Holocaust Remembrance Day: Poland pilgrims face magnitude of death camps, today's Hamas horrors

LUBLIN, MIEDZYRZEC, and TREBLINKA, Poland – Israel is commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day this year on May 6th against the backdrop of the October 7th massacre.

Although the scale was smaller, it brought many back to the murder of Jews during the Holocaust and many Israelis felt the spirit was the same.

Shortly before the current war began, CBN News visited the site of Poland's Treblinka death camp and the city of Lublin, where the Nazis ruled the country in the Second World War.

One part of Lublin became known as the German SS city due to the black-uniformed Nazi's presence here.

David Pileggi, rector of Christ Church in Jerusalem, leads the Narrow Bridge historical tours of Poland, focusing on areas where the Jewish community lived and prospered for a thousand years and then the Holocaust happened.

He told CBN News, "It was from here (in Lublin) that they planned the murder of over two million Polish Jews. These were the desk murderers – people who were bureaucrats, secretaries, planners, junior officers. They arranged, for this murder to take place, and they were equally, if not more responsible, than those who actually did the physical killing."

From here, SS squads would organize train timetables, dispatch killing units to Jewish towns, or round up Jews to eventually be sent to one of Poland's death camps.

"Poland became the place of death because this is where most Jews in Europe lived. They lived in Poland, Central Europe, Eastern Europe. So this was simply a matter of convenience and logistics," Pileggi stated.

One example is today a beautiful town square in Miedzyrzec, about 65 miles from Lublin, where the Nazis forced the Jewish people to come, stand, and wait for the train to take them to Treblinka.

From the surrounding villages, trains would transport tens of thousands of Jews through the woods to their ultimate destination of death.

The Treblinka death camp was only in operation for 15 months, but during that time, the Nazis murdered 925,000 Jews there.

Australian visitor Marion Sully told us, "I've known about the word Treblinka for many, many years." But she insists just being aware of this history isn't enough.

"And to be here now is to be really impacted, she said. "It's probably the hardest thing that I need to do, is to acknowledge how evil and wicked men can become. Just not men, but women and, it could even happen so, to anyone."

Kay Harris from Seattle, Washington, agreed. "Just the impact of how people who are just common, ordinary people can be so cold – for so long. And it's just shocking and horrifying, and I think about the day that we live in and how parallel this could be to our time today," Harris declared.

Teresa Gardner, director of Zion Center for Worship and the Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina, noted, "You can hear the numbers, but when you begin to understand the individuals, it impacts you in a whole different way and you realize – again – what was behind this evil, this destruction, the deception; and sadly and very disconcertingly, I believe we see some of those same things in the world today."

CBN News