World War II began with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Russian forces overran eastern Poland on Sept. 17. Poland’s government surrendered on Sept. 27. Following Germany’s declaration of war against Russia in June 1941, all of Poland fell under German control.
Within weeks of their conquest, Nazi authorities began the forced relocation of Polish Jews to cramped ghettos surrounded by walls and barbed wire. Disease and starvation took terrible tolls within each urban prison.
Clif CleavelandMeanwhile, construction proceeded on German-run camps specifically designed as killing centers for Jews and other persons deemed inferior by the Nazis.
For years I have tried to comprehend the evil architects of the Holocaust and the horrors of the ghettos and death camps. I focused my attention specifically upon Treblinka because of my esteem for the heroic Polish physician, Janusz Korczak, who was murdered at Treblinka alongside the orphans to whom he had dedicated his life.
Treblinka began operation in July 1942. An estimated 900,000 Jews and several thousand prisoners from Poland and other Nazi-occupied territories were killed at the camp. In August 1943, prisoners revolted and 200 escaped, half of whom eventually made their way to freedom and alerted Western Allies to the existence of the death camps.