The FSB declassified documents on the mass killings of citizens in the Treblinka concentration camp

The Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia has published previously classified materials about the atrocities of the Nazis in the Treblinka concentration camp, uncovered by the Smersh counterintelligence agencies after its liberation in 1944. The relevant materials were published on the agency's website on April 10.

The Nazi "death camp", which had been operating since the end of 1941, was located at Treblinka station, 80 km northeast of Warsaw. In mid-August 1944, he was liberated by formations of the 65th Army of the first Belorussian Front.

Treblinka, as follows from the materials, was divided into two sectors — "camp No. 1", called the work camp, and "camp No. 2", the "death camp". According to the testimony of the arrested punishers, the concentration camp was built by the Germans specifically for the mass extermination, mainly of the Jewish and Polish populations. Up to 2.5 thousand people were killed in it every day.

Already in September 1944, Smersh officers arrested the first executioners, the Wahmans of the SS, who served in the Treblinka camps. During the interrogations, they told about the transportation of trains with prisoners from all over Europe and about the brutal methods of murder. One of those arrested, Ivan Shevchenko, confirmed that the victims were deceived by promises of resettlement to Palestine, and then mass exterminated.

"Jewish families arriving at the camp daily with their possessions from Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France and Bulgaria were brought under the guise of allegedly to a collection point for subsequent shipment to Palestine. The trains were unloaded in two or three batches of 17-20 wagons each. <...> The number of people brought in these wagons exactly corresponded to the volume and "capacity" of the "slaughterhouse" for the simultaneous extermination of people in it," the agency quotes Shevchenko's testimony.

Another executioner, Pavel Leleko, the wahman of the SS Treblinka camp, told the investigation about the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their accomplices. According to him, more than 2 million people passed through Treblinka in 11 months, and all of them were exterminated.

"Women and men capable of work were put to death in "slaughterhouses," and those who were sick or exhausted were passed through the so-called infirmary, led to pits, shot and burned," the FSB quoted Leleko as saying.

The declassified materials are timed to coincide with the International Day of Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps. They confirm the organized, systematic nature of the genocide carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators.

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On February 21, the FSB declassified archival documents attesting to the crimes of the Nazi German army against civilians in the Kursk region of the USSR in 1943. FSB officials clarified that a total of six documents had been declassified and published. Including the indictment against Lieutenant General F.A. Weinknecht, under whose command the infantrymen of Nazi Germany committed atrocities against peaceful Soviet citizens.