Treblinka used to be a Nazi extermination camp–to borrow Avi’s words, a factory of death. Now, nothing of the original structures remains. Instead, there exists in the place that was formally a gas chamber massive structure of stone, and around that, what seems like thousands of smaller stones, each like a mass headstone to represent a community whose members were sent to the place. From afar, the whole place looks like a massive graveyard.
There are also herds of flys and bees that live near the memorial. As we stood there, a fly landed on my arm, and, instinctively, I raised my hand to strike it dead–to take its very life–but I could not bring myself to extinguish a life–even that of a fly–in a place where so many had already been killed. And yet, the impulse to kill the fly was a thoughtless act, an impulse that I almost acted upon without giving any regard to what I was doing. While I will not equate a human life to that of an insect, I cannot help but wonder: for the SS Officers and soldiers who operated the camp, was the killing of the Jews and other people sent to the factory driven as much by impulse as my desire to kill the fly? Is that what drove the entire Holocaust: the human impulse to kill?
Bees and flys are not the only examples of life at Treblinka; there are also countless ant holes, butterflies, groves upon groves of trees and flowers, and from any place near the memorial, one can hear birdsongs. As I stood looking at the flowers and listening to the birds, I didn’t know whether to be appalled or touched at the audacity of nature to bring so much life to a place of so much death.
Finally, we held a brief memorial service for those that perished at Treblinka, which culminated in us lighting six or seven makeshift Yahrzeit candles at the stone memorial. The slight breeze in the air made it difficult for the candles to catch flame, and we were only able to light one by means of a match. The rest, we lit off of that one, and then off of one another; one candle passed the flame to another, which, in turn, passed its flame to the next candle. I was inspired to think of this as a passing of knowledge L’dor v’dor–from generation to generation. In order to protect the flame, we placed the candles in a dark crevice in the stone structure, and they lit it almost completely.
Fifteen minutes later, I went back to the structure, all but one candle’s flame had extinguished, and I recalled one of the verses the group had read as we lit them: “This last candle is dedicated to us–the next generation. We must bear witness to what has happened after all the other candles are extinguished and there is no-one but ourselves who are left to carry the flames of remembrance.”