What Actually DID Happen at Treblinka?
Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2025 8:55 am
I wanted to revive this topic based on some recent discussions (and the ongoing discussion/debate with this camp often at the center): what actually happened at Treblinka?
It's now very well-established that despite all the big claims about corpses buried under Treblinka, the evidence of what is actually buried there is actually firmly against the alleged scale (and hence, also the nature) of what is alleged.
A summary of the revisionist view thus far:
Holocaust Encyclopedia - Treblinka
https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/instr ... linka/889/
A recent thread diving further into the findings immediately post-war (Judge Łukaszkiewicz):
"56 Olympic Swimming Pools" and Treblinka (Nessie's logic)
viewtopic.php?t=578
Thus, I think it's now appropriate to revisit the question of what did actually happen at Treblinka. The most important work addressing this question thus far comes from forum member PrudentRegret, whose findings have been more or less mind-blowing insofar as showing clearly and plainly that 'Aktion Reinhardt' (notice the 't') -- and with it, T-II (Treblinka) as well -- was an economic operation, officially documented as such -- the exact kind of documentation utterly lacking for interpretations of it as an 'extermination' operation/facility.
Here is a thread I would consider "essential reading" on this matter:
A New Revisionist Interpretation of Operation Reinhardt
viewtopic.php?t=26
Once you are caught up, just to throw my own thoughts into the mix, while I agree with PrudentRegret on the core/essential functions of these AR camps, the question still remains of just how many Jews actually set foot there? This seems a very important question which, to my knowledge, has not yet been fully addressed by revisionists.
One thing to consider is that the transports and the number of Jews on them actually reaching as far as the Bug River (or AR camps) is not as clear as one might assume when looking at documents like the Hoefl telegram which simply shows a total number of Jews channeled through [non-specified] "camps in the General Government". And in addition to this, earlier findings by forum member Nazgul (also discussed by myself) were that there were documented lengthy stops apparently serving for off-boarding and/or on-boarding of passengers (given no other explanation) at various Jewish labor camp (Zwangsarbeitslagers) locations before these trains leaving the ghettos ever reached the AR camps. It is likely that only a relative minority of the total number of Jews being deported stayed within the General Government (GG) in this way, however there were at least several hundred labor camps within the GG at this time, making such distributions plausible. Altogether, this shows that the transports from the ghettos to the AR camps were themselves not necessarily "airtight".
A discussion from the old CODOH forum:
NEW Considerations on Treblinka and the AR Camps
https://archive.codohforum.com/20230609 ... =2&t=14794
Once the trains had physically reached the approximate location of the AR camps, what happened then? Well, the official 'Holocaust' narrative would have us believe that all of the Jews immediately exited their cattle car and marched by the millions into gas chambers. But is it possible that something else happened, instead?
First, consider that the main pieces of documentary evidence used to claim that Jews actually arrived at AR camps (and T-II) include:
My understanding is also that these documents (train schedules) are overall very few and far between, with the vast majority of them not surviving the war. But of those which we do have, we see patterns like both of those just discussed above (often ending at or near an AR camp site, with various stops near labor camps or other sites along the way).
So, how should we interpret camps like Treblinka or Sobibor being documented as the 'last stop' on train schedules? Well, here's a key point that's gone largely understated: administrative jurisdiction.
Were these Fahrplanordnung documents intended to document Jewish travels or train movements all across Europe or the whole world? Or is there some place or location where the purposes for this documentation (and whatever authority is documenting it) has ended? If the latter, where would that location be?
As it turns out, the administrative authority which determined the Fahrplanordnung documents is the Generaldirektion der Ostbahn, overseeing the Ostbahn territory. Fascinatingly, their jurisdiction ends approximately at the Bug River, which means Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec each as a "last stop" for purposes of documentation by the Generaldirektion der Ostbahn.
Question:
Novak's response:
Why in the hell would there be regular coordination with the "Head of Transport matters in the Wehrmacht" (i.e. near the eastern front) about transports evacuating Jews from the west?
Here's another important item: the Ganzenmuller letter, sent late July 1942:
Here's what it says, original German first:
Moreover, given that official documentation clearly outlines Aktion Reinhardt as an economic operation above all, and since Globocnik is explicitly named as a recipient of the same message, this is further direct support of this letter's relevance to an economic focus, not a homicidal one.
Altogether, this means this letter is only evidence that the quantity of Jews reflected an approximate cash value, evidence of efficiency, and a level of security threat -- not any indication of how many actually offboarded the trains being sent to these camps as the final stop within the Ostbahn territory.
I have another point to make but let me first share some postwar newspaper excerpts to set the stage further:
Aside from the fact that, by the time of the above publication, Judge Łukaszkiewicz's team (in 1945) had already documented an extraordinary lack of corpse remains underground at Treblinka (making the "largest grave on earth" nonsense summarily debunked), I find it crucial to note the possibility of trains simply "bypassing Treblinka entirely" -- that this location was hardly memorable in such a desolate landscape. To the question of why Jews sent East would not, then, in the decades post-war have thought to mention Treblinka... it seems that most of them could have been in trains that simply kept going, never so much as glimpsing at Treblinka or any other AR camp.
This is all further reinforced by the fact that the most ridiculous elements straining belief about the Treblinka (T-II) narrative are those which pertain to mass Jewish arrivals and what was done to them. From the same article above:
"3.5 million", according to "reliable estimates", all arriving by 'saloon-style' luxury passenger cars... obvious nonsense. But it seems there is a partial consensus between revisionists and exterminationists on one issue: "Jewish work crews, employed to unload the arrivals and sort clothing and valuables".
Indeed, this was extremely important work and central to the operations at T-II, as confirmed 100% by the excavation findings of Judge Łukaszkiewicz and his team in 1945 (endless instances of various Jewish property across "innumerable" diggings there). I was curious to learn more about just how central such property-sorting and trash burial/destruction operations were at T-II. Fortunately, Vassily Grossman (a Soviet-Jewish journalist and propagandist compiling witness narratives) provided some hints and possible insights, interspersed with the usual Soviet embellishments and absurdities:
Whereas a number of corpses within several orders of magnitude to what is claimed buried at Treblinka can be definitively said to not be buried there, the types of items listed above were actually found in the many diggings of Judge Łukaszkiewicz and his team.
Altogether, what this says to me is that PrudentRegret's assessment of Aktion Reinhardt and certainly T-II is correct, and that it is reasonably certain that such economic tasks were the central focus of the camp. Given the overwhelming amount of deception about German barbarity vs. Jewish suffering evident about AR camps, coupled with a remarkable lack of actual corpses in every attempted excavation, I would argue that it is just as clear that mass extermination alleged at these locations (accounting for even a small fraction of the claimed totals) cannot be reasonably thought to have occurred, and that there is ample reason to reject such claims outright.
We now have a lack of incriminating evidence, a viable counter-narrative, and a clear (evidenced) pattern of deception among "witnesses" and narrative-builders about T-II and AR camps. No informed, reasonable person can still take these narratives seriously.
It's now very well-established that despite all the big claims about corpses buried under Treblinka, the evidence of what is actually buried there is actually firmly against the alleged scale (and hence, also the nature) of what is alleged.
A summary of the revisionist view thus far:
Holocaust Encyclopedia - Treblinka
https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/instr ... linka/889/
A recent thread diving further into the findings immediately post-war (Judge Łukaszkiewicz):
"56 Olympic Swimming Pools" and Treblinka (Nessie's logic)
viewtopic.php?t=578
Thus, I think it's now appropriate to revisit the question of what did actually happen at Treblinka. The most important work addressing this question thus far comes from forum member PrudentRegret, whose findings have been more or less mind-blowing insofar as showing clearly and plainly that 'Aktion Reinhardt' (notice the 't') -- and with it, T-II (Treblinka) as well -- was an economic operation, officially documented as such -- the exact kind of documentation utterly lacking for interpretations of it as an 'extermination' operation/facility.
Here is a thread I would consider "essential reading" on this matter:
A New Revisionist Interpretation of Operation Reinhardt
viewtopic.php?t=26
Once you are caught up, just to throw my own thoughts into the mix, while I agree with PrudentRegret on the core/essential functions of these AR camps, the question still remains of just how many Jews actually set foot there? This seems a very important question which, to my knowledge, has not yet been fully addressed by revisionists.
One thing to consider is that the transports and the number of Jews on them actually reaching as far as the Bug River (or AR camps) is not as clear as one might assume when looking at documents like the Hoefl telegram which simply shows a total number of Jews channeled through [non-specified] "camps in the General Government". And in addition to this, earlier findings by forum member Nazgul (also discussed by myself) were that there were documented lengthy stops apparently serving for off-boarding and/or on-boarding of passengers (given no other explanation) at various Jewish labor camp (Zwangsarbeitslagers) locations before these trains leaving the ghettos ever reached the AR camps. It is likely that only a relative minority of the total number of Jews being deported stayed within the General Government (GG) in this way, however there were at least several hundred labor camps within the GG at this time, making such distributions plausible. Altogether, this shows that the transports from the ghettos to the AR camps were themselves not necessarily "airtight".
A discussion from the old CODOH forum:
NEW Considerations on Treblinka and the AR Camps
https://archive.codohforum.com/20230609 ... =2&t=14794
Once the trains had physically reached the approximate location of the AR camps, what happened then? Well, the official 'Holocaust' narrative would have us believe that all of the Jews immediately exited their cattle car and marched by the millions into gas chambers. But is it possible that something else happened, instead?
First, consider that the main pieces of documentary evidence used to claim that Jews actually arrived at AR camps (and T-II) include:
- Fahrplanordnung documents (train schedules), and
- the aforementioned Hoefl telegram
- the Ganzenmuller letter
My understanding is also that these documents (train schedules) are overall very few and far between, with the vast majority of them not surviving the war. But of those which we do have, we see patterns like both of those just discussed above (often ending at or near an AR camp site, with various stops near labor camps or other sites along the way).
So, how should we interpret camps like Treblinka or Sobibor being documented as the 'last stop' on train schedules? Well, here's a key point that's gone largely understated: administrative jurisdiction.
Were these Fahrplanordnung documents intended to document Jewish travels or train movements all across Europe or the whole world? Or is there some place or location where the purposes for this documentation (and whatever authority is documenting it) has ended? If the latter, where would that location be?
As it turns out, the administrative authority which determined the Fahrplanordnung documents is the Generaldirektion der Ostbahn, overseeing the Ostbahn territory. Fascinatingly, their jurisdiction ends approximately at the Bug River, which means Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec each as a "last stop" for purposes of documentation by the Generaldirektion der Ostbahn.
- Eichmann's section (by way of Franz Novak, the Transportation Officer) drafted the initial timetables which then had to be finalized, published, and implemented by the Reich Transport Ministry.
- Per Novak's testimony at the Eichmann trial, Jewish evacuations involved timetables coordinated between both the Reich Transport Ministry and the head of transport in the Wehrmacht, suggesting Jewish evacuations regularly involved coordination with territories in the East.
Question:
https://www.nizkor.org/franz-novak-01-eichmann-adolf/(16) Which was the authority of the Reich Government
which was in charge of, and responsible for, providing
timetables for the evacuation of Jews?
Novak's response:
https://www.nizkor.org/franz-novak-02-eichmann-adolf/(16): Responsibility for drawing up timetables for
evacuating Jews belonged to the Reich Ministry of Transport,
in conjunction with the Head of Transport Matters in the
army [Wehrmacht].
Why in the hell would there be regular coordination with the "Head of Transport matters in the Wehrmacht" (i.e. near the eastern front) about transports evacuating Jews from the west?
Here's another important item: the Ganzenmuller letter, sent late July 1942:
Here's what it says, original German first:
And the translation:Sehr geehrter Pg Wolf!
Unter Bezugnahme auf unser Ferngespräch vom 16. Juli
teile ich Ihnen folgende Meldung meiner Generaldirektion der
Ostbahnen (Gedob) zu Ihrer gefälligen Unterrichtung mit:
"Seit dem 22.7. fährt täglich ein Zug mit je 5 000 Juden
von Warschau über Malkinia nach Treblinka, außerdem zweimal
wöchentlich ein Zug mit 5 000 Juden von Przemysl nach Bel-
zek. Gedob steht in ständiger Fühlung mit dem Sicherheits-
dienst in Krakau. Dieser ist damit einverstanden, daß die
Transporte von Warschau über Lublin nach Sobibor (bei Lublin)
solange ruhen, wie die Umbauarbeiten auf dieser Strecke
diese Transporte unmöglich machen (ungefähr Oktober 1942)."
Die Züge wurden mit dem Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei
in Generalgouvernement vereinbart. SS- und Polizeiführer des
Distrikts Lublin, SS-Brigadeführer Globocnik, ist verständigt
Given the significance of the economic operation associated to these camps, and given the presumed security risk of Jews at any location, Ganzenmuller had every incentive to spotlight Jewish transport figures as a proxy for (1) economic value, (2) efficiency of operations, and (3) matters of security.Dear Pg Wolf!
With reference to our telephone conversation of July 16,
I am forwarding the following report from my General Directorate of the Eastern Railways (Gedob) for your kind information:
"Since July 22, a train carrying 5,000 Jews has been running daily from Warsaw via Malkinia to Treblinka, and in addition, a train carrying 5,000 Jews runs twice a week from Przemyśl to Belzek. Gedob is in constant contact with the Security Service in Kraków. The Security Service has agreed that the transports from Warsaw via Lublin to Sobibor (near Lublin) will be suspended until the reconstruction work on this line makes these transports impossible (approximately October 1942)."
The trains were arranged with the Commander of the Security Police in the General Government. The SS and Police Leader of the Lublin District, SS-Brigadeführer Globocnik, has been informed.
Moreover, given that official documentation clearly outlines Aktion Reinhardt as an economic operation above all, and since Globocnik is explicitly named as a recipient of the same message, this is further direct support of this letter's relevance to an economic focus, not a homicidal one.
Altogether, this means this letter is only evidence that the quantity of Jews reflected an approximate cash value, evidence of efficiency, and a level of security threat -- not any indication of how many actually offboarded the trains being sent to these camps as the final stop within the Ostbahn territory.
I have another point to make but let me first share some postwar newspaper excerpts to set the stage further:
"The Largest Grave on Earth", Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, 1946.02.21, p. 4.Treblinka is a small railway embankment on the Szedlec-Malkin line, not far from the Bug pond. "Before the war, a completely unknown place, the Bug only stopped here a few times before continuing on its way. Express trains bypassed Treblinka entirely, speeding through this desolate landscape. None of the travelers ever remembered its name, none suspected that the meager grounds of a few abandoned houses would become such a gruesome specter, and that the largest grave on earth was to stand here.
Aside from the fact that, by the time of the above publication, Judge Łukaszkiewicz's team (in 1945) had already documented an extraordinary lack of corpse remains underground at Treblinka (making the "largest grave on earth" nonsense summarily debunked), I find it crucial to note the possibility of trains simply "bypassing Treblinka entirely" -- that this location was hardly memorable in such a desolate landscape. To the question of why Jews sent East would not, then, in the decades post-war have thought to mention Treblinka... it seems that most of them could have been in trains that simply kept going, never so much as glimpsing at Treblinka or any other AR camp.
This is all further reinforced by the fact that the most ridiculous elements straining belief about the Treblinka (T-II) narrative are those which pertain to mass Jewish arrivals and what was done to them. From the same article above:
Ibid., p. 4.Gas chambers were built for the extermination work, and a large sign reading "The Bath" was hung above their entrances. This sign, along with others such as "Rassa" (Reception), "Waiting Room," etc., was intended to deceive those arriving. A sign for a fictitious train station, Bialistok-Volkovyk, was also included.
SS personnel, Ukrainian and other fascist executioners were housed in large barracks. Fine barracks were needed for the arriving prisoners. As soon as they left the train cars, they were taken to the bathhouse for "hygienic reasons" and quickly sent to their deaths. There were only two barracks, one for each of two groups of Jewish workers. One group consisted of 700 men, the other of 300. Both groups were strictly separated, their barracks surrounded by barbed wire.
In July 1942, Treblinka had "only" three gas chambers in operation, where people were poisoned with various gases or suffocated by having the air pumped out of the chambers. As Hitler's bloodlust grew, the number of arriving transports increased. The three gas chambers were no longer sufficient; twelve were built. According to eyewitness accounts, an average of 20,000 people died in the gas chambers every day.
It was not without reason that the SS called the Treblinka camp "the Jewish state." Jews from all over Hitler's sphere of influence were brought to Treblinka, from Poland, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. Western European Jews were ordered to take their best and most valuable possessions with them. They were led to believe that they were going to Poland to be resettled there. They were led in saloon-style [luxury passenger] train cars...
At first, the unsuspecting victims genuinely believed these were sanitary facilities. They read the signs; they saw the Jewish Warsaw doctor, Dr. Choronzicki, walking around the camp in a white coat and Red Cross armband, thus completing the diabolical image of deception.
But the lie was quickly exposed. The pitiful cries of the thousands dying were devastating. They broke through the confines of the camp and penetrated the hopeless distance to the Polish camp and beyond. The Jewish work crews, employed to unload the arrivals and sort clothing and valuables, to remove corpses from the gas chambers and burn them on the pyres, soon revealed to the arriving transports their inescapable fate, the bitter truth of their inevitable, imminent death.
The infamous SS leaders Marx Biel, Scharführer Roitner, Untersturmführer Frank, Lagerführer Kurt Sindler, and others surrounded the immigrant transports with columns of SS men and Ukrainian police, forcibly driving the defenseless victims into the so-called "bath." According to reliable estimates, 3.5 million people lost their lives by August 2, 1943, the day of the Treblinka uprising.
"3.5 million", according to "reliable estimates", all arriving by 'saloon-style' luxury passenger cars... obvious nonsense. But it seems there is a partial consensus between revisionists and exterminationists on one issue: "Jewish work crews, employed to unload the arrivals and sort clothing and valuables".
Indeed, this was extremely important work and central to the operations at T-II, as confirmed 100% by the excavation findings of Judge Łukaszkiewicz and his team in 1945 (endless instances of various Jewish property across "innumerable" diggings there). I was curious to learn more about just how central such property-sorting and trash burial/destruction operations were at T-II. Fortunately, Vassily Grossman (a Soviet-Jewish journalist and propagandist compiling witness narratives) provided some hints and possible insights, interspersed with the usual Soviet embellishments and absurdities:
Grossman, V. "DIE HÖLLE VON TREBLINKA". Internationale Literatur, 1945 (Jahrgang 15, nr. 1-12) 1945-05-01 / nr. 5, p. 57-58As a final deception of the arrivals from Europe, the dead-end track leading to the camp was equipped like an ordinary railway station. On the platform where the twenty carriages were unloaded stood a station building with ticket counters, a luggage room, a station restaurant, and signs everywhere pointing to "Trains to Bialystok," "To Baranovichi," "...Boarding for Volkoviysk," etc. As the train arrived, a band was playing in the station building; all the musicians were well-dressed. The gatekeeper, wearing a railway employee's uniform, took the passengers' tickets and let them out onto the station square. Three to four thousand people, laden with sacks and suitcases and supporting their elderly and sick, entered the square. Mothers held their little ones in their arms, while older children, curiously surveying the square, crowded around their parents. Something unsettling, something terrible, hung over this square, trampled by millions of human feet. The sharp eyes of the people quickly discovered alarming details. On the—obviously hastily swept ground, evidently just a few minutes before the arrival of the transport—lay abandoned items: bundles of clothes, open suitcases, shaving brushes, enameled cooking pots. How had they gotten here?
[...]
And in the square in front of the station, two hundred workers with sky-blue armbands silently, quickly, and skillfully untie the bundles, open the baskets and suitcases, and undo the straps of the travel blankets. The sorting and valuation of the belongings left by the newly arrived group is in full swing. Carefully packed sewing boxes fly to the ground, along with spools of thread, children's underwear, shirts, bedsheets, jumpers, small knives, razors, tied parcels of letters, photographs, thimbles, perfume bottles, mirrors, bonnets, shoes, thick boots sewn from cotton blankets to protect against the frost, ladies' shoes, stockings, lace, pajamas, packages of butter, coffee, boxes of cocoa, prayer robes for church services, candlesticks, books, rusks, violins, and toy dice. One had to be a skilled professional to sort and assess these thousands of different items in mere minutes—some for shipment to Germany, others, the second-rate, worn-out, and mended items for burning. Woe betide the worker who made a mistake and added an old synthetic-fiber suitcase to the pile of leather travel bags selected for Germany, or threw a pair of Parisian stockings onto the mountain of mended old socks. A worker could only make one mistake. He was given no opportunity for a second. Forty SS officers and sixty guards worked "during transport"—that was the term used in Treblinka for the first stage just described: receiving the trains, escorting the procession from the "station" to the square, and checking the workers who were sorting and assessing the items. During this activity, the workers would secretly put pieces of bread, sugar, or sweets they had found in food parcels into their mouths, so the guards wouldn't notice. This was forbidden. It was permitted to rub one's face and hands with eau de cologne and perfume after work; water was scarce in Treblinka, and only the Germans and the guards were given access to washing water. And while the surviving former owners of the belongings prepared for a bath, the work on their property came to an end; the valuable items were taken to storage, and the letters, the photographs of newborns, brothers, and brides, the yellowed wedding announcements—all these thousands of things, infinitely precious to their owners but useless junk to the masters of Treblinka—were thrown into a pile and transported to the enormous pits, at the bottom of which lay hundreds of thousands of similar letters, postcards, business cards, photographs, and scraps of paper with children's scribbles, the first clumsy crayon drawings. The area was quickly swept and ready to receive a new group of condemned prisoners.
[...]
Items valuable enough for shipment to Germany were immediately taken to the storage areas. All metal or fabric markings were carefully removed. The rest was burned or buried in the refuse pits.
[...]
The squad leader sat in the small, makeshift shack. SS men and sentries stood beside him. Wooden boxes hung in the background, into which valuables were thrown: one containing paper money, another coins, and a third watches, rings, earrings, brooches with precious stones, and bracelets. Documents no one in the world needed anymore, the documents of the living dead, which an hour later would be buried in the grave, were thrown to the ground. But the money and valuables were now subjected to careful examination. Dozens of jewelers inspected the purity of the metal, the value of the stones, and the clarity of the diamonds.
Whereas a number of corpses within several orders of magnitude to what is claimed buried at Treblinka can be definitively said to not be buried there, the types of items listed above were actually found in the many diggings of Judge Łukaszkiewicz and his team.
Altogether, what this says to me is that PrudentRegret's assessment of Aktion Reinhardt and certainly T-II is correct, and that it is reasonably certain that such economic tasks were the central focus of the camp. Given the overwhelming amount of deception about German barbarity vs. Jewish suffering evident about AR camps, coupled with a remarkable lack of actual corpses in every attempted excavation, I would argue that it is just as clear that mass extermination alleged at these locations (accounting for even a small fraction of the claimed totals) cannot be reasonably thought to have occurred, and that there is ample reason to reject such claims outright.
We now have a lack of incriminating evidence, a viable counter-narrative, and a clear (evidenced) pattern of deception among "witnesses" and narrative-builders about T-II and AR camps. No informed, reasonable person can still take these narratives seriously.