Treblinka Work Camp Delousing Chamber

[Nessie]

Ironically, that is something "you have invented in your mind and it isn't supported by evidence".

Eberl's letter is an internal document and he refers to it as Arbeitslager Treblinka. That's direct evidence that the camp he was constructing was known by that name. There is also evidence and controversy surrounding a steam chamber and multiple delousing facilities at that camp, and there is a budget for a delousing chamber at the camp with the exact same name given by Eberl directly in that document.

And there's the AR insider who, naturally, worked on property administration, who testified to his understanding that "Treblinka" referred to a work camp. That is much more evidence than evidence for that camp being known by "T-II" or being a separate camp from "T-I".

You have one document and a statement that called it a labour camp, compared to one document that is explicit TII was an extermination camp. There is ample evidence TI and TII operated in different ways, with different prisoner categories and under different management.

I agree Revisionists need to revisit the transit camp hypothesis for Treblinka at least.

You are claiming they are all wrong.

No doubt there were many workers being shuffled, transported to/from the quarry labor camp. And a delousing facility at the Jewish camp may have been used by thousands of people coming and going.

"May" is an admission you do not have evidence to prove. Odd you do not have a witness, when you admit many thousands of people saw inside the camp.

But the idea that Treblinka was constructed as a transit camp to secretly receive the 800,000 deportees from Warsaw and everywhere else appears to be getting weaker compared to the economic interpretation of it as a work camp under AR very similar to Trawniki and Poniatowa.

You have a pet theory, you cannot evidence, that you want to be true. No wonder you will see everything in your favour. The evidence for TII as a death camp is in fact overwhelming.

[Nessie]

All the revisionists who think it is a transit camp, need to claim calling a work camp, is the use of a code word. Which makes no sense.

You're begging the question with an unproven Judeocentric supposition that whatever was being done to Jews was the centerpiece of Treblinka. Doesn't seem that it was significant enough to change the camp's function, so you may curb your Judeocentrism.

The most commonly accepted and claimed revisionist function for TII, is the Judeocentric, it was a transit camp for Jews being sent to be resettled east.

Let's put it this way: the iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza building was renamed the RCA Building, then the GE Building and is now the Comcast Building. In every iteration, there's one flagship tenant and then there are other tenants. Latecomer tenants don't necessarily drive a name change unless their prominence is overwhelming and somehow earned.

Arbeitslager Treblinka apparently stayed Arbeitslager Treblinka and everyone agrees labor was performed all over Treblinka. No reason to rename for a secondary function, and the tenancy of SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka at the camp does not seem to have created a formal "Treblinka II" that you keep writing your open hallucinations about. Zero evidence of any formal "Treblinka I" either. Find peace with the apparent fact that it's just Treblinka.

The Nazi who referred to it as TII, was clear that it was being used to kill Jews transported there from the Warsaw ghetto.

[TlsMS93]

The Nazi who referred to it as TII, was clear that it was being used to kill Jews transported there from the Warsaw ghetto.

If he said that 2+2=5 then it was true.

Nazis are sincere in a court where the crimes were common knowledge and the defense was innocuous, serving only to reduce the sentence in exchange for compromising everyone involved. This collective atmosphere served the allies well.

[PrudentRegret]

The Nazi who referred to it as TII, was clear that it was being used to kill Jews transported there from the Warsaw ghetto.

At the trial he denied authorship of that. The Eberl communication is very clear as to its name.

Can you cite anything that refers to "TI" as "Treblinka I"? It is also simply referred to as "Arbeitslager Treblinka" in documents. They were both part of the same camp.

[Nazgul]

The Nazi who referred to it as TII, was clear that it was being used to kill Jews transported there from the Warsaw ghetto.

You are referring to Jürgen Stroop the SS Commander. This TII may refer to either Kosow Lascki or Czerwony Bor, not the current site location you think is TII. TII, the current site, was cited by US intelligence as a judenlager, or konzentrationslager.

[Nessie]

The Nazi who referred to it as TII, was clear that it was being used to kill Jews transported there from the Warsaw ghetto.

If he said that 2+2=5 then it was true.

Nazis are sincere in a court where the crimes were common knowledge and the defense was innocuous, serving only to reduce the sentence in exchange for compromising everyone involved. This collective atmosphere served the allies well.

You are alleging that 100% of the Germans and Ukrainians put on trial were lying as they were all cowards who preferred to keep evidence of their innocence hidden, even when tried by other Germans. It would have served the Allies better to have had a West Germany more easily reintegrated with other nations, especially as Europe descended into the Cold War.

You are thinking only as a die hard conspiracists thinks.

[Nessie]

The Nazi who referred to it as TII, was clear that it was being used to kill Jews transported there from the Warsaw ghetto.

At the trial he denied authorship of that. The Eberl communication is very clear as to its name.

Can you cite anything that refers to "TI" as "Treblinka I"? It is also simply referred to as "Arbeitslager Treblinka" in documents. They were both part of the same camp.

Are you now arguing TI and TII were two parts of the same camp, like A-B was multiple camps that operated as one camp?

[borjastick]

Could a revisionist here ( I ask because I want the truth) tell me more about the accommodation etc at the Treblinka 1 work camp? What facilities were there? Such as sleeping quarters, numbers there at the peak periods, food and shower blocks etc.

Were the shower blocks at Treblinka 2 built to also serve those working just down the road and T1 and is there any evidence of sharing these facilities with others?

The 'evidence' presented by the usual suspects here for T2 being a death camp is laughable, such as several people saying the gas chambers had terracotta tiles.

But info on the above from revisionists here would be interesting to read.

[SanityCheck]

The camps fell under two separate jurisdictions.

You have not shown this to be true, you've just cited the mainstream that claims this based on no evidence. Why would there be two camps right next to each-other off the exact same spur with the exact same name but under separate jurisdictions?

Trawniki was an Operation Reinhardt camp, and there the sorting and salvaging of confiscated property for that operation was under the jurisdiction of what is called SS-Arbeitslager Trawniki in documents.

Poniatowa was an Operation Reinhardt camp, and there the sorting and salvaging of confiscated property for that operation was under the jurisdiction of what is called SS-Arbeitslager Poniatowa in documents.

T-II was an Operation Reinhardt camp, and there the sorting and salvaging of confiscated property for that operation was under the jurisdiction of what Eberl himself calls Arbeitslager Treblinka.

TI would have a delousing chamber, for the same reason other labour camps did, to help control the spread of disease, as prisoners come and go.

Are there any accounts whatsoever of a delousing chamber at TI? The Treblinka museum includes a camp layout of T-I with different facilities, but nowhere for a delousing chamber. I am not aware of any accounts of delousing chamber in T-I from any witnesses. But of course there are witness accounts of a "steam chamber" in T-II.

Nessie, if T-II was not officially known as Arbeistlager Treblinka, similar to Arbeitslager Trawniki and Arbeitslager Poniatowa, the latter two unequivocally Aktion Reinhardt camps also, then what was the official name of the T-II camp?

Official titles coexisted alongside unofficial names; the term Konzentrationslager was officially reserved for camps run by the IKL and then Amtsgruppe D of the WVHA, but there are plenty of cases of KLs being named which were camps run by other parts of the SS, unofficially.

Name designations also routinely changed, thus the shift from Infanterie-Division (mot.) to Panzergrenadier-Division, from Infanterie-Regiment to Grenadier-Regiment or Panzergrenadier-Regiment, without the units changing otherwise.

Eberl writing from Arbeitslager Treblinka a whole 10 days before it began operating saying it was basically ready to begin operations cannot refer to the existing Arbeitserziehungslager Treblinka which had opened in November 1941, and which was being used in the first half of 1942 for Polish and Jewish inmates subjected to punitive labour (the 'reeducation' part for Poles).

Eberl's letters record him indicating to his wife that she should write him care of SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka, which was a designation that recurs through 1942-3. This was the 'official' unit designation.

Eupen commanded what became recorded in documents, especially the Trawniki personnel records, as SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka. This was then reduced in shorthand to Arbeitslager Treblinka in the GG budget records.

In budget terms, SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka was financed from the official GG police budget, while SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka as part of Einsatz Reinhardt was financed from their accounts, as indicated in Globocnik's economic report on Aktion Reinhardt. The proceeds and profits from Aktion Reinhardt were directed to specific accounts of the SS-Wirtschafter of HSSPF Ost in Krakow, the costs and expenditures were accounted for in Lublin and the records from these destroyed. From the perspective of the regular budget this was 'off the books' or 'black budget', not regular budget.

Therefore whatever appears in the regular budget cannot relate to SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka: there really were two camps at Treblinka, one was an Arbeitslager or SS-Arbeitslager commanded by von Eupen with a distinct roster of Trawniki guards who were replaced with other Trawnikis known from name rosters, the other was SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka whose Trawnikis and SS staff are recorded as serving there in personnel files and promotion lists, quite distinct to the German and Trawniki staff known to have worked at SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka.

SSPF Warschau provided administrative and other oversight for SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka, while some functions such as the quarry received technical oversight from DESt and the related supervisory WVHA group.

SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka was merely within the territorial space of SSPF Warschau but was administered for personnel, pay, administration from SSPF Lublin, including the SS-Ausbildingslager Trawniki for the Trawnikis, with pay for German SS personnel administered still by T4.

Construction tasks to build the two camps seem to have devolved to the Zentralbauleitung Warschau, but the Zentralbauleitung Lublin provided some assistance for the other SS-Sonderkommandos at Belzec and Sobibor while also reserving some oversight for SSPF Lublin Einsatz Reinhardt insiders like Richard Thomalla.

Naturally when asked about who built what after the war, SS veterans of ZBL Warschau ran a mile from admitting helping construct SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.

The records of ZBL Warschau don't survive, whereas there are more files from ZBL Lublin which do, but these don't include the three Reinhardt camps, suggesting those were kept separately or destroyed already in 1943 when Globocnik and his staff left the area (overlooking receipts and invoices for some of the Reinhardt property sorting depots in Lublin).

A 1943 budget request for 1.4 million then 800,000 RM to expand Arbeitslager Treblinka including a delousing chamber is not much use if one is hoping to claim this overlaps with gas chambers reported in SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka already in the second half of 1942. They clearly don't, given the time lag. The budget allocation relates to a 1943 fiscal year so one would need to check when this was, and whether the work was completed from other sources. There are no reports or other sources about an explicit delousing chamber in SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka, while it's quite possible that despite the budget allocation this was never built for SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka, since it was overrun in mid-1944.

(I cannot be bothered to go through all sources and testimonies for SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka right now, nor am I a research slave for Prudent Regret, who can take his pseudonym to the archives and see if he pips the entry on Treblinka labour camp in the forthcoming USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos to find something substantive beyond one of his trademark endless circle jerk threads of over, under and misinterpretations of a handful of decontextualised sources).

Clothing gathered at SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka was shipped by rail to Lublin after preliminary sorting, for which we have transport receipts for some 1942 shipments, as well as totals in the SSPF Lublin overall accountings in 1943, and some data in the depot receipts. Clothing being recycled for use and onward shipment from Lublin would thus have been disinfected in Lublin.

The labour camps in the Lublin district such as SS-Arbeitslager Poniatowa and Trawniki were administratively under SSPF Lublin, but not in a cost sense under Aktion Reinhardt. The records of ZBL Lublin contain several files on such camps, likely with cost accountings. The records are not currently digitised, but copied in various forms within Ludwigsburg and Majdanek Museum collections I do have access to, but again I can't be bothered to nail down this point, as it's unnecessary. Globocnik's economic and final reports on Aktion Reinhardt indicate costs/expenditures which are far too low to include the costs of setting up big labour camps as well as BST, so the other camps weren't included.

This is in contrast to the simplified revenue/cost notes for SSPF Galizien in the Katzmann report, where profits from exploiting forced labour are included alongside costs and profits from property plunder. No such figures are included in Globocnik's accounting, and indeed revenue from several of the work camps was accounted for in the separate records of Osti.

[PrudentRegret]

Eberl writing from Arbeitslager Treblinka a whole 10 days before it began operating saying it was basically ready to begin operations cannot refer to the existing Arbeitserziehungslager Treblinka which had opened in November 1941

The Governor of Warsaw District Dr. Fischer referred to "Arbeitslager Treblinka" with exactly that name in November 1941, Betrifft: Arbeitslager Treblinka



So what you mean to say is what when Eberl wrote Arbeitslager Treblinka that cannot refer to Arbeitslager Treblinka. Total nonsense.

A key point is that SanityCheck acknowledges the construction of "T-II" fell under the Zentralbauleitung Warschau. So he admits this, and he acknowledges that these budgets under ZBL Warsaw refer to a major expansion of "Arbeitslager Treblinka".

But, he says, the budgetary document pertained to a 1943 budget. However, budgeting for the expansion of "Arbeitslager Treblinka" goes back to FY 1942 as well, with 815,000 Zl towards "New buildings and extensions in Arbeitslager Treblinka":



Another very revelatory document pertaining to FY 1942 also describes the expansion of Arbeitslager Treblinka with sanitary facilities:

E4 Zur Erweiterung des Arbeitslagers Treblinka ist die Errichtung weiterer Barakken (Häftlingsunterkünfte, Zugangs- und Entlausungsbaracke, Wirtschaftsbaracke usw.) geplant. Für die Errichtung und Unterhaltung des Lagers wurden bereits im Rechnungsjahr 1941 Mittel ausserplanmässig zur Verfügung gestellt.

E4 The construction of further barracks (prisoner accommodation, access and delousing barracks, economic-enterprise barracks, etc.) is planned for the expansion of the Treblinka labor camp. Extraordinary funds were already made available for the construction and maintenance of the camp in the 1941 financial year.

So we have ample reference to an expansion of Arbeitslager Treblinka in the same FY Eberl is talking about construction at Arbeitslager Treblinka. You have furthermore admitted that Eberl's construction fell under ZBL Warsaw, meaning we would expect it to show up in these documents.

The Fiscal Year is also not necessarily a precise statement on when the project was actually constructed. It is entirely possible that the budget reflects accounting or financial reconciliation for construction projects that were already complete or mostly completed. This type of retrospective budgeting is common, especially during World War II, when projects often proceeded rapidly to meet wartime needs, and formal accounting and documentation might lag behind the actual work.

What is very clear is that after initial construction of Arbeitslager Treblinka in 1941, starting in 1942 we see budgetary references to an expansion of Arbeitslager Treblinka at the same time as the construction of "T-II", which you have admitted fell under ZBL Warsaw. The expansion pertains to sanitary facilities and economic-enterprise barracks, which would be facilities relevant to the Aktion Reinhardt operations in the Jewish camp under "Arbeitslager Treblinka."

SanityCheck's gambit is to conflate the name of SS-Sonderkommando as a unit working for a special enterprise with the name of the camp. SS-Sonderkommando was the name of the unit with tenancy in Arbeitslager Treblinka. In the same way, Schultz & Co. had tenancy in Trawniki, but the name of the camp wasn't Schultz & Co. They were "Firma Schultz & Co. im SS-Arbeitslager Trawniki". Along the same vein, SS-Sonderkommando would be the name of the unit managing an operation (AR) in Arbeitslager Treblinka.

You are not simply saying Eberl was being imprecise when he mentioned construction at "Arbeitslager Treblinka" but you are saying he used the EXACT same name as the existing camp off the exact same spur to refer to a COMPLETELY different camp that was in actuality called "SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka". Makes no sense.

To summarize:

• The name Arbeitslager Treblinka goes back to 1941, the exact same name given by Eberl multiple times in his communication.
• You admit that construction of "T-II" was under the construction office of Warsaw.
• The GG budget shows major expansion of "Arbeitslager Treblinka" pertaining to both FY 1942 and FY 1943, the exact same time Eberl is communicating about construction at Arbeitslager Treblinka.
• SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka was the name of a unit, it was not the name of the camp. Mattogno caught on to this fact years ago.

Here is a letter in which SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka is sending an invoice and promising the shipment of wagons of gravel. This document totally torpedoes the notion that SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka was the name of a camp totally separate from "T-I".



This document is perfectly consistent with the notion that Arbeitslager Treblinka encompassed operations at both "camps", with SS-Sonderkommando referring to an administrative entity. The mining of gravel was an operation conducted on the site by a corresponding firm, namely the Deutsche Herd- und Steinwerk GmbH Kieswerk Treblinka.

So identical to Trawniki and Poniatowa, you have private enterprises with a presence in the "Arbeitslager". Treblinka, Poniatowa, and Trawniki all also had a Jewish labor force dedicated to sorting clothing and property for Operation Reinhardt. You admit that this activity was under SS-Arbeitslager Trawniki at Trawniki, and it was under SS-Arbeitslager Poniatowa at Poniatowa, but you deny it was under Arbeitslager Treblinka at Treblinka even though Eberl identifies the camp under construction with that exact name.

[SanityCheck]

Your obfuscation basically evaporates when one considers personnel since the Trawniki records offer us enough examples of individual personnel files and transfer rosters to show that there were two guard companies at Treblinka, one for SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka and one for SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.

The German SS personnel for both camps have also been identified and for the SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka German staff, are further identified with Einsatz/Aktion Reinhardt in other personnel documents (promotion lists etc).

Survivors of both Treblinkas identify the German SS and various Trawnikis as well; thus Israel Cymlich was in SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka and knew this (while also knowing about the other Treblinka), and Oskar Strawczynski was in SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.

Proximity meant they could cooperate on occasion, thus guards from SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka are reported to have escorted trains from Warsaw to SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka in the summer of 1942, while the labour camp was stocked up with small selections from some transports otherwise perishing in SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.

The letter from Maetzig to Trawniki is not necessarily any different; SS-Uscha Maetzig is identified as the administrator for SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka but was here stepping in, it seems, to help out the billing and shipment of gravel to Trawniki. Note the involvement of DESt Auschwitz in the trade as well. There isn't a sustained run of documents showing that SS-Uscha Maetzig was doing all the book-keeping and admin for both Treblinkas. He would however have had more time by June 1943 with transports largely wound down, to help. The document doesn't suggest control, which devolved commercially to DESt

Treblinka I first shows up in correspondence being described as an Arbeitserziehungslager.

Anruf SS-Standartenführer Schnabel, SSPF Warschau, 31.10.1041; H.H.u.B., D.Ch.d.A.II.B, Betr.: Arbeitserziehungslager in Treblinka, 5.11.1941, BA DH ZB6768. A.1, pp.380-1 (now BArch NS 3/1636, frames 12 and 14 of online file digitised here: https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio ... 75f0a85f8/)

That two weeks later Ludwig Fischer called it an Arbeitslager perfectly illustrates the point about not obsessing over nomenclature at an early stage, when a camp is being established and becoming operational.

Indeed Kammler's office was still referring to Treblinka as an Arbeitserziehungslager a whole six days after Fischer's decree (BArch NS 3/1636, p.378, frame 8)

The file does confirm the involvement of ZBL Warschau in providing barracks for the guard force at the new camp


Sobibor, as has been pointed out already, was labelled an Arbeitslager in June 1942 in the text of a police report about a transport from Vienna, i.e. not as a from/to sender/recipient or title. 13 months later the camp which very visibly had SS-Sonderkommando over an entry gate was labelled a Durchgangslager in correspondence between Himmler and others, but there is no document with SS-Durchgangslager Sobibor on a letterhead, or as a from/to unit recipient.

Belzec was interestingly once referred to as an SS-Arbeitslager in the clean-up phase when it was sent a new contingent of 70 Trawnikis on March 26-27 1943; this contingent mutinied on April 10 so was replaced wholesale with a new contingent of 60 Trawnikis on April 12, 1943, only this time the SS-Ausbildungslager Trawniki sent them to SS-Sonderkommando Belzec, according to the handover roster.

Referring to Belzec as a labour camp when it was no longer receiving transports and was employing prisoners to burn bodies makes sense within SS-logic, but Sobibor continued to be labelled a SS-Sonderkommando in the transfer rosters from Trawniki into February and March 1944 (19 Trawnikis were still present on 30 March 1944), long after the end of transports and the revolt; there wasn't as much clean-up work to be done since cremation had been ongoing in 1942-43, unlike at Belzec which largely did this in the first half of 1943 without also receiving transports.

So the reference to SS-Arbeitslager Belzec in March 1943 is as I-don't-care as the changing references to Treblinka (II) in July 1942. Especially as there wasn't a parallel labour camp alongside SS-Sonderkommando Belzec; the labour camp Belzec existed in 1940.


As usual, your attempts to transmogrify or relocate the extermination camp of Treblinka by quoting isolated sources out of context are at best mildly amusing, at worst a sign you might need to consult a mental health professional. Ultimately they're utterly futile, given the range of documents one needs to factor in, such as the transport schedules, Wolff-Ganzenmueller exchange, and the waybills showing transfer of clothing out of Treblinka to Lublin already in September 1942, along with the personnel files of Trawnikis and SS, even before we get to the 1943 documents (and the dismantling of SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka complete with shipping out 'engines'). Or the other documents for Einsatz/Aktion Reinhardt and SSPF Lublin, and the other explicit Reinhardt camps of Belzec and Sobibor.

[SanityCheck]

West German investigators accepted the claims/denials of ZBL Lublin veterans that they had not been directly involved in the construction of any of Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka. Sobibor and Treblinka SS-Sonderkommando members identify Richard Thomalla as supervising the construction of both camps. Both the Zentrale Stelle in Ludwigsburg and investigators in Hamburg agreed on this (summarising notes on the ZBL Lublin investigation in its Ludwigsburg copy)

ZBL Warschau veterans such as Hermann Leyh had to admit constructing the SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka, as Leyh had boasted about this in a 1944 Lebenslauf in his file, but strenuously denied any involvement in constructing SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka, although Leyh did concede some oversight at the Warsaw end of two construction firms brought in. That seems to have been administrative, since there was blank denial they had overseen anything at Treblinka II; the site construction manager job was evidently Thomalla's role (summarising notes from the Treblinka investigation in its Ludwigsburg copy).

Thomalla was still in Kyiv at the end of 1941, so was likely not involved in constructing Belzec, but there may well have been surviving barracks from the 1940-41 camp that had not been dismantled; the lengthy time-frame (four and a half months) from the first reports of construction and the presence of Trawnikis at the turn of October/November 1941 to beginning operations likely also meant that Wirth et al could oversee the construction of the camp while only depending on some deliveries of materials.

Globocnik asserted his authority over the construction of Majdanek in this phase and was only muscled out properly in early 1942, so Belzec was built in the wilder phase of the Lublin Standort. ZBL Lublin definitely also expanded with the expansion of plans for Majdanek in 1941-2 and this plus other Lublin city sites would have absorbed a lot of their attention. The Zamosc site was definitely also being built up with demands for construction for SS-Police purposes, so this would have been much closer to Belzec, but did that need oversight? Not if it was conceived of as a 'black' site from the get-go, which is likely. Note that in German 'schwarz gebaut' was used to describe off-the-books construction, and witnesses used this to describe various sites in Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was otherwise a meticulously documented site. They were talking of the infamous swimming pool, as it happens, which was officially a firefighting reservoir...

One final comment on construction and budgets: the GG budgets cover police budgets, but the construction offices were for the Waffen-SS and Police. Waffen-SS costs shaded into the military contribution (Wehrbeitrag, Wehrmachtskosten) rather than police costs (Polizeikosten). Police costs were substantial enough, running to hundreds of millions of RM for the GG and the besetzten Ostgebieten each. But when going through the GG budgets I didn't see chapter and verse on every SS camp or site in the GG; the ones not mentioned would likely have been financed through Waffen-SS costs, and this would have been entirely explicit with anything to do with the WVHA or a Konzentrationslager (Lublin, Plaszow, Warschau and later, other sub-camps).

The SS could deny the civilian authorities insight into anything 'Waffen-SS', or indeed anything else they wanted to keep on a lower profile, but did not particularly care regarding 'regular' police sites. And Treblinka I, SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka, was one of those, since the civilian authorities had the right to send Poles and Jews to the camp as punishment. They had no such right regarding the KL-Einweisung of a Pole or Jews to KL Lublin. Nor did they have oversight over the SS-Sonderkommandos, although all of the county captains where one was located seem to have been informed about them in general, while neighbouring county captains had no need-to-know.

[curioussoul]

It's actually embarrassing reading Terry's rambling, verbose nonsense trying to justify and explain why the name of the camp (T-II) would have been "SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka". A Sonderkommando is a personnel unit, not camp designation. At best it could have been referred to as a 'Sonderlager' or similar. I know your German isn't the best, but this is below you.

[SanityCheck]

It's actually embarrassing reading Terry's rambling, verbose nonsense trying to justify and explain why the name of the camp (T-II) would have been "SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka". A Sonderkommando is a personnel unit, not camp designation. At best it could have been referred to as a 'Sonderlager' or similar. I know your German isn't the best, but this is below you.

Nice try at an insult, but what you're missing is the dearth of references in the German documents to a 'Lager' of any kind for what is considered the Treblinka extermination camp. I'm perfectly fluent in reading German but the even more crucial thing is knowing the documents.

SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka predominates, along with referencing just Treblinka as a destination. T II appears in the Stroop report and that's about it for the surviving German documents. This is why I've avoided it and opted to reiterate SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.

The Trawniki personnel records provide the biggest cache of references to Treblinka outside of the railway records preserved by Zabecki, and those consistently stick with SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka and SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka. Things like the Wolff-Ganzenmueller exchange simply refer to 'nach Treblinka', to the destination. The railway documents are similar. Neither the personnel nor transport related documents need to speak of it as a camp.

The pattern continues for SS-Sonderkommandos Kulmhof, Belzec and Sobibor, all of which feature in the records with this designation. There are somewhat more references to these as 'Lager' of various kinds, as I've already noted. But not that many, since the bulk of the records which survive pertain to transport issues (thus destinations) and personnel.

There were SS-Sonderlager or Sonderlager elsewhere: Stutthof, Soldau/Dzialdowo, Hinzert. A Sonderlager was thus a name for something short of a Konzentrationslager, until it might be converted into one, or a camp set up by the Security Police or a HSSPF. But the designation was not standardised elsewhere, since either the camps were also labour camps, or as holding camps they could be referred to by other terms.

I appreciate this all might be extremely painful for black-and-white thinkers who insist that Germans always designate things one way, even if this is patently obviously NOT the case across the organisational jungles of the Third Reich, but defining Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Kulmhof as a certain kind of camp would have rather defeated the object of keeping things obscure. Schroedinger's Lager was a better option to ensure the cover-up and describe it to different audiences who did not have need-to-know. Thus the flip-flopping between Arbeitslager in a handful of documents, and Durchgangslager in a handful of others. Or just Lager in a few cases. IIRC one example is a note about promoting Wirth after Himmler's visit to 'Lager Sobibor'.

I already noted the photo of a Sobibor entrance gate with SS-Sonderkommando in huge letters above it, which came to light in the Niemann photo album in early 2020. No reference to a Lager there, even if of course it was a camp and looks like a camp from the photo of the entrance.

In Himmler's appointments schedule for 12 February 1943, a flight from East Prussia to Lublin was followed by travelling via 'Cholm' (Chelm) to an inspection of the SS-Sonderkommando (Besichtigung des SS-Sonderkommandos). No mention of a Lager here, either. The aforementioned file note on Wirth's promotion confirms what should be obvious from the geography, that this was indeed a visit to Sobibor, since there was no other SS-Sonderkommando near Chelm.

I've not drawn any inferences from why these camps were called SS-Sonderkommandos, there were after all a variety of other SS-Sonderkommandos with defined purposes that did not involve killing, but the vagueness in the surviving records about these four is quite remarkable.

The only reason to insist on SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka is because Prudent Regret is trying on another of his bullshit routines about Treblinka, which he's been trotting out since before the pandemic in early 2020, i.e. for coming up on five years, with painfully little progress.

The latest spiel seems to be conflating SS-Arbeitslager Treblinka ('Treblinka I') with SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka ('Treblinka II') even though these were clearly separate camps with separate staffs on opposite sides of a rail line whose whereabouts were easily and clearly identified after the war, despite one being dismantled and covered up and the other being left behind hastily in the 1944 retreat.

Comprehending German finacial records, budgets and accounting procedures is indeed excruciatingly tedious, but don't blame me for someone else's wild goose chase.

[Callafangers]

I've not drawn any inferences from why these camps were called SS-Sonderkommandos, there were after all a variety of other SS-Sonderkommandos with defined purposes that did not involve killing, but the vagueness in the surviving records about these four is quite remarkable.

The term "Sonderkommando" typically refers to a personnel unit, not a camp designation. Having a special command unit stationed at a particular area allows for some overlap in how these are described but does not overrule the necessity for a distinct designation for the location itself.

As PR has shown, the name "Arbeitslager Treblinka" goes back to 1941 and was used consistently in documents. The idea that Eberl was using a 'code name' that exactly matched the name of an existing camp next door makes no sense and would have done more to cause confusion than to obscure any particular camp function. There is no hint of this reference being a 'coded' one; only your assumptions when backed against a wall, it seems. The budgetary documents from the SSPF Warsaw pertain to the expansion of "Arbeitslager Treblinka" in both 1942 and 1943, aligning with Eberl's communications about construction at the same camp.

You provide some evidence of two distinct staffs, but this does not address [as PR has shown] the most straightforward reading of the direct, contemporary evidence: that is, Eberl referring to the camp collectively (TI and TII, together) as "Arbeitslager Treblinka". This does not remotely align with the notion of it as a separate entity and jurisdiction. Even if "SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka" refers to an area and not only a unit (note: when used in this way, "command" (kommando) is defined as "the personnel, area, or organization under a commander"), all we have confirmed is there is a specially-designated area within Arbeitslager Treblinka.

What you are forced to claim, Nick, is that this "special" command was there exclusively to kill everyone, despite copious evidence now conflicting with this interpretation and, at the very least, better aligning with a non-genocidal (revisionist) interpretation as to the use of the T-II area.

Altogether, this further limits you exclusively to this notoriously-problematic pool of 'eyewitnesses' (scroll to 30%):

https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/instr ... linka/889/

And remember, those are just the 'best' witnesses. Even more absurd ones came later. Can you name any other historical narrative so heavily-reliant on such a problematic pool (i.e. proportion of inconsistencies and falsehoods) of eyewitnesses?