When I visited the Trebrinka death camp, way back in 1998, I was given the opportunity to see the Treblinka labor camp (Treblinka I) but I turned down an invitation from a Polish tour guide to join a group of Polish teenagers who were going to walk about a mile from the death camp to the labor camp.
I had my own Polish tour guide, who told me that there was nothing to see at the labor camp. I decided not to walk a mile, just to see the bare ground of the former labor camp, where the Nazis had put Jews to work during World War II.
I have never regretted that decision, until today, when I read a news article in the Huffington Post about the new discoveries that have been found at the Treblinka I labor camp.
This quote is from the article in the Huffington Post, which you can read in full here:
Of all the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich, Treblinka is one of the most mind-boggling. Historians estimate that about 900,000 Jews were murdered at this concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland over a mere 16 months.
The Nazis began deporting Jews, mostly from the ghettos of Warsaw and Radom, to Treblinka in July 1942. There were two camps. Treblinka I was a forced-labor camp where prisoners were made to manufacture gravel for the Nazi war effort. A little more than a mile (2 kilometers) away was Treblinka II, a horrendously efficient death camp.
I am old enough to remember when there were gravel roads in America. I thought that I knew what gravel is, but I had to google it to be sure.
I found this definition of gravel: “a loose aggregation of small water-worn or pounded stones”. So those mean ole Nazis had the Jews pounding stones to manufacture gravel.
There were dirt roads in Poland back then. Maybe the Nazis wanted to build gravel roads for their tanks.
I took the photo below as my tour guide drove me to Treblinka. The road shown in the picture is a “black top road.” Is a gravel road better than a black top road? I have traveled many a road, back in the boon docks of Missouri, and I don’t think so. A black top road is better than a gravel road.
Road to Treblinka death camp
According to the news article in the Huffington Post, there were Jews killed at the Treblinka I labor camp. Time for a new Memorial, to the murdered Jews, to be put up at the Treblinka I camp.
Memorial stone at the entrance to the Treblinka II camp
Monument at the Treblinka II death camp
I wrote about the Treblinka death camp on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Treblinka/introduction.html
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