Treblinka — a remembrance visit with private transport from Warsaw

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Treblinka II extermination camp was established by the SS in July 1942 in the Mazovian forests, approximately one hundred kilometres north-east of Warsaw. It was the third — after Bełżec and Sobibór — German centre of Aktion Reinhard, the operation named in memory of Reinhard Heydrich (assassinated in May 1942) and directed by Odilo Globocnik from Lublin. The aim of the operation was the physical extermination of the Jews of the General Government and the adjoining territories. The first transport — from the Warsaw ghetto — arrived on 23 July 1942. Over the following months some 254,000 Jews from Warsaw, close to 350,000 from the Radom, Lublin and Białystok districts, more than 100,000 from elsewhere in the General Government, and transports from ghettos in Macedonia, Greek Thrace, Czechoslovakia, Germany and France were murdered at Treblinka. Several thousand Roma also perished. The total death toll at Treblinka II is estimated at approximately 870,000 — one of the greatest acts of mass murder in human history committed in a single location. The pace of killing at Treblinka was staggering. Three gas chambers, later enlarged to ten, were in operation. From each transport — often numbering five to seven thousand persons — several dozen men were selected for the so-called Sonderkommando, forced to remove the bodies. The German staff numbered only a few dozen SS men together with several hundred Ukrainian guards recruited at the Trawniki training camp. On 2 August 1943, members of the Sonderkommando rose in revolt, setting fire to the camp and attempting a mass escape. Of approximately 850 prisoner-rebels, only several dozen survived the war. The Germans, with the Red Army approaching, dismantled the camp at the end of 1943 — gas chambers and crematoria were destroyed, the ground was ploughed and planted with lupine, and a sham farmstead was erected. The objective was to erase every trace of the crime. The post-war recognition of the scale of the murder is owed in large measure to the testimony of survivors of the revolt and to court proceedings in Düsseldorf (1964–1965). The monument on the grounds of the former camp, designed by Adam Haupt and Franciszek Duszeńko, was unveiled in 1964. The central monument is surrounded by seventeen thousand granite stones, of which 216 bear the names of cities and towns from which transports arrived. The Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom in Treblinka operates as a branch of the Regional Museum in Siedlce.

Treblinka differs fundamentally from Auschwitz-Birkenau — no camp buildings, barracks or gas chambers survive. The Germans erased the traces in 1943. Today’s Treblinka is a symbolic space: a field of granite stones, concrete markers indicating the cremation pyres, the deportees’ path leading from the former rail ramp to the place of death. The absence of physical structures asks of the visitor a different kind of attention — the contemplation of landscape, the reading of names on the stones, the listening to the silence of the forest in which the crime was committed. A standard visit lasts approximately two to three hours. A small museum at the entrance presents a permanent exhibition documenting the history of the camp, the Aktion Reinhard crimes and the August 1943 revolt. From the museum a path leads to the site of Treblinka II — the field of stones with the central monument — and to the adjacent Treblinka I, the German forced labour camp where approximately 10,000 people perished (the majority of them Polish political prisoners). For Jewish families intending to recite Kaddish we recommend an arrival outside peak visiting hours (preferably on weekdays outside the summer season). The granite stone bearing the name of the city or town from which the family’s transport originated may be located with the help of museum staff. Kaddish is traditionally recited in the immediate vicinity of the central monument or by the stone of the ancestral town. Some families bring memorial stones from the old Jewish cemetery in Warsaw or from a relative’s grave and place them at the Treblinka stone.

From a hotel in central Warsaw to Treblinka a Mercedes V-Class drive takes approximately one and a half hours by national road via Wyszków or Sokołów Podlaski. We typically plan departure between 8:30 and 10:00 so that the visit falls in the late morning and early afternoon. The return to Warsaw by 16:00 allows for combination with an afternoon visit to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews or to the Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street. The Mercedes V-Class offers space for seven passengers. The road passes through Mazovia — the landscape across which the transports of deportees from Warsaw once travelled. Some families request a brief stop at Małkinia Górna, the last railway station before the camp, from which the Germans drove transports on foot or by narrow-gauge railway to the camp ramp. The platform retains its original layout. Treblinka does not require advance individual entry booking. For families wishing to be accompanied by a museum educator we arrange a meeting in advance — the museum staff is small and accommodates principally school groups. Many family visits take place self-guided with the museum’s site map and informational materials. The driver remains by the vehicle or near the museum building throughout the visit. We provide water and a warm drink and, for families undertaking the long return to Krakow or Berlin, we recommend a stop in Sokołów Podlaski for a brief meal and rest.