Editing Treblinka extermination camp (section)

===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}}