


Horrors of Treblinka Nazi death camp gradually reemerge
FeatureDespite the Nazis' attempt to erase all traces of the extermination camp when it was dismantled in 1943, Polish researchers and citizens are working to shine a historical light on the 900,000 people who were killed in the camp. It is a mammoth undertaking thanks to recent discoveries and the construction of a new, larger and more comprehensive museum than the present one.
The voices of some 20 people echoed among the pine trees of the former Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka, 80 kilometers northeast of Warsaw, Poland. "Jakub Kopel Rozencwajg, 53, a tailor from Tomaszów Mazowiecki, together with his wife Chana, 49, and their children Hinda, 23, and Uszer, 16, were deported to Treblinka on November 2, 1942," said one person reciting from a slip of paper in their hands. "Aron Margolin, a 70-year-old shopkeeper, lived in Dortmund, Germany, with his wife. The couple were sent to Theresienstadt [in Czech Bohemia, occupied by the Third Reich] on July 28, 1942, and then to the Treblinka extermination camp on September 23," said another.
On a foggy morning at the end of November, a small group of Polish citizens spelled out the forgotten names of some of the estimated 900,000 victims exterminated in the camp's gas chambers that were constructed by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland to implement its Final Solution plan.
Unlike Hitler's most murderous enterprise at Auschwitz, which commemorates the 80th anniversary of its liberation on January 27, Treblinka was almost forgotten by the general public. Here, there is no irrefutable proof of Nazi atrocities such as mounds of hair and wooden barracks where almost 2 million people gather every year. At Treblinka, the SS took care to dismantle everything before leaving in November 1943. As there are no survivors left to testify, it is difficult to accurately establish the number and identity of entire families that, between July 1942 and 1943, were swallowed up by the camp.
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