Treblinka Survivor’s Daughter To Design Education Center at Death Camp
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
The Israeli daughter of a Jew who escaped Treblinka will design a Holocaust education center to be opened on the premises of the Nazi death camp.
The plan to have Orit Willenberg-Giladi, an architect from Tel Aviv and daughter of Samuel Willenberg, design the center was announced August 2 at a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the uprising in Treblinka.
“We meet at one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the world,” said Prof. Pawel Spiewak, director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, during the ceremony.
The Treblinka extermination camp was partly ruined during the uprising of prisoners which took place 70 years ago, on Aug. 2, 1943.
In total, approximately 870,000 people were murdered at Treblinka, according to the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. The first transports reached Treblinka on July 23, 1942 and included Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto.
“Our goal was to destroy the factory of death,” said Samuel Willenberg, who is the last known living survivor from the camp. “This whole revolt lasted maybe 20 or 30 minutes. We wanted this camp to stop working. In the forest I started to shout ‘hell is burnt’.” Willenberg fought and escaped during the uprising.
Shevah Weiss, a former Israeli ambassador to Poland, referred during the ceremony to the recent ban on ritual slaughter in Poland. “This is a bridge. I’m talking to Poles. Do not destroy this bridge today. There are not many Jews in Poland. Let them live peacefully and preserve their rituals,” he said.
During the ceremony, participants laid the foundation stone for the Holocaust Education Center of Treblinka, which is to be built over the next three to four years. The project’s total cost it still unknown.
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