The last camp I’ll describe here is actually the first one
I visited. Treblinka was an extermination camp located about fifty miles
northeast of Warsaw. When I was planning my trip, I didn’t think twice about
seeing it. I was planning to see the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, and knew that most
of the Jews deported from Warsaw went to Treblinka. In my courses, I’ve
included films that discuss the camp (Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, for example) and I knew that around 850,000 people were
killed there, mostly Jews, making it second only to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the
number of victims. (Non-Jewish victims
included ethnic Poles and Roma.) This
number is even more staggering given that the extermination camp only operated
for fifteen months, from July 1942 to October 1943.
 |
| Stones representing the victims' Jewish communitites in Poland |
The images I had seen of the memorial made me want to see
it in person—17,000 large and jagged stones representing the victims' Jewish
communities in Poland. While the commemorative focus is on Polish Jews, there
are commemorative stones representing ten countries from where victims were
deported: Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Greece, the
Netherlands, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. (The memorial was
created in the 1960s and Cold War geography is reflected in the stones.)
After arriving in Warsaw, it became clear to me that I
hadn’t spent enough time researching how visitors actually get to
Treblinka. I had assumed I could use a
combination of trains and buses, as at Auschwitz, though on a smaller scale.
However, it’s rather complicated getting there by public transit and most
visitors either rent a car and drive themselves or hire a tour guide and
driver. There are also companies that will organize tours for small groups. But
I was only in Warsaw for a few days and needed to make arrangements quickly, so
I decided to use a guide and driver, spending much more than I had planned. In
the end, it was well worth it. My tour guide, Magdalena, taught me a great deal
about the history of Warsaw, Poland and Treblinka.
As we drove away from my hotel, I was able to take in a
broader view of Old Town Warsaw and the areas reconstructed after World War II.
Magdalena helped me appreciate how much of Warsaw was destroyed in the war—85%
of the historic city and 100% of the Jewish Ghetto. Of the 1.3 million prewar
inhabitants, less than 10% survived the war. While walking around the
reconstructed Old Town, I saw an outdoor photographic exhibit of Warsaw in
1947—rubble, two years after the war had ended.
It’s hard to imagine the vast destruction of the city, the result of
German bombing in 1939, and Nazi retribution for the Jewish ghetto uprising of
April 1943, and the broader Varsovian resistance uprising in August to October
1944. Though the Polish insurgents had planned to receive Soviet support,
Stalin let the Germans destroy the resistance, holding back the Red Army on the
outskirts of Warsaw to facilitate Soviet domination after “liberation.” Today,
the Old Town has been impressively reconstructed, with 13th to 20th-century
architecture, and is a UNESCO heritage site. Though it does not feel entirely
authentic, one has to admire this example of Varsovian spirit and resiliency.
(see the photo gallery at whc.unesco.org/en/list/30/)
The drive from Warsaw to Treblinka takes about an hour and
features with some lovely scenery. As around Ravensbrück, I was struck by the
beauty of the Polish countryside, very green and lush, with wetlands and dense
forests. It’s an odd feeling to admire the surroundings of such a place,
knowing the horrible acts committed there.
 |
| "Never Again" inscribed in several languages on the commemorative stone to the left of the central obelisk. |
Given the scale of killing carried out at Treblinka, I had
anticipated more visitors at the memorial.
Whereas there were thousands at Auschwitz, there were perhaps dozens at
Treblinka, and no tour buses, at least not that day. Before my trip, I had been
aware of this disproportionate number of visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau, about
a million each year (eerily close to the number of people killed there). It
makes sense, given that the Nazis destroyed Treblinka, whereas much of
Auschwitz has been preserved and could be turned into a museum. Yet I found myself wishing that more people
would see other camps as well, where there is a concerted effort by governments
and organizations to teach this history. Researchers today are still learning
about thousands of smaller Nazi camps and ghettos that had all but vanished
from public memory—estimated at more than 42,000 across Europe. (see the
multivolume encyclopedia project being published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
and Museum, www.ushmm.org/research/center/encyclopedia/)
When I was at Treblinka, most of the other visitors came
from one large group of Polish motorcyclists. They seemed to be covering a lot
of miles during the holiday week. (Labor Day on May 1 and Constitution Day on
May 3) Magdalena seemed a bit surprised to see them there. Clad in black
leather and reflective gear with their motorcycles parked side by side in the
parking lot, they didn’t exactly fit the imagined profile of the typical
Treblinka visitor. But we were heartened
to see them there, feeling that it was indicative of a larger public wanting to
learn about the camp.
There were two Nazi camps near the village of
Treblinka. The first, Treblinka I, was a
labor camp established in December 1941. About a mile away, the Nazis
established Treblinka II in July 1942 for one purpose: killing. Along with
Sobibor and Belzec, Treblinka II was part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi
program for exterminating Jews from occupied Poland. The Nazis closed the camp
in October 1943, two months after a heroic inmate uprising that failed to thwart
SS control of the camp but allowed 300 inmates to escape, 100 of whom survived
the ensuing manhunt. Operation Reinhard
had been a top secret program and when the Nazis closed the camp, they tried to
destroy all evidence of it. There are no preserved buildings so one has to
imagine how the camp appeared.
Visitors can walk on the train platform where victims
arrived and visualize the scenes that took place there. The Nazis maintained the illusion the victims
were heading for a labor or detention camp. They didn’t want the victims to
panic or to overtake SS guards. This
illusion enabled thirty or so guards to dominate hundreds of victims at a
time. A warehouse with the victims’
belongings was made to look like a train station from the platform, with a sign
that read “Treblinka,” and a ticket window—completely useless. At the “field
hospital,” there was a Red Cross flag, again entirely useless because those who
were too weak or ill to walk to the gas chamber were simply sent there so they
could be shot into a mass grave.
 |
| Concrete slabs representing railroad ties |
The victims who were able to walk were separated by gender
and stripped of their belongings. The SS seized valuables such as coins or
jewelry and the clothes were piled in huge mounds. SS guards then ordered the victims to walk
the “path of happiness” to the gas chamber.
Men’s heads were shaved, women’s hair was cut short so it could be woven
into textiles. (There is a very powerful scene in Shoah in which a Polish-Jewish barber recounts being forced to cut
the hair of Treblinka victims.) They were killed in gas chambers, mostly using
carbon monoxide, and their bodies were burned on huge pyres. Initially, the Nazis had tried to use mass
graves at Treblinka but discovered that the soil was too sandy and the bodies
didn’t decompose adequately, leaving evidence of the operation. Compared to
Birkenau, the Nazis’ extermination methods were less sophisticated at
Treblinka, and the coarse, rocky memorial created in the early 1960s also seems
to reflect this more crude approach.
Leading to the train platform, the path of the train tracks
is commemorated in concrete narrow blocks, meant to look like railroad
ties. As you follow a path to the
extermination site, you enter a wide field and see a looming, 26-foot stone
obelisk modeled after Jewish tombstones. Surrounding the obelisk are 17,000
jagged granite shards inscribed with the names of the victims’ Jewish
communities in Poland. As James Young puts it, the memorial “resembles a great,
craggy graveyard.” (The Texture of
Memory, 186) The largest stone, as
one might expect, commemorates Warsaw’s Jews. Otherwise, there does not seem to
be a set pattern in terms of the stones’ placement and some stones are blank.
For this reason, it can be difficult for visitors to track down a stone from a
particular community. (Magdalena has helped visitors do this, and she was
pleased to pick up a guide from the visitor center with the stones’ locations.)
There is one stone dedicated to an individual, Janus
Korczak, a Polish-Jewish pediatrician and author of children’s books who ran an
orphanage for Jewish children. The Nazis offered him an opportunity to escape
deportation, but he instead chose to die with the children under his care. At the base of his commemorative stone,
visitors had left dozens of small stones, a Jewish tradition akin to leaving
flowers at a Christian cemetery.
Next to the memorial, there is a small but useful visitor
center that displays artifacts, such as coins and everyday objects collected
from victims at the extermination and labor camps. Exhibits in a few rooms
explain European history leading up to World War II. In this and the Warsaw
Uprising museum, I was struck by a narrative emphasizing the lack of Allied
action in face of Nazi aggression in the late 1930s. The displays show that the
Poles were abandoned while the West appeased Hitler; Britain seemed to be the
primary target in this critique. A photo
of Ribbentrop and Molotov signing the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of August
1939 was juxtaposed with one showing lovely British ladies at a seaside
boardwalk around the same time, not a care in the world. If the West had
checked Nazi aggression, the displays suggest, the Holocaust and murder of
Poles and other enemies of the Reich could have been prevented. Whatever one thinks of the interpretation, it
comes through clearly in these Polish museums.
A detailed scale model of the camp helps visitors visualize
how it operated. Photographs of the camp taken by SS guards also help visitors
visualize how it operated and provide further evidence of the crimes committed.
One image that still haunts me showed victims loading onto a cattle car, a
little girl in a light-colored jacket holding her mother’s hand. It’s such a
basic, primal image of mother and child that one sees every day, but here, you
know the mother can’t protect the little girl and you imagine what they
endured. Other photos that stick in my mind: the huge mounds of victims’
clothing piled up next to the gas chambers; the site of the initial mass
graves, before the bodies were burned; the zoo—yes, a zoo was at the camp for
the SS officers’ enjoyment; the model shows planted flowers outside the
Kommandant’s quarters; the vegetable gardens, which must have been covered by
human ashes. Humanity at its worst.
Having seen the four camps I’ve described here, I’m left
with a question I ask in my classes on World War II and the Holocaust: what should we do with the knowledge of atrocities
committed by the Nazis, killing six million Jews and at least several million
other enemies of the Reich? We all have
to answer this question in our own ways. For me, this history provides a deep
sense of gratitude for the blessings I enjoy that are easy to take for
granted—to live, work, marry and raise a family. I want my students also to recognize the many
ways in which they are fortunate, despite whatever personal struggles they may
be facing. (and many face serious ones)
In my opinion, awareness of our security and good fortune gives us a
duty to recognize when basic human rights are withheld from members of today’s
society, and to speak out against social and political injustice. The Holocaust
Memorial Social Action site at DU, sponsored by the Center for Judaic Studies
and Holocaust Awareness Institute, offers the perfect space in which these
connections between the past and present can be made.
My memories of these visits are still fresh and I have
several months to think about how I will incorporate what I’ve learned into my
courses. I can only make sense of the experience by focusing on hope. There was
a beautiful symbol of hope in the area surrounding Treblinka—storks. These
graceful birds migrate to the marshy habitat in this part of Poland to breed,
and often build their nests on houses or barns. They aren’t afraid of humans,
which helps explain the centuries-old legend about storks delivering babies and
bringing good fortune. As we were driving away from Treblinka, we could see a row
of nests on street lamps along the road. In a place forever marked by murder
and genocide, this life-affirming image restored my faith in regeneration,
human compassion, and our collective potential to pursue a more just present
and future.
No comments:
Post a Comment