In the extermination camp Treblinka in a densely wooded and sparsely populated part of the northeast of the »General Gouvernement«, approximately 870,000 people – mostly Jews – but also Roma and Sinti were murdered in the course of »Operation Reinhard« from July 1942 until the dismantling of the camp in the fall of 1943. The same as the camps of Sobibor and Belzec, the camp measured 400 to 600 square meters, and was fenced in with barbed wire that was camouflaged with branches. The camp was divided into three zones: housing barracks, arrival, and extermination.

Upon arrival the victims were taken to changing rooms in baracks that were separated according to their sex. They had to hand in their clothes, money and valuables. As of the fall of 1942, women's heads were shorn here as well. Then the prisoners, women and children first, then men, were driven naked into the gas chambers through the so-called »pipe,« a passage that was 90 meters long and 5 meters wide. Into the gas chambers carbon monoxide was inserted. Within 30 minutes everybody inside had suffocated. After the addition of further gas chambers in September 1942, up to 3500 people were murdered within one to two hours. At first, the corpses were buried in mass graves, from spring 1943, they were burnt on grills of rails so as to eliminate any traces of the mass murders.

Between 5 and 25 October 1942 about 8000 Jews were transported from Terezín/Theresienstadt to Treblinka in five transports. About 3100 of them were Austrians. The sum total of all the victims from Austria in Treblinka extermination camp is difficult to establish. Obersturmführer Franz Stangl, Austrian camp commander of Treblinka, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Düsseldorf in 1970.