Treblinka: Memory and Responsibility towards the Historical Record
Albert Stankowski
On 21 September 2026, the Israeli daily Haaretz published an article by Ofer Aderet concerning the Treblinka Museum and disputes surrounding the way the site is commemorated today. The author addressed a number of very different issues: the Museum’s Rosh Hashanah greetings, Jan Maletka, the Black Road, the crosses at Treblinka I, the burial of the remains of at least 49 people, the stones bearing the names of Jedwabne and Radziłów, the Wall of Names, and the permanent exhibition now in preparation. Debate about Treblinka is necessary. This is not a place that should be free from questions, disagreement or criticism. On the contrary, the way in which it is commemorated should continually be tested against historical knowledge, new research and the voices of different communities of remembrance. The Museum, too, must be prepared to revise its own decisions when new sources emerge or when arguments are raised that were not previously taken into account. There is, however, a difference between criticism of a particular solution and an accusation that history is being distorted or that Treblinka’s Jewish character is being pushed aside. In the latter case, it is worth moving away from assumptions about intentions and returning to the documents. In our response to Haaretz, we wrote that the discussion should remain grounded in archival documents, research findings, witness testimony, conservation records and a clearly stated degree of certainty for each conclusion. This is not intended to close down debate, but to ensure that we know what, precisely, we are debating.
The headline and subheading of the Haaretz article point very clearly towards a particular interpretation. The juxtaposition of ‘crosses instead of Stars of David’, ‘Masses instead of psalms’, vehicles passing over fragments of Jewish gravestones, and disputed memorials can create the impression that the Jewish history of Treblinka is gradually being relegated to the background. Yet some of the phenomena described have an entirely different origin. We need to distinguish the history of the German camps Treblinka I and Treblinka II from the history of the post-war memorial, and that, in turn, from decisions being taken today. Some elements were created several decades ago, under entirely different political and social conditions. If they now require correction or supplementation, that should be done. Their origins should not, however, be attributed to people who assumed responsibility for the Museum many years later. One point is beyond dispute. Treblinka II was one of the principal sites of the extermination of European Jews. The memory of the Holocaust of the Jews lies at the heart of the history of this place and must neither be overlooked nor relativised.
The Museum’s Rosh Hashanah greetings, and the words ‘choose life’ used in them, prompted considerable emotion. In Treblinka, such a juxtaposition may evoke particularly strong feelings, and that must be acknowledged. At a place such as Treblinka, language carries an additional responsibility. At the same time, it is worth remembering where those words come from. The Hebrew u-vacharta ba-chayim — ‘choose life’ — is a quotation from the Torah. The concept of chayim, life, also recurs in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah and throughout the High Holy Days. It was not an injunction addressed to the victims. We later explained the meaning of the quotation in the briefest possible terms: ‘Not to the victims. To us.’ Rosh Hashanah is not external to the history of Treblinka either. Eliahu Rosenberg recalled prisoners praying in the barracks: a minyan, the festive Maariv service, Kaddish and El Malei Rachamim for those who had been murdered. The form of the greetings may be judged in different ways. It is worth doing so, however, with an understanding of the religious meaning of the words used, rather than on the basis of their literal wording alone.
The case of Jan Maletka requires similar caution. It is also worth recalling that the initiative to commemorate him did not come from the present management of the Treblinka Museum, but from the Pilecki Institute. This matters for understanding the origins of the entire undertaking and responsibility for the original concept of the commemoration. It does not, of course, alter the Museum’s duty today to assess the evidential basis of the story and the way in which it is presented with due rigour. We do not question accounts describing people who exploited the desperate situation of the deportees and sold them water in exchange for money, gold or valuables. This aspect of the history of Treblinka’s surroundings is well documented and should be presented without softening it. A separate matter is the identification of the particular railway worker who, according to Franciszek Ząbecki, was shot by a German guard for giving water to Jews. The surviving material includes Jan Maletka’s death certificate, the testimony of Remigiusz Pawłowicz, Ząbecki’s memoirs and his testimony at the Düsseldorf trial. Ząbecki himself did not give the name of the man who was killed. It was only by comparing his testimony with other material that researchers concluded that the victim was most probably Jan Maletka. The words ‘most probably’ are crucial here. This is not an identification without any evidential basis. Nor is it an identification of which we can be one hundred per cent certain. It is therefore legitimate to discuss whether the inscription should express that degree of uncertainty more clearly. That is an honest discussion. What would not be honest is to claim that the entire story was constructed without any source material.
A similar problem arises in relation to the remains of at least 49 people discovered at Treblinka I. Anthropological and genetic research established many details, but did not provide a basis for determining conclusively the national or ethnic origin of all those whose remains were found. The documentation states this explicitly. The decision not to assign a religious affiliation was also discussed with experts and with rabbinical representatives. It is possible that some of these people were Jews. We do not, however, know how many. At a place such as this, the words ‘we do not know’ should mean something. The same applies to the wider discussion about the composition of the victims of Treblinka I. Jews constituted a very large group of prisoners. There is no doubt about that. Yet the complete camp records that would allow us to establish precise percentages for the various groups among those murdered have not survived. We estimate that approximately 10,000–12,000 people were killed at Treblinka I. We do not, however, have sources that would allow us to state reliably how many of them were Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti, or members of other groups. This is not an argument against making the Jewish victims more visible in the memorial landscape. It is an argument against constructing precise proportions where the documents do not support them.
It is for precisely this reason that the question of the crosses at the Treblinka I Execution Site must be approached with care. I believe that the Jewish victims are not sufficiently visible there today. That needs to change. At the same time, we need to explain how the site acquired its present form. The crosses were not erected by the current management. The surviving design documentation dates back to 1964. They are therefore also part of the history of Treblinka’s post-war commemoration. This does not mean that everything should remain unchanged. Quite the opposite. Visitors should know why particular symbols are present, when they were introduced and whom they refer to. Without such an explanation, it is easy to assume that the current appearance of the site is a deliberate choice made by the Museum today. It is not. Care must also be taken not to create a new omission while remedying an existing one. Greater visibility for the memory of the Jewish victims should not mean removing symbols that are important to Poles, Roma and Sinti. Conversely, the presence of Christian symbolism must not result in the Jewish dimension of the history of Treblinka I becoming invisible. This is not about dividing the space mathematically between different groups. It is about maintaining an honest sense of historical proportion in the story we tell. Visitors should understand who was imprisoned at Treblinka I, who died there, what the sources allow us to say, and what we still do not know. They should also understand why the memorial itself looks as it does today. That seems more honest than replacing one set of symbols with another.
The same is true of the Black Road. There is no need to minimise the problem. The Germans used fragments of Jewish gravestones in its construction. That is a fact. In recent years, larger fragments of gravestones have been removed from the road and secured. Elements that remain in the road at the points most exposed to traffic have been protected with metal panels. In some places, the route taken by vehicles was also altered so as to avoid surviving fragments of gravestones. It should also be stated clearly that the Black Road was not previously an ordinary road open to general motor traffic. Vehicle access was permitted only exceptionally, principally for people with disabilities, older visitors and those with mobility difficulties. Every such journey required the permission of the Museum Director. At the request of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the road has now been completely closed to motor vehicles. This, however, has created a different problem. There is currently no alternative access road between Treblinka II and Treblinka I. Building a new road would require a separate infrastructure project. Current estimates put the cost at close to PLN 10 million and indicate that approximately 2,000 trees would have to be felled. That, in turn, would constitute a serious intervention in the historic landscape. This is therefore not a choice between a good solution and a bad one. Each option has consequences. The gravestones must be protected. The landscape must be protected. We must also remember those visitors who are unable to cover the entire route on foot. Finding a solution that reconciles these needs is the real problem we face today.
The question of the stones bearing the names of Jedwabne and Radziłów is more complex still. There is no dispute that most of the Jews from those towns were not murdered at Treblinka. Nor is there any reason to soften the way in which the crimes of 1941 and the participation of part of the local Polish population are presented. The question is a different one: must correcting a mistaken reading of the memorial necessarily require the physical removal of the stones? The history of how they came to be there matters. In June 1993, the Commission for the Protection of Memory and Commemoration of the Martyrdom of the Jewish Nation at the Association of Polish Jews in Israel requested that additional place names be added to the stones of the memorial. Benjamin Majerczak wrote that such symbolic commemoration might remain ‘the only testimony to the existence of a Jewish community in the town’. A year later, the co-creators of the memorial, Adam Haupt and Franciszek Duszeńko, agreed to the addition of the names. This changes the way in which these stones should be understood. They are not an idea of the current management, nor are they a product of recent Polish politics of memory. They were introduced at the initiative of a Jewish organisation and with the consent of the creators of the memorial. They have themselves become part of the history of this commemoration. That does not mean they can be left without explanation. If visitors may come away with the mistaken impression that the Jews of Jedwabne and Radziłów were murdered at Treblinka, that impression must be corrected clearly and without euphemism. Professor Daniel Blatman has proposed the following formula: ‘Do not remove, but explain; do not obscure the responsibility of the local population, but state it unambiguously.’ This approach deserves serious consideration. The memorial can itself be understood as part of the history of commemoration, while also providing today’s visitors with precise historical information.
The Wall of Names concerns an entirely different problem. We do not know the names of the majority of Jews murdered at Treblinka II. We must not create the impression that a complete list of victims is being compiled. But the fact that we do not have all the names is not an argument against restoring those we do know. That is the purpose of the project. The Wall is being created in cooperation with the Jewish Historical Institute and the ‘Treblinka Remembrance’ Foundation. Documentation from Yad Vashem is also being used. It should communicate two things at once: the names that have been recovered, and the enormity of that part of memory which will probably never be reconstructed.
At the end of the Haaretz article, Professor Havi Dreifuss argues that the Museum is attempting to limit discussion of Polish involvement in the looting of Jewish property and to counterbalance it with stories of the Righteous. This is a serious allegation. The best way to assess it is therefore to look at specific examples from the exhibition script. Our position is straightforward. The exhibition should present the full spectrum of conduct towards Jews: assistance, indifference, looting, denunciation, violence and the exploitation of the deportees’ desperate situation. I see no purpose in ‘balancing’ one phenomenon against another. History is not a balance sheet. If the sources speak of robbery, we must speak of robbery. If they speak of denunciation, denunciation must be shown. If they document assistance, that too forms part of the history. The problem begins when a single example is used to construct an image of an entire group, or when different phenomena are presented without any indication of their scale. The exhibition is being prepared in cooperation with the Jewish Historical Institute. That does not mean it is beyond criticism. It should be criticised. The most useful criticism, however, identifies a specific passage, a specific solution and a specific problem. Those are matters that can then be addressed.
All these issues have one thing in common. A historian is responsible not only for what they say, but also for the degree of certainty with which they say it. A museum must not hide behind an alleged lack of sources when sources exist and say things that are uncomfortable. Nor should it fill gaps with its own convictions merely because a particular version of events appears plausible. In our response to Haaretz, we wrote: ‘To say “we do not know”, when the documentation does not allow us to say more, is not denialism. It is a fundamental duty of the historian and the museum.’ That sentence captures our position well. ‘We do not know’ does not mean ‘we do not want to know’. It means only that we do not wish to present a hypothesis as a fact. If new documents, new research or sources emerge that alter our present understanding, the Museum should be prepared to revise its position. It should respond in the same way if it becomes clear that an existing form of commemoration does not make one group of victims sufficiently visible, or leads visitors to mistaken conclusions.
That does not always mean, however, that what was created earlier must be removed. Treblinka also has a history of its own commemoration. Some of its elements date from the 1960s; others were introduced later. Some reflect the thinking of their own period. Today we can comment on them, supplement them and, at times, correct them. It is important, however, that visitors should understand what dates from the period of the war, what belongs to the post-war history of remembrance, and what constitutes the Museum’s contemporary commentary. This makes it possible to understand not only the history of Treblinka itself, but also the history of how Treblinka has been remembered.
When allegations of this seriousness are made, readers have a right to see not only the opinions of those involved in the dispute, but also the documents on which those opinions are based. Treblinka requires a willingness to speak about difficult matters, including those that are uncomfortable for Polish collective memory. It also requires a readiness to correct what is incomplete in the existing forms of commemoration. But responsibility for this place also requires restraint where the sources do not allow us to say more. These two obligations are not contradictory. This is precisely what responsible historical museum practice should entail.
Memory at Treblinka should not be constructed in opposition to anyone. It should not become a place in which symbols, national sensitivities or competing claims over whose memory should be more visible are set against one another. It should remain a place in which the victims come first, and in which the duty of those responsible for their memory today is to reconstruct their history as faithfully as possible. This will not always be easy. The sources are incomplete, post-war forms of commemoration have histories of their own, and contemporary knowledge does not always allow us to provide the answers that are now expected of a museum. In such circumstances, honesty requires both the courage to speak about difficult and uncomfortable facts and the courage to say: this, we still do not know.
Remembrance should not consist in removing successive layers of history simply because we interpret them differently today. Sometimes they need to be changed, sometimes supplemented, and sometimes, above all, explained. A person visiting Treblinka should know not only what happened here, but also why the memorial site looks as it does, who made decisions about its form and when, and what, from today’s perspective, still requires further explanation.
This applies to the memory of Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti, and to all the other victims of Treblinka. Presenting one group more fully does not have to diminish the memory of another. On the contrary, a mature memorial site should be capable of accommodating different experiences while maintaining a proper sense of historical proportion and without attributing to the sources more than they actually establish.
Perhaps this is the Treblinka Museum’s most important responsibility today: not to defend a version of history once adopted, but to remain willing continually to test it, supplement it and, where necessary, revise it. Without fear of difficult facts, but equally without replacing knowledge with conviction. The memory of Treblinka is too important to be subordinated to the controversies of the present. Above all, it must remain an obligation towards those who were murdered here.