Treblinka was built in the Spring of 1942. It is estimated that 870,000 people were murdered in Treblinka by the Germans.

Treblinka was, above all else, a death camp. Only a very small number of inmates survived. According to some sources, there were, at any given time only about 700 to 1,000 Jewish prisoners kept at Treblinka, with about 600-700 kept in camp A and another 150-300 in camp B. All other Jews that arrived were immediately "processed" - that's a cleansed way of saying they were brutally processed through the Nazi killing mechanism, separated from their possessions including the clothes they wore, gassed and cremated - effectively, efficiently, smoothly and quickly.

There were a series of revolts in Treblinka, acts of resistance, attempts to gain freedom. Some were successful, most were not.

In August, 1943, the remaining 850 inmates attempted a final revolt. At least half were killed during the revolt itself. Of the remaining amount, most were caught by ther Germans. In several documented cases, non-Jews found the escaped prisoners and turned them back over to the Germans for a reward.

Parts of Treblinka were destroyed during subsequent revolts, and on October 20, 1943, the last Jews of Treblinka were brought to the camp for extermination. The camp was then dismantled and the remaining inmates shot.

To hide the evidence of their crimes, the Germans planted trees, and a Ukrainian family settled the land.

Today, Treblinka is a sudden break in the trees, populated by 17,000 stones of various sizes and colors. Each stone represents a community, and many stones bear the names of a Jewish community decimated by the Holocaust.

Pick a stone and ask it to tell you a story of the Jewish community it represents. The wind will blow, the sun will shine, and the rock will be silent.

That, after all, is the truest testimony of all. The world went about its business, there was silence in the world, and more than six million Jews were murdered.

Treblinka was the hardest of the camps for me to understand. There is nothing left. It is a vast field covered in part by groups of stones. It was good that we had been to Maidanek so that we could imagine what the gas chambers were like in Treblinka. It was good that we’d been in Auschwitz, because it was only through our imagination that we could imagine the barracks where the inmates slept. And it was good that we had been to Chelmno, so that we could imagine how the new arrivals were "processed" and ultimately murdered.

But the stones were placed there by the Poles. It is a Polish memorial, not a Jewish one. The wind continues to blow, the sun continues to shine, but the Jews of Treblinka are not here.