 |
| The monument dedicated to Janusz Korczak and the children of his orphanage at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw is widely regarded as his symbolic grave (cenotaph). Pan Misza - Michal Wasserman Wróblewski, the only teacher from Dom Sierot who survived the deportation, stands before his master. |
Post scriptum is a Latin expression meaning "after writing," used as a note at the end of a text, and in letters after a signature. Under the Post Scriptum (abbreviated as PS), information is added that has been forgotten or whose content doesn't fit the main message. I contemplated this particular post scriptum while reading and editing the book by Pan Misza, my father. Like my father, I didn't want to introduce the martyrdom section early in my descriptions, so this will not attract the reader's attention. This particular postscriptum is actually a response to my own long-standing questions and reflections.
Janusz Korczak does and does not have a grave at Treblinka. The same situation concerns almost 950,000 Jews who were murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp. Initially, gassed victims were buried in large mass graves.
In 1943, the Nazis, in an attempt to hide evidence of the mass murder, ordered the bodies to be exhumed from mass graves and burned on large, open-air pyres made of railway lines and wood. Thereafter, ashes were mixed with sand and spread over a large area of the campgrounds. Therefore, the Treblinka monument serves as a memorial to all those who were murdered there, including Korczak, the Dom Sierot staff, and 239 children. The entire area at the Treblinka death camp is regarded as a mass grave as the ashes of the victims are commingled with the soil of the camp site.
There is, however, a single stone within the Treblinka memorial that commemorates Dr. Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit). The stone is the only one among the 17,000 stones at the site that bears an individual name.
Treblinka was the second deadliest Nazi extermination camp, after Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most of the Polish Jews were murdered there (not in Auschwitz). Victims were transported to the camp in the cattle wagons and murdered in gas chambers with carbon monoxide exhaust fumes. It happened immediately upon arrival. The Treblinka extermination camp was in operation from July 23, 1942, to October 1943. Gassing operations ceased after the prisoner uprising on August 2, 1943, and the final transport of Jews was murdered on August 19, 1943.
The last time my mother, Lunia Rozental, saw her father was on June 26, 1942, in the Warsaw ghetto. In the morning, my grandfather, Gabriel Rozental was going to get a free soup from a soup kitchen on Ogrodowa Street. Gross Action had just started. The same day he did not show up at home, the rest of the family understood that he was being deported to the Treblinka death camp. After that day, the Rozental sisters heard nothing more from their father. On that day, 6,400 Jews were transported to the death camp Treblinka. There is no single photo of my grandfather Gabriel Rozental. He was murdered in Treblinka at the age of 48.
My grandmother, Helena Rozental née Polirsztok, was also murdered in Treblinka. To avoid deportation, she worked and lived in a factory in the ghetto that manufactured brushes for German contractors. However, she was taken from there on August 3, 1942, to Umschlagplatz and Treblinka. My mother went to visit her that evening and found only an empty bed in the room where she lived with other workers. She sat on her mother's bed for a long time. It was probably then that she decided to escape from the ghetto despite the great dangers outside. On that day, 6,458 Jews were transported to the death camp Treblinka.
On August 5, 6,623 Jews were transported to the death camp Treblinka. Among them were Janusz Korczak, Pani Stefa, 239 children, and ten teachers. Several other orphanages from the Little Ghetto were also sent on that day to Treblinka.
The ashes of my grandparents, Helena and Gabriel Rozental, and more than 100 other members of the Polirsztok, Rozental, and Wójcikiewicz families from Warsaw are scattered around the Treblinka area.
The monument dedicated to Janusz Korczak and the children of his orphanage at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw is nowadays widely regarded as his symbolic grave (cenotaph). The monument serves as a place for remembrance and mourning in the city where he lived and worked. It is symbolic because his physical remains lie at the site of the Treblinka extermination camp.
 |
| Pan Misza, (Wasserman-Wróblewski) at the Korczak stone in Treblinka. |
 |
 |
 |
| There is, however, a single stone within the Treblinka memorial that commemorates Dr. Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit). The stone is the only one among the 17,000 stones at the site that bears an individual name. |
