Theodor van Eupen (24 April 1907 – 11 December 1944) was a member of the
SS of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
. A
Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
perpetrator, he served as the commandant of the
Treblinka I forced-labour camp (''
Arbeitslager
''Arbeitslager'' () is a German language word which means labor camp. Under Nazism, the German government (and its private-sector, Axis, and collaborator partners) used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially durin ...
'') in
occupied Poland
' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...
during its entire course of operation. Unlike the parallel
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Mas ...
(Treblinka II) subordinate to the
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...
authorities in Berlin, Treblinka I was controlled by the
SS and Police Leader
The title of SS and Police Leader (') designated a senior Nazi Party official who commanded various components of the SS and the German uniformed police (''Ordnungspolizei''), before and during World War II in the German Reich proper and in the o ...
in Warsaw.
The labour camp was liquidated on 23 July 1944, ahead of the Soviet advance. By then, more than half of its cumulative number of some 20,000 inmates had died from
summary execution
In civil and military jurisprudence, summary execution is the putting to death of a person accused of a crime without the benefit of a free and fair trial. The term results from the legal concept of summary justice to punish a summary offense, a ...
s, hunger, disease, and mistreatment.
The regular workforce consisted of 1,000–2,000 prisoners, terrorized by staff of about a dozen SS-men and 100
''Wachmänner'' guards.
Career
Born in Düsseldorf, Eupen received a law degree before World War II similar to other notable members of the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
such as
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German Nazi politician, lawyer and convicted war criminal who served as head of the General Government in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Frank was an early member ...
, head of the semi-colonial
General Government
The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
.
Eupen joined the ''
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.
It beg ...
'' with the card number 4528. After the
invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...
, he was promoted to the position of Commandant of Treblinka I in the summer of 1941, ahead of the camp's official founding which took place in November 1941. He supervised the building of barracks as well as
barbed wire
Roll of modern agricultural barbed wire
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire or bob wire (in the Southern and Southwestern United States), is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the ...
fencing tall, around the
perimeter
A perimeter is the length of a closed boundary that encompasses, surrounds, or outlines either a two-dimensional shape or a one-dimensional line. The perimeter of a circle or an ellipse is called its circumference.
Calculating the perimet ...
.
Treblinka I was a gravel quarry equipped with heavy machinery, essential to the production of concrete and road construction. Before the
German occupation
German-occupied Europe, or Nazi-occupied Europe, refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including puppet states, by the (armed forces) and the government of Nazi Germany at ...
, the mega quarry was owned by the Polish industrialist Marian Łopuszyński who built a
railway track
Railway track ( and UIC terminology) or railroad track (), also known as permanent way () or "P way" ( and Indian English), is the structure on a railway or railroad consisting of the rails, fasteners, sleepers ( railroad ties in American ...
connecting the mine with
Małkinia–
Sokołów Podlaski
Sokołów Podlaski is a town in Poland, in Masovian Voivodeship, about east of Warsaw. The town lies on the Cetynia river, in the historical region of Podlachia and is the capital of Sokołów County. The first settlement was in the 6th century a ...
junction. Setting up a penal colony there was the idea of ''
Sturmbannführer
__NOTOC__
''Sturmbannführer'' (; ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to Major (rank), major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the Sturmabteilung, SA, Schutzstaffel, SS, and the National Socialist Flyers Corps, NSFK ...
'' Ernst Gramss who first ran it as his own personal business venture in occupied Poland. The quarry became vital during the German
attack on the Soviet Union, supplying gravel for the strategic road-building programme around the German–Soviet border.
Eupen was in charge of Treblinka I officially from 15 November 1941 (date of the camp's founding by Warsaw ''SS'' Governor Dr. Ludwig Fischer), until its closing on 23 July 1944. He worked closely with the ''SS'' and police commandanture in Warsaw during the
deportation of Jews to the
gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
History
Donatie ...
s of Treblinka II in early 1943, in order to have the slave labour brought to him from the
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...
for necessary replacements. He claimed to have been a German-Dutch aristocrat and liked to have his wife and two little sons visit him in occupied Poland. Eupen was feared even by his own ''SS'' subordinates penalized by being sent to the Eastern Front for even the smallest infractions. He arranged to have a garden built by his house with a pond and water fowl.
Reportedly well-mannered,
Eupen nevertheless had a reputation of a notorious sadist who often personally executed prisoners,
[ See also]
Camps: Typological Differences.
/ref> "taking shots at them, as if they were partridges" wrote Franciszek Ząbecki
Lieutenant Franciszek Ząbecki (; 8 October 1907 – 11 April 1987) was a station master at the village of Treblinka. During the German occupation of Poland in World War II, Ząbecki worked as a dispatcher for the ''Deutsche Reichsbahn''; he also ...
, the Polish station master. Prisoners who worked 12- to 14-hour shifts received watery soup for breakfast, similar soup for lunch, and the roasted-grain beverage with rye bread for supper, each loaf shared by the 10 of them. During the liquidation of the camp, some 500–700 inmates were executed by the ''SS'' in the forest, and all structures were burned to the ground. Eupen's luck ended shortly thereafter.
He was killed by Polish partisans near Jędrzejów in mid December 1944, ambushed on the road. He jumped out of the car and ran on foot as far as Lipówka village where he crawled under a pile of hay. The partisans machine-gunned his hiding place and learned who he was only from the documents they found on his corpse.
The next day, the corpse and 3 other Germans killed in the ambush were recovered from the lake by a specially arrived German unit and transported to Lipówka and then to Jędrzejów, where he was to be buried on 13 December 1944. According to Norbert Michta, the Germans then selected 13 people from among the local population to be shot. However, the Nazis managed to be convinced that the attack was the work of Russian paratroopers unknown to the people, and W. Ważniewski, on the basis of Reports and German documents, reports that they took nine village leaders from nearby villages hostage, but after four days they released them.
On 13 December, the Germans launched operation "Schneesturm", which was aimed at liquidating Soviet partisans staying in the vicinity of the Sancygniów forests, attacked from three directions, from the Mountains through Lipówka to Teodorów, from the side of Działoszyce and from the side of Książ Wielki through Janowice and Rzemiędzice, they pacified several surrounding villages, m.in Trzonów, located 6 km from the assassination site, Bugaj, Gaik-hamlet Zaryszyna, Sadek and killed at least 64 inhabitants of these villages and burned many buildings.
References
Obóz w Treblince
Izrael.Badacz.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eupen, Theodor van
1907 births
1944 deaths
Holocaust perpetrators in Poland
Treblinka extermination camp personnel
Military personnel from Düsseldorf
Deaths by firearm in Poland
SS-Sturmbannführer
Lawyers in the Nazi Party
Nazis assassinated by Polish resistance
Waffen-SS personnel killed in action