The Nazis had built a mock train station there to con the Jews into believing they were at a transfer terminal, a ploy intended to keep them calm and orderly. At the end of the war, Treblinka was dismantled by the Nazis. Today its existence is marked by more than 17,000 stones planted in concrete. Each stone represents a community from which Jews came. The larger the stone, the larger the community.
Most larger stones bear the names of the communities they represent.
I found the stone for Bialystok, where some of my family had lived. I said a prayer and lit a candle. The first camps we saw were secluded. Majdanek, in contrast, sits at the edge of Lublin, a medium-size town in Eastern Poland. The vastness of this camp is incredible.