10 grudnia 2025 z Jacobem Flawsem z Kean University w New Jersey, USA

Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp

Spaces of Treblinka 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.

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.  Spaces of Treblinka 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. See  https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781496239730/spaces-of-treblinka/

Dr. Jacob Flaws is an assistant professor of history at Kean University in Union, NJ where he teaches on topics in Modern European history, the Holocaust, and global genocide. He is the author of the 2024 book  Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp, published by the University of Nebraska Press, as well as several other journal articles and book chapters. Flaws earned his Ph.D. In history from the University of Colorado-Boulder.  

Topic: Polish University Abroad History Seminar Zoom Meeting

Time: Dec 10, 2025 18:30 London

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