Although the uprising lasted only a few dozen minutes, its memory lives on and has taken on an international character. The 82nd anniversary of the prisoners' rebellion was commemorated at the site of the former German Nazi death camp Treblinka II. The celebrations were attended by representatives of the authorities, state institutions, the diplomatic corps, and the clergy, as well as Holocaust survivors and the Righteous Among the Nations.
The Willenbergs pay tribute
A special guest at the ceremony was Ada Krystyna Willenberg, a Holocaust survivor and widow of Samuel Willenberg, a participant in the Treblinka uprising and one of several dozen fighters who survived the war. Ada Willenberg, 96, told Heschel Center News that she visits Treblinka every year. "Every time I think it's the last time, but somehow someone is kind to me. I am not a believer, so I cannot say that God is kind to me, but someone is kind to me, because I am still functioning and can speak, my mind is still working," confessed Ada Willenberg, recalling that Treblinka is a special place not only because of her husband. Many members of her family died here, including her mother, Rachel Lubelczyk.
Today, 82 years after the events that marked the Willenberg family for years, Ada's daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter arrived in Treblinka. Orit Willenberg-Giladi is a famous Israeli architect and the author of two designs for the Education and Exhibition Center in Treblinka. “I grew up hearing stories about what happened here. My father was completely devoted and dedicated his entire life to commemorating and restoring the memory of Treblinka and everything that happened here,” Orit Willenberg-Giladi told Heschel Center News. Her daughter Lee, who came to Poland with her three-month-old daughter Gaia, stood with her mother and grandmother at the Monument to the Victims of the Treblinka Extermination Camp. “We will not be defeated, which is why I came here with my daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter (...) this is our revenge,” emphasized Ada Willenberg.
She added that, for her, Treblinka is “the place where she lives and where almost her entire family perished.” “My husband was here for over 10 months. For several decades, we came here with groups of young people and spoke about what happened,” said Ada Willenberg. The Holocaust survivor emphasized that she is alive thanks to a Polish family who hid her after she escaped from the ghetto. However, she was not free from fears of denunciations and the phenomenon of extortion and blackmailing Jews who had escaped from the ghetto.
Testimony and commemoration
The story of Ada Willenberg's mother was recalled by Marta Cienkowska, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, who was present at the ceremony. "We were ordered to line up in single file, and from our compact group, we transformed into a huge human snake. My mother stood in front of me at a certain distance—when she turned around at one point, she saw that several children younger than me had lined up behind me. She had a bad feeling, perhaps she thought that I looked quite childish compared to them. She decided to switch places with me, so now I was in front of my mother and behind her was a group of children. I did not realize then that my mother would pay for this decision with her life. Did my mother realize that by doing so she would save mine?" Minister Marta Cienkowska quoted Ada Willenberg's memoirs. She emphasized that Treblinka was the place of death for about 900,000 Jews. “This place is the largest cemetery of Polish citizens, victims of World War II,” said the Minister of Culture, adding that the Treblinka Museum, co-run with the local government of the Mazovia Province, commemorates this history. The new building is to be ready by the end of this year. The permanent exhibition is to be presented in two years.
A joint Polish-Israeli voice
A letter from Polish President Andrzej Duda was read by his advisor Tadeusz Deszkiewicz. The Polish president emphasized that the overwhelming horror and sense of helplessness in the face of unimaginable crimes cannot justify silence about the Shoah. "Let the truth be heard today: the Nazi Third Reich conceived and implemented a plan for the complete extermination of the Jews. Taking advantage of the fact that the occupied Polish territories were one of the largest concentrations of this nation in history, the invaders built camps here, where men, women, and children of Jewish origin were systematically murdered on an unprecedented scale," wrote the President of Poland in his letter.
The Israeli ambassador to Poland, Jaakow Finkelstein, also spoke out against the falsification of history. He pointed out that although the Treblinka prisoners' uprising was not a military success, it was an act of human courage that is of great significance today. “We do not live for ourselves alone, we also live for those whose voices were silenced in the gas chambers,” said the Israeli ambassador, quoting the words of Jechiel Mejer Rajchman, one of the survivors of Treblinka. “Even now, in 2025, there are still public figures who deny the agony of those who were murdered, who suffer from a kind of amnesia – it is to them that we say – we remember,” assured the Israeli ambassador.
The director of the Jewish Historical Institute, Dr. Michał Trębacz, admitted that although the “transmission of memory” about Treblinka encountered various obstacles, the memory itself survived, also through the establishment of a memorial site on the grounds of the former German camp. “It is our duty to protect the memory it expresses, to oppose attempts to relativize this history, not so that history does not repeat itself, but out of respect for the families murdered here, out of respect for the witnesses and their stories,” said the director of the Institute.
The Treblinka uprising
On August 2, 1943, an armed rebellion broke out in the German extermination camp in Treblinka, involving over 800 prisoners. The insurgents attacked the guards and set fire to a fuel tank. The camp command and the headquarters of Operation Reinhardt tried to downplay the uprising and keep it secret, and in late autumn 1943, the Germans began to cover up the traces of their crimes in Treblinka II. About 200 prisoners managed to escape during the uprising. It is estimated that no more than 100 of them survived until the end of the war.
The last survivor of the Treblinka uprising was Samuel Willenberg, who died in 2016 and came from Częstochowa. After emigrating to Israel, he and his family visited Poland many times on the anniversary of August 2 and took part in the celebrations. He left behind an artistic legacy – a series of sculptures depicting the lives of Treblinka prisoners and the uprising they organized. In accordance with the author's wishes, the exhibition will eventually be housed in the newly built museum pavilion.
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Heschel Center News