Auschwitz-Birkenau in the context of "IG Farben"

Treblinka (Polish: [trɛˈbliŋ.ka]; German: [tʁeˈblɪŋka]) was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, four kilometres (2+1⁄2 miles) south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Managed by the German SS with assistance from Trawniki guards – recruited from among Soviet POWs to serve with the Germans – the camp consisted of two separate units. Treblinka I was a forced-labour camp (Arbeitslager) whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the cremation pits. Between 1941 and 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates were murdered via shootings, hunger, disease and mistreatment.

Rudolf Reder a.k.a. Roman Robak (April 4, 1881 – October 6, 1977) was one of only two survivors of the Bełżec extermination camp. His testimony after the war became very well known. He submitted a deposition to the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in January 1946 in Kraków. In terms of the number of Polish Jews who perished in its gas chambers, Bełżec had the third highest death toll among the six Nazi death camps located in occupied Poland, estimated between 500,000 and 600,000 men, women and children. Only Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka killed more people during the Holocaust.

The postwar testimony of Reder was of special significance. This is because Chaim Hirszman, the only other survivor of Bełżec, joined the new communist militia in Stalinist Poland shortly after the war and was himself murdered in March 1946 by anti-communist forces before he was able to give a full account of his camp experience.

The Holocaust—the systematic killing of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945—is the most-documented genocide in history. Although there is no single document which lists the names of all Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, there is conclusive evidence that about six million Jews were murdered. There is also conclusive evidence that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Operation Reinhard extermination camps, and in gas vans, and that there was a systematic plan by the Nazi leadership to murder them.

Evidence for the Holocaust comes in four main varieties:

Edith Frank (née Holländer; 16 January 1900 – 6 January 1945) was the mother of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank and her older sister Margot. After the family were discovered in hiding in Amsterdam during the German occupation, she was transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where she died of weakness and disease.