During the Second World War, the Third Reich established a vast network of concentration camps and extermination camps with one ultimate goal: mass murder. Many guards at these sites earned notorious reputations for their cruelty.
Joseph Kramer, known as the Beast of Belsen, was commandant of Bergen-Belsen and became infamous for brutal treatment and conditions that caused hundreds of deaths each day from disease and starvation. Irma Grese was another guard notorious for her evil and brutality toward female prisoners.
Both Kramer and Grese worked at concentration camps, but the Nazis also built a different kind of facility intended solely for killing. Extermination camps had no facilities for people to live in, only those forced to help with the killing process. These were centers where thousands could be killed each hour.
One of the deadliest was Treblinka. Victims were loaded onto trains and transported there. Once they arrived, they were driven into the gas chambers, and many were treated brutally on their journey to their final moments.
Treblinka was an extermination camp inside occupied Poland, built in a forest northeast of Warsaw and south of the village of Treblinka. It operated between July 1942 and October 1943.
During that period, an estimated 700,000 to 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers. It was the deadliest extermination camp built, with only a larger death toll at Auschwitz.
The camp was managed by the German SS, who recruited a number of guards from Soviet prisoner-of-war camps and forced them to serve the Germans. Treblinka had two elements.
Treblinka I was a forced labor element where prisoners worked in gravel pits and in the forest, cutting down trees for use in the cremation pits. Only a small number of workers inside Treblinka I were forced to help in the killing process. Around 10,000 people were killed there through executions, disease, and poor treatment.
Treblinka II was the extermination center, where victims were transported and where the gas chambers claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands. It contained several sections.
The first part of the camp was an administration and residential center with a main road and barracks for the Jewish Sonderkommando, who were forced to clean up the atrocities. The SS quarters were also located there.
Close by was a receiving area with the railway unloading ramp, surrounded by barbed wire. Once there, there was no chance of escaping. Two large barracks stood there, where victims undressed, removed their jewelry, and handed over their possessions and valuables. Women and children also had their hair cut short, and clothes and belongings were piled up.
The Nazis created a shack with a red cross symbol on it, a fake hospital or infirmary. The old, sick, wounded, and difficult prisoners were taken there. Behind it was an open deep pit, where prisoners were led to the edge and shot by Blockführer Willi Mentz, who himself executed thousands of Jews in the pit.
The third part of Treblinka II was the killing area where the gas chambers were found. In the center, it was hidden from the railway tracks by earthen banks. From the undressing barracks, a fenced-off path went through the forest to the gas chambers. It was nicknamed "the tube" or "the road to heaven." After a short walk, victims were forced into the gas chambers.
Treblinka had only one purpose: to murder the people sent there. Many deported from the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto arrived at Treblinka, and thousands were killed each day.
After being told to undress, Jews were beaten with whips to force them quickly into the gas chambers. Men who were hesitant or defiant were beaten barbarically and often killed or shot. Victims were told they were going to be de-loused, but instead they were killed inside the chambers.
In a sadistic practice, women and children were gassed after the men. They could often hear the screams and shouts of the panicked men as they took their last breaths, which caused a huge degree of panic.
Survivors of Treblinka told of one guard in particular who was known for his sadistic treatment of Jews and victims. He was nicknamed Ivan the Terrible. Along with another guard named Nikolai, Ivan was known for horrific treatment and brutal murdering of prisoners.
It was said that Ivan was in charge of operating the gas chambers and quickly forcing men, women, and children into the chamber. He was said to be armed with an iron pipe and a sword, and he would cut, whip, and torture people before they were driven into the death chamber.
Others told how he nailed people's ears to walls, gouged out their eyes in violent scenes, and brutally killed children with his bare hands. These incidents were claimed to have occurred while Jews waited outside the chamber. He repeatedly beat victims over the head with his pipe, sometimes bludgeoning them to death, and he also stabbed many to death.
One account of Ivan the Terrible and the killing process states that Ivan was tall and though his eyes seemed kind and gentle, he was a sadist. He enjoyed torturing his victims, and while he did this his face showed sadistic satisfaction, and he laughed and joked. He finished off victims according to his mood at the moment.
On top of this, other guards forced people toward two Ukrainians who stood by the chamber entrance. Rifle butts shoved and shunted them, attack dogs bit and tore flesh from bones, while guards shouted abhorrent lies: "Faster, faster, the water will get cold, others still have to go under the showers."
To escape the blows and the dogs, the crowd rushed to its death, pushing into the chamber. The stronger ones shoved the weaker ones ahead of them. The bedlam lasted only a short while, for soon the doors were shut, the chamber was filled, the motor turned on and connected with the inflow pipes. Within 25 minutes at the most, all lay stretched out dead, or to be more accurate, standing up dead, since there was not an inch of free space. They just leaned against each other.
The brutality of Ivan the Terrible was investigated after the war. Treblinka was staffed by 25 SS men and around 120 other guards made up of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war. The name Ivan was common inside the camp and common among Ukrainian and Russian men, and many of the guards were given Soviet nicknames. The true identity of the guard has still not been completely worked out today.
One key man associated with the work of Ivan the Terrible was John Demjanjuk, who was accused of being Ivan. Demjanjuk was a Ukrainian who worked as a guard at Sobibor, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg. He was extradited from the United States to Israel and accused of being a Trawniki man, one of the Soviet men who aided the Nazis in mass murder, and was accused of crimes against humanity. He also faced war crimes charges and was linked to being Ivan the Terrible.
He claimed it was a case of mistaken identity, but many surviving witnesses of Treblinka identified him as Ivan. Eliyahu Rosenberg was asked by the prosecution if he recognized Demjanjuk and asked him to remove his glasses. Rosenberg approached him and stared into his face. When Demjanjuk smiled and offered his hand, Rosenberg jumped back shouting "Grozny," meaning terrible in Polish and Russian. He said, "Ivan, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, this is him. It is Ivan from Treblinka, from the gas chambers, the man I'm looking at now. I saw his eyes, I saw those murderer's eyes. How dare you put out your hand, murderer that you are."
However, Rosenberg had previously testified that Ivan the Terrible was killed during a prisoner uprising in Treblinka in 1943. Demjanjuk was also identified by a former German SS guard who also worked at Treblinka. The court sentenced him to death by hanging, but new evidence from the Soviets threw this into doubt, and the credibility of the prosecution's case against Demjanjuk was questioned. The death sentence was overturned.
There was proof beyond doubt that he had worked as a guard in an extermination camp, but it could not be proven definitively that he was Ivan the Terrible. He was sent back to America briefly before being brought to trial again as an SS guard who served at Sobibor extermination camp, charged with involvement in the deaths of 28,000 people. Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment, but he died in 2012 pending his appeal.
According to Soviet archives, there is evidence pointing toward Ivan the Terrible being Ivan Marchenko. He had brown hair, hazel eyes, a square face, and a large scar down his neck. This was different from Demjanjuk. It was said that Marchenko was last seen in Yugoslavia in 1944, that he fled to the partisans, and that he was last seen coming out of a brothel. It was documented that the Soviets were looking for him, but he could not be found.
It is noted that if Marchenko was found, he would be 110 years old today. Based on the evidence, it is almost certain that Marchenko, if not killed during the Second World War, would now be dead.
Ivan the Terrible was a name that lived on notoriously along with the most brutal SS guards who conducted their crimes under the guise of the Second World War. There is much doubt about his true identity, but little can be disputed about the horrific crimes of those staff who worked at Treblinka and were complicit in the deaths of an estimated 900,000 people.