he two parallel camps of Treblinka were located 80 kilometres (50 mi) northeast of the Polish capital
Warsaw,
[37][38] near the
Małkinia–
Sokołów Podlaski railway junction connecting major cities in central Poland with the
Treblinka village railroad station. Before World War II, it was the site of a gravel mining enterprise essential to the production of concrete. During that time it was owned and operated by the Polish industrialist Marian Łopuszyński, who built a 6-kilometre (3.7 mi)
railway track to the existing line.
[39] When the Germans built Treblinka I, the quarry was already equipped with heavy machinery that could be used right away.
[40] For them, Treblinka was conveniently located. It was well-connected but distant enough to provide isolation,
[g][41] as it was situated halfway between some of the largest Jewish ghettos in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, including the
ghetto in Warsaw and the
ghetto in Białystok, the capital of the newly formed
district of Bialystok (German:
Bezirk Bialystok). The Warsaw Ghetto had about 500,000 Jewish inmates,
[42] while the
Białystok Ghetto had about 60,000.
[43] From the beginning Treblinka was split into two parallel camps, Treblinka I and Treblinka II. The German contractors who oversaw the construction of Treblinka I and Treblinka II were the Schoenbronn Company of Leipzig and the Warsaw branch of Schmidt–Munstermann.[1] Between 1942 and 1943 the extermination camp was further redeveloped with a crawler excavator. New gas chambers made of bricks and mortar and mass cremation pyres were also introduced during this time.[44] Additionally, the perimeter was enlarged to provide a buffer zone, thus making it impossible to approach the camp from the outside. The number of trains caused panic among the residents of nearby settlements.[14] They would likely have been killed if caught near the train tracks.[45]
Treblinka I