German extermination camp Treblinka II (part 3)

The grate.

Initially, the murdered were buried, then burned on grates. Cremation began in February 1943, immediately after Himmler’s visit.

The originator of the idea of building grates from railway rails was SS-Oberscharführer Herbert Floß. Brushes were placed under the rails and poured with gasoline. In this way, not only the freshest corpses were burned, but also those extracted from graves using an excavator. Additional grates made it possible to burn up to 12,000 corpses at the same time. The resulting clouds of smoke were visible from many kilometers away. By the end of July 1943, approximately 700,000 corpses were burned on grates. The ashes mixed with sand were buried.

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German extermination camp Treblinka II (part 2)

22,000 m2 of surface covered with concrete, on which 17,000 stones of various sizes were placed. This concrete covers the ashes of people murdered here. The stones symbolize matzevot - tombstones in the Jewish cemetery. The names of the cities from which Jews were brought were written on them.

Totenlager – the extermination camp, referred to by the prisoners as camp 2 or upper camp. The name “upper” was derived from the terrain. It was located on a small hill, in contrast to camp 1 (lower camp) located at the bottom.

The most important buildings here were the gas chambers. At the beginning of the functioning of the camp, three buildings were built (new ones were created as part of the reorganization carried out in August and September 1942).

Next to the gas chambers there was a room with an engine, most probably dismantled from a Russian tank, and a generator that supplied the camp with electricity. The outlet of the engine’s exhaust pipe was connected to the underground pipe and opened into all three chambers. Death was caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, which caused paralysis of the central airways. The corpses were pulled out through manholes opened from the outside onto the ramp. They were loaded on wagons, which drove on special narrow tracks. After turning the wagon, the bodies were thrown down and the wagon was pulled for the next bodies.

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