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.
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.