Treblinka II extermination camp, located approximately 100 kilometres north-east of Warsaw, is one of the most tragic sites associated with the Second World War. Between 1942 and 1943, around 850,000 people were murdered here, making it the second-largest extermination camp in occupied Europe after Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Most of the victims came from the Warsaw Ghetto, from which approximately 300,000 Jews were deported directly to the camp. During the so-called Grossaktion, which began on 22 July 1942 and drove the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, trains carrying around 5,000 people arrived in Treblinka each day for more than eight weeks.
The deportees did not come only from Warsaw. As part of Operation Reinhard—the systematic murder of the Jewish population in the General Government, the German-occupied central part of Poland—further transports arrived from ghettos in Białystok, Grodno, Kielce, Radom, Częstochowa and many smaller towns. Jews from Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, Belgium and France were also deported to Treblinka.
The victims were murdered in gas chambers using carbon monoxide from engine exhaust fumes. In August 1943, prisoners staged an uprising, marking the beginning of the camp’s dismantling. By November that year, Treblinka had been completely destroyed: the gas chambers were demolished, the barracks dismantled and the fences removed. The Germans levelled the site and planted lupins in an attempt to conceal the traces of the crime.
Today, a powerful memorial commemorates the suffering and memory of the victims. Some 17,000 unworked stones are spread across the former camp grounds. Visitors can also see a small museum pavilion presenting the history of Treblinka and Operation Reinhard, helping to preserve the memory of those who were murdered.
