The Treblinka extermination camp was run by the SS, a Nazi paramilitary organization, with the help of Eastern European Trawnikis (Hiwis), who were collaborationist auxiliary police recruited directly from Soviet POW camps. The Trawnikis served at all the major extermination camps, including Treblinka.[1] Treblinka was part of Operation Reinhard, the systematic extermination of the three million Jews living in the General Government of German-occupied Poland. It is believed that between somewhere between 800,000 and 1,200,000 people[2] were murdered in its gas chambers, almost all of whom were Jews. More people were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp besides Auschwitz.[3]
The camp consisted of two separate units: Treblinka I and the Treblinka II extermination camp (Vernichtungslager). The first 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 crematoria. Between 1941 and 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates died from summary executions, hunger, disease and mistreatment.[4] [5]
Meanwhile, the first official German trial for war crimes committed at Treblinka was also held in 1964, with the former camp personnel first brought to justice at that time, some twenty years after the end of the war.
| Name | Rank | Function and Notes | Citation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nazi leadership | ||||
| Heinrich Himmler | Reichsführer | |||
| Odilo Globocnik | SS-Hauptsturmführer and SS-Polizeiführer (Captain and SS Police Chief)SS-Gruppenführer and SS and Polizei Leader of Lublin. | head of Operation Reinhard | ||
| Hermann Höfle | SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) | coordinator of Operation Reinhard | ||
| Christian Wirth | SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) | inspector for Operation Reinhard | ||
| SS-Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) | head of death camp construction during Operation Reinhard | |||
| Erwin Lambert | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | head of gas chamber construction during Operation Reinhard (large gas chambers) | ||
| Treblinka commandants | ||||
| SS-Sturmbannführer (Major), Commandant of Treblinka I Arbeitslager, 15 November 1941 – July 1944 (cleanup) | head of the forced-labour camp | [6] | ||
| Irmfried Eberl | SS-Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant), Commandant of, 11 July 1942 – 26 August 1942 | transferred to Berlin due to incompetence | ||
| Franz Stangl | SS-Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant), 2nd Commandant of, 1 September 1942 – August 1943 | transferred to Treblinka from Sobibor extermination camp | ||
| Kurt Franz | SS-Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant), last Commandant of, August (gassing) – November 1943 | promoted from deputy commandant in August 1943 following camp prisoner revolt | ||
| Deputy commandants | ||||
| Karl Pötzinger | SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant), Deputy commandant of | head of cremation | ||
| Heinrich Matthes | SS-Scharführer (Sergeant), Deputy commandant | chief of the extermination area | ||
| Staff | ||||
| Fritz Schmidt | SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) | gas chambers | ||
| Lorenz Hackenholt | SS-Hauptscharführer (Master Sergeant) | gas chambers, gas pipes | [7] [8] | |
| Kurt Küttner | SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) | lower camp of Treblinka II | ||
| Willy Mätzig | SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) | unloading ramp | ||
| Herbert Floss | SS-Scharführer (Sergeant) | cremation pyres | ||
| Erich Fuchs | SS-Scharführer (Sergeant) | generator, gassing engine | ||
| Josef Hirtreiter | SS-Scharführer (Sergeant) | unloading ramp terror | ||
| Karl Emil Ludwig | SS-Scharführer (Sergeant) | head of the Waldkommando forest brigade | [9] | |
| Gustav Münzberger | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | gas chambers | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | stabbed to death by inmate Meir Berliner on at roll call selection | [10] | ||
| Paul Bredow | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | head of Kommando Rot | ||
| Hans Hingst | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | gas chambers | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | corpse detail | |||
| Willi Mentz | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | Lazaret killing station | [11] | |
| August Miete | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | Lazaret | ||
| Max Möller | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | Lazaret | ||
| Willi Post | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | Head of Ukrainian Guard, Volksdeutsche SS squad leader | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | gas chambers | |||
| Karl Schiffer | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | command of Ukrainian guard unit of 12 Trawnikis overseeing farmhouse construction | ||
| Ernst Stengelin | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | killed in attack on 14 October 1943 | ||
| Franz Suchomel | SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) | Goldjuden supervisor | ||
| Otto Stadie | SS-Stabsscharführer (Staff Squad Leader) | camp administration | ||
| Ivan Marchenko | Wachmann (Guard), presumed Ukrainian | gas chambers | [12] [13] | |
| Feodor Fedorenko | Wachmann (Guard) | gas chambers | [14] | |
. Yitzhak Arad . Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps . 1987 . Indiana University Press . Bloomington, Indianapolis . 0-253-21305-3 . Google Books preview .
. Sobibor – The Forgotten Revolt . Thomas Blatt . H.E.P. . 2000 . 3, 92 . 0-9649442-0-0 . Google Books snippet view .
. Alexander Donat . The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary . 1979 . . Berlin . 14 . 0-8052-5008-5 . The eyewitness articles ... include some of the Polonophobic aspects of contemporary Holocaust lore ... [i.e. Tanhum] Grinberg, having arrived well after the fact, [could not] possibly know the identity(-ies) and motive(s) of the killer(s). .
. Saul Friedländer . The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 . 2009 . HarperCollins . 432 . 978-0-06-198000-8 . Google Books preview .
. Ernst Klee . 1988 . The Good Old Days: the Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders . Konecky Konecky . New York: The Free Press . Dressen, Willi; Riess, Volker . 1-56852-133-2 . Photograph of excavator used for corpses at Treblinka II.
. Timothy Snyder . 2012 . Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin . Basic Books . 12 November 2013 . The source of the Treblinka count is Witte, Peter, "A new document", 472, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15,3 (Oxford 2001), which provides the German's count of 713,555 for 1942 (per radiogram intercepted by the British); and Młynarczyk, Jacek Andrzej, "Treblinka – ein Todeslager der 'Aktion Reinhard", 281, in: Bogdan Musial (ed.), Aktion Reinhard – Die Vernichtung der Juden im Generalgouvernement (Osnabrück 2004), 257–281, which supplies the 1943 reconing of 67,308 victims. . 978-0-465-03147-4 .
. Franciszek Ząbecki . Wspomnienia dawne i nowe . Old and New Memories . 1977 . . Warsaw . 148 . PB 7495/77 . Polish . Book description with digitized text samples at Swistak.pl. .
. Unsolved History: Investigating Mysteries of the Past . . Nickell, Joe . 2005 . 38 . 0-8131-9137-8 . Joe Nickell.