Misplaced Pages

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137-552: In the location of present-day Starachowice, a forge existed, which in the 16th century belonged to the Starzechowski family (most probably, the name of the town comes from this family). The oldest known mention of Starachowice comes from 1547. The settlement, which was built around the forge, belonged until 1817 to the Cistercians from Wąchock Abbey , located nearby. It was the monks who in 1789 initiated construction of

274-447: A Red Army tank. SS- Scharführer Erich Fuchs was responsible for installing it. The engine was brought in by the SS at the time of the camp's construction and housed in a room with a generator that supplied the camp with electricity. The tank engine exhaust pipe ran just below the ground and opened into all three gas chambers. The fumes could be seen seeping out. After about 20 minutes

411-411: A blast furnace (see also Old-Polish Industrial Region ). In the meantime Polish bishop Bogusław Radoszewski founded the town of Wierzbnik in 1624, which was granted town rights by Polish King Sigismund III Vasa . Three annual fairs and three weekly markets were organized in the town, however it developed slowly, while Starachowice developed faster. Both settlements were administratively located in

548-512: A "cutting table" That is used for cutting hot or cold steel with chisels, and hot cut tools without harming the anvil's face. Marks on the face transfer into imperfections in the blacksmith's work. There are many types of hammer used in a blacksmith's workshop but this will name just a few common ones. Hammers can range in shape and weight from half an ounce to nearly 30 pounds depending on the type of work being done with it. Chisels are made of high carbon steel . They are hardened and tempered at

685-467: A Jewish eyewitness, one of about 100 people who escaped during the 1943 uprising, told of the camp's state when he arrived there in August 1942: When we were unloaded, we noticed a paralysing view – all over the place there were hundreds of human bodies. Piles of packages, clothes, suitcases, everything in a mess. German and Ukrainian SS-men stood at the corners of the barracks and were shooting blindly into

822-498: A blacksmith as such because they are too soft. A common term for a cast iron anvil is "ASO" or "Anvil Shaped Object". The purpose of a tool steel face on an anvil is to provide what some call "rebound" as well as being hard and not denting easily from misplaced hammer blows. The term rebound means it projects some of the force of the blacksmith's hammer blows back into the metal thus moving more metal at once than if there were no rebound. A good anvil can project anywhere from 50 to 99% of

959-426: A brief verbal announcement. An earlier signboard with directions was removed because it was clearly insufficient. The deportees were told that they had arrived at a transit point on the way to Ukraine and needed to shower and have their clothes disinfected before receiving work uniforms and new orders. Treblinka received transports of almost 20,000 foreign Jews between October 1942 and March 1943, including 8,000 from

1096-425: A burner tube mounted at a right angle to the body. The chamber is typically lined with refractory materials such as a hard castable refractory ceramic or a soft ceramic thermal blanket (ex: Kaowool ). The burner mixes fuel and air which are ignited at the tip, which protrudes a short way into the chamber lining. The air pressure, and therefore heat, can be increased with a mechanical blower or by taking advantage of

1233-408: A cart to the gravel work detail. At 3:45 p.m., 700 Jews launched an insurgency that lasted for 30 minutes. They set buildings ablaze, exploded a tank of petrol, and set fire to the surrounding structures. A group of armed Jews attacked the main gate, and others attempted to climb the fence. Machine-gun fire from about 25 Germans and 60 Ukrainian Trawnikis resulted in near-total slaughter. Lajcher

1370-582: A communiqué published by the Office of Information of the Armia Krajowa , based on observation of Holocaust trains passing through the village of Treblinka. The 39 wagons that came to Treblinka on 19 August 1943 were carrying at least 7,600 survivors of the Białystok Ghetto Uprising . On 19 October 1943, Operation Reinhard was terminated by a letter from Odilo Globocnik. The following day,

1507-481: A competent administrator with a good understanding of the project's objectives, and Globocnik trusted that he would be capable of resuming control. Stangl arrived at Treblinka in late August 1942. He replaced Eberl on 1 September. Years later, Stangl described what he first saw when he came on the scene, in a 1971 interview with Gitta Sereny : The road ran alongside the railway. When we were about fifteen, twenty minutes' drive from Treblinka, we began to see corpses by

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1644-480: A fake infirmary called "Lazarett", with the Red Cross sign on it. It was a small barracks surrounded by barbed wire, where the sick, old, wounded and "difficult" prisoners were taken. Directly behind the "Lazarett" shack, there was an open excavation pit seven metres (23 ft) deep. These prisoners were led to the edge of the pit and shot one at a time by Blockführer Willi Mentz , nicknamed "Frankenstein" by

1781-523: A fake train-station clock with hands painted on it, names of destinations, a fake ticket window, and the sign "Ober Majdan", a code word for Treblinka commonly used to deceive prisoners arriving from Western Europe. Majdan was a prewar landed estate 5 km (3.1 mi) away from the camp. The mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto began on 22 July 1942 with the first transportation of 6,000 people. The gas chambers began to be operated

1918-524: A flat grave marker resembling one of them. It is constructed from melted basalt and has a concrete foundation. It is a symbolic grave, as the Nazis spread the actual human ashes, mixed with sand, over an area of 2.2 ha (5.4 acres). The camp was operated by 20–25 German and Austrian members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände and 80–120 Wachmänner ("watchmen") guards who had been trained at

2055-416: A greater distance away from the hot metals. They are very useful and found throughout the world. Tongs are used by the blacksmith for holding hot metals securely. The mouths are custom made by the smith in various shapes to suit the gripping of various shapes of metal . It is not uncommon for a blacksmith to own twenty or more pairs of tongs; traditionally, a smith would start building their collection during

2192-472: A guard at Treblinka II. He was instructed to tell visitors that he had been farming there for decades, but the local Poles were well aware of the existence of the camp. SS- Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl was appointed the camp's first commandant on 11 July 1942. He was a psychiatrist from Bernburg Euthanasia Centre and the only physician-in-chief to command an extermination camp during World War II. According to some, his poor organisational skills caused

2329-441: A high wooden fence. Originally, they consisted of three interconnected barracks 8 m (26 ft) long and 4 m (13 ft) wide, disguised as showers. They had double walls insulated by earth packed down in between. The interior walls and ceilings were lined with roofing paper. The floors were covered with tin-plated sheet metal, the same material used for the roof. Solid wooden doors were insulated with rubber and bolted from

2466-455: A kitchen, a bakery, and dining rooms; all were equipped with high-quality items taken from Jewish ghettos. The Germans and Ukrainians each had their own sleeping quarters, positioned at an angle for better control of all entrances. There were also two barracks behind an inner fence for the Jewish work commandos, known as Sonderkommandos . SS-Untersturmführer Kurt Franz set up a small zoo in

2603-477: A large group of Jewish Arbeitskommandos who had worked on dismantling the camp structures over the previous few weeks were loaded onto the train and transported, via Siedlce and Chełm , to Sobibór to be gassed on 20 October 1943. Franz followed Globocnik and Stangl to Trieste in November. Clean-up operations continued over the winter. As part of these operations, Jews from the surviving work detail dismantled

2740-471: A long period of secret preparations. The clandestine unit was first organised by a former Jewish captain of the Polish Army , Dr. Julian Chorążycki , who was described by fellow plotter Samuel Rajzman as noble and essential to the action. His organising committee included Zelomir Bloch (leadership), Rudolf Masaryk , Marceli Galewski, Samuel Rajzman, Dr. Irena Lewkowska ("Irka", from the sick bay for

2877-578: A massacre of over 20 Polish civilians. On September 7, German troops entered Starachowice. On September 27, 1939, the Einsatzgruppe II entered the city to commit various crimes against Poles . Afterwards it was occupied by Germany and in 1940 the Germans carried out mass arrests of local Polish intelligentsia . Poles were used as forced labour in the local factory. During the Holocaust ,

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3014-417: A revolt by the prisoners in early August. Several Trawniki guards were killed and 200 prisoners escaped from the camp; almost a hundred survived the subsequent pursuit. The camp was dismantled in late 1943. A farmhouse for a watchman was built on the site and the ground ploughed over in an attempt to hide the evidence of genocide . In the postwar Polish People's Republic , the government bought most of

3151-578: A special SS facility in the Trawniki concentration camp near Lublin , Poland; all Wachmänner guards were trained at Trawniki. The guards were mainly ethnic German Volksdeutsche from the east and Ukrainians, with some Russians, Tatars , Moldovans, Latvians, and Central Asians , all of whom had served in the Red Army. They were enlisted by Karl Streibel , the commander of the Trawniki camp, from

3288-485: A trace of remorse just murdered every little thing." Willenberg and Taigman emigrated to Israel after the war and devoted their last years to retelling the story of Treblinka. Escapees Hershl Sperling and Richard Glazar both suffered from survivor guilt syndrome and eventually killed themselves. Chaim Sztajer, who was 34 at the time of the uprising, had survived 11 months as a Sonderkommando in Treblinka II and

3425-426: A workforce of 1,000–2,000 prisoners, most of whom worked 12- to 14-hour shifts in the large quarry and later also harvested wood from the nearby forest as fuel for the open-air crematoria in Treblinka II. There were German, Czech and French Jews among them, as well as Poles captured in łapankas , farmers unable to deliver food requisitions, hostages trapped by chance, and people who attempted to harbour Jews outside

3562-410: Is a type of hearth used for heating metals , or the workplace ( smithy ) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging , or to the point at which work hardening no longer occurs. The metal (known as the "workpiece") is transported to and from the forge using tongs , which are also used to hold

3699-480: Is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people . More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau . Managed by the German SS with assistance from Trawniki guards – recruited from among Soviet POWs to serve with the Germans – the camp consisted of two separate units. Treblinka I

3836-424: Is placed in or on the hearth and ignited. A source of moving air, such as a fan or bellows, introduces additional air into the fire through the tuyere. With additional air, the fire consumes fuel faster and burns hotter (and cleaner - smoke can be thought of as escaped potential fuel). A blacksmith balances the fuel and air in the fire to suit particular kinds of work. Often this involves adjusting and maintaining

3973-486: Is refined into wrought iron . The anvil serves as a workbench to the blacksmith , where the metal to be forged is worked. Anvils may seem clunky and heavy, but they are a highly refined tool carefully shaped to suit a blacksmith's needs. Anvils are made of cast or wrought iron with a tool steel face welded on or of a single piece of cast or forged tool steel. Some anvils are made of only cast iron and have no tool steel face. These are not real anvils, and will not serve

4110-408: Is usually a large container full of water used by a blacksmith to quench hot metal. The slack tub is principally used to cool parts of the work during forging (to protect them, or keep the metal in one area from "spreading" for example, nearby hammer blows); to harden the steel; to tend a coal or charcoal forge; and simply to cool the work quickly for easy inspection. In bladesmithing and tool-making

4247-629: The Deutsche Reichsbahn . Most of those murdered at Treblinka were Jews, but about 2,000 Romani people were also murdered there. Like the Jews, the Romani were first rounded up and sent to the ghettos. At a conference on 30 January 1940 it was decided that all 30,000 Romani living in Germany proper were to be deported to former Polish territory. Most of these were sent to Jewish ghettos in

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4384-681: The Hiwis ), Leon Haberman, Chaim Sztajer , Hershl (Henry) Sperling from Częstochowa , and several others. Chorążycki (who treated the German patients) killed himself with poison on 19 April 1943 when faced with imminent capture, so that the Germans could not discover the plot by torturing him. The next leader was another former Polish Army officer, Dr. Berek Lajcher , who arrived on 1 May. Born in Częstochowa, he had practised medicine in Wyszków and

4521-776: The Katyn Commission to prove that the Soviets were solely responsible, and used radio broadcast and newsfilm to alert the Allies to this war crime. Subsequently, the Nazi leadership, concerned about covering up their own crimes, issued the secret orders to exhume the corpses buried at death camps and burn them. The cremations began shortly after Himmler's visit to the camp in late February or early March 1943. To incinerate bodies, large cremation pits were constructed at Camp 3 within Treblinka II. The burning pyres were used to cremate

4658-601: The Roman Catholic Church (1979). When capitalist system was reintroduced in 1989, the situation in Starachowice worsened, and unemployment grew drastically. The town currently has a special economy zone with lower tax rates to help the settlement of new industry. There is the Municipal Stadium in the city. Local football teams are: Starachowice is twinned with: Forge A forge

4795-554: The SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka by the Nazis. A small number of Jewish men who were not murdered immediately upon arrival became members of its Sonderkommando whose jobs included being forced to bury the victims' bodies in mass graves. These bodies were exhumed in 1943 and cremated on large open-air pyres along with the bodies of new victims. Gassing operations at Treblinka II ended in October 1943 following

4932-740: The Sandomierz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown . In the Third Partition of Poland , in 1795, the area was annexed by Austria , in 1809 it passed to the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw , and in 1815 it passed to so-called Congress Poland in the Russian Partition of Poland. In 1815, the furnace was taken over by the government of Congress Poland , and in

5069-606: The Sonderkommandos to be exchanged for the next set of twenty wagons. Members of all work units were continuously beaten by the guards and often shot. Replacements were selected from the new arrivals. There were other work details which had no contact with the transports: the Holzfällerkommando ("woodcutter unit") cut and chopped firewood, and the Tarnungskommando ("disguise unit") camouflaged

5206-629: The Tarnungskommando (the work detail led out to collect them). From the undressing barracks, a fenced-off path led through the forested area to the gas chambers. The SS cynically called it die Himmelstraße ("the road to heaven") or der Schlauch ("the tube"). For the first eight months of the camp's operation, the excavator was used to dig burial ditches on both sides of the gas chambers; these ditches were 50 m (160 ft) long, 25 m (82 ft) wide, and 10 m (33 ft) deep. In early 1943, they were replaced with cremation pyres up to 30 m (98 ft) long, with rails laid across

5343-457: The Totenjuden barracks occurred at the rate of 15 to 20 per day. The work crews were almost entirely replaced every few days; members of the old work detail were murdered except for the most resilient. In early 1943, an underground Jewish resistance organisation was formed at Treblinka with the goal of seizing control of the camp and escaping to freedom. The planned revolt was preceded by

5480-497: The Venturi effect . Gas forges vary in size and construction, from large forges using a big burner with a blower or several atmospheric burners to forges built out of a coffee can utilizing a cheap, simple propane torch . A small forge can even be carved out of a single soft firebrick . The primary advantage of a gas forge is the ease of use, particularly for a novice. A gas forge is simple to operate compared to coal forges, and

5617-507: The front . With almost all the Jews from the German ghettos (established in Poland) murdered, there would have been little point in rebuilding the facility. Auschwitz had enough capacity to fulfil the Nazis' remaining extermination needs, rendering Treblinka redundant. The camp's new commandant Kurt Franz , formerly its deputy commandant, took over in August. After the war he testified that gassings had stopped by then. In reality, despite

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5754-518: The ghetto in Wierzbnik was liquidated on October 27, 1942, and many of its prisoners were sent to the death camp Treblinka . The remaining Jewish residents of Starachowice and Wierzbnik were sent to German labor camps in the vicinity. Those camps were liquidated in the summer of 1944. The remaining survivors were deported to Auschwitz where many were murdered by the Schutzstaffel . There

5891-506: The mass graves were overflowing. According to the testimony of his colleague Unterscharführer Hans Hingst , Eberl's ego and thirst for power exceeded his ability: "So many transports arrived that the disembarkation and gassing of the people could no longer be handled." On incoming Holocaust trains to Treblinka, many of the Jews locked inside correctly guessed what was going to happen to them. The odour of decaying corpses could be smelled up to 10 km (6.2 mi) away. Oskar Berger,

6028-453: The 1943 prisoner uprising and escaped, when the doors of the gas chambers had been opened, the bodies of the victims were standing and kneeling rather than lying down, due to the severe overcrowding. Dead mothers embraced the bodies of their children. Prisoners who worked in the Sonderkommandos later testified that the dead frequently let out a last gasp of air when they were extracted from the chambers. Some victims showed signs of life during

6165-481: The Camp 2 Auffanglager receiving area each squad had a different coloured triangle. The triangles made it impossible for new arrivals to try to blend in with members of the work details. The blue unit ( Kommando Blau ) managed the rail ramp and unlocked the freight wagons. They met the new arrivals, carried out people who had died en route, removed bundles, and cleaned the wagon floors. The red unit ( Kommando Rot ), which

6302-593: The General Government during Aktion Reinhard were overseen in occupied Poland by Odilo Globocnik , a deputy of Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS, in Berlin. The Operation Reinhard camps reported directly to Himmler. The staff of Operation Reinhard, most of whom had been involved in the Action T4 "involuntary euthanasia" programme, used T4 as a framework for the construction of new facilities. Most of

6439-538: The General Government, such as those in Warsaw and Łódź. As with the Jews, most Romani who went to Treblinka were murdered in the gas chambers, although some were shot. The majority of the Jews living in ghettos were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, or Treblinka to be murdered; most of the Romani living in the ghettos were shot on the spot. There were no known Romani escapees or survivors from Treblinka. After undressing, newly arrived Jews were beaten with whips to drive them towards

6576-857: The German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia via Theresienstadt , and over 11,000 from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace , Macedonia , and Pirot following an agreement with the Nazi-allied Bulgarian government. They had train tickets and arrived predominantly in passenger carriages with considerable luggage, travel foods and drinks, all of which were taken by the SS to the food storage barracks. The provisions included such items as smoked mutton, speciality breads, wine, cheese, fruit, tea, coffee, and sweets. Unlike Polish Jews arriving in Holocaust trains from nearby ghettos in cities like Warsaw , Radom , and those of Bezirk Bialystok ,

6713-491: The Jewish ghettos or who performed restricted actions without permits. Beginning in July 1942, Jews and non-Jews were separated. Women mainly worked in the sorting barracks, where they repaired and cleaned military clothing delivered by freight trains, while most of the men worked at the gravel mine. There were no work uniforms, and inmates who lost their own shoes were forced to go barefoot or scavenge them from dead prisoners. Water

6850-414: The Jews inside it during the trip, rather than force the drivers and guards to murder them at the destination. After visiting Treblinka on a guided tour, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss concluded that using exhaust gas was inferior to the cyanide used at his extermination camp. The chambers became silent after 12 minutes and were closed for 20 minutes or less. According to Jankiel Wiernik , who survived

6987-471: The Jews who were murdered in the Reinhard camps came from ghettos. The Operation Reinhard camps reported directly to Himmler, and not to the concentration camps inspector Richard Glücks . The two parallel camps of Treblinka were built 80 km (50 mi) northeast of Warsaw . Before World War II, it was the location of a gravel mining enterprise for the production of concrete, connected to most of

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7124-503: The Schönbronn Company of Leipzig and the Warsaw branch of Schmidt–Münstermann, oversaw the construction of both camps. Between 1942 and 1943, the extermination centre was further redeveloped with a crawler excavator . New gas chambers constructed of brick and cement mortar were freshly erected, and mass cremation pyres were also introduced. The perimeter was enlarged to provide a buffer zone, making it impossible to approach

7261-513: The Treblinka station or to the layover yard in Małkinia for the next load, while the victims were pulled from the carriages onto the platform by Kommando Blau , one of the Jewish work details forced to assist the Germans at the camp. They were led through the gate amidst chaos and screaming. They were separated by gender behind the gate; women were pushed into the undressing barracks and barber on

7398-407: The apprenticeship. There are various types of tongs available in the market. (1) flat tong (2) rivet or ring tong (3) straight lip fluted tong (4) gad tong Fullers are forming tools of different shapes used in making grooves or hollows. They are often used in pairs, the bottom fuller has a square shank which fits into the hardy hole in the anvil while the top fuller has a handle. The work is placed on

7535-551: The bellies of pregnant women exploding from boiling amniotic fluid . He wrote that "the heat radiating from the pits was maddening." The bodies burned for five hours, without the ashing of bones. The pyres operated 24 hours a day. Once the system had been perfected, 10,000–12,000 bodies at a time could be incinerated. The open air burn pits were located east of the new gas chambers and refuelled from 4 a.m. (or after 5 a.m. depending on work-load) to 6 p.m. in roughly 5-hour intervals. The current camp memorial includes

7672-472: The belongings, including sacks of hair from women who had been murdered there. The Goldjuden unit ("gold Jews") collected and counted banknotes and evaluated the gold and jewellery. A different group of about 300 men, called the Totenjuden ("Jews for the dead"), lived and worked in Camp 3 across from the gas chambers. For the first six months they took the corpses away for burial after gold teeth had been extracted. Once cremation began in early 1943 they took

7809-501: The bodies were removed by dozens of Sonderkommandos , placed onto carts and wheeled away. The system was imperfect and required a lot of effort; trains that arrived later in the day had to wait on layover tracks overnight at Treblinka, Małkinia, or Wólka Okrąglik . Between August and September 1942, a large new building with a concrete foundation was built from bricks and mortar under the guidance of Erwin Lambert , who had supervised

7946-483: The bottom fuller and the top is placed on the work and struck with a hammer. The top fuller is also used for finishing round corners and for stretching or spreading metal. The hardy tool is a tool with a square shank that fits in a hardy hole. There are many different kinds of hardy tools such as the hot cut hardy, used for cutting hot metal on the anvil; the fuller tool, used for drawing out metal and making grooves; bending jigs - and too many others to list. A slack tub

8083-464: The building site to the original gas chambers. The new gas chambers became operational after five weeks of construction, equipped with two fume-producing engines instead of one. The metal doors, which had been taken from Soviet military bunkers around Białystok, had portholes through which it was possible to observe the dead before removing them. Stangl said that the old gas chambers were capable of murdering 3,000 people in three hours. The new ones had

8220-514: The camp from the outside. The number of trains caused panic among the residents of nearby settlements. They would likely have been killed if caught near the railway tracks. Opened on 1 September 1941 as a forced-labour camp ( Arbeitslager ), Treblinka I replaced an ad hoc company established in June 1941 by Sturmbannführer Ernst Gramss. A new barracks and barbed wire fencing 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high were erected in late 1941. To obtain

8357-483: The camp opened in 2006. It was later expanded and made into a branch of the Siedlce Regional Museum. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, most of the 3.5 million Polish Jews were rounded up and confined to newly established ghettos by the Nazis. The system was intended to isolate the Jews from the outside world in order to facilitate their exploitation and abuse. The supply of food

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8494-401: The camp, there were two 19-year-olds, Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman , who had both arrived in 1942 and had been forced to work there under the threat of death. Taigman died in 2012 and Willenberg in 2016. Taigman stated of his experience, "It was hell, absolutely hell. A normal man cannot imagine how a living person could have lived through it – killers, natural-born killers, who without

8631-399: The capital for fear of similar incidents; the remaining 42,000 Warsaw Jews were deported to Majdanek , instead. The burning of unearthed corpses continued at full speed until the end of July. The Treblinka II conspirators became increasingly concerned about their future as the amount of work for them began to decline. With fewer transports arriving, they realised "they were next in line for

8768-456: The centre next to his horse stables, containing two foxes, two peacocks and a roe deer (introduced in 1943). Smaller rooms were built as laundry, tailors , and cobblers , and for woodworking and medical aid. Closest to the SS quarters were separate barracks for the Polish and Ukrainian women who served, cleaned, and worked in the kitchen. The next section of Treblinka II (Camp 2, also called

8905-416: The construction of gas chambers for the Action T4 involuntary euthanasia program. It contained 8–10 gas chambers, each of which was 8 by 4 m (26 by 13 ft), and it had a corridor in the centre. Stangl supervised its construction and brought in building materials from the nearby village of Małkinia by dismantling factory stock. During this time victims continued to arrive daily and were led naked past

9042-574: The construction of stationary facilities for mass murder. Treblinka was the third extermination camp of Operation Reinhard to be built, following Bełżec and Sobibór, and incorporated lessons learned from their construction. Alongside the Reinhard camps, mass-murder facilities using Zyklon B were developed at the Majdanek concentration camp in March 1942, and at Auschwitz II-Birkenau between March and June. Nazi plans to murder Polish Jews from across

9179-402: The corpses to the pits, refuelled the pyres, crushed the remaining bones with mallets, and collected the ashes for disposal. Each trainload of "deportees" brought to Treblinka consisted of an average of sixty heavily guarded wagons. They were divided into three sets of twenty at the layover yard. Each set was processed within the first two hours of backing onto the ramp, and was then made ready by

9316-528: The crowd. When Globocnik made a surprise visit to Treblinka on 26 August 1942 with Christian Wirth and Wirth's adjutant from Bełżec, Josef Oberhauser , Eberl was dismissed on the spot. Among the reasons for dismissal were: incompetently disposing of the tens of thousands of dead bodies, using inefficient methods of murder, and not properly concealing the mass-murder. Eberl was transferred to Berlin, closer to operational headquarters in Hitler's Chancellery , where

9453-417: The cutting edge while the head is left soft so it will not crack when hammered. Chisels are of two types, hot and cold chisels. The cold chisel is used for cutting cold metals while the hot chisel is for hot metals. Usually, hot chisels are thinner and therefore can not be substituted with cold chisels. Also, many smiths shape chisels as to have a simple twisted handle as to resemble a hammer, they can be used at

9590-549: The dies have many aspects to them that must be considered. They all must be properly aligned, they must be designed so the metal and the flash will flow properly and fill all the grooves, and special considerations must be made for supporting webs and ribs and the parting line location. The materials must also be selected carefully. Some factors that go into the material selection are cost, their ability to harden, their ability to withstand high pressures, hot abrasion, heat cracking, and other such things. The most common materials used for

9727-535: The disposal of the corpses, but the guards routinely refused to react. The Germans became aware of the political danger associated with the mass burial of corpses in April 1943 after they discovered the graves of Polish victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre carried out by the Soviets near Smolensk. The bodies of the 10,000 Polish officers executed by the NKVD were well preserved despite their long burial. The Germans formed

9864-550: The drop forming process is commonly known as a power or drop hammer. These may be powered by air, hydraulics, or mechanics. Depending on how the machine is powered, the mass of the ram, and the drop height, the striking force can be anywhere from 11,000 to 425,000 pounds. The tools that are used, dies and punches, come in many different shapes and sizes, as well as materials. Examples of these shapes are flat and v-shaped which are used for open-die forging, and single or multiple-impression dies used for closed die forging. The designs for

10001-432: The energy back into the workpiece. The flat top, called the "face" is highly polished and usually has two holes (but can have more or less depending on the design). The square hole is called the hardy hole, where the square shank of the hardy tool fits. There are many different kinds of hardy tools. The smaller hole is called the pritchel hole, used as a bolster when punching holes in hot metal, or to hold tools similar to how

10138-473: The extensive damage to the camp, the gas chambers were intact, and the murder of Polish Jews continued. Speed was reduced, with only ten wagons rolled onto the ramp at a time, while the others had to wait. The last two rail transports of Jews were brought to the camp for gassing from the Białystok Ghetto on 18 and 19 August 1943. They consisted of 76 wagons (37 the first day and 39 the second), according to

10275-404: The fire in the forge. A forge typically uses bituminous coal , industrial coke or charcoal as the fuel to heat metal. The designs of these forges have varied over time, but whether the fuel is coal , coke or charcoal the basic design has remained the same. A forge of this type is essentially a hearth or fireplace designed to allow a fire to be controlled such that metal introduced to

10412-407: The fire is handled differently. Individual smiths and specialized applications have fostered the development of a variety of forges of this type, from the coal forge described above to simpler constructions amounting to a hole in the ground with a pipe leading into it. A gas forge typically uses propane or natural gas as the fuel. One common, efficient design uses a cylindrical forge chamber and

10549-442: The fire may be brought to a malleable state or to bring about other metallurgical effects ( hardening , annealing , and tempering as examples). The forge fire in this type of forge is controlled in three ways: amount of air, the volume of fuel, and shape of the fuel/fire. Over thousands of years of forging, these devices have evolved in one form or another as the essential features of this type of forge: During operation, fuel

10686-417: The fire produced is clean and consistent. They are less versatile, as the fire cannot be reshaped to accommodate large or unusually shaped pieces. It is also difficult to heat a small section of a piece. A common misconception is that gas forges cannot produce enough heat to enable forge- welding , but a well-designed gas forge is hot enough for any task. A finery forge is a water-powered mill where pig iron

10823-434: The following morning. For the next two months, deportations from Warsaw continued daily, via two shuttle trains (the second one, from 6 August 1942), each carrying about 4,000 to 7,000 people crying for water. No other trains were allowed to stop at the Treblinka station. The first daily trains came in the early morning, often after an overnight wait, and the second, in mid-afternoon. All new arrivals were sent immediately to

10960-611: The following years, the industrial settlement of Starachowice emerged as main center of metallurgy . According to a plan devised by Stanisław Staszic , metal industry was developed along the Kamienna river, and the settlement of Starachowice was its center. As part of anti-Polish repressions following the unsuccessful Polish January Uprising , the Russian administration stripped Wierzbnik of its town rights in 1870, which were restored in 1916. After Poland regained independence in 1918,

11097-712: The foreign Jews received a warm welcome upon arrival from an SS man (either Otto Stadie or Willy Mätzig), after which they were murdered like the others. Treblinka was mainly used for the murder of Polish Jews, Bełżec was used to murder Jews from Austria and the Sudetenland , and Sobibór was used to murder Jews from France and the Netherlands. Auschwitz-Birkenau was used to murder Jews from almost every other country in Europe. The frequency of arriving transports slowed down in winter. The decoupled locomotive went back to

11234-490: The gas chambers brick-by-brick and used them to erect a farmhouse on the site of the camp's former bakery. Globocnik confirmed its purpose as a secret guard post for a Nazi-Ukrainian agent to remain behind the scenes, in a letter he sent to Himmler from Trieste on 5 January 1944. A Hiwi guard called Oswald Strebel, a Ukrainian Volksdeutscher (ethnic German), was given permission to bring his family from Ukraine for "reasons of surveillance", wrote Globocnik; Strebel had worked as

11371-503: The gas chambers for their turn. During this time, the women and children could hear the sounds of suffering from inside the chambers, and they became aware of what awaited them, which caused panic, distress, and even involuntary defecation. Many survivors of the Treblinka camp testified that an officer known as ' Ivan the Terrible ' was responsible for operating the gas chambers in 1942 and 1943. While Jews were awaiting their fate outside

11508-473: The gas chambers, Ivan the Terrible allegedly tortured, beat, and murdered many of them. Survivors witnessed Ivan beat victims' heads open with a pipe, cut victims with a sword or a bayonet, cut off noses and ears, and gouge out eyes. One survivor testified that Ivan murdered an infant by bashing it against a wall; another claimed that he raped a young girl before cutting her abdomen open and letting her bleed to death. The gas chambers were completely enclosed by

11645-490: The gas chambers." The uprising was launched on the hot summer day of 2 August 1943 (Monday, a regular day of rest from gassing), when a group of Germans and 40 Ukrainians drove off to the River Bug to swim. The conspirators silently unlocked the door to the arsenal near the train tracks, with a key that had been duplicated earlier. They had stolen 20–25 rifles, 20 hand grenades, and several pistols, and delivered them in

11782-408: The gas chambers; hesitant men were treated particularly brutally. Rudolf Höss , the commandant at Auschwitz, contrasted the practice at Treblinka of deceiving the victims about the showers with his own camp's practice of telling them they had to go through a "delousing" process. According to the postwar testimony of some SS officers, men were always gassed first, while women and children waited outside

11919-683: The genocide of Jews, known as the "Final Solution" to the Jewish Question. The extermination programme was codenamed Operation Reinhard . and was separate from the Einsatzgruppen mass-murder operations in Eastern Europe, in which half a million Jews had already been murdered. Treblinka was one of three secret extermination camps set up for Operation Reinhard; the other two were Bełżec and Sobibór . All three were equipped with gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, for

12056-538: The government in Warsaw decided to build an arms factory in Starachowice. On October 12, 1920, The Society of Starachowice Mining Company signed a contract with Main Office of Supplying the Army . Soon afterwards, works on construction of artillery ammunition factory began. Zakłady Starachowickie ( Starachowice Works ), which was an industrial complex including ammunition factory, artillery equipment factory and iron works,

12193-474: The guards. The area where the women and children were shorn of their hair was on the other side of the path from the men. All buildings in the lower camp, including the barber barracks, contained the piled up clothing and belongings of the prisoners. Behind the station building, further to the right, there was a Sorting Square where all baggage was first collected by the Lumpenkommando . It was flanked by

12330-403: The hardy tool does, but for tools that require being able to turn a 360-degree angle such as a hold-down tool for when the blacksmith's tongs cannot hold a workpiece as securely as it needs to be. On the front of the anvil, there is sometimes a "horn" that is used for bending, drawing out steel, and many other tasks. Between the horn and the anvil face, there is often a small area called a "step" or

12467-402: The heat of the fire. Surrounding all is a ring or horseshoe-shaped layer of raw coal, usually kept damp and tightly packed to maintain the shape of the fire's heart and to keep the coal from burning directly so that it "cooks" into coke first. If a larger fire is necessary, the smith increases the air flowing into the fire as well as feeding and deepening the coke heart. The smith can also adjust

12604-437: The heated material, which is very malleable, to conform to the shape of the die and die cavities. Typically only one die is needed to completely form the part. Extra space between the die faces causes some of the material to be pressed out of the sides, forming flash . This acts as a relief valve for the extreme pressure produced by the closing of the die halves and is later trimmed off of the finished part. The equipment used in

12741-430: The highest possible capacity of any gas chambers in the three Reinhard death camps and could murder up to 22,000 or 25,000 people every day, a fact which Globocnik once boasted about to Kurt Gerstein , a fellow SS officer from Disinfection Services. The new gas chambers were seldom used to their full capacity; 12,000–15,000 victims remained the daily average. The killing process at Treblinka differed significantly from

12878-418: The inmates. Mentz single-handedly killed thousands of Jews, aided by his supervisor, August Miete , who was called the "Angel of Death" by the prisoners. The pit was also used to burn old worn-out clothes and identity papers deposited by new arrivals at the undressing area. The third section of Treblinka II (Camp 3, also called the upper camp) was the main killing zone, with gas chambers at its centre. It

13015-537: The land where the camp had stood, and built a large stone memorial there between 1959 and 1962. In 1964, Treblinka was declared a national monument of Jewish martyrdom in a ceremony at the site of the former gas chambers. In the same year, the first German trials were held regarding the crimes committed at Treblinka by former SS members . After the end of communism in Poland in 1989, the number of visitors coming to Treblinka from abroad increased. An exhibition centre at

13152-433: The left, and men were sent to the right. All were ordered to tie their shoes together and strip. Some kept their own towels. The Jews who resisted were taken to the "Lazarett", also called the "Red Cross infirmary", and shot behind it. Women had their hair cut off; therefore, it took longer to prepare them for the gas chambers than men. The hair was used in the manufacture of socks for U-boat crews and hair-felt footwear for

13289-423: The length and width of the fire in such a forge to accommodate different shapes of work. The major variation from the forge and fire just described is a ' backdraft ' where there is no fire pot, and the tuyere enters the hearth horizontally from the back wall. Coke and charcoal may be burned in the same forges that use coal, but since there is no need to convert the raw fuel at the heart of the fire (as with coal),

13426-475: The local station master, Eupen often murdered prisoners by "taking shots at them, as if they were partridges". A widely feared overseer was Untersturmführer Franz Schwarz, who killed prisoners with a pickaxe or hammer. Treblinka II (officially the SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka ) was divided into three parts: Camp 1 was the administrative compound where the guards lived, Camp 2 was the receiving area where incoming transports of prisoners were offloaded, and Camp 3

13563-401: The lower camp or Auffanglager ), was the receiving area where the railway unloading ramp extended from the Treblinka line into the camp. There was a long and narrow platform surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. A new building, erected on the platform, was disguised as a railway station complete with a wooden clock and fake rail terminal signs. SS- Scharführer Josef Hirtreiter , who worked on

13700-464: The main architect of the Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler, had just stepped up the pace of the programme. Globocnik assigned Wirth to remain in Treblinka temporarily to help clean up the camp. On 28 August 1942, Globocnik suspended deportations. He chose Franz Stangl, who had been the commandant of the Sobibór extermination camp, to assume command of the camp as Eberl's successor. Stangl had a reputation as

13837-576: The major cities in central Poland by the Małkinia – Sokołów Podlaski railway junction and the Treblinka village station. The mine was owned and operated by the Polish industrialist Marian Łopuszyński, who added the new 6 km (3.7 mi) railway track to the existing line. When the German SS took over Treblinka I, the quarry was already equipped with heavy machinery that was ready to use. Treblinka

13974-404: The method used at Auschwitz and Majdanek, where the poison gas Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) was used. At Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec, the victims were murdered by suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning from engine exhaust in stationary gas chambers. At Chełmno , they were carried within two specially equipped and engineered trucks, driven at a scientifically calculated speed so as to murder

14111-408: The murder of entire transports of people. The method was established following a pilot project of mobile extermination conducted at Soldau and at Chełmno extermination camp that began operating in 1941 and used gas vans . Chełmno (German: Kulmhof ) was a testing ground for the establishment of faster methods of murdering and incinerating bodies. It was not a part of Reinhard, which was marked by

14248-430: The new corpses along with the old ones, which had to be dug up as they had been buried during the first six months of the camp's operation. Built under the instructions of Herbert Floß , the camp's cremation expert, the pits consisted of railroad rails laid as grates on blocks of concrete. The bodies were placed on rails over wood, splashed with petrol, and burned. It was a harrowing sight, according to Jankiel Wiernik, with

14385-412: The new town was named Starachowice-Wierzbnik , and in 1952 the name was changed into Starachowice. During the German invasion of Poland , which started World War II , the arms factory was evacuated eastwards on September 6, 1939. Later that same day, the suburb of Wanacja (present-day district of Starachowice) was the site of a battle between German and Polish troops, after which German troops committed

14522-410: The operation of Treblinka to turn disastrous; others point out that the number of transports that were coming in reflected the Nazi high command's wildly unrealistic expectations of Treblinka's ability to "process" these prisoners. The early gassing machinery frequently broke down due to overuse, forcing the SS to shoot Jews assembled for suffocation. The workers did not have enough time to bury them, and

14659-407: The outside by heavy cross-bars. According to Stangl, a train transport of about 3,000 people could be "processed" in three hours. In a 14-hour workday, 12,000 to 15,000 people were murdered. After the new gas chambers were built, the duration of the killing process was reduced to an hour and a half. The victims were murdered via gas, using the exhaust fumes conducted through pipes from an engine of

14796-470: The pits on concrete blocks. The 300 prisoners who operated the upper camp lived in separate barracks behind the gas chambers. Unlike Nazi concentration camps in which prisoners were used as forced labour, extermination camps such as Treblinka had only one function: to murder those sent there. To prevent incoming victims from realising its nature, Treblinka II was disguised as a transit camp for deportations further east, complete with unreal train schedules,

14933-503: The prisoner of war (POW) camps for Soviet soldiers. The degree to which their recruitment was voluntary remains disputed; while conditions in the camps for Soviet POWs were dreadful, some Soviet POWs collaborated with the Germans even before cold, hunger, and disease began devastating the POW camps in mid-September 1941. The work at Treblinka was carried out under threat of death by Jewish prisoners organised into specialised work details. At

15070-587: The revolt, Stangl met the head of Operation Reinhard, Odilo Globocnik, and inspector Christian Wirth in Lublin, and decided not to draft a report, as no native Germans had died putting down the revolt. Stangl wanted to rebuild the camp, but Globocnik told him it would be closed down shortly and Stangl would be transferred to Trieste to help fight the partisans there. The Nazi high command may have felt that Stangl, Globocnik, Wirth, and other Reinhard personnel knew too much and wanted to dispose of them by sending them to

15207-412: The river and others like Sperling ran 30 km (19 mi) and were then helped and fed by Polish villagers . Of those who broke through, around 70 are known to have survived until the end of the war, including the future authors of published Treblinka memoirs: Richard Glazar , Chil Rajchman , Jankiel Wiernik , and Samuel Willenberg . Among the Jewish prisoners who escaped after setting fire to

15344-411: The shape of the fire. In a typical coal forge, a firepot will be centred in a flat hearth. The tuyere will enter the firepot at the bottom. In operation, the hot core of the fire will be a ball of burning coke in and above the firepot. The heart of the fire will be surrounded by a layer of hot but not burning coke. Around the unburnt coke will be a transitional layer of coal being transformed into coke by

15481-409: The structures of the camp. Another work detail was responsible for cleaning the common areas. The Camp 1 Wohnlager residential compound contained barracks for about 700 Sonderkommandos which, when combined with the 300 Totenjuden living across from the gas chambers, brought their grand total to roughly one thousand at a time. Many Sonderkommando prisoners hanged themselves at night. Suicides in

15618-403: The term will usually be changed to a "quench tank" because oil or brine is used to cool the metal. The term slack is believed to derive from the word "slake", as in slaking the heat. Drop forging is a process used to shape metal into complex shapes by dropping a heavy hammer with a die on its face onto the workpiece. The workpiece is placed into the forge. Then the impact of a hammer causes

15755-618: The tools are carbon steel and, in some cases, nickel-based alloys. The materials that are used most commonly in drop forging are aluminium, copper, nickel, mild steel, stainless steel, and magnesium. Mild steel is the best choice, and magnesium generally performs poorly as a drop forging material. Various gods and goddesses are associated with the forge in a number of mythologies, such as the Irish Brigid , West African Ogun , Greek Hephaestus and Roman Vulcan . Treblinka Treblinka ( pronounced [trɛˈbliŋka] )

15892-650: The undressing area by the Bahnhofskommando squad that managed the arrival platform, and from there to the gas chambers. According to German records, including the official report by SS- Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop , 265,000 Jews were transported in freight trains from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka during the period from 22 July to 12 September 1942. The Polish railway was very heavily used. An average of 420 German military trains were passing through every 24 hours on top of internal traffic already in 1941. The Holocaust trains ' passage to their destination

16029-407: The unloading ramp was known for being especially cruel; he grabbed crying toddlers by their feet and smashed their heads against wagons. Behind a second fence, about 100 m (330 ft) from the track, there were two large barracks used for undressing, with a cashier's booth where money and jewelry were collected, ostensibly for safekeeping. Jews who resisted were taken away or beaten to death by

16166-723: The workforce for Treblinka I, civilians were sent to the camp en masse for real or imagined offences, and sentenced to hard labour by the Gestapo office in Sokołów, which was headed by Gramss. The average length of a sentence was six months, but many prisoners had their sentences extended indefinitely. Twenty thousand people passed through Treblinka I during its three-year existence. About half of them were murdered there via exhaustion, hunger and disease. Those who survived were released after serving their sentences; these were generally Poles from nearby villages. At any given time, Treblinka I had

16303-481: The workpiece on the smithy's anvil while the smith works it with a hammer. Sometimes, such as when hardening steel or cooling the work so that it may be handled with bare hands, the workpiece is transported to the slack tub , which rapidly cools the workpiece in a large body of water . However, depending on the metal type, it may require an oil quench or a salt brine instead; many metals require more than plain water hardening. The slack tub also provides water to control

16440-409: Was a forced-labour camp ( Arbeitslager ) whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the cremation pits. Between 1941 and 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates were murdered via shootings, hunger, disease and mistreatment. The second camp, Treblinka II, was an extermination camp ( Vernichtungslager ), referred to euphemistically as

16577-616: Was a munition plant there where Jewish slave labor was used. In 1944, during and following the Warsaw Uprising , the Germans deported thousands of Varsovians from the Dulag 121 camp in Pruszków , where they were initially imprisoned, to Starachowice. Those Poles were mainly old people, ill people and women with children. 10,000 Poles expelled from Warsaw stayed in the town, as of 1 November 1944. During World War II , Starachowice

16714-528: Was an important center of the Home Army , where units of Jan Piwnik and Antoni Heda operated. At least three local Polish boy scouts were killed by the Germans during the war. After the war, the town prospered as an important industrial center. Besides Starachowice Works , truck producer FSC Star was opened in 1948. A Star truck was used as the basis for the first Popemobile for Pope John Paul II 's during his first visit to his home country as Pope of

16851-419: Was completely screened from the railway tracks by an earth bank built with the help of a mechanical digger. This mound was elongated in shape, similar to a retaining wall, and can be seen in a sketch produced during the 1970 trial of Treblinka II commandant Franz Stangl . On the other sides, the zone was camouflaged from new arrivals like the rest of the camp, using tree branches woven into barbed wire fences by

16988-400: Was either 17 ha (42 acres) or 13.5 ha (33 acres) in size (sources vary), was surrounded by two rows of barbed-wire fencing 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) high. This fence was later woven with pine tree branches to obstruct the view of the camp from outside. More Jews were brought in from surrounding settlements to work on the new railway ramp within the Camp 2 receiving area, which

17125-523: Was expelled by the Nazis to Wegrów in 1939. The date of the revolt was initially set for 15 June 1943, but it had to be postponed. A fighter smuggled a grenade in one of the early May trains carrying captured rebels from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising , which had begun on 19 April 1943. When he detonated it in the undressing area, the SS and guards were thrown into a panic. After the explosion, Treblinka received only about 7,000 Jews from

17262-709: Was inadequate, living conditions were cramped and unsanitary, and Jews had no way to earn money. Malnutrition and lack of medicine led to soaring mortality rates. In 1941, the initial victories of the Wehrmacht over the Soviet Union inspired plans for the German colonisation of occupied Poland , including all territory within the new district of General Government . At the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin on 20 January 1942, new plans were outlined for

17399-555: Was instrumental in the coordination of the uprising between the two camps. Following his escape in the uprising, Sztajer survived for over a year in the forest before the liberation of Poland. Following the war, he migrated to Israel and then to Melbourne, Australia where later in life he constructed from memory a model of Treblinka which is currently displayed at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne. After

17536-487: Was killed along with most of the insurgents. About 200 Jews escaped from the camp. Half of them were killed after a chase in cars and on horses. The Jews did not cut the phone wires, and Stangl called in hundreds of German reinforcements, who arrived from four different towns and set up roadblocks along the way. Partisans of the Armia Krajowa (Polish: Home Army) transported some of the surviving escapees across

17673-487: Was main Poland’s producer of such materiel. It also manufactured the 75 mm Armata wz.02/26 , 105 mm Armata wz. 29 , 1 20 mm Armata wz. 78/09/31 , Bofors 40 mm , and Bofors 37 mm guns, used by the Polish Army in 1939. The very town of Starachowice was not created until April 1, 1939, when the ancient town of Wierzbnik was merged with the settlement of Starachowice Fabryczne and the village of Starachowice Górne . At first,

17810-407: Was part of the strategic road-building programme in the war with the Soviet Union. It was equipped with a mechanical digger for shared use by both Treblinka I and II. Eupen worked closely with the SS and German police commanders in Warsaw during the deportation of Jews in early 1943 and had prisoners brought to him from the Warsaw Ghetto for the necessary replacements. According to Franciszek Ząbecki ,

17947-553: Was rationed, and punishments were regularly delivered at roll-calls. From December 1943 the inmates were no longer carrying any specific sentences. The camp operated officially until 23 July 1944, when the imminent arrival of Soviet forces led to its abandonment. During its entire operation, Treblinka I's commandant was Sturmbannführer Theodor van Eupen . He ran the camp with several SS men and almost 100 Hiwi guards. The quarry, spread over an area of 17 ha (42 acres), supplied road construction material for German military use and

18084-578: Was ready by June 1942. The first section of Treblinka II (Camp 1) was the Wohnlager administrative and residential compound; it had a telephone line. The main road within the camp was paved and named Seidel Straße after Unterscharführer Kurt Seidel, the SS corporal who supervised its construction. A few side roads were lined with gravel. The main gate for road traffic was erected on the north side. Barracks were built with supplies delivered from Warsaw, Sokołów Podlaski, and Kosów Lacki . There were

18221-528: Was routinely delayed; some transports took many days to arrive. Hundreds of prisoners were murdered by exhaustion, suffocation and thirst while in transit to the camp in the overcrowded wagons. In extreme cases, such as the Biała Podlaska transport of 6,000 Jews travelling only a 125 km (78 mi) distance, up to 90 percent of people were already dead when the sealed doors were opened. From September 1942 on, both Polish and foreign Jews were greeted with

18358-560: Was the largest squad, unpacked and sorted the belongings of victims after they had been "processed". The red unit delivered these belongings to the storage barracks, which were managed by the yellow unit ( Kommando Gelb ), who separated the items by quality, removed the Star of David from all outer garments, and extracted any money sewn into the linings. The yellow unit was followed by the Desinfektionskommando , who disinfected

18495-527: Was the location of the gas chambers. All three parts were built by two groups of German Jews recently expelled from Berlin and Hanover and imprisoned at the Warsaw Ghetto (a total of 238 men from 17 to 35 years of age). Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla , the head of construction, brought in German Jews because they could speak German. Construction began on 10 April 1942, when Bełżec and Sobibór were already in operation. The entire death camp, which

18632-572: Was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II . It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw , 4 km (2.5 mi) south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship . The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard , the deadliest phase of the Final Solution . During this time, it

18769-615: Was well-connected but isolated enough, halfway between some of the largest Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the Warsaw Ghetto and the Białystok Ghetto , the capital of the newly formed Bialystok District . The Warsaw Ghetto had 500,000 Jewish inmates, and the Białystok Ghetto had about 60,000. Treblinka was divided into two separate camps 2 km (1.2 mi) apart. Two engineering firms,

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