Treblinka

Wartime Aerial Photos of Treblinka Cast New Doubt on "Death Camp" Claims

by Mark Weber and Andrew Allen

Treblinka is widely regarded as the second most important German wartime extermination center. Only Auschwitz-Birkenau is supposed to have claimed more lives.

Treblinka became the focus of worldwide attention in 1987-1988 during the 14-month trial in Jerusalem of John (Ivan) Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born American factory worker. As Treblinka's "Ivan the Terrible," Demjanjuk supposedly operated the machinery used to gas hundreds of thousands of Jews there. Citing testimony by Jewish survivors, the Israeli court that condemned him to death in April 1988 declared that more than 850,000 Jews were killed at Treblinka between July 1942 and August 1943.

After the death sentence was handed down, Demjanjuk's family was able to discover previously suppressed evidence -- much of it from Soviet Russian archives -- indicating that the real "Ivan the Terrible" was another Ukrainian named Ivan Marchenko (or Marczenko). This new evidence discredited the courtroom testimony of five Jewish camp survivors, each of whom had "positively" identified Demjanjuk as the sadistic mass murderer of Treblinka. (note 1) More