After a good night’s rest and a filling breakfast, we headed out on the bus. We started today by seeing some of the remaining parts of the ghetto wall and street. We stood on the actual cobblestone of the ghetto streets. It was an odd feeling, standing on those streets. It almost felt as if we were moving back in time. We spoke about the conditions in the ghetto where there were between 5 and 15 people living in every room. It was so crowded that people had to sleep on the floors of the bathrooms. As people were sent away, the Nazis shrunk the ghetto to keep the same, terrible, conditions. In the ghetto, food was rationed; however, the rations were so small that unless you could buy food on the black market or get it smuggled in, you would certainly starve. Many survivors who were in the ghetto write about being kept awake by the screams of hungry people.
Next we headed to the apartment where Adam Czerniakowa lived. He wasn’t really a leader in the Jewish community before the war, but when the Nazis took Poland many of the leaders fled to Russia. Adam Czerniakowa was appointed by the Nazis to run the Jewish Council. The Nazis often appointed Jews to carry out their atrocities, in an attempt to turn the members of the Jewish community against each other. Adam Czerniakowa made the controversial decision to commit suicide rather than choose Jews to send to their deaths. Leaders of other ghettos either sent all the children away first, or offered themselves only to be taken away.
We walked a few blocks to a house that also serves as an art installation. It is sandwiched between two apartment buildings, and is the thinnest livable house. It is meant to be a commentary on how little living space people had in the Warsaw ghetto, and is stayed in by artists.
Right next to this house was the location of the bridge that connected the smaller and larger ghettos. It was built where a streetcar entered the ghetto, because people were using the streetcar as a way to escape the ghetto.
From there we walked to the area where there used to be the train station where people gathered to be deported. Many people were forced there by the Jewish police, very few came willingly. Those who did come willingly came because the Nazis said they would get a loaf of bread and a jar of marmalade. They had no idea where the trains were going – they did not yet know they would be taken to their deaths – but they did know they were going to an unfamiliar place, leaving all they knew. Some were hungry enough to take the risk.
After seeing the memorial at what was the train station, we walked to the entrance of a bunker. After much of the ghetto had been deported and it was widely known that being deported meant certain death, the remaining people of the ghetto decided they would rather die fighting than be killed by the Nazis. They built bunkers under many buildings and smuggled in weapons and ammunition through the sewers. When the Nazis came to deport who was left from the ghetto, they were ambushed and forced to retreat. They attacked again on the first night of Passover, and after 3 weeks of fighting had succeeded. The ghetto was bombed, the synagogue was burned, and there were very few survivors.
Next we walked to a monument to the Jewish ghetto fighters, which is right outside the Polin museum. It was built by the Soviets, which is interesting because they did not like to separate people into religious groups. The black stone used in the monument was commissioned by Hitler to use as a monument to his victory but was instead used to commemorate the Jews who fought for their freedom. The back of the monument depicts what seems like a biblical scene with a man holding a Torah, and the front depicts the ghetto fighters standing bravely.
Just a few yards away stand another memorial to the ghetto fighters, this one built by the few fighters who survived the war on the 3 year anniversary of the beginning of the uprising. It is made up of 2 sewer manhole covers to represent the sewers they crawled through and the path to freedom. Nearby, there is a statue of Jan Karski sitting on a bench. He was a Polish citizen who was being smuggled in and out of ghettos to witness and report on the atrocities committed by the Nazis. He spoke with Roosevelt and Churchill to try and convince them to send help to the Jews. Unfortunately, they did not heed his advice.
After seeing these memorials, we got onto the bus. We rode for about half an hour before stopping to have lunch. From there, it was another 2 hours to Treblinka.
I’m not sure why I had thought Treblinka would be a perpetually dark and stormy place. When we got there, the sun was out and there were trees everywhere. It was deceiving. There are no visible remnants of Treblinka. The Nazis destroyed it to cover their tracks. 870,000 people were murdered at Treblinka, 250,000 in the first 6 weeks. The most terrifying part was how systematic it was. Everything was planned out to murder people as efficiently as possible. Only 42 people lived to tell the stories of Treblinka. They were the people the Nazis forced to cut people’s hair before they were sent to the gas chambers, people who removed the dead bodies afterwards, or people who managed to jump off the trains before they arrived at Treblinka. Towards the end, these people made to work realized they would be killed next, so they rebelled. Some of them escaped into the forest and lived to tell the tale.
Where Treblinka once stood is now a huge monument to those who died there. There is a sculpture where the gas chambers were, surrounded by a field of stones. It was a cemetery for all those buried underneath. Many of the stones had the names of towns where Jews had lived before the Holocaust. Only one had a person’s name: Janusz Korczak, to honor all the good he did.
While we were at the memorial, we spoke about how Treblinka was run. Then, Howard got a chance to tell his story. We lit a candle on the stone for Howard’s town and then held a memorial service for the victims of Treblinka.
We took the bus back to the hotel and spent an hour discussing the day. From there, we went to the part of Warsaw that has been reconstructed exactly as it was before the war and had dinner.
Emma Stewart is a student at Winchester Thurston School.