All photos in the article: Alicja Szulc
and shoots the frightened Germans. Amid the roar of gunshots, we hear his voice: "This is for my wife and my child, who never saw the world" - the account of the insurgent Stanislaw Kon was recalled by Tal Ben Ari Yaalon, chargé d'affaires of the Israeli Embassy. - The Treblinka Uprising teaches us an important lesson that values such as freedom, equality and life must be fought for and that we must do so not only for ourselves but for the good of us all.
- Germany, my country, brought immeasurable suffering to Poland, your country, between 1939 and 1945. The Germans murdered nearly six million Poles, half of whom were of the Mosaic faith. A further three million Jews from all over Europe fell victim to German racist madness and hatred, which became a veritable death factory on this very site. Every individual human fate has the same value - said Robert von Rimscha, Minister Counsellor for Cultural Affairs at the German Embassy.
- If all the victims of Treblinka could stand along the entire length of this road in a tight row one after the other, there would not be enough room for them. It is hard to imagine and impossible to describe the scale of suffering and death - noted Jarosław Nowak, Plenipotentiary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Contacts with the Jewish Diaspora.
- We must not forget what happened at Treblinka and other extermination sites. When the last witnesses of those terrible events depart this life, when people who remember those times are gone, we will be obliged to carry on the story, warning and memory - said Aldona Machnowska-Góra, deputy mayor of Warsaw.
- The stories are deeply saddening. Unfortunately, there are hardly any first-hand accounts of these stories anymore. Virtually no one will give a first-hand account of it anymore. My mother stayed at Treblinka, and nearly all my family died at Treblinka. For me, this place is sacred. It is the largest cemetery there can be - said Ada Willenberg, Holocaust survivor and widow of Samuel Willenberg, the last insurgent from Treblinka who died in 2016.- I hope that when we, the last witnesses of this crime, are gone, you will still come here because this place must not be forgotten.
At the end of the ceremony, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich and representatives of the Christian faith recited prayers. Wreaths were laid, and candles lit.
The German Nazi death camp Treblinka II was opened on 23 July 1942. - On that day, the first transports of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto arrived at the camp.
For almost a year and a half, transports from central Poland and other countries of occupied Europe arrived at the camp. Every day the Germans murdered around 5-10 thousand people in the gas chambers using flue gas from a tank engine.
Treblinka Museum. The concrete blocks represent the approximate route of the tracks used by the death trains.
The Germans destroyed the entire camp area in 1943. Pic. Alicja Szulc
On 2 August 1943, at about 16:00, the prisoners' commenced a revolt, attacking the German and Ukrainian guards and setting fire to the camp buildings. Of the more than 700 participants of the revolt, about 200 managed to escape beyond the camp's borders, and nearly 100 of them survived the war.
Treblinka is the largest cemetery for Polish Jews and one of the largest cemeteries for Polish citizens. Approximately 900,000 Jews were murdered at the camp, mainly from Warsaw, Bialystok, Mazovia and Podlasie, Slovakia, Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, including an estimated 2,000 Roma. We only know the names of about 45,000 of those murdered.