In reference to the activities of Prof. J. Grabowski in the press and on social media concerning Treblinka, including his letter addressed to Ms Marta Cienkowska, Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, on 7 September 2025, I would like to clarify that the Treblinka Museum. The German Nazi Extermination Camp and the Labour Camp (1941–1944) is responsible for preserving the grounds of two camps established by the Germans during the occupation: the Treblinka II Extermination Camp and the Treblinka I Labour Camp.
In the summer of 1941, the Germans established the Arbeitslager Treblinka / Treblinka I Labour Camp, which operated until late July/early August 1944. Over its entire period of operation, around 20,000 prisoners were held there: Poles, Jews, Roma and Sinti.
In mid-1942, 2 km from the Treblinka I Labour Camp, the Germans established another camp: SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka / Treblinka II Extermination Camp. This was the last camp of “Operation Reinhardt”. Its sole purpose was the mass murder of Jews. The Treblinka Extermination Camp was liquidated in November 1943. The German–Austrian camp staff, with the support of SS auxiliary guards (Wachmannschaften), murdered around 900,000 people there – primarily Polish Jews, but also Jews from other European countries as well as several hundred Roma and Sinti (3,000–4,000 in total including those killed at the so-called Execution Site).
The Museum’s mission is to preserve the memory of both former German camps. Prof. Grabowski makes no mention whatsoever of who bears responsibility for the crimes committed in these two camps. Let me remind at the outset that they were the German Nazis. In relation to the four issues raised by the Professor regarding alleged falsification of history, I would like to provide the following clarifications:
1. The initiative to build the monument to Jan Maletka at the former Treblinka railway station, and its legal ownership, belong to the Pilecki Institute. The monument was created within the framework of the programme “Called by Name”, which commemorates Poles murdered by the Germans for helping Jews during the German occupation of Polish lands in the Second World War. It is a fieldstone with a plaque inscribed in Polish and English: “A person should be measured by the yardstick of the heart’ – John Paul II. In memory of Jan Maletka, murdered by the Germans on 20 August 1942 for helping Jews. In memory of the Jews murdered in the German Nazi extermination camp in Treblinka”.
During the night of 16–17 June 2022, the monument was vandalised with “fire-engine red paint”. The violators were never found. In my view, the desecration was both anti-Polish and antisemitic, as the first line of the inscription refers to Jan Maletka, while the second commemorates the Jews murdered in the German Nazi Extermination Camp in Treblinka.
2. The inscriptions of “Jedwabne” and “Radziłów” on the memorial stones bearing the names of ghettos/towns from which Jews were deported to the Treblinka II Extermination Camp were first proposed in 1993 by Eng. Benjamin Majerczak, Secretary General of the Union of Polish Jews in Israel, who compiled a “Supplementary List of Towns and Villages from which Jews Were Deported to the Death Camp in Treblinka”. In 1998, following extensive discussions, the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, whose Secretary General at the time was Andrzej Przewoźnik, decided to engrave the names from Majerczak’s Supplementary List. That same year, the decision was taken to allow for further additions to the memorial, with a procedure established for this purpose. Given the controversies raised by the stones inscribed “Jedwabne” and “Radziłów”, I requested clarification from the Institute of National Remembrance, which conducted investigations into the crimes committed in Jedwabne and Radziłów, whether some Jews from these towns were killed in the Treblinka Extermination Camp. I received the following reply: “With a high degree of probability, it may be assumed that a significant group of Jews from Jedwabne were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, and possibly also several individuals from Radziłów. It should also be considered that individual escapees from these localities, who sought refuge in Białystok, may also have been included in transports to Treblinka.” The Director of the Museum has no competence to remove symbolic stones from the Memorial Site.
3. The Memorial to the Victims of the Treblinka I Labour Camp was created in 1964 according to the design of Prof. Franciszek Strynkiewicz, when crosses were placed at the so-called Execution Site. In 2003, on the initiative of the families of Polish prisoners, plaques bearing the names of those murdered and buried there were added to most of the crosses. Sources state that around 20,000 prisoners passed through the camp, of whom around 10,000 were murdered or died due to disease and conditions in the camp, without reference to their nationality. These figures are based on forensic examinations of mass graves and witness testimonies. By name, we know of 296 Poles and four persons of Jewish origin buried at the Execution Site. The Germans destroyed camp documentation during the liquidation of the Treblinka I Labour Camp. Those imprisoned there included Poles, Jews, Roma and Sinti. Prof. Grabowski is misleading when he claims that “Jews constituted 95% of the victims of the Treblinka I Labour Camp.” There are no historical sources that precisely define either the total number of victims of the German Treblinka I Labour Camp, nor their nationality or religion.
Executions of Polish prisoners from Pawiak also took place at the Execution Site. Among those murdered were: Stanisław Ratajczyk, Member of Parliament of the 5th Sejm from the Gniezno constituency; Edward Szpakowski, Brigadier General of the Polish Army; Wacław Boguszewski, Lieutenant Colonel of the Polish Army; Andrzej Wieczorek, member of the Polish Military Organisation; Andrzej Piotrowski, graduate and employee of the Warsaw University of Technology; Stefan Essmanowski, Polish poet, publicist and literary critic, professor of the State Institute of Theatre Arts; Jędrzej Cierniak, editor-in-chief of Teatr Ludowy; and Grzegorz Drozdowski, financial-administrative editor and co-founder of the Polish-Finnish-Estonian Review. Also murdered in the Treblinka I Labour Camp was 14-year-old Hania Zalewska, who became a symbol of the martyrdom of Polish children from Sokołów and Węgrów counties.
The common death of Poles, Jews, Roma and Sinti at the hands of the German occupiers united them in shared graves, and the cross does not apply solely to faith, but in Polish tradition is also a symbol of remembrance for the murdered. Catholic ceremonies, held regularly at this site on the first Saturday of September for the past 35 years, are organised in honour of the Victims of the Treblinka camps and of the Second World War. Their initiator was the Roman Catholic parish in Prostyń and the families of prisoners of the Labour Camp. These ceremonies are in full compliance with applicable regulations.
4. Concerning the Memory Wall / Wall of Names: already in 1960, plans existed to commemorate individuals murdered in the Treblinka II Extermination Camp. One idea was to inscribe their names on stones “slightly different in shape, colour or size” from the other stones marking mass graves. Another proposal suggested commemorating prominent individuals murdered here with “memorial plaques” along the road from the railway ramp to the central monument. Yet another concept was to inscribe victims’ names on fieldstones and scatter them across the former camp grounds. None of these ideas were realised. Documentation from 1959–1964 does not explain why; most likely due to the difficulty of compiling such a list. The German Nazis did not prepare lists of Polish Jews deported to the Extermination Camp. Lists of deportees have survived from other countries. The idea of individual commemoration has, however, resurfaced from time to time. In 2021, during an open competition for the design of a new exhibition and education building, the Competition Jury proposed the idea of the Wall of Names, included in their post-competition recommendations, and it entered the scope of the project. The Wall of Names is part of the exhibition prepared by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, with which the Treblinka Museum has signed an agreement. The project is now at an advanced stage of implementation, and no deviation from it is foreseen.
Dr. Edward Kopówka
Director of the Treblinka Museum. The German Nazi Extermination Camp and the Labour Camp (1941–1944).