Spaces of Treblinka

<p><em>Spaces of Treblinka</em> utilizes testimonies oral histories and recollections from Jewish German and Polish witnesses to create a holistic representation of the Treblinka death camp during its operation. This narrative rejects the historical misconception that Treblinka was an isolated Nazi extermination camp with few witnesses and fewer survivors. Rather than the secret sanitized site of industrial killing Treblinka was intended to be Jacob Flaws argues Treblinka's mass murder was well known to the nearby townspeople who experienced the sights sounds smells people bodies and train cars the camp ejected into the surrounding world.</p><p>Through spatial reality Flaws portrays the conceptions fantasies ideological assumptions and memories of Treblinka from witnesses in the camp and surrounding towns. To do so he identifies six key spaces that once composed the historical site of Treblinka: the ideological space the behavioral space the space of life and death the interactional space the sensory space and the extended space. By examining these spaces Flaws reveals that there were more witnesses to Treblinka than previously realized as the transnational groups near and within the camp overlapped and interacted. <em>Spaces of Treblinka</em> provides a staggering and profound reassessment of the relationship between knowing and not knowing and asks us to confront the timely warning that we in our modern interconnected world can all become witnesses. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>Jacob Flaws</strong> is an assistant professor of history at Kean University.</p><p><br></p>