Treblinka Was a Hybrid of Auschwitz and Chelmno

Treblinka was, indeed. a diabolical hybrid of Auschwitz and Chelmno. On the one hand – like Auschwitz – it consisted of two separate units. Treblinka I (officially Reformatory Labor Camp Treblinka) was a forced-labor camp whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and subsequently in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the cremation pits.

Like in Auschwitz, Treblinka I was very much an “extermination through labor” camp: between 1941 and 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates died from hunger, disease and mistreatment – or were killed by the SS.

The second camp, Treblinka II, was an extermination camp, referred to euphemistically as 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.

Like Chelmno, Treblinka II was built to facilitate extermination of Jewish population of just one Jewish ghetto: the Warsaw Ghetto (it was the largest ghetto created by the Nazis with over half a million prisoners).

The key difference was that Treblinka II used stationary gas chambers while in Chelmno Jews were killed in gas vans… however, in both killing centers victims were murdered with exhaust fumes of internal combustion engines.

Creation of Treblinka II was made possible by the existence of Treblinka I (the latter was created a year prior to the former); consequently, creation of the former became a significant step on the Road to Holocaust.

The two parallel camps of Treblinka were built 80 km 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 the major cities in central Poland by the railway junction and the Treblinka village station.

When the German SS took over Treblinka I, the quarry was already equipped with heavy machinery that was ready to use.[46] Treblinka was well-connected but isolated enough, halfway between some of the largest Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the Warsaw Ghetto (the largest in Europe).

In short, the ideal location for the death factory (killing center).