Poland 2007: Visit to Treblinka Extermination Camp

Treblinka Extermination Camp is located roughly two hours from Warsaw, requiring a long train ride to Malkinia and then a taxi to shuttle you the rest of the way. On the day we visited, Malkinia had only one taxi in operation, so we traveled the final 10km in waves. Memory in this case is inaccessible, inconvenient, and almost entirely intangible. Because, sadly, precious little remains of Treblinka today.

To help fill in the gaps, the Legacy Project's history teacher, Dave Whitson, told the story of the Treblinka uprising. The raw transcript of the presentation follows...

----------------------------------------------------------

On August 2, 1943, one of the major concentration camp uprisings took place here at Treblinka, a little after the camp had been in operation for a year. As you have seen today, there were actually two camps. The one further down, where it's just cement pads left, that was actually the labor camp and it was established first, and it was significantly bigger. Then there was the smaller Camp 2 down here, which was the extermination camp.

The slogan for Treblinka was "Door to door in 45 minutes." Basically, from out of the train doors, unloaded into the camp, and then into the gas chamber and the doors sealed 45 minutes later. So, it was all about Nazi efficiency, and they were masters of it. The labor camp is where the uprising actually started. The man who was behind it was the Jewish Commandant, a man named Galewski, and in every camp the Germans would have a Jewish hierarchy to help maintain order. So, they selected the Jew that was, or that seemed to be most respected among the Jewish population - in this case it was Galewski. And then he would have certain officials underneath him, capos, and the capos would have assistants, and on down the line - people who would really be responsible for over-seeing the transfer of the Jews into the camps, their assimilation, and getting their heads shaved, losing their clothes, getting the camp outfit, and so on. And so, typically, they were also the first ones to beat the new Jews coming into the camp, to sort of force them to fall into line. And it was in that way that one of the layers of efficiency the Germans created was implemented - having the Jews be responsible for beating their own as they came into camp. And it was still tempting, because you had a much greater chance of surviving for a while if you took that position.

For example, in the labor camp, the Germans employed a method of quartering, not in the sense where you're being drawn and quartered, but every time that they would have an increase in the population, they would have huge physical challenges, racing around, sprinting back and forth, back and forth, back and forth - until the prisoners reached a point where a quarter of the population just couldn't keep up anymore - they had fallen clearly behind. They would be killed as the new group was brought in, to keep the population down and ensure that you had the most fit people staying behind to work in the camps and provide labor for the Germans.

Ultimately, they needed to create the extermination camp. And those workers who came to work at the extermination camp, those Jews, actually received the best benefits. They had almost sufficient food portions, and they had decent beds to sleep in, good rooms to stay in. They were amply rewarded for being the ones who had to take the bodies of their dead fellow Jews out and dump them into the ditches where they would be incinerated. So, it was horrible, it was a terrible job. But, again, when your options are either to be the one in that ditch or survive, you'll take survival. Now, the problem was, the Germans didn't want the slightest bit of information to leak out about this camp, or any other camp, so those who were working in Camp 2 were guaranteed to die. There was no hope. And periodically they would be eliminated. Whereas, in the labor camp, it was in the Germans' best interests to maintain a steady labor supply. As long as the Jews working there were in good shape, and they were obeying, they were following orders, it was good for them to stick around because it would just ensure maximum efficiency. So, those who took the better options of working in the extermination camp, they were unwittingly condemning themselves to death sometime down the road.

Now, the rebellion that took place actually came about after a series of failed rebellions. A number of attempts had been planned. The closest one before it was a situation where the Jews plotting the rebellion - and it was a very limited group, they didn't want information to leak out because, in that sort of situation, if you were in a position where you were about to die, if you had a little bit of information that you could give the Germans to survive, well, facing death you would probably give it to them. So, only a small, very committed group actually knew about the plans for the rebellion. And, what they decided was, they would get a key to the armory and then they would be able to arm themselves with grenades, potentially rifles, be able to attack the first wave of guards, seize their weapons, and hopefully break out and have some people get away. And this required a lot of different people to be involved. So, for example, when we were at the first camp, you saw the main Jewish quarters, but then next to them there were quarters for the locksmith, or the people who they called the dentists, who were the ones who had to pull the gold crowns out of the teeth of the Jews. They had these skilled craftsmen who had positions of importance - still Jews, still prisoners, but slightly better conditions because they had skills.

Well, the Jews who were plotting the rebellion, led by Galewski, they coordinated with one of the locksmiths who - it's a funny story, really. He was working on the door to the armory for the Germans and, he had the key, and he had been keeping a small bit of soft wax in his pocket for days, so that the moment he had a chance he could take that key, shove it against the wax, and have an imprint so that he could forge a duplicate. But, the Germans were suspicious, so they had six Germans all watching him as he worked on this door. So, ultimately he pushed a hammer slowly to the edge of the table, and then there was a bolt, and he was working really hard to crank this bolt off, and so he puffed out his cheeks - his face was all red. And finally, with a big show of force, he finally undid it, and in so doing the force caused his hand to hit the hammer, which fell off the table and landed on the foot of a German who started swearing and hopping around on one foot. And all of his men surrounded him. And in that one moment, the locksmith put the key in his pocket, shoved it against the wax, got the imprint, pulled it back out, put it on the table, and soon enough was able to make a key, make a duplicate.

So, they were ready. And, the day of the rebellion everyone was in place. They worked it out so that a child in the camp, like 12 years old I believe - he always pushed around a little cart to gather garbage. And so he pushed it by the door of the armory. Meanwhile, one person who had been selected used the key to get in the armory, get a box of grenades, put it up through the window into the cart, and then push away. They thought that they were set. But, then one of them finally took a look at the grenades and discovered that there were no fuses in the grenades, so they weren't going to blow up anything, they were essentially duds. And so, very quickly, they had to abandon the rebellion and just go back to normal. It might not sound like much, but when you consider the fact that they were living in a situation where they could die at any moment and they had been building up to this one moment, this huge, illustrious hope, that they would be able to break out, that some of them might make it out alive. To get so far as getting their hands on a box of grenades, putting them on that cart, being ready to go and then discovering that they were duds - it was a huge setback. And it's amazing that, after that, they were able to summon forth the will to try again.

But when they did, they took on an even greater challenge. Originally, they were only working on a rebellion at Camp 1. Now, they wanted to start a rebellion at Camp 2 as well, so that they could synchronize the rebellions. The problem was that there was no good way to get from Camp 1 to Camp 2. You couldn't just stroll over and say "I'm going to go ask for a little bit of sugar for my coffee and then I'm going to walk back to Camp 1." The Germans kept them separated. Those in Camp 1 had no clear idea what was going on in Camp 2. All they knew was that quite often there was a lot of smoke coming from over here. But, they couldn't be sure what was going on. So, two of the leaders of the rebellion ultimately decided that they would go to Camp 2. And the way that they would make it to Camp 2 would be by committing a minor act of dissent. Basically, just disobeying the Germans in a very small way. With most Jews, that would have resulted in execution on the spot. Because they had been assistant capos, though, they had enough authority, enough respect, that they would just be beaten to the edge of their lives but allowed to survive - and then punished by being sent to work at Camp 2 which, again, was basically a death sentence at some point down the line. It was a sacrifice, but they made it down to Camp 2 and from there they found subtle ways to communicate between the two camps to try to coordinate the revolt. But, it just kept getting pushed back and back and back and back, because there was just no good way, no perfect time to make the rebellion work where they could be sure of it. And, for those like Galewski who had been living in Treblinka basically the whole time, it was incredibly difficult to continue to find the will to struggle when you know that you're going to die in the act anyway.

But, ultimately they were out of time. The shipments of Jews from Warsaw had basically dried up and they knew it was only a matter of time before the Germans liquidated the camp, eliminating all of those who were left, and destroying the remains. So, they knew they had to act. On August 2nd, 1943, they finally did, and it was a success. It was very, very close in moments, but the rebellion took off in both Camp 1 and Camp 2, relatively well coordinated, not quite as planned, but successful in the sense that some people made it out alive. They knew that they wouldn't all make it out alive, in fact they knew that most of them would die. In the end, out of the 800,000 Jews who were brought to Treblinka, 40 made it out alive. Forty. 600 Jews were behind the uprising, 600 who really organized and executed the uprising. So, out of those 600, 40 of them survived. They knew that most of them were going to die. The leadership in particular, people like Galewski, knew they were going to die because they would stay to the very end, making sure that people got out. They knew that their own cause was hopeless. The only hope there, the only hope that existed, was that at least one person would get out and be able to tell the story, to communicate what happened here, so that it wouldn't be able to disappear. So that it could be remembered some day, in some form - even if the buildings don't remain that there will be something to tell people who come later about the horrible evil that was committed here. And, at the same time, the tremendous heroism - that people, facing certain death, still were willing to run straight at it, head-first, in order to allow something to survive - the story, the truth, history - allow history to be written, to try to stop it from ever happening again. That is the story of Treblinka.

(Student questions follow. The first question was inaudible in the recording, but the response and additional questions are transcribed below.)

You know, what's really crazy to think about is...towards the end of Treblinka, right around the one-year anniversary, the man in charge, who they called Lalke, decided that he wanted to change the camp, he wanted to make it feel like a town. So, they built things that looked like streets with little flower-boxes, painted a clock. And on Sundays, the laborers wouldn't have to work. They would have shows, so like, some of the prisoners who had musical skills formed an orchestra, and others acted and performed skits. Every Sunday these things would happen. And, after a little while, they started to actually bring in women so that some of the high-ranking men could have their own wives, and then they would have their opportunities to be husband and wife on occasion. And it was like creating this myth that life is actually going on - we're just living in this normal town, perfectly normal, nothing to see here - but it was sick and twisted. The weird thing, though, was the effect that it had on the Jews who really got excited about it, because really it was a break from work, from knowing that at any moment if they took a misstep they could be shot on the spot. So, to have an opportunity to laugh at their peers doing some sort of comedic sketch, or to listen to good music, or to have a chance to actually see a woman again, it was pretty exciting. But, it had the sobering effect afterwards of just increasing the sort of guilt that was often prevalent - how can we laugh in a situation like this? It was a psychological power to make the people imprisoned feel guilty in as many different ways as possible. That's incredibly powerful, to make people feel like they are responsible for being here, that they are to blame, that they are bad people, that they are immoral. So, it was a brilliant tactic, like so many of the Nazi ones.

Student: So, you said there were 600 [conspirators]. Did other people know?

It was kept well hidden. Because, again... there was one story in particular of an important Jewish prisoner, and he married a woman who was brought in. But then that woman angered the Germans and was sent to Camp 2. And he was so angry, he was about to come forward and say, "I'll tell you, I have something to tell you if you let her go. Don't send her to Camp 2." But she stared him down, and without talking basically told him to shove it, don't tell them, and so he stopped talking. And ultimately he committed an indiscretion so that he would be punished and sent to Camp 2 to be with her. But that's the reason that they had to keep it hidden, because facing death most of us, I think would be pushed to sacrifice secrets that we know if it was the only way to be able to survive. So, they had to keep it as hidden as possible. And really, how many people needed to know? You'd only have so many grenades, you'd only have so many rifles to use, so you'd have enough for the people that you already have committed to the cause. Once that happens, everyone else is going to know - run like hell. They'll figure it out quickly enough. So, it was probably the best thing, the only thing to do in the circumstances.

Student: So how exactly did everybody die? Was it German attack, or was it just that they blew up the barracks?

Well, only 40 survived for a couple of reasons. One, it was very hard to get out of the camps in the first place. You have to understand that they had towers all the way around on the walls, so they had people with machine guns pointed in, and they also had an armored vehicle inside the camp. So, on one hand they had to go in and assault that vehicle and kill the driver inside of it. On the other, somehow they had to get rifles quickly enough so that they could fire up and take out the men with the machine guns, which was incredibly tricky. And then there were other German troops available to come in, swoop in, and attack. Those were great dangers in and of themselves. But then, almost as dangerous was going out into the woods afterwards. Because, not only were there Germans out there, but there were Poles who were not too excited to see Jews coming out and around. In some cases, the Ukrainian guardsmen held especially potent grudges towards the Jews. So, it was a situation where, it was sort of out of the fire and into the frying pan, in the sense that they're out of the worst situation, but it's still really bad, and it's still dangerous. In a number of cases, people who made it out of the concentration camp alive were killed soon after, trying to survive the Polish winter while in hiding, living under first German and then Soviet occupation. It was not a pleasant situation to be in.

	Poland 2007: Treblinka
Home	Treblinka Extermination Camp is located roughly two hours from Warsaw, requiring a long train ride to Malkinia and then a taxi to shuttle you the rest of the way. On the day we visited, Malkinia had only one taxi in operation, so we traveled the final 10km in waves. Memory in this case is inaccessible, inconvenient, and almost entirely intangible. Because, sadly, precious little remains of Treblinka today. To help fill in the gaps, the Legacy Project's history teacher, Dave Whitson, told the story of the Treblinka uprising. The raw transcript of the presentation follows... ---------------------------------------------------------- On August 2, 1943, one of the major concentration camp uprisings took place here at Treblinka, a little after the camp had been in operation for a year. As you have seen today, there were actually two camps. The one further down, where it's just cement pads left, that was actually the labor camp and it was established first, and it was significantly bigger. Then there was the smaller Camp 2 down here, which was the extermination camp. The slogan for Treblinka was "Door to door in 45 minutes." Basically, from out of the train doors, unloaded into the camp, and then into the gas chamber and the doors sealed 45 minutes later. So, it was all about Nazi efficiency, and they were masters of it. The labor camp is where the uprising actually started. The man who was behind it was the Jewish Commandant, a man named Galewski, and in every camp the Germans would have a Jewish hierarchy to help maintain order. So, they selected the Jew that was, or that seemed to be most respected among the Jewish population - in this case it was Galewski. And then he would have certain officials underneath him, capos, and the capos would have assistants, and on down the line - people who would really be responsible for over-seeing the transfer of the Jews into the camps, their assimilation, and getting their heads shaved, losing their clothes, getting the camp outfit, and so on. And so, typically, they were also the first ones to beat the new Jews coming into the camp, to sort of force them to fall into line. And it was in that way that one of the layers of efficiency the Germans created was implemented - having the Jews be responsible for beating their own as they came into camp. And it was still tempting, because you had a much greater chance of surviving for a while if you took that position. For example, in the labor camp, the Germans employed a method of quartering, not in the sense where you're being drawn and quartered, but every time that they would have an increase in the population, they would have huge physical challenges, racing around, sprinting back and forth, back and forth, back and forth - until the prisoners reached a point where a quarter of the population just couldn't keep up anymore - they had fallen clearly behind. They would be killed as the new group was brought in, to keep the population down and ensure that you had the most fit people staying behind to work in the camps and provide labor for the Germans. Ultimately, they needed to create the extermination camp. And those workers who came to work at the extermination camp, those Jews, actually received the best benefits. They had almost sufficient food portions, and they had decent beds to sleep in, good rooms to stay in. They were amply rewarded for being the ones who had to take the bodies of their dead fellow Jews out and dump them into the ditches where they would be incinerated. So, it was horrible, it was a terrible job. But, again, when your options are either to be the one in that ditch or survive, you'll take survival. Now, the problem was, the Germans didn't want the slightest bit of information to leak out about this camp, or any other camp, so those who were working in Camp 2 were guaranteed to die. There was no hope. And periodically they would be eliminated. Whereas, in the labor camp, it was in the Germans' best interests to maintain a steady labor supply. As long as the Jews working there were in good shape, and they were obeying, they were following orders, it was good for them to stick around because it would just ensure maximum efficiency. So, those who took the better options of working in the extermination camp, they were unwittingly condemning themselves to death sometime down the road. Now, the rebellion that took place actually came about after a series of failed rebellions. A number of attempts had been planned. The closest one before it was a situation where the Jews plotting the rebellion - and it was a very limited group, they didn't want information to leak out because, in that sort of situation, if you were in a position where you were about to die, if you had a little bit of information that you could give the Germans to survive, well, facing death you would probably give it to them. So, only a small, very committed group actually knew about the plans for the rebellion. And, what they decided was, they would get a key to the armory and then they would be able to arm themselves with grenades, potentially rifles, be able to attack the first wave of guards, seize their weapons, and hopefully break out and have some people get away. And this required a lot of different people to be involved. So, for example, when we were at the first camp, you saw the main Jewish quarters, but then next to them there were quarters for the locksmith, or the people who they called the dentists, who were the ones who had to pull the gold crowns out of the teeth of the Jews. They had these skilled craftsmen who had positions of importance - still Jews, still prisoners, but slightly better conditions because they had skills. Well, the Jews who were plotting the rebellion, led by Galewski, they coordinated with one of the locksmiths who - it's a funny story, really. He was working on the door to the armory for the Germans and, he had the key, and he had been keeping a small bit of soft wax in his pocket for days, so that the moment he had a chance he could take that key, shove it against the wax, and have an imprint so that he could forge a duplicate. But, the Germans were suspicious, so they had six Germans all watching him as he worked on this door. So, ultimately he pushed a hammer slowly to the edge of the table, and then there was a bolt, and he was working really hard to crank this bolt off, and so he puffed out his cheeks - his face was all red. And finally, with a big show of force, he finally undid it, and in so doing the force caused his hand to hit the hammer, which fell off the table and landed on the foot of a German who started swearing and hopping around on one foot. And all of his men surrounded him. And in that one moment, the locksmith put the key in his pocket, shoved it against the wax, got the imprint, pulled it back out, put it on the table, and soon enough was able to make a key, make a duplicate. So, they were ready. And, the day of the rebellion everyone was in place. They worked it out so that a child in the camp, like 12 years old I believe - he always pushed around a little cart to gather garbage. And so he pushed it by the door of the armory. Meanwhile, one person who had been selected used the key to get in the armory, get a box of grenades, put it up through the window into the cart, and then push away. They thought that they were set. But, then one of them finally took a look at the grenades and discovered that there were no fuses in the grenades, so they weren't going to blow up anything, they were essentially duds. And so, very quickly, they had to abandon the rebellion and just go back to normal. It might not sound like much, but when you consider the fact that they were living in a situation where they could die at any moment and they had been building up to this one moment, this huge, illustrious hope, that they would be able to break out, that some of them might make it out alive. To get so far as getting their hands on a box of grenades, putting them on that cart, being ready to go and then discovering that they were duds - it was a huge setback. And it's amazing that, after that, they were able to summon forth the will to try again. But when they did, they took on an even greater challenge. Originally, they were only working on a rebellion at Camp 1. Now, they wanted to start a rebellion at Camp 2 as well, so that they could synchronize the rebellions. The problem was that there was no good way to get from Camp 1 to Camp 2. You couldn't just stroll over and say "I'm going to go ask for a little bit of sugar for my coffee and then I'm going to walk back to Camp 1." The Germans kept them separated. Those in Camp 1 had no clear idea what was going on in Camp 2. All they knew was that quite often there was a lot of smoke coming from over here. But, they couldn't be sure what was going on. So, two of the leaders of the rebellion ultimately decided that they would go to Camp 2. And the way that they would make it to Camp 2 would be by committing a minor act of dissent. Basically, just disobeying the Germans in a very small way. With most Jews, that would have resulted in execution on the spot. Because they had been assistant capos, though, they had enough authority, enough respect, that they would just be beaten to the edge of their lives but allowed to survive - and then punished by being sent to work at Camp 2 which, again, was basically a death sentence at some point down the line. It was a sacrifice, but they made it down to Camp 2 and from there they found subtle ways to communicate between the two camps to try to coordinate the revolt. But, it just kept getting pushed back and back and back and back, because there was just no good way, no perfect time to make the rebellion work where they could be sure of it. And, for those like Galewski who had been living in Treblinka basically the whole time, it was incredibly difficult to continue to find the will to struggle when you know that you're going to die in the act anyway. But, ultimately they were out of time. The shipments of Jews from Warsaw had basically dried up and they knew it was only a matter of time before the Germans liquidated the camp, eliminating all of those who were left, and destroying the remains. So, they knew they had to act. On August 2nd, 1943, they finally did, and it was a success. It was very, very close in moments, but the rebellion took off in both Camp 1 and Camp 2, relatively well coordinated, not quite as planned, but successful in the sense that some people made it out alive. They knew that they wouldn't all make it out alive, in fact they knew that most of them would die. In the end, out of the 800,000 Jews who were brought to Treblinka, 40 made it out alive. Forty. 600 Jews were behind the uprising, 600 who really organized and executed the uprising. So, out of those 600, 40 of them survived. They knew that most of them were going to die. The leadership in particular, people like Galewski, knew they were going to die because they would stay to the very end, making sure that people got out. They knew that their own cause was hopeless. The only hope there, the only hope that existed, was that at least one person would get out and be able to tell the story, to communicate what happened here, so that it wouldn't be able to disappear. So that it could be remembered some day, in some form - even if the buildings don't remain that there will be something to tell people who come later about the horrible evil that was committed here. And, at the same time, the tremendous heroism - that people, facing certain death, still were willing to run straight at it, head-first, in order to allow something to survive - the story, the truth, history - allow history to be written, to try to stop it from ever happening again. That is the story of Treblinka. (Student questions follow. The first question was inaudible in the recording, but the response and additional questions are transcribed below.) You know, what's really crazy to think about is...towards the end of Treblinka, right around the one-year anniversary, the man in charge, who they called Lalke, decided that he wanted to change the camp, he wanted to make it feel like a town. So, they built things that looked like streets with little flower-boxes, painted a clock. And on Sundays, the laborers wouldn't have to work. They would have shows, so like, some of the prisoners who had musical skills formed an orchestra, and others acted and performed skits. Every Sunday these things would happen. And, after a little while, they started to actually bring in women so that some of the high-ranking men could have their own wives, and then they would have their opportunities to be husband and wife on occasion. And it was like creating this myth that life is actually going on - we're just living in this normal town, perfectly normal, nothing to see here - but it was sick and twisted. The weird thing, though, was the effect that it had on the Jews who really got excited about it, because really it was a break from work, from knowing that at any moment if they took a misstep they could be shot on the spot. So, to have an opportunity to laugh at their peers doing some sort of comedic sketch, or to listen to good music, or to have a chance to actually see a woman again, it was pretty exciting. But, it had the sobering effect afterwards of just increasing the sort of guilt that was often prevalent - how can we laugh in a situation like this? It was a psychological power to make the people imprisoned feel guilty in as many different ways as possible. That's incredibly powerful, to make people feel like they are responsible for being here, that they are to blame, that they are bad people, that they are immoral. So, it was a brilliant tactic, like so many of the Nazi ones. Student: So, you said there were 600 [conspirators]. Did other people know? It was kept well hidden. Because, again... there was one story in particular of an important Jewish prisoner, and he married a woman who was brought in. But then that woman angered the Germans and was sent to Camp 2. And he was so angry, he was about to come forward and say, "I'll tell you, I have something to tell you if you let her go. Don't send her to Camp 2." But she stared him down, and without talking basically told him to shove it, don't tell them, and so he stopped talking. And ultimately he committed an indiscretion so that he would be punished and sent to Camp 2 to be with her. But that's the reason that they had to keep it hidden, because facing death most of us, I think would be pushed to sacrifice secrets that we know if it was the only way to be able to survive. So, they had to keep it as hidden as possible. And really, how many people needed to know? You'd only have so many grenades, you'd only have so many rifles to use, so you'd have enough for the people that you already have committed to the cause. Once that happens, everyone else is going to know - run like hell. They'll figure it out quickly enough. So, it was probably the best thing, the only thing to do in the circumstances. Student: So how exactly did everybody die? Was it German attack, or was it just that they blew up the barracks? Well, only 40 survived for a couple of reasons. One, it was very hard to get out of the camps in the first place. You have to understand that they had towers all the way around on the walls, so they had people with machine guns pointed in, and they also had an armored vehicle inside the camp. So, on one hand they had to go in and assault that vehicle and kill the driver inside of it. On the other, somehow they had to get rifles quickly enough so that they could fire up and take out the men with the machine guns, which was incredibly tricky. And then there were other German troops available to come in, swoop in, and attack. Those were great dangers in and of themselves. But then, almost as dangerous was going out into the woods afterwards. Because, not only were there Germans out there, but there were Poles who were not too excited to see Jews coming out and around. In some cases, the Ukrainian guardsmen held especially potent grudges towards the Jews. So, it was a situation where, it was sort of out of the fire and into the frying pan, in the sense that they're out of the worst situation, but it's still really bad, and it's still dangerous. In a number of cases, people who made it out of the concentration camp alive were killed soon after, trying to survive the Polish winter while in hiding, living under first German and then Soviet occupation. It was not a pleasant situation to be in.
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Poland 2007: Treblinka