“We are honoring those killed in this unequal fight and paying homage to all Holocaust victims,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote in a letter that was read out during anniversary commemorations on Monday.
“During the 15 months of its existence, the death factory at Treblinka took the lives of nearly 900,000 people,” Morawiecki added.
Exactly 78 years ago, on August 2, 1943, around 700 Jews staged an armed revolt in the Treblinka camp in German-occupied Poland.
According to the Treblinka Museum, in Poland's north-east, around 200 fighters managed to escape, but half of them were later killed after a chase in cars and on horses. Only 70 survived World War II.
On July 22, 1942, Germans began deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. Over the two months that followed, from 5,000 to 7,000 Jews were transported every day by train to Treblinka, where they were exterminated.
In August 1943, German soldiers began a gradual "liquidation" of the camp. In November, the ground at Treblinka was plowed.
The Treblinka death camp operated between July 1942 and October 1943. During this time, between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered there by the Germans, along with 2,000 Roma people.
Treblinka was the second-largest extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland after Auschwitz-Birkenau.
(jh/gs)
Source: IAR, Treblinka Museum