Even before the end of the Second World War was declared, institutions, including the Polish-Soviet Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, started investigating crimes the Nazi regime perpetrated at the Treblinka death camp.
Between 1941 and 1942, the Schutzstaffel (SS) established on this site in north-east Poland a forced labour camp for Jewish people, known as Treblinka I, and an extermination centre—Treblinka II—a mile down rail. The location was chosen for one of the Operation Reinhard killing centres because of its efficient rail connections to Warsaw, Lublin, Radom and Bialystok.
An estimated 925,000 people, primarily Jewish people deported from the Warsaw ghettos, but also Poles, Roma and Sinti were murdered at Treblinka. It is, as Iwona Wasilewska, the deputy director for administrative and economic affairs for the Treblinka Museum, puts it, “one of the most significant sites of martyrdom in the world”. And yet, for decades, a handful of Treblinka survivors, notably the author and sculptor Samuel Willenberg and his wife Ada Krystyna, as well as Polish citizens and international academics, have had to fight for it to not be entirely forgotten. A new purpose-built museum now in the works aims to ensure that never happens.
The idea of a Treblinka memorial museum was first mooted in 1947, but no concrete measures were put in place. The great lengths the Nazi authorities went to in order to erase all evidence of their activities upon their departure go some way to explaining why. When Soviet troops advanced on the area in July 1944, the camp authorities dismantled the buildings, killed all remaining prisoners, and evacuated their personnel. They disguised the land as a farm under the charge of an ethnic German farmer and sowed the earth with lupine flowers.
In 1964 an official memorial, designed by Franciszek Duszeńko, Adam Haupt and Franciszek Strynkiewicz, was unveiled, and the Mausoleum of Struggle and Martyrdom in Treblinka was established. In the 1980s this was turned into a museum, under the direction of the Regional Museum of Siedlce. It was only in 2018 that the Museum Treblinka was established as an independent cultural institution, under joint direction of the Masovian Voivodeship Self-Government and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
But all this time, it has been housed in a small 1960s house. Built for an erstwhile caretaker, this diminutive building was extended in the 2010s to add an exhibition space and a conference room. In that time, both significant archaeological finds and the passing of ever more Holocaust survivors have underscored the urgency for the site’s memory to be enshrined in suitable premises.
Expanded display space
Now under construction, the new museum, designed by the Warsaw architecture firm Bujnowski Architekci, features 730 sq. m of exhibition spaces—a marked improvement on the present 150 sq. m. Currently, workshops must often be held remotely which, as Wasilewska says, precludes people from “engag[ing] directly with the authentic memorial site”, which is a critical aim.
Recent geo-radar studies of Treblinka’s basement levels, initiated by the British scholar Caroline Sturdy Colls, and undertaken by Sebastian Różycki of the Warsaw University of Technology, have found new evidence of gas chambers and cremation grids. In 2025 the research focus is on locating what was known as “der Schlauch” (the tube)—the camouflaged passageway that led from the fenced-in receiving area to the gas chambers. A new publication, Treblinka: Traces of Crime, which collates all archaeological findings to date, is due for release in April.
The new building will include expanded education rooms and a conference hall as well as administration, archive and storage facilities, and a space for quiet reflection. Willenberg’s figurative sculptures, many of which depict in unbearable detail daily life in the camp—a father bending down to take off a child’s shoe; a huddle of naked women; prisoners sorting through piles of belongings—are set to have a dedicated hall.
In 2024 the museum saw 37,000 visitors, marking a gradual return to pre-pandemic levels (over 61,000 in 2019). The hope is that the new building will see significantly higher numbers.
To Wasilewska’s mind, the need is plain: “Treblinka is a place where, during the German Nazi occupation, contempt for fellow human beings was concentrated, resulting in genocide. Here, the horrific plan to murder the innocent was executed on a massive scale. This places upon us the responsibility not only to remember the tragic fate of its victims but also to continually examine our own value systems and attitudes toward others. This is essential not only to preserve memory but also to prevent similar crimes from occurring in the future.”
