Operation Reinhard The Construction of the Treblinka Extermination Camp
Construction of Treblinka began after Belzec and Sobibor were in
operation. The experience gained from the installation and the
extermination procedures in those two camps was taken into
consideration in the planning and building of Treblinka. Thus, it
became the most "perfect" extermination camp of Operation Reinhard.
The camp was situated in the northeastern part of the General
Government, not far from Malkinia, a town with a railroad station on
the main Warsaw-Bialystok line and close to the Malkinia-Siedlce
line.
The camp was erected in a sparsely populated region, 4 km. from the
village of Treblinka and the railroad station. The site chosen for
the camp was wooded and thus naturally concealed. Since the spring
of 1941 a punishment camp had been located a few kilometers away,
where Polish and Jewish prisoners were made to process raw material
from a gravel pit for frontier fortifications.
At the end of April or the beginning of May 1942, an SS-unit decided
on the location. The size and master plan of Treblinka were
identical to those of Sobibor. The construction of the extermination
camp began at the end of May or beginning of June 1942. Richard
Thomalla was in charge; he had completed his construction job in
Sobibor and had been relieved by Stangl in April 1942. In building
the gas chambers he was assisted by SS-Unterscharführer Erwin
Lambert, a chief-of-construction for technical matters from the
"Euthanasia" program. The extermination sector was located in the
southwest, in an area measuring 200 x 250 m., totally separated from
the rest of the camp by barbed wire. As on the outside, branches
were intertwined with the barbed wire to hide it from view. For the
same reason, the entrances were placed behind a special partition.
The gas chambers were housed in a massive brick building in the
center. The access paths, including the "tube," in Treblinka named
"Street to Heaven" by the SS-men, were model led on those in Belzec
and Sobibor; the same applied to the "reception camp" and
"accommodation camp."
During the first stage, three gas chambers were in operation, each of
them,much like those in Sobibor,4 x 4 m. in size and 2.6 m. high.
A diesel engine producing poisonous carbon monoxide, as well as a
generator which supplied the whole camp with electricity, were housed
in a built-on room.
The entrance doors of the gas chambers opened into a passage in front
of the building; each door was 1.8 m. high and 90 cm. wide. They
could be hermetically closed and bolted from the outside. Inside
each gas chamber, opposite the entrance door, was a thick door made
of wooden beams, 2.5 m. high and 1.8 m. wide, which could also be
hermetically closed. The walls in the gas chambers were covered with
white tiles up to a certain height, shower heads had been installed,
and water pipes ran along the ceiling -- all this so as to maintain the
"showers" fiction. In reality the pipes conducted the poisonous gas
into the chambers. When the doors were shut, it was compeltely dark
inside.
To the east of the gas chambers were huge ditches into which the
corpses were thrown. They had been dug with an excavator from the
gravel pit in Treblinka. Prisoners had to participate in this work.
The ditches were 50 m. long, 25 m. wide, and 10 m. deep. A
narrow-gauge track had been laid from the gas chambers to transport
the corpses to the ditches. Prisoners had to push the trolleys.
The main extermination installations were completed by mid-June 1942.
The murder operations began on July 23, 1942.
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The Extermination
Camps
of
Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka