The post-war prosecution of perpetrators of crimes committed in the Treblinka II Extermination Camp and the Treblinka I Labour Camp was limited in scope and faced numerous obstacles, including difficulties in gathering evidence, the small number and dispersion of witnesses, post-war migrations, and the fact that some perpetrators went into hiding. As a result, only a portion of the members of the staff of both camps in Treblinka were brought to trial, and many of those convicted received relatively lenient sentences.
The first commandant of the Treblinka II Extermination Camp, the physician Irmfried Eberl, settled after the war in Blaubeuren near Ulm, where he ran a private medical practice. He was arrested on 8 January 1948 by the American authorities on suspicion of crimes against humanity. On 16 February 1948, he committed suicide while in custody in Ulm.
His successor, Franz Stangl, emigrated to Brazil after the war. In 1967, as a result of the efforts of Simon Wiesenthal, he was arrested and extradited to the Federal Republic of Germany. On 22 December 1970, a court in the Federal Republic of Germany sentenced him to life imprisonment for complicity in the murder of approximately 900,000 people during his tenure as commandant of the Treblinka II Extermination Camp. He died on 28 June 1971 in prison as a result of a heart attack.
Kurt Franz, Stangl’s deputy and the last commandant of the Treblinka II Extermination Camp, was arrested on 2 December 1959. On 3 September 1965, a court in Düsseldorf sentenced him to life imprisonment. In February 1993, he was conditionally released from prison due to his health condition. He died in July 1998 in Wuppertal.
Theodor van Eupen, commandant of the Treblinka I Labour Camp, was killed by partisans of the “Awangarda” unit near the village of Lipówki on 11 December 1944 [1].
References
[1] Ważniewski, Władysław, Walki partyzanckie nad Nidą 1939–1945, Warszawa 1969, pp. 324–325; Ważniewski, Władysław, Na przedpolach stolicy 1939–1945, Warszawa 1974, p. 90.