Treblinka - Death and Slave Labour Camps

We met our guide just before nine for the visit to Treblinka. Jacek knew his stuff and he took us to the relevant points in Warsaw which included certain monuments and one point that showed the edge of a ghetto area. Also the holding area that was just one kilometer square where those unfortunate and discriminated people waited to be transported to their premature deaths after having to suffer abhorrent treatment.



The journey to Treblinka took about one and half hours and on the way we saw a mixture of landscape, trees yet to come into leaf and sodden fields with some standing water. The snow had only disappeared two or so so weeks ago and the grass looked flat and lifeless after the winter. We saw a mixture of architecture and some old wooden buildings in the country areas. That is not to say that there was dereliction and new builds were evident.

Both the slave labour camp and the extermination camp were deliberately placed in woods and out of normal view of the world. Afterwards they reduced it to ground level in an attempt to hide what had actually occurred there.

There is since 2011 a small functional museum that goes some way to explain what the camps looked like and how the exterminations took place. There is a scale model where the possible locations of all the aspects have been elicited through thorough investigations by academics.
Excavations of mass graves have take place and it became known that the initial victims were buried, later dug up to be burnt and then re-interned. Later victims were incinerated or partly so before being thrown into the death pit.

The camps were staffed by SS officers and soldiers and with guards from the Ukraine. The workers were slave labour that existed in the separate camp. These were conditions were horrific not only in the work that they were forced to do, but with a food supply that was at starvation levels and where they were expected to labour for 12 hours per day. Brutality and death were part of their daily diet. The smell from the camps and the smoke from burning bodies must have been awful to the extreme.

This was a systematic annihilation of not only Jewish people, but Sinti and Roma as well. A railway was built and cattle trucks were used to convey them to a purpose built station. Every thing that was done was intended to deceive the unfortunates. It was deliberate organized murder on a grand scale. On one day 17,00 were eliminated and now there are the same number standing stones to commemorate them.



Close to the slave labour camp there are stone crosses some with names and some with a date where in November and December 1943 the inmates from the labour camp were executed with bullet through the back of the head. Peace at last for them, but agony for the living.

There was an uprising where over 600 escaped, but only 200 or so survived even for a while. Some were able to tell there stories and that must account for the names on the crosses.

I am not sure what my feelings are about this visit as I think that I need time to assimilate what I have seen and maybe be in a place where I can articulate something more.

I know that it is impressive. The vision that is created by all those standing stones and that the perimeter is marked by large upright stones and it is clear where the railway tracks and platform once were. All of it is very atmospheric, but the story is greater than what is left to see. However it is a monument to the destructive nature of the Third Reich and should never be forgotten.

On a much lighter note. After returning from our first guided trip we needed replenishments of various kinds. A supermarket beckoned and with a minimum of fuss we bought some eating essentials, two bottles of Porter, just as samples, and a bottle of Vodka, to be taken slightly more seriously.

We had noticed 'Bar and Books' and with that as a title we had to go in. Well it was both elegant and swish. It definitely had style. The barman a twenty old something with jacket, tie and a crinkly collar prepared Michelle a Grapefruit Margarita in style of course and I quaffed, in an elegant glass, a bottle of Coffee Porter. We enjoyed our drinks, looked around us taking it all in while funky style European Jazz conspired with a silent old James Bond film to entertain. Another barman appeared from somewhere, did a few things and two female attendants graced the end of the bar. It could have been so good in there, but there was no attempt to engage with us and that did not make us feel either welcome or comfortable. It is on the edge of 'The Old Town and we are not sure that it fits in this area.

The first 'Bar and Books' was opened in New York and they have two in Prague. Warsaw opened eighteen months ago and there is one owner. Good luck to him, but perhaps it was not for us. There are other bars to investigate and sample the local atmosphere.

And now it could be Krakow tomorrow and a different concept at Auschwitz.