Treblinka

Treblinka , a camp unknown to most , but not least deadlier then the others .
It's situated in Northeastern Poland in a remote forest .
Many claimed it to just be an assembly camp , a gather point for shipment to other extermination camps.
They prooved to be wrong .... this is the story of Treblinka

"In a relatively short time of it's existance the camp took a total over 870.000 victims of Jews from Poland , Austria , Belgium , Czechoslovakia , France , Greece , Jugoslavia , Germany and the Soviet Union ."

Treblinka , another camp where many people found death by execution , starvation or slave labour .
All people arrived in cattlewagons , were sorted out on the platform and then send to work under the vigilant eye of Franz Stangl , the camp commander who send many into their death .
Because of it's remotness , it was hard to spot , let alone to know what happened there .

The camp was constructed in 1941 for slaveworkers , later on Treblinka II was formed by nazi firms , polish workers and Jews . Treblinka II would be the elimination centre of Treblinka ... .
As with other deathcamps the nazi's didn't want the Jews to knew what was going to happen to them .
At the walls of Treblinka gaschambers there was a davidstar or jewstar and a Hebrewic inscription wich was on a curtain at the entrance . This inscription read : "This is the gate through wich the righteous pass"

The uppercamp was unable to recieve long trains , so a few wagons at a time was pushed in and unloaded und the platform .
When disembarking , they heared an SS-officer making a speech that they arrived at a transit camp .
Women were seperated from the men , those who couldn't walk were dragged to a pit near the infirmary and shot , no Jew knew what their fate would be .... yet .... .

They were put in their barracks , heads were shaved and postcards were send to family .
SS personell posted the cards , to promote the Jewish resetlement to the East ... .
After the cards it was shower time ... a shower from wich they will never return ... .
To make it look real , they put piping on the ceiling with showerheads , door was shut after them and gas came out of these showerheads on the command of "Ivan , WASSER !" (Ivan , WATER !), this was what the German shouted at the Ukranian guard who would then turn the gascranes open .
The facility started with 3 gaschambers but soon expanded to 6 .

After this , the corpses were dragged through an opposite door of the entry door , to be searched for valuables hidden in bodycavaties (like goldteeth etc) . Then on to the massgraves wich later prooved to be a problem .
So they stacked them up on left over railroad tracks to be burned .
Their belongings were send to Germany .
Prisoners had to clean the cattlewagons after disembarking , to get rid of the bodies and clean the wagons up .
This had to be done quickly as another train awaited it's entry ... .

The camp was ran by SS-obersturmführer Imfried Eberl but then command was given to SS-obersturmführer Franz Stangl in August 1942 .
He and his camp deputy Kurt Franz were cruel commanders , like most of them were ... .

There was resitance in the camp , some actions killed an SS men and Ukrainians .
There was an underground organised resistance movement active in Treblinka .
50 to 70 men planned to raid the weapons storage , steal the weapons , blow the camp up and flee in the surrounding forest . They thought once the rebellion started that many others would join .
But an alert SS-officer guard , Kurt Kuttner , forced the rebellion sooner then planned .
They stormed the weapon storage and set some buildings on fire then tried to flee .
750 men tried to escape but most were shot by the campguards . 70 survived .
After this incident and the approaching of the Russians , Treblinka was torn down by the nazi's .
A farm was built on it and given to an Ukrainian .