JACOB JR, MY JEWISH WORLD. VERNICHTUNGSLAGER TREBLINKA. TREBLINKA/POLAND.

Sunday, Kislev 29, 5778. December 17, 2017.

Shalom! World.

The Vernichtungslager (extermination camp)  in Treblinka was built in the spring of 1942 near na existing penal labor on na área of 17 hectares. The camp was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence camouflaged with interwoven vegetation in order to hide what was going on inside. Anti-tank obstacles and rolls of barbed wire were placed outside the fence. Watch towers were also placed in various parts  of the camp.

The staff consisted of  25-30 Germans and Austrians who supervised the camp, and of guards company of some 100 men, mostly Ukrainian orygin, Dr Irmfried Eberl was appointed the first commanding officer of  the camp, later replaced by Franz Stangl. Kurt Franz was the deputy commanding officer.

The first transports of people, consisting of Jews deported from the Warszawa ghetto, 22 July 1942. From that day onwards, Jews were transported to the camp from occupied Poland, Czechslovakia, France, Greece, Yugoslavia and the USSR, aas well as from Germany and Áustria. A certain number of Gypsies were also sent there, particularly from Germany and Poland.

These people were put to death by exhaust fumes in gás chambers specially built for the purpose. It is estimated that more than 800,000 people perished here.  In order to wipe out traces of the crime the corpses were burnt on specially built grates.

An armed revolt organizedby the prisioners of the camp broke out on 2  August  1943. Of the 840 participants only about 200 succeded in escaping from the camp. Not more than 100 of them survived until the end of the war. After the revolt the camp was slowly liquidated. In November 1943 aall the buildings and installations of  the camp were  demolished. A house was built for a  Ukrainian Family and the área of the campwas  ploughed up and planted with lupin. The buildingswere burnt down shortly before the arrival of the Eastern front.

On 2 July 1947 the Polish parliament adopted a law  for perpetuating the memory of the former camps in Treblinka. However, it was not until the 1950s that three artists, Adam Haupt, Frranciszek Duszenko and Franciszek Strynkiewicz working as a team, worked out the spatiaal and architectural design of a munument. They did not restrict their work to a monumento but took into account the área as a whole. The boundaries of the former camp were delimitated by huge pillars of granite. The entrance gate was  marked by two concrete blocks; through it's centre a paved road leads in the direction of the "ramp" - the railway siding. Concrete blocks leading to the "ramp" - na idea of Adam Haupt - repressent symbolicallly the  railroad. Near the "ramp" there are eleven  blocks of  stones engraved with  the names of the countries from wich Jews were brought to  the camp. Between the "ramp" and the monument there is a paved road which led to the gás chambers. On both sides of the road there are stones marking the site of the barracks  where the inmates had to remove their clothes. On the spot where the  newgas  chambers were situated a tal monumento, designed by Franciszek Duszenkko, rises. It is built of large  blocks of granite, placed so as to remaind one of the Wailiing Wall in Jerusalém. The front wall gives the impression of  being Split in the middle. At the top of the monumento there  is  sort of cap on the front, the West, side of wich there are symbolic  human remains, torn to pieces, as well as  palms  in a  gesture of blessing - a symbolic found on Jewish tombstones. A menor - symboll of Judaism - is located on the east side. In front of the monumento there is an inscription: "NEVER AGAIN" in Polish, Yddish, Russian, English, French and German. The monumento is the symbolic grave for all those who perished here. Behind the monument a rectangular hole filled with melted black basalt forming irregular coagulations and blobs. Around this depression several dozen oil lamps are placed which, when lighted, remind that heaps of human corpses were burnt on this spot. This monument was designed by Adam Haupt. Na área of 22,000 sq. m is covered with concrete and 17,000 granite stones of various sizes are situated on it. This concrete covers the ashes of people who were murdered here.

The stones represent symbolically the tombstones of a Jewish cemetery. On 221 of them names are graved of localitties from which Jews were brought here. Originally there were 130 inscriptions. The remaining ones were engraved inn 1998 with the financial assistance of ROPWiM in Warszawa. The localities the names of  which were added are mainly situated inn the former region of Byalystok - an area which after the Second World War found itself outside the borders of Poland.

One of the stones commemorates Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit) and children. It is the only individual memorial stone. This entire monumental structure consist of plain grey-coloured concrete and granite which reminds that ashes of more than 800,000 people are located here.

Since 1983 the área of the former camps, the gravel pit, the so-called, "Black Road" and the surrounding area form the Museum of Fighting and Martyrdom in Treblinka, a branch of the Regional Museum in Siedlce.

Contact to transfer from Malkinia to VL Treblinka: Taxi Malkinia, Mr. Wladyslaw Zadrozny, tel: 29 74 55 839. Excellent professional!

Shalom! Aleichem.

Cultural Support:  Jacob Jr. B.A.C.E., avec L'Integration d'Association avec Israel et dans le Monde/Cz.