Each camp was used to learn how to exterminate the Jews and Poles more efficiently and quickly.  In the beginning, the Jews were shot in the head and shoved into huge pits, covered with lye and then bulldozed over.  It was soon discovered that this was a slow and expensive process.  The Jews from Warsaw were brought to Treblinka on trains…only about an hour from Warsaw.  When they arrived, they were told to remove their clothes and they were herded to a gas chamber.  In the beginning, the Nazis used carbon dioxide to kill the victims, but this took as long as 20 minutes.  Later, Zyklon B gas was developed which killed the victims in a matter of minutes.  After the victims were dead, the bodies were removed and cremated or dumped into mass graves.  The Nazis destroyed Treblika fairly early after an uprising and destroyed all evidence of a death camp.  They replanted the forest.

Today, there are large concrete blocks symbolizing the rail tracks and they stop where the people disembarked.  There are 216 granite blocks with the names of the locations from which the murdered Jews came…among 17 thousand smaller granite blocks to symbolize tombstones.  Where the gas chamber once stood is a giant monument symbolizing the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem with a giant slit up the middle.  The only stone with a person’s name on it is that of Janusz Korczak, the man who brought the children from the Warsaw orphanage to the camp and died with them.  

More than 800 thousand men, women and children were murdered at this site.  Jews, Poles, political prisoners and  Roma Gypsies were the main victims of Treblinka.