Editing Treblinka extermination camp (section)

==Victims==
[[File:Boxcar monument Yad Vashem (2).jpg|thumb|right|The Holocaust "Güterwagen" wagon holding an average of 100 victims, [[occupied Poland]]]]
There are many estimates of the total number of people murdered at Treblinka; most scholarly estimates range from 700,000 to 900,000,<ref name="Roca"/>{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}} meaning that more Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp except for Auschwitz.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|p=173}} The Treblinka museum in Poland states that at least 800,000 people were murdered at Treblinka;{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}} Israel's Holocaust museum, [[Yad Vashem]], puts the number at 870,000; and the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] gives a range of 870,000 to 925,000.<ref name="USHMM-Treblinka" />

===First estimates===
The first estimate of the number of people murdered at Treblinka came from [[Vasily Grossman]], a Soviet war reporter who visited Treblinka in July 1944 as the Soviet forces marched westward across Poland. He published an article called "The Hell Called Treblinka", which appeared in the November 1944 issue of ''Znamya'', a monthly Russian literary magazine.{{sfn|Grossman|2005|p=434}} In the article, he claimed that 3&nbsp;million people had been murdered at Treblinka. He may not have been aware that the short station platform at Treblinka II greatly reduced the number of wagons that could be unloaded at one time,{{sfn|Grossman|2005|p=457}} and may have been adhering to the Soviet trend of exaggerating Nazi crimes for propaganda purposes.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}} In 1947, the Polish historian [[Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz]] gave an estimate of 780,000 murders,{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}}{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=113|ps=: Ryszard Czarkowski, ''Cieniom Treblinki'' [To Shadows of Treblinka], Wydawn. Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej 1989. {{ISBN|83-11-07724-X}}; and Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz, "Obóz zagłady Treblinka," in: Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, I, 1946, p. 142.}} based on the accepted record of 156 transports with an average of 5,000 prisoners each.<ref name="Stein">{{cite web |url=http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpoltreb1.htm |title=The Treblinka Extermination Camp |publisher=HLSS Social Sciences |work=Source: German Crimes in Poland. Volume I. Published by the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Warsaw, 1946 |date=2 February 2000 |access-date=29 July 2014 |editor=S.D. Stein |format=Internet Archive |url-status=unfit |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061008222717/http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpoltreb1.htm |archive-date=8 October 2006}}</ref>

===Court exhibits and affidavits===
[[File:Daily deportations to Treblinka.jpg|frameless|right|upright=2|Daily deportations to Treblinka]]
The Treblinka trials of the 1960s took place in [[Düsseldorf]] and produced the two official West German estimates. During the 1965 trial of Kurt Franz, the Court of Assize in Düsseldorf concluded that at least 700,000 people were murdered at Treblinka, following a report by Dr. [[Helmut Krausnick]], director of the [[Institute of Contemporary History (Munich)|Institute of Contemporary History]].<ref name="nizkor.org">{{cite web |url=http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/reinhard/reinhard-faq-13.html |publisher=Operation Reinhard: Treblinka Deportations |title=First Treblinka Trial |year=1968 |access-date=8 January 2014 |work=Excerpts From Judgments |archive-date=23 September 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130923030356/http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/reinhard/reinhard-faq-13.html |url-status=dead }} Source: [[Alexander Donat|Donat, Alexander]] (1979), The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary, New York, pp. 296–316. Decision of the Düsseldorf County Court (AZ-LG Düsseldorf: II-931638, p. 49 ff.) in translation</ref> During Franz Stangl's trial in 1969, the same court reassessed the number to be at least 900,000 after new evidence from Dr. [[Wolfgang Scheffler (historian)|Wolfgang Scheffler]].{{sfn|Donat|1979|p=14}}{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}}

A chief witness for the prosecution at Düsseldorf in the 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1970 trials was [[Franciszek Ząbecki]], who was employed by the ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'' as a rail traffic controller at Treblinka village from 22 May 1941.<ref name="Ząbecki 1977">{{cite book |last=Ząbecki |first=Franciszek |author-link=Franciszek Ząbecki |title=Wspomnienia dawne i nowe |trans-title=Old and New Memories |year=1977 |publisher=[[PAX Association|PAX]] |location=Warsaw |page=148 |id=PB 7495/77 |language=pl |url=http://www.swistak.pl/a6143172,Wspomnienia-dawne-i-nowe-Franciszek-Zabecki.html |quote=Book description with digitized text samples at ''Swistak.pl''. |access-date=31 October 2013 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130820031136/http://www.swistak.pl/a6143172,Wspomnienia-dawne-i-nowe-Franciszek-Zabecki.html |archive-date=20 August 2013}}</ref> In 1977 he published his book ''Old and New Memories'',<ref name="Wiścicki-MHP">{{cite web |url=http://www.muzhp.pl/artykuly/1059/stacja-tuz-obok-piekla-treblinka-w-relacji-franciszka-zabeckiego.html |title=Stacja tuż obok piekła. Treblinka w relacji Franciszka Ząbeckiego |trans-title=Train station to hell. Treblinka retold by Franciszek Ząbecki |publisher=Muzeum Historii Polski (Museum of Polish history) |quote=''Source:'' [[Franciszek Ząbecki]], "Wspomnienia dawne i nowe", Pax Publishing, Warsaw 1977 |date=16 April 2013 |access-date=14 August 2013 |author=Wiścicki, Tomasz |archive-date=6 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131006052152/http://www.muzhp.pl/artykuly/1059/stacja-tuz-obok-piekla-treblinka-w-relacji-franciszka-zabeckiego.html |url-status=live }}</ref> in which he used his own records to estimate that at least 1,200,000 people were murdered at Treblinka.{{sfn|Donat|1979|p=14}}<ref name="Zabecki-Treblinka" /> His estimate was based on the maximum capacity of a trainset during the ''Grossaktion'' Warsaw of 1942 rather than its yearly average.<ref name="The Ministry">{{cite book |title=The trial of Adolf Eichmann: record of proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, Volume 5 |page=2158 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-JDjAAAAMAAJ&q=5%2C000+train+per+day |author=Bet ha-mishpaṭ ha-meḥozi (Jerusalem) |year=1994 |publisher=Trust for the Publ. of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial |isbn=9789652790149 |access-date=20 September 2020 |archive-date=16 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210816212729/https://books.google.com/books?id=-JDjAAAAMAAJ&q=5%2C000+train+per+day |url-status=live }}</ref> The original German [[waybill]]s in his possession did not have the number of prisoners listed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.net/ar/treblinka/trebdocs.html |title=Documents Related to the Treblinka Death Camp |publisher=Holocaust Research Project.org |year=2007 |access-date=10 August 2014 |author1=Holocaust Education |author2=Archive Research Team|name-list-style=amp |quote=''Bundesarchiv – Fahrplanordnung 567''. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141017001752/http://www.holocaustresearchproject.net/ar/treblinka/trebdocs.html |archive-date=17 October 2014}}</ref> Ząbecki, a Polish member of railway staff before the war, was one of the few non-German witnesses to see most transports that came into the camp; he was present at the Treblinka station when the first Holocaust train arrived from Warsaw.<ref name="Zabecki-Treblinka">{{cite web |url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/zabecki.html |title=Franciszek Zabecki – The Station Master at Treblinka. Eyewitness to the Revolt – 2 August 1943 |publisher=Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team |work=H.E.A.R.T |year=2007 |access-date=14 August 2013 |author=S.J. C.L. H.E.A.R.T |archive-date=25 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140325042843/http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/zabecki.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Ząbecki was a member of the ''Armia Krajowa'' (Polish: Home Army), which formed most of the [[Polish resistance movement in World War II]], and kept a daily record of the extermination transports. He also clandestinely photographed the burning Treblinka II perimeter during the uprising in August 1943. Ząbecki witnessed the last set of five enclosed freight wagons carrying ''Sonderkommandos'' to the Sobibór gas chambers on 20 October 1943.<ref name="Grzesik-Lublin 2011">{{cite web |url=http://alija.4me.pl/pdf/PK-%20%20Zaglada%20Zydow.pdf |title=Holocaust – Zaglada Zydów (1939–1945) |publisher=Liber Duo S.C. |quote=''Source:'' Ząbecki, Franciszek, "Wspomnienia dawne i nowe", Warszawa 1977. s. 94–95 |year=2011 |access-date=14 August 2013 |author=Grzesik, Julian |page=13 |archive-date=15 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171015150246/http://alija.4me.pl/pdf/PK-%20%20Zaglada%20Zydow.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> In 2013, his son Piotr Ząbecki wrote an article about him for ''Życie Siedleckie'' that revised the number to 1,297,000.<ref name="Piotr">{{cite web |url=http://zyciesiedleckie.pl/zyciowe-sprawy/7509-byl-skromnym-czlowiekiem# |title=Był skromnym człowiekiem |trans-title=He was a humble man |date=12 December 2013 |author=Piotr Ząbecki |publisher=Życie Siedleckie |page=21 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131219001325/http://zyciesiedleckie.pl/zyciowe-sprawy/7509-byl-skromnym-czlowiekiem |archive-date=19 December 2013}}</ref> Ząbecki's daily records of transports to the camp, and demographic information regarding the number of people deported from each ghetto to Treblinka, were the two main sources for estimates of the death toll.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}}

In his 1987 book ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps'', Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad stated that at least 763,000 people were murdered at Treblinka between July 1942 and April 1943.{{sfn|Arad|1987|p=223}} A considerable number of other estimates followed: see [[Treblinka extermination camp#Table of estimates|table]] (below).

===Höfle Telegram===
A further source of information became available in 2001. The [[Höfle Telegram]] was an encrypted message sent to Berlin on 31 December 1942 by Operation Reinhard deputy commander [[Hermann Höfle]], detailing the number of Jews deported by DRB to each of the Operation Reinhard death camps up to that point. Discovered among declassified documents in Britain, it shows that by the official count of the German Transport Authority 713,555 Jews were sent to Treblinka in 1942.<ref name="HöfleTelegram">{{cite journal |last1=Witte |first1=Peter |last2=Tyas |first2=Stephen |date=Winter 2001 |title=A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during "Einsatz Reinhardt" 1942 |journal=Holocaust and Genocide Studies |publisher=Oxford University Press |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=472 |doi=10.1093/hgs/15.3.468 |doi-access=free}}</ref> The number of murders was probably higher, according to the ''Armia Krajowa'' communiqués.{{efn|The ''[[Armia Krajowa]]'' communiqués were published by the [[Polish Underground State]] through the ''[[Biuletyn Informacyjny]]'' newspaper (BI) on behalf of the exiled [[Polish government-in-exile|Polish government in London]]. It was the most widely read Underground publication in [[occupied Poland]].<ref name="Grzegorz Mazur">{{cite web |url=http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/13%20Article.htm |title=The ZWZ-AK Bureau of Information and Propaganda |publisher=Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association, London Branch |work=Essays and Articles |year=2013 |access-date=1 December 2013 |author=Grzegorz Mazur |archive-date=27 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121027095031/http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/13%20Article.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>}}{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=112}} On the basis of the telegram and additional undated German evidence for 1943 listing 67,308 people deported, historian Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk calculated that by the official DRB count, 780,863 people were brought by ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'' to Treblinka.{{sfn|Snyder|2012|loc=note 53}}

===Table of estimates===
:{|style="font-size: 90%; border: gray solid 1px; border-collapse: collapse; text-align: middle;" class="wikitable" width="100%"
|-
! style="text-align:center;background:#B0C4DE"|Estimate
! style="text-align:center;background:#B0C4DE"|Source
! style="text-align:center;background:#B0C4DE"|Notes
! style="text-align:center;background:#B0C4DE"|Year
! style="text-align:center;background:#B0C4DE"|Work{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}}
|-
|at least 700,000||Helmut Krausnick||first West German estimate; used during trial of [[Kurt Franz]]||1965||<ref name="d'Història">{{cite web |last=Roca |first=Xavier |date=2010 |title=Comparative Efficacy of the Extermination Methods in Auschwitz and Operation Reinhard |publisher=Barcelona: Departament d'Història Moderna i Contemporània de la UAB |work=Revista HMiC, vol. VIII |issn=1696-4403 |url=http://www.raco.cat/index.php/HMiC/article/download/186946/243582 |format=PDF |access-date=7 August 2014 |at=p. 202 (4/15 in current document) |id=Direct download, 188 KB |archive-date=3 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303215558/http://www.raco.cat/index.php/HMiC/article/download/186946/243582 |url-status=live }}</ref>
|-
|at least 700,000||Adalbert Rückerl||Director of the Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crime in [[Ludwigsburg]]{{sfn|Sereny|2013|p=12}}||N/A||
|-
|at least 700,000||Joseph Billig||French historian||1973||
|-
|700,000–800,000||[[Czesław Madajczyk]]||Polish historian||1970||
|-
|700,000–900,000||Robin O'Neil||from ''Belzec: Stepping Stone to Genocide; Hitler's answer to the Jewish Question'', published by JewishGen Yizkor Books Project||2008||<ref name="d'Història"/>
|-
|713,555||[[Höfle Telegram]]||discovered in 2001; official Nazi estimate up to the end of 1942||1942||<ref name="HöfleTelegram"/>
|-
|at least 750,000||[[Michael Berenbaum]]||from his encyclopedia entry on Treblinka||2012||''Encyclopædia Britannica''<ref name="Berenbaum">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Berenbaum |first=Michael |title=Treblinka |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |location=Chicago}}</ref>
|-
|at least 750,000||[[Raul Hilberg]]||American Holocaust historian||1985||''The Destruction of European Jews''
|-
|780,000||[[Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz]]||Polish historian responsible for the first estimate of the number of murders based on 156 transports with 5,000 prisoners each, published in his monograph ''Obóz zagłady w Treblince''||1947||
|-
|780,863||Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk||cited by [[Timothy Snyder]]; combines Hölfe Telegram with undated German evidence from 1943||2004||{{sfn|Snyder|2012|p=408}}
|-
|at least 800,000||Treblinka camp museum||uses Franciszek Ząbecki's evidence and evidence from the ghettos||N/A||
|-
|850,000||[[Yitzhak Arad]]||Israeli historian who estimates 763,000 deaths between July 1942 and April 1943 alone{{sfn|Arad|1987|p=223}}||1983||''Treblinka, Hell and Revolt''<ref name="Arad-1983">{{cite web |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/reinhard.html |title=The "Final Solution" |publisher=The Jewish Virtual Library |work=Operation Reinhard: Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka |access-date=29 July 2014 |author1=Kenneth McVay |author2=Yad Vashem |quote=The total number of victims killed in Treblinka was 850,000 (Yitzhak Arad, ''Treblinka, Hell and Revolt'', Tel Aviv, 1983, pp 261–265.) |archive-date=5 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905055409/http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/reinhard.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
|-
|at least 850,000||[[Martin Gilbert]]||British historian||1993||
|-
|870,000||[[Yad Vashem]]||Israel's Holocaust museum||N/A||<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/resources/treblinka.asp |title=Treblinka |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |website=Yad Vashem |access-date=8 July 2014 |archive-date=8 October 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141008222515/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/resources/treblinka.asp |url-status=live }}</ref>
|-
|870,000 to 925,000||[[United States Holocaust Museum]]||from "Treblinka: Chronology" article; excludes the deaths from forced labour in Treblinka I||N/A||<ref name="USHMM" />
|-
|876,000||[[Simon Wiesenthal Center]]||738,000 Jews from the [[General Government]]; 107,000 from [[Bialystok]]; 29,000 Jews from elsewhere in Europe; and 2,000 Gypsies||N/A||{{sfn|Grossman|2005|p=550}}
|-
|at least 900,000||[[Wolfgang Scheffler (historian)|Wolfgang Scheffler]]||second West German estimate; used during trial of [[Franz Stangl]]||1970||
|-
|912,000||Manfred Burba||German historian||2000||
|-
|at least 1,200,000||[[Franciszek Ząbecki]]||Polish eyewitness||1977||''Old and New Memories''
|-
|1,297,000||Piotr Ząbecki||revision of Franciszek Ząbecki's estimate by his son Piotr||2013||''He was a humble man''<ref name="Piotr"/>
|-
|1,582,000||Ryszard Czarkowski||Polish historian||1989||
|-
|3,000,000||[[Vasily Grossman]]||Soviet reporter||1946||''The Hell of Treblinka''
|}
*The information in the rows with an empty last column comes from ''Dam im imię na wieki'', page 114.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=114}}