Editing Treblinka extermination camp (section)

==Arrival of the Soviets==
In late July 1944, Soviet forces approached from the east. The departing Germans, who had already destroyed most direct evidence of [[genocidal intent]], burned surrounding villages to the ground, including 761 buildings in [[Poniatowo, Ostrów Mazowiecka County|Poniatowo]], [[Prostyń]], and [[Grądy, Gmina Małkinia Górna|Grądy]]. Many families were murdered.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=30|loc=graph 1}} The fields of grain that had once fed the SS were burned.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=402}} On 19 August 1944, German forces blew up the church in Prostyń and its bell tower, the last defensive strongpoint against the Red Army in the area.<ref name="Rytel-Andrianik/Prostyń">{{cite web |url=http://parafia-prostyn.drohiczyn.opoka.org.pl/ktrojca2.html |title=Kościoły Św.Trójcy |publisher=Drohiczyn Learned Society |work=Historia parafii Prostyń [History of Prostyń congregation] |year=2010 |access-date=9 December 2013 |first=Paweł |last=Rytel-Andrianik |language=pl |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304034718/http://parafia-prostyn.drohiczyn.opoka.org.pl/ktrojca2.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> When the Soviets entered Treblinka on 16 August, the extermination zone had been levelled, ploughed over, and planted with [[lupin]]s.<ref name="USHMM-Treblinka"/>{{sfn|Arad|1987|p=247}} What remained, wrote visiting Soviet war correspondent [[Vasily Grossman]], were small pieces of bone in the soil, human teeth, scraps of paper and fabric, broken dishes, jars, shaving brushes, rusted pots and pans, cups of all sizes, mangled shoes, and lumps of human hair.{{sfn|Grossman|1946|p=406}} The road leading to the camp was pitch black. Until mid-1944 human ashes (up to 20 carts every day) had been regularly strewn by the remaining prisoners along the road for {{cvt|2|km|mi|abbr=off}} in the direction of Treblinka&nbsp;I.{{sfn|Grossman|1946|p=402}} When the war ended, destitute and starving locals started walking up the Black Road (as they began to call it) in search of man-made nuggets shaped from melted gold in order to buy bread.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=378}}

===Early attempts at preservation===
[[File:Treblinka death camp 2018i.jpg|thumb|upright|Treblinka memorial in 2018. Plaque states [[never again]] in several languages.]]
The new Soviet-installed government did not preserve evidence of the camp. The scene was not legally protected at the conclusion of World War II. In September 1947, 30 students from the local school, led by their teacher Feliks Szturo and priest Józef Ruciński, collected larger bones and skull fragments into farmers' wicker baskets and buried them in a single mound.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|pp=416, 418}} The same year the first remembrance committee ''Komitet Uczczenia Ofiar Treblinki'' (KUOT; Committee for the Remembrance of the Victims of Treblinka) formed in Warsaw, and launched a design competition for the memorial.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=117}}

Stalinist officials allocated no funding for the design competition nor for the memorial, and the committee disbanded in 1948; by then many survivors had left the country. In 1949, the town of Sokołów Podlaski protected the camp with a new fence and gate. A work crew with no archaeological experience was sent in to landscape the grounds. In 1958, after the end of [[Stalinism in Poland]], the Warsaw provincial council declared Treblinka to be a place of martyrology.{{efn|"Place of martyrology" is a [[calque]] borrowed from the popular Polish phrase "Miejsce Martyrologii Żydów", which was introduced by the Act of Parliament ([[Sejm]]) {{nowrap|on 2 July 1947}} in Warsaw.{{sfn|Cywiński|2013}}|name=calque}} Over the next four years, {{cvt|127|ha|acre}} of land that had formed part of the camp was purchased from 192 farmers in the villages of Prostyń, Grądy, Wólka Okrąglik and [[Nowa Maliszewa]].{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=118}}

===Construction of the memorial===
The construction of a monument {{cvt|8|m}} in height designed by sculptor [[Franciszek Duszeńko]] was inaugurated on 21 April 1958 with the laying of the cornerstone at the site of the former gas chambers. The sculpture represents the trend toward large avant-garde forms introduced in the 1960s throughout Europe, with a granite tower cracked down the middle and capped by a mushroom-like block carved with abstract reliefs and Jewish symbols.<ref name="Marcuse-Genre">{{cite journal |url=http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/histpublications/files/07917-2010marcuseahrforumholocaustmemorialsgenre.pdf |title=Holocaust Memorials: The Emergence of a Genre |journal=American Historical Review |date=February 2010 |access-date=23 October 2013 |author=Marcuse, Harold |pages=35–36 of current PDF document |format=PDF file, direct download 26.3 MB |quote=Beginning with the Buchenwald memorial and numerous designs for the Birkenau competition, and continuing with the ''[[Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation|Île de la Cité]]'' in Paris, Treblinka, and Yad Vashem near Jerusalem, such experiential spaces have become a hallmark of major Holocaust memorials. |archive-date=20 December 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121220140057/http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/histpublications/files/07917-2010marcuseahrforumholocaustmemorialsgenre.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Treblinka was declared a national monument of martyrology on 10 May 1964 during an official ceremony attended by 30,000 people.{{efn|''Translation from Polish:'' The official unveiling of the monument took place on 10 May 1964. At this time, the name was introduced of the Mausoleum of the Fight and Martyrdom. The ceremony was attended by 30,000 people.&nbsp;... ''Original:'' "Oficjalne odsłonięcie pomnika odbyło się 10 maja 1964 r. Przyjęto wtedy nazwę tego miejsca – 'Mauzoleum Walki i Męczeństwa w Treblince'. W wydarzeniu tym uczestniczyło ok. 30 tys. osób.&nbsp;... Odsłonięcia dokonał wicemarszałek Sejmu PRL – [[Zenon Kliszko]]. Wśród zebranych byli więźniowie Treblinki II: [[Jankiel Wiernik]] z Izraela, [[Richard Glazar]] z Czechosłowacji, Berl Duszkiewicz z Francji i Zenon Gołaszewski z Polski."{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=122}}}}{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=122}} The monument was unveiled by [[Zenon Kliszko]], the [[Marshal of the Sejm|Marshal]] of the [[Sejm of the Republic of Poland]], in the presence of survivors of the Treblinka uprising from Israel, France, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The camp custodian's house (built nearby in 1960){{efn|The custodian and the first director of the Treblinka camp museum was Tadeusz Kiryluk, who was originally from Wólka Okrąglik.{{sfn|Kopówka|Rytel-Andrianik|2011|p=121}}|name=custodian}} was turned into an exhibition space following the [[End of Communism in Poland (1989)|collapse of communism in Poland]] in 1989 and the retirement of the custodian; it opened in 2006. It was later expanded and made into a branch of the Siedlce Regional Museum.<ref name="memorialmuseums.org">{{cite web |url=http://www.memorialmuseums.org/eng/staettens/view/59/Treblinka-Museum-of-Struggle-and-Martyrdom |title=Treblinka Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom |publisher=Portal to European Sites of Remembrance |year=2013 |access-date=14 September 2013 |website=Memorial Museums.org |archive-date=6 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306161036/http://memorialmuseums.org/eng/staettens/view/59/treblinka-museum-of-struggle-and-martyrdom |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="MWiMT">{{cite web |url=http://www.treblinka.bho.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=129 |title=The Memorial |publisher=Muzeum Walki i Męczeństwa w Treblince. Oddział Muzeum Regionalnego w Siedlcach [Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom at Treblinka. Division of the Regional Museum in Siedlce] |date=4 February 2010 |access-date=31 October 2013 |author=Kopówka, Edward |work=Treblinka. Nigdy wiecej, Siedlce 2002, pp.&nbsp;5–54. |archive-date=19 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131019060357/http://www.treblinka.bho.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=129 |url-status=live }}</ref>