Editing Treblinka extermination camp (section)

===Treblinka I===
{{Main|Treblinka labor camp}}
Opened on 1 September 1941 as a forced-labour camp (''[[Arbeitslager]]''),{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=74}} Treblinka I replaced an ''ad hoc'' company established in June 1941 by [[Sturmbannführer]] Ernst Gramss. A new barracks and barbed wire fencing {{cvt|2|m}} high were erected in late 1941.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=36}} To obtain the workforce for Treblinka I, civilians were sent to the camp ''en masse'' for real or imagined offences, and sentenced to hard labour by the [[Gestapo]] office in Sokołów, which was headed by Gramss.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|pp=49, 56}} The average length of a sentence was six months, but many prisoners had their sentences extended indefinitely. Twenty thousand people passed through Treblinka I during its three-year existence. About half of them were murdered there via exhaustion, hunger and disease.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=74|loc=''Summary''}} Those who survived were released after serving their sentences; these were generally Poles from nearby villages.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|pp=368–369,380}}
[[File:German ID issued to a worker who was posted to the Malkinia train station near Treblinka.jpg|thumb|German ID issued to a worker who was posted to the Malkinia train station near Treblinka. He was in charge of supplying coal to the trains going to and leaving from the death camp.]]

[[File:Treblinka I Arbeitslager 2-12-1941.jpg|thumb|Official announcement of the founding of Treblinka I, the forced-labour camp]]
At any given time, Treblinka I had a workforce of 1,000–2,000 prisoners,{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=36}} most of whom worked 12- to 14-hour shifts in the large quarry and later also harvested wood from the nearby forest as fuel for the open-air crematoria in Treblinka II.{{sfn |Webb|Chocholatý|2014|p=90}} There were German, Czech and French Jews among them, as well as Poles captured in ''[[łapanka]]s'',{{efn|''Lapanka'' is Polish for "roundup" and in this situation refers to the widespread German practice of capturing non-German civilians ambushed at random.<ref>Ron Jeffery, "Red Runs the Vistula", Nevron Associates Publ., Manurewa, Auckland, New Zealand, 1985.</ref>}} farmers unable to deliver food requisitions, hostages trapped by chance, and people who attempted to harbour Jews outside the Jewish ghettos or who performed restricted actions without permits. Beginning in July 1942, Jews and non-Jews were separated. Women mainly worked in the sorting barracks, where they repaired and cleaned military clothing delivered by freight trains,{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|pp=35–57}} while most of the men worked at the gravel mine. There were no work uniforms, and inmates who lost their own shoes were forced to go barefoot or scavenge them from dead prisoners. Water was rationed, and punishments were regularly delivered at roll-calls. From December 1943 the inmates were no longer carrying any specific sentences. The camp operated officially until 23 July 1944, when the imminent arrival of Soviet forces led to its abandonment.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|pp=35–57}}

During its entire operation, Treblinka I's commandant was ''Sturmbannführer'' [[Theodor van Eupen]].{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=36}} He ran the camp with several SS men and almost 100 ''Hiwi'' guards. The quarry, spread over an area of {{cvt|17|ha}}, supplied road construction material for German military use and was part of the strategic road-building programme in the war with the Soviet Union. It was equipped with a mechanical digger for shared use by both Treblinka I and II. Eupen worked closely with the SS and German police commanders in Warsaw during the deportation of Jews in early 1943 and had prisoners brought to him from the Warsaw Ghetto for the necessary replacements. According to [[Franciszek Ząbecki]], the local station master, Eupen often murdered prisoners by "taking shots at them, as if they were partridges". A widely feared overseer was ''[[Untersturmführer]]'' Franz Schwarz, who killed prisoners with a pickaxe or hammer.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|pp=44, 74}}