Treblinka was such a horrific place to visit. I knew that it would be difficult, but I underestimated how hard it would be. The hour and half drive from Warsaw was filled with silence and impending dread. As narrow roads led to smaller roads it became apparent that this camp was going to be remote.
Treblinka was built in 1942 as part of Operation Reinhard. As it was intended to be a disposal center, barracks were never built. Individuals were lead straight to the gas chambers.
The first camp commandant was Dr Irmfried Eberl who was later replaced by Franz Stangl, with Kurt Franz as deputy commandant. Important to mention because we have not even mentioned or discussed Hitler once on this trip. We discussed the importance of de-emphasizing Hitler as the holocaust could not have happened without others.
One June 22, 1942 the first transport of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto arrived. Jews from all of Europe were sent here. 850,000 people were killed by exhaust fumes in gas chambers. The Nazis created special grates used to erase traces of the corpses.
There was a huge act of resistance here in 1943 lead by the prisoners. They managed to arm themselves and break away. Unfortunately, very few survived. The camp was liquidated after the revolt and the buildings were completely demolished. The area of the camp was ploughed up and a house was built for a Ukranian land owner.
It is difficult how to describe the feeling of being in a place where so many lives were extinguished. One of our group members kept referring to the sites as "holy ground." That is exactly what it felt like...the entire time that we were there I had a pit in my stomach trying to imagine what these poor souls experienced. It is easy to say "Never Again" but until I visited many of these sights first hand the phrase meant something different.
The memorial moving to the core. For as far as the eye can see, there are 17,000 stones of various sizes and colors set into concrete to represent a symbolic cemetery. 130 of the stones have the names of cities and towns from which the victims arrived from.
There is also a 26 foot granite memorial stone in the location where the gas chambers once stood.
A moving poem about this site
Go to Treblinka
Go to Treblinka
keep your eyes wide open
sharpen your hearing
stop your breathing
and listen to the voices which emerge
from every grain of that earth –
Go to Treblinka
They are waiting there for you
They long to the voice of your life
to the sign of your existence,
to the pace of your feet
to human look understanding and remembering
to caress of love over their ashes –
Go to Treblinka
go by your own free will
go by the power of pain over the horror which has happened
from the depth of understanding and the aching heart which has not accepted –
listen to Them there with all your senses!
Go to Treblinka
there the green silence, golden or white
which embrace Them each season of the year
will tell you stories of the stories
about life which became forbidden and impossible –
Go to Treblinka
watch how time has stopped there
listen to the standing time, to the dead thundering silence
and to the human stones weeping there in silence
Go to Treblinka to feel it even for just one second –
Go to Treblinka
grow a flower by a hot tear, by human breath
against one stone – memory of a whole community
on earth which is their flesh and ashes.
They are waiting there in Treblinka for you to come and listen to Them
cry within the silence
and in total mute identification, unifying
bring Them each time the story of life which continues and of reviving love.
Go to Treblinka for generations to generations
Do not leave Them alone -
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| Replica of what the camp looked like |
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| Franz Stangle, Camp Commander, in the middle |
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