Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Join us in conversation with Jacob Flaws, author of Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp, which reassesses the popular historical narrative of Treblinka as a “secret” site of mass killing to create a holistic representation of the death camp during its operation.
About Spaces of Treblinka
With some 900,000 people murdered there between July 1942 and October 1943, history has conceived of Treblinka as an isolated killing center with few witnesses and fewer survivors. Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp rejects that narrative: Rather than the secret, sanitized site of industrial killing Treblinka was intended to be, Jacob Flaws argues, the mass murder was well known to the nearby townspeople. Through spatial reality, Flaws traces the conceptions, fantasies, ideological assumptions, and memories of Treblinka from witnesses in the camp and surrounding towns. By examining 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—Flaws reveals that there were more witnesses to Treblinka than previously realized, as the transnational groups near and within the camp overlapped and interacted. Utilizing testimonies, oral histories, and recollections from Jewish, German, and Polish witnesses who experienced the sights, sounds, and smells the camp ejected into the world around it, Spaces of Treblinka provides a 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.
About the Author
Jacob Flaws, PhD, is an assistant professor of history at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. Flaws teaches a broad range of classes on modern European history, the Holocaust, and comparative genocide. He is also a nonresident Research Fellow at The National WWII Museum’s Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Flaws was previously the World War II Studies master’s degree program lead at Arizona State University and an assistant teaching professor in history and Jewish Studies. He earned his PhD in 2020 from the University of Colorado-Boulder where he studied under David Shneer and David Ciarlo. Flaws is the author of Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (University of Nebraska Press), as well as two journal articles and a forthcoming chapter in the edited Routledge volume, The Eastern Front.
Join us in conversation with Jacob Flaws, author of Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp, which reassesses the popular historical narrative of Treblinka as a “secret” site of mass killing to create a holistic representation of the death camp during its operation.
About Spaces of Treblinka
With some 900,000 people murdered there between July 1942 and October 1943, history has conceived of Treblinka as an isolated killing center with few witnesses and fewer survivors. Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp rejects that narrative: Rather than the secret, sanitized site of industrial killing Treblinka was intended to be, Jacob Flaws argues, the mass murder was well known to the nearby townspeople. Through spatial reality, Flaws traces the conceptions, fantasies, ideological assumptions, and memories of Treblinka from witnesses in the camp and surrounding towns. By examining 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—Flaws reveals that there were more witnesses to Treblinka than previously realized, as the transnational groups near and within the camp overlapped and interacted. Utilizing testimonies, oral histories, and recollections from Jewish, German, and Polish witnesses who experienced the sights, sounds, and smells the camp ejected into the world around it, Spaces of Treblinka provides a 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.
About the Author
Jacob Flaws, PhD, is an assistant professor of history at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. Flaws teaches a broad range of classes on modern European history, the Holocaust, and comparative genocide. He is also a nonresident Research Fellow at The National WWII Museum’s Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Flaws was previously the World War II Studies master’s degree program lead at Arizona State University and an assistant teaching professor in history and Jewish Studies. He earned his PhD in 2020 from the University of Colorado-Boulder where he studied under David Shneer and David Ciarlo. Flaws is the author of Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (University of Nebraska Press), as well as two journal articles and a forthcoming chapter in the edited Routledge volume, The Eastern Front.
