During the Summer of 1942, transport trains carrying as many as 6,000 Jews began moving through the countryside in eastern Poland. Up to 120 men, women and children were locked within a single closed cattle wagon in appalling conditions. There was no food, insufficient water, poor ventilation and only a bucket for sanitary use which often doubled as a drinking water container at brief stops. As a result, many people died before reaching the end of the line. After a harrowing journey that sometimes took over three days to complete, the transports passed through a tiny hamlet who's name remains infamous today, Treblinka. Four kilometres south east of this village, the trains came to a stop at a clearing in a forest. Here, those who survived the trip were ordered out of the cattle cars and were told by an SS Officer that they had arrived at a transit camp and needed to take a shower to disinfect before being sent on to work further in the East.

The prisoners were forced to surrender their belongings and the men were separated from the women and children. Everyone was then instructed to undress before being lead up a path the Germans called Der Himmelstrasse, 'The Road to Heaven.' At the end of the path, the prisoners were herded into a building adorned with a Star of David above the entry. Once inside, they were locked in sealed rooms and gassed to death with exhaust fumes from a large engine. Under threat of execution, the Sonderkommando (work units comprised of prisoners selected from incoming transports) were then forced to remove the bodies from the gas chamber and dispose of them by burning on open air cremation pyres. During the 15 months that Treblinka II was operational, over 925,000 innocent men, women and children were sent there; just 67 of them survived. Next to Auschwitz, it was the second most murderous camp in the Nazi state. In their war against European Jewry, the German government committed resources and gave priority to the massive logistical undertaking of transporting Jews to camps like Treblinka all over the Nazi occupied territory even if it came at the expense of Germany's war against the Allies.

I decided to embark on this project after watching a film called 'Denial' (2016) which stars Rachel Weisz. I simply could not, and still to this day cannot fathom that people can deny that the Holocaust occurred, or say that the numbers of those who were murdered are exaggerated etc so I wanted to contribute something that can be used to help educate people, primarly younger generations about the atrocities that were committed by the Third Reich and its collaborators.

I started work to build the model on 8/3/2019; after assembling and painting nearly 2,000 individual components, the build was finally completed nearly two years later on 4/11/2020. This diorama depicts one of the transports en route to the extermination camp. I chose this subject for several reasons, mainly because the vast majority of Holocaust dioramas show scenes from within a camp and I've not seen one of a thisnnature. It provides a valuable opportunity to highlight the horrific conditions people were forced to endure on the trains for days at a time with no reprieve.

The locomotive is a BR-52 accompanied by G10 covered wagons. These were chosen as they were widely used during the Holocaust and have become an iconic symbol of the persecution of Europe's Jews. Within the open car there are a number of suitcases that bear the names of actual people who were sent to Treblinka II. The German and Trawniki guards frequently encouraged the victims to mark their luggage as part of the ruse to to make them feel like they were travelling somewhere safe; where possible I have included figures representing each individual named. One suitcase remains blank to honour the countless unidentified Jews who were brutally murdered by the Germans and their co-conspirators. The driver leaning out of the engine's cab represents Henryk Gawkowski who drove the trains into the camp. Gawkowski features on the cover used for 'Shoah' (1985) which is one of the most valuable compilations of testimony ever assembled on film and I have tried to replicate that image here. When I first started this build, I did not intend on including trees but after reading the account of Treblinka survivor Samuel Willenberg, I felt they were an important addition. He stated that as the transport approached the camp, the trees were so close to the wagons that people could reach through the barbed wire covering the openings and touch the branches. Scattered around the diorama are a number of butterflies resting on the purple and yellow flowers that grow all around where the railway line to the extermination centre ran. These stand as a memorial to the children who's lives were cut short, and as a reminder that hope existed even during one of, if not, the darkest chapter in human history after which the victims of the Holocaust, the survivors would return to life.

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