Treblinka trials
The two Treblinka trials concerning the Treblinka extermination camp personnel began in 1964. Held at Düsseldorf in West Germany, they were the two judicial trials in a series of similar war crime trials held during the early 1960s, such as the Jerusalem Adolf Eichmann trial and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, as a result of which the general public came to realize the extent of the crimes that some two decades earlier had been perpetrated in occupied Poland by Nazi bureaucrats and their willing executioners. In the subsequent years, separate trials dealt with personnel of the Bełżec, Sobibor, and Majdanek extermination camps.
Hirtreiter trial
In 1946 Josef Hirtreiter was arrested in the course of the Allied investigations into the killing of disabled persons in the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre. Although not focused on Treblinka from the beginning, and not serving as an upbeat to the later Treblinka trials, the Hirtreiter trial is viewed by some historians as being part of these. Hirtreiter could not be shown to have been criminally involved at Hadamar; however, he did confess to having worked in a camp near the Polish village of Małkinia where Jews were killed in a gas chamber. Further investigations showed that Hirtreiter had been stationed at the Treblinka extermination camp, where he supervised the victims' disrobement prior to their gassing. He was charged with participation in the mass-murder of Jews, particularly the killing of more than 10 persons, including infants. On 3 March 1951 Hirtreiter was sentenced to life imprisonment.First Treblinka trial
The crimes committed in the General Government territory of occupied Poland were investigated by the Central Agency from July 1959 by the German specialist in the Nazi prosecution Dietrich Zeug, present at the Eichmann trial. His inquiry led to the first arrest of Treblinka deputy commandant on 2 December 1959. Zeug received survivor testimonies from Yad Vashem which allowed him to examine German national archives for more clues. He was the first to establish the chain of command for Operation Reinhard.The first Treblinka trial began on 12 October 1964 and concerned eleven members of the SS camp personnel, or about a quarter of the total number of SS employed in the extermination of Jews brought aboard Holocaust trains to Treblinka. More than 100 witnesses were called, with incriminating evidence presented by Franciszek Ząbecki, a dispatcher employed by the during the Holocaust train departures from across occupied Poland, proven by original German waybills he collected. The verdicts were pronounced on 3 September 1965:
| Defendants | Photograph | Rank | Function | Sentence | Reality |
| SS-Untersturmführer | Deputy commandant | Life imprisonment | Served 28 years, released, lived another 5 years | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer | Totenlager – Corpse detail | Acquitted | |||
| SS-Unterscharführer | Built Large Gas Chambers | 4 years imprisonment | Time served. Died 1976 | ||
| SS-Scharführer | Chief of Totenlager | Life imprisonment | |||
| SS-Unterscharführer | Lazarett | Life imprisonment | Released in 1978 and died 3 months later | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer | Lazarett – "Angel of Death" | Life imprisonment | Possibly released in the mid 1980s. | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer | Totenlager – Gas Chambers | 12 years imprisonment | Served 6 years, released on good behaviour, lived another 6 years | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer | Totenlager – Gas Chambers | 3 years imprisonment | |||
| SS-Stabsscharführer | Camp Administration | 6 years imprisonment | Released early due to poor health, lived about another decade | ||
| SS-Unterscharführer | Gold and Valuables | 7 years imprisonment | Served 4 years, released, lived another 10 years | ||
| SS-Oberscharführer | Lower camp of Treblinka II | Died before trial |