Mass killings of the Jewish population began in the summer of 1941, following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Members of the German mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, carried out shootings of Jewish inhabitants in the occupied towns and villages[1]. The decision to implement the systematic extermination of European Jews was most likely taken in the autumn of 1941, although historiography continues to debate the exact moment of its formalisation. On 20 January 1942, during the Wannsee Conference[2], Reinhard Heydrich informed senior officials of the Third Reich about actions connected with the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe”. The meeting was primarily administrative and organisational in nature, serving to coordinate extermination policy, rather than constituting the moment at which the decision itself was taken. One of the elements in the implementation of this plan was “Operation Reinhardt”, conducted under the direction of Odilo Globocnik, SS and Police Leader in the Lublin District.

In mid-1942, in the vicinity of the Treblinka I Labour Camp, German Nazis established the Treblinka II Extermination Camp[3]. It was the last camp created as part of “Operation Reinhardt”. It operated from July 1942 until November 1943. It is estimated that between 800,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered there, primarily Polish citizens, as well as Jews deported from other European countries, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Macedonia and Germany. The victims also included Roma and Sinti.

The camp covered an area of approximately 17 hectares[4]. It was staffed by 30–40 Germans and Austrians[5], as well as 100–120 guards[6] recruited from Soviet prisoners of war, mainly of Ukrainian origin. All guards had previously undergone training at the training camp in Trawniki near Lublin. A large proportion of the German personnel had previously participated in the so-called “Action T4”, the programme carried out between 1939 and 1941 within the Third Reich to murder people with mental illnesses and disabilities.

The camp commandants were Austrians[7]: Irmfried Eberl, who was dismissed in August 1942, followed by Franz Stangl, who served for approximately one year. Stangl’s deputy was the German Kurt Franz, who assumed the position of commandant in August 1943[8]. The first transport of deportees arrived at the camp on 23 July 1942 from the Warsaw Ghetto. Victims were brought mainly from the Warsaw and Radom districts, from the northern part of the Lublin District, and from the Białystok District[9].

The camp consisted of three main sections: the administrative area, the reception area, and the so-called upper camp (Totenlager[10]), where deportees were killed using exhaust fumes in gas chambers. Initially, bodies were buried in mass graves within the camp site. From early spring 1943, corpses were burned on grates constructed from railway rails. Labour detachments composed of Jewish prisoners existed within the camp and were forced to perform tasks connected with its operation. The average number of prisoners present in the camp was approximately 1,000[11]. Turnover was high. The sick and the weak were sent to the gas chambers, and new prisoners were selected from among newly arrived transports. The Germans also murdered some members of the labour detachments, fearing uprisings and eliminating individuals who possessed knowledge of the camp’s functioning[12].

On 2 August 1943, an uprising prepared in secrecy by the prisoners broke out[13]. Of the approximately 840[14] Jews present in the camp at that time, nearly 200 managed to escape.

It is estimated that around 1,000[15] individuals may have escaped over the entire period of the camp’s operation. The names of 143[16] former prisoners who survived the war are known.

Following the uprising, the liquidation of the camp was accelerated[17]. In November 1943, the camp buildings and installations were dismantled, the area was ploughed over and sown with lupins. A farm was established on the site, inhabited by two former guards together with their families [18]. Before the Red Army entered the area in August 1944, these buildings were burned down.