Treblinka: Where Genocide was a Philosophy

Treblinka: Where Genocide was a Philosophy

By Steve Rodan

In Holocaust literature, Auschwitz takes center stage. It was the longest-running death camp and killed more Jews than any other German facility. But Treblinka, referred to as the "forgotten camp," was seen as more brutal and certainly more effective as an instrument of Hitler's Final Solution.

Eighty years ago this month, the Germans completed the construction of Treblinka, meant to exterminate the Jews of Warsaw. Treblinka -- overseen by Odilo Globočnik, deemed by historian Michael Allen as "the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known" -- was immediately used for mass killings.

On July 25, 1942, the Jewish police in Warsaw, on orders from the SS, brought 10,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the trains bound for Treblinka. For nearly the next month, the police grabbed at least 7,000 Jews daily for the short ride to Treblinka, which the Germans termed a transit camp. The police were so efficient that the Polish police were excused from the mission.

The camp, located in a forest 80 kilometers northeast of Warsaw, was built by Jewish slave labor that suspected that they were building a killing center that would be used against their brethren and eventually themselves. At one point, some of the 1,000 Jewish laborers asked a rabbi in the camp for a ruling. The rabbi was quoted as saying that one must do anything to survive.

Death was easy in Treblinka. The SS employed between 25 and 43 German guards, helped by 60-100 Ukrainians, termed Wachmanner. The death camp, known as Treblinka-2, was tiny -- 500 meters at its widest point -- and meant for rapid extermination. Up to 4,000 people would be led to the camp square, where they were ordered to leave their luggage and proceed to the "bath house."

The old and frail were taken to the "sanitorium" by a man with a white apron and a Red Cross band on his left sleeve. Women were taken into barracks where barbers cut their hair, later transported to Berlin.

"Women and children must take their shoes off when entering the barracks," an SS scharfuhrer, or sergeant, boomed. "Stockings must be put into shoes...Be tidy."

Then came the final journey. Jewish prisoners called Sonderkommandos, or special detachment, forced the now-naked Jews, holding soap, documents and money, through a narrow path to the gas chambers. Those who moved slowly were taken to a bogus clinic with a Red Cross flag, where SS Cpl. Willi Mentz, nicknamed "Frankenstein," shot them next to an open pit.

When all the rest had been herded to the gas chambers the Sonderkommandos were ordered to clean out the French rail cars, bloody from those who had slit their necks or wrists, to prepare for the next transport of Jews. The stench of death was overpowering and Poles fled from neighboring villages.

Sometimes, the doomed would resist. Polish peasants told the Russian Jewish journalist Vasily Grossman that once a woman grabbed a gun from a Ukrainian. Twice, Jews broke out of the train, knocked down the guards and ran for the forest. Once, 60 people managed to make it to the forest. They were all tracked and killed.

Survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising were thrown into burning pits. The gas chambers, which took 25 minutes to kill, were too good for them. At one point, up to 15,000 victims arrived daily.

The Germans were plagued by boredom. SS guards would compete as to who could kill more Jews, rape more girls, torture those who searched for food. Sometimes, they made the Jews starve to death. They ordered the doomed to sing German songs before their execution. One song was an ode to the camp.

"Fur uns, gibt heute nur Treblinka, die unser Schhiksal ist. [For us, there is now only Treblinka, which is our fate.]"

But what the Jews most remembered was the German obsession with philosophy. The SS guards and officers would make speeches to their Jewish audience of the historical justice of Hitler's Final Solution. This, they said, marked the future of humanity, when the Aryan nation would eliminate or enslave those deemed inferior.

But despite the odds, the Jews never abandoned resistance. In early 1943, the forced laborers organized revolt. There were few as the Germans killed the Sonderkommandos nearly every day. Those who survived longer were the specialists -- tailors, carpenters, builders and barbers.

On Aug. 2, the Sonderkommandos seized weapons from the camp armory but were discovered before they were ready to attack the guards and take over Treblinka. Still, the sight of fighting Jews made the SS guards panic, and between 300 and 750 Jews escaped. The Germans used every means to find and kill the fugitives, including the Luftwaffe. Only about 100 Jews made it to safety.

But the brief revolt rattled SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who feared exposure as well as the approach of the Red Army. After killing more than 900,000 over 15 months, Himmler believed that the Jews might again revolt, and he lacked the manpower to resume the efficient operation of the death machine. Soon, nearby Auschwitz, where Zyklon B rather than carbon monoxide was employed, would become the leading camp in the German constellation of death.

After the revolt, Treblinka-2 essentially ceased operations. Himmler ordered that the remaining bodies of Jews be burned, the buildings destroyed and the gas chambers blown up. The SS planted lupine flowers over the covered burning pits, and a Ukrainian was given a wooden house to show that Treblinka had actually been a farm.

In July 1944, the Red Army arrived, including Grossman. The Germans failed in their attempt to conceal the genocide. As Grossman put it, the ground at Treblinka literally expunged the dead.

"The earth is throwing out crushed bones, teeth, clothes, papers," Grossman wrote in his notebook. "It does not want to keep secrets. And the objects are climbing out from the earth, from its unhealing wounds."

Below: Three who escaped in the Treblinka revolt, now in Warsaw in 1945.