Treblinka Museum – The Nazi German Extermination and Forced Labour Camp (1941-1944)

Muzeum Treblinka – Niemiecki nazistowski obóz zagłady i obóz pracy (1941 - 1944)

In 1964, a memorial was dedicated on the site of the former Treblinka death camp where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered in 1942/43.

History

After Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, SS Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) shot hundreds of thousands of Jews in the occupied territories. This marked the shift to the systematic genocide of Jews in Europe. In occupied Poland, local German authorities began planning the murder of the Jews who since 1939 had been persecuted and forced to live in ghettos. The SS drew upon the experiences of »Action T4«, during which it had overseen the murder of about 120,000 ill and handicapped people in hospitals in Germany. The first extermination camp was established in the Warthegau, a part of Poland which had been incorporated into the German Reich in 1939: from November 1941 on, the SS murdered tens of thousands of Jews in »gas vans« in Chełmno near Łódź.
At the same time, the SS was planning the systematic murder of Jews in the Generalgouvernement (General Government) under the codename »Aktion Reinhardt«. The operation was directed by the leader of the SS and the in the Lublin district, Odilo Globocnik. Three extermination camps were set up by his order, their sole purpose being to murder as many people as possible: Belzec, Sobibor, and, from July 1942 on, Treblinka near Warsaw.
At times, over 10,000 people were murdered in the course of one day at Treblinka. The victims arrived at Treblinka by train, after which several train cars at a time were brought into the camp. The staff at Treblinka consisted of between 25 and 30 SS men and about 120 »Trawniki«-guards, most of whom were Ukrainian. They shot all the weakened and ill prisoners upon arrival in a part of the camp disguised as a sickbay. The remaining prisoners were forced to undress and subsequently chased down an 80-metre long path, known as the »tube«, to the gas chambers. The victims died in agony, asphyxiated by exhaust fumes.

Treblinka, 1942/43, Photo from the private album of camp commandant Kurt Franz: mechanical digger, used to dig mass graves, Yad Vashem

Treblinka, undated, Ashes and remains of bones shortly after the war, Yad Vashem

Victims

Among newly arrived Jewish prisoners, the SS selected members of the »Sonderkommando«. Members of this special work detail were forced to sort out the victims' valuables, remove the bodies from the gas chambers, conduct a cavity search to find any hidden objects and remove any gold teeth.
In the spring of 1943, the Sonderkommando had to exhume the bodies which had previously been buried and burn them. The Germans' efforts to erase all traces of the mass killings signalled to the prisoners that the camp could be dissolved soon. Fearing for their lives as witnesses to the killings, the prisoners organised an armed uprising which was launched on August 2, 1943. About 840 prisoners took part; 200 were able to flee, of whom 60 lived to see the end of the war.
The uprising hastened the camp's planned liquidation. Jewish prisoners, »Trawniki«-guards and members of the SS remained at the camp to clear up. They tore the entire complex down and built a farmhouse on the premises as a disguise.
From July 1942 until August 1943, between 800,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered by the SS at Treblinka. The victims were for the most part from Poland, many also came from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. There were also about 1,000 Sinti and Roma among the victims.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

In the autumn of 1947, a tender competition was held for the design of a memorial on the former camp premises. The competition jury consisted of both state institutions as well as representatives of the Jewish Central Committee in Poland. The decision-making process within the jury was accompanied by many conflicts. While some wished to present Treblinka as a place at which people of many different nationalities perished, others wanted to underline the Jewish identity of the victims. The design which eventually won clearly depicted Treblinka as a site of Jewish suffering. However, out of ideological reasons, it was never built: the consolidation of the communist regime in Poland in 1948/49 meant that the memory of victims of the National Socialist regime was subjected to Stalinist state propaganda. Depictions of heroic resistance fighters were given priority, while religious symbols vanished.
Only on May 10, 1964, could a memorial - designed by architect Adam Haupt and sculptors Franciszek Duszeńko and Franciszek Strynkiewicz - be dedicated. The main monument, placed on the site where presumably the gas chambers had been standing, is surrounded by thousands of granite stones symbolising the annihilated Jewish communities. A small exhibition has been on display in the administration building since 2006. The memory of Janusz Korczak (1878-1942) plays a special role at the memorial. The pedagogue and author turned down many opportunities to escape the Warsaw ghetto, refusing to abandon the orphanage he was working in. He accompanied the 192 orphans under his care to the Treblinka death camp and into the gas chambers.
In 2020, a new memorial was inaugurated at the former site of the Treblinka railroad station. The station was located four kilometers from the extermination camp. The transports had to stop here and the wagons were gradually uncoupled and pushed into the exterminatin camp with the people on board.

Treblinka, 2021, View of the memorial landscape, Stiftung Denkmal

Treblinka, 2021, Central monument, Stiftung Denkmal

Possibilities

Guided tours in Polish (audio guides available in English, German and Hebrew), research activities.

Open

April to October daily 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., November to March daily 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed during Christmas and Easter

Contact

https://muzeumtreblinka.eu/

sekretariat@muzeumtreblinka.eu

+48 (0)257 811 658

Wólka Okrąglik 115
08-330 Kosów Lacki

Treblinka, 2021, Memorial on the site of the former train station Treblinka, Stiftung Denkmal

Treblinka, 2021, Museum building, Stiftung Denkma

Treblinka, 2021, Model of the extermination camp in the exhibition, Stiftung Denkmal

Treblinka, 2021, Stylized ramp and symbolic tracks made out of stone blocks, Stiftung Denkmal

Treblinka, 2021, View of the memorial premises with a stylized mass grave with stones reminiscent of ashes, Stiftung Denkmal

Treblinka, 2021, View of the memorial site's landscape, Stiftung Denkmal

Treblinka, 2021, View of the central monument surrounded by stones remembering annihilated Jewish communities, Stiftung Denkmal

Treblinka, 2021, Detailed view of the central monument, Stiftung Denkmal

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