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Treblinka 1942-1943: Io sono l'ultimo ebreo
“Rajchman è un sopravvissuto di Treblinka. Ha visto tutto, sentito tutto, provato tutto. Ha il coraggio di deporre per la Storia.Il suo racconto è di una densità che dà i brividi. Credo di aver letto molte opere su questo stesso soggetto. E tutte sono dolorose. Alcune sollecitano dei dubbi sull’uomo, altre sul suo creatore. Quella di Rajchman, con la sua semplicità commovente, apre degli orizzonti nuovi nell’immaginario del Male. Il viaggio angosciante verso l’Ignoto. L’arrivo. L’abbandono delle ultime proprietà. La separazione delle famiglie. Le urla. Il sadismo degli ‘assassini’ e la tortura umiliante delle vittime. Il sistema funziona alla perfezione. Tutto è previsto, programmato.Gli uccisori uccidono e gli ebrei muoiono. Rajchman è restato un anno a Treblinka: dal 1942 al 1943, fino alla rivolta eroica dei disperati, cui aveva partecipato. In questo lasso di tempo, nell’odore pestilenziale permanente, ha conosciuto ciò che nessuno dovrebbe vedere: lavorava lì dove le vittime, uomini, donne e bambini, andavano verso la morte. Era lui l’ultimo essere umano che le donne vedevano prima di soffocare nelle camere a gas. [...] Come ha fatto Rajchman a vivere e sopravvivere con i morti adattandosi così velocemente a situazioni così pietrificanti?”dalla Postfazione di Elie Wiesel
130 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Chil Rajchman
1 book32 followersChil Meyer Rajchman a.k.a. Henryk Reichman nom de guerre Henryk Ruminowski (June 14, 1914 – 2004) was a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor; former prisoner of the Treblinka extermination camp which took the lives of 800,000 Jews during the genocidal Operation Reinhard in World War II. Rajchman belonged to a group of inmates who escaped successfuly during the perilous Treblinka revolt which resulted in the camp's closure in October 1943.
After the Treblinka trials he emigrated to Uruguay, where he died in 2004.
His Treblinka memoir titled "The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir" originally in Yiddish, was published in 2009 for the very first time in German and French, without the English translation which appeared in 2011 with the Preface by Elie Wiesel seven years after his death at the age of 90.
Source: wikipedia.com
After the Treblinka trials he emigrated to Uruguay, where he died in 2004.
His Treblinka memoir titled "The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir" originally in Yiddish, was published in 2009 for the very first time in German and French, without the English translation which appeared in 2011 with the Preface by Elie Wiesel seven years after his death at the age of 90.
Source: wikipedia.com
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February 8, 2019
Only 67 persons are known to have survived the extermination camp Treblinka II in occupied Poland, where as many as 900.000 people were killed over a span of 16 months.
About 300 prisoners escaped the camp in a bold revolt. More than 200 of the fleeing prisoners were killed in the ensuing manhunt.
The last survivor died in February 2016 at the age of 93.
Only a few of these survivors wrote their testimony of what went on in this death camp.
The prisoners consisted of strong young men who were spared the chambers only to be forced to assist their Nazi torturers in the massmurder.
The survivors were tormented by unimaginably painful memories of what went on there. Reading these written testimonies is equally devastating.
Rajchman knew that. He didn’t write this with the intention of publishing a book ; he simply kept his writings in a drawer and after his death in 2004, someone opened that drawer and published it.
There is little emotion to be found is this disturbing book. His vivid and detailed account of the cruelty and sadism in the camp is horrifying.
There was a reason after all, why the Nazis were so eager to leave no visible trace of such a hell on earth.
Everybody had assumed that because the history books said it was destroyed, it was. Holocaust deniers have used the lack of physical evidence to suggest there was no genocide at Treblinka. But those claims were thwarted when British archaeologists began assessing Treblinka as an archaeological site in 2007. What was revealed was the presence of previously unknown mass graves and the burnt remains of bodies (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0... ; https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/t...).
About 300 prisoners escaped the camp in a bold revolt. More than 200 of the fleeing prisoners were killed in the ensuing manhunt.
The last survivor died in February 2016 at the age of 93.
Only a few of these survivors wrote their testimony of what went on in this death camp.
The prisoners consisted of strong young men who were spared the chambers only to be forced to assist their Nazi torturers in the massmurder.
The survivors were tormented by unimaginably painful memories of what went on there. Reading these written testimonies is equally devastating.
Rajchman knew that. He didn’t write this with the intention of publishing a book ; he simply kept his writings in a drawer and after his death in 2004, someone opened that drawer and published it.
There is little emotion to be found is this disturbing book. His vivid and detailed account of the cruelty and sadism in the camp is horrifying.
There was a reason after all, why the Nazis were so eager to leave no visible trace of such a hell on earth.
Everybody had assumed that because the history books said it was destroyed, it was. Holocaust deniers have used the lack of physical evidence to suggest there was no genocide at Treblinka. But those claims were thwarted when British archaeologists began assessing Treblinka as an archaeological site in 2007. What was revealed was the presence of previously unknown mass graves and the burnt remains of bodies (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0... ; https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/t...).
May 17, 2012
The Deepest Circle of Hell
I came across the name of Chil Rajchman fairly recently. It was while reading The Road, an anthology of the shorter writings, fiction and non-fiction, of Vasily Grossman, the author of Life and Fate and Everything Flows. To be more exact it was in the appendices, the piece entitled Grossman and Treblinka.
Grossman, a Soviet Army war correspondent, was the first to gather material on the operation of Treblinka, an extermination facility close to Warsaw. The Nazis had done their best to cover the traces, destroying it completely in 1943. But by sifting through the evidence, including some personal testimony of those who lived near the camp, he was able to reconstruct it in The Hell of Treblinka, one of the earliest accounts of the death camp ever written, used by the prosecution in the trial of the main Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.
People are generally more familiar with Auschwitz than Treblinka and the other Operation Reinhard death camps, so called after Reinhard Heydrich, one of the principle architects of the Holocaust. Auschwitz was its own particular hell and more people died there than at Treblinka or any other single facility, but the paradox is that there was a greater chance of survival if one was sent there. For Auschwitz was a major centre for slave labour as well as extermination.
Treblinka was pure death. Healthy or unhealthy, male or female, young or old, most people went straight to the gas. The few who escaped immediate extermination were set aside to serve as the adjutants of destruction. All the while they themselves were subject to the most gratuitous and sadistic treatment at the hands of the German and Ukrainian guards; all the while they could be visited by death on a whim and in an instant. In the end very few survived. One such was Chil Rajchman.
Rajchman escaped from Treblinka in August 1943 during a general camp uprising. In the ten months he had spent there he was employed in various tasks – shaving the heads of women about to be consigned to the gas chambers, sorting clothes, removing gold teeth and dentures from corpses, digging up the decaying bodies of the dead after the Nazis decided on cremation. These tasks were performed under constant lashings, exhortations to work faster, faster and faster.
Rajchman set his account of this life in death down in Yiddish in 1944. Thereafter he kept it by his side, deciding not to publish during his lifetime. He died in 2004. His testament Treblinka: A Survivor’s Guide was finally translated into English in 2011. It’s the author’s legacy to the world, a witness to bitterness and despair that I find almost impossible to comprehend.
Not a word is out of place. The style is stark and direct. Dante’s vision of the Inferno is almost benign by contrast. To have seen this and not gone mad is astonishing; to have survived and not gone mad is astonishing; to have lived a normal life and not gone mad is astonishing. Words simply can’t capture the importance of this unique document, at once a testament to the worst forms of human depravity and an expression of the highest form of human nobility, the nobility of a man who could survive a descent into the abyss.
At just over a hundred pages I read it this afternoon in a single sitting, in just over an hour. I could not stop. The horror is not new to me; it’s the immediacy of the horror that Rajchman manages to convey that it makes it so utterly compelling. This is not a book to be enjoyed, but it is a book to be read.
In a way I think it was probably, for him, a kind of catharsis, too personal to be published on his lifetime, a way of coping and forgetting, a personal memory that could only be revealed after death when no further probing was possible. The very control he shows in his style, his economy of words, his total lack of embellishment, may very well have been the minimum that was possible to say. This is the top of the iceberg of horror, with so much unsaid, so much that is impossible to say, below.
The edition I have is the paperback version, published this year by Maclehose Press, translated by Solon Beinfeld and introduced by Samuel Moyn. It also includes Grossman’s essay on Treblinka, another revelation if you are coming to it for the first time. I do have a criticism. I’m raising this with considerable reluctance especially as it has no bearing at all on the five star rating I give this book. But when it comes to the horrors inflicted by the Nazis I feel that the most pedantic forms of exactness are necessary, tight enough to prevent the deniers getting through the cracks.
Moyn, I regret to say, is not the complete master of his brief. It’s completely wrong to suggest, as he does, that the western concentration camps, the ‘non extermination’ facilities, only became lethal in the last months of the war as the regime lost its ability to feed the prisoners. That may be true, to an extent, of Belsen, but it is most certainly not true of places like Dachau and, above all, Mauthausen.
No matter. It takes nothing away from a testimony that will both break your heart and leave you numb. There are things almost beyond the imagination. I am so sorry that Rajchman had to live through this horror. I’m so glad that he survived to tell his story, a fitting memorial to him and the countless thousands who did not.
I came across the name of Chil Rajchman fairly recently. It was while reading The Road, an anthology of the shorter writings, fiction and non-fiction, of Vasily Grossman, the author of Life and Fate and Everything Flows. To be more exact it was in the appendices, the piece entitled Grossman and Treblinka.
Grossman, a Soviet Army war correspondent, was the first to gather material on the operation of Treblinka, an extermination facility close to Warsaw. The Nazis had done their best to cover the traces, destroying it completely in 1943. But by sifting through the evidence, including some personal testimony of those who lived near the camp, he was able to reconstruct it in The Hell of Treblinka, one of the earliest accounts of the death camp ever written, used by the prosecution in the trial of the main Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.
People are generally more familiar with Auschwitz than Treblinka and the other Operation Reinhard death camps, so called after Reinhard Heydrich, one of the principle architects of the Holocaust. Auschwitz was its own particular hell and more people died there than at Treblinka or any other single facility, but the paradox is that there was a greater chance of survival if one was sent there. For Auschwitz was a major centre for slave labour as well as extermination.
Treblinka was pure death. Healthy or unhealthy, male or female, young or old, most people went straight to the gas. The few who escaped immediate extermination were set aside to serve as the adjutants of destruction. All the while they themselves were subject to the most gratuitous and sadistic treatment at the hands of the German and Ukrainian guards; all the while they could be visited by death on a whim and in an instant. In the end very few survived. One such was Chil Rajchman.
Rajchman escaped from Treblinka in August 1943 during a general camp uprising. In the ten months he had spent there he was employed in various tasks – shaving the heads of women about to be consigned to the gas chambers, sorting clothes, removing gold teeth and dentures from corpses, digging up the decaying bodies of the dead after the Nazis decided on cremation. These tasks were performed under constant lashings, exhortations to work faster, faster and faster.
Rajchman set his account of this life in death down in Yiddish in 1944. Thereafter he kept it by his side, deciding not to publish during his lifetime. He died in 2004. His testament Treblinka: A Survivor’s Guide was finally translated into English in 2011. It’s the author’s legacy to the world, a witness to bitterness and despair that I find almost impossible to comprehend.
Not a word is out of place. The style is stark and direct. Dante’s vision of the Inferno is almost benign by contrast. To have seen this and not gone mad is astonishing; to have survived and not gone mad is astonishing; to have lived a normal life and not gone mad is astonishing. Words simply can’t capture the importance of this unique document, at once a testament to the worst forms of human depravity and an expression of the highest form of human nobility, the nobility of a man who could survive a descent into the abyss.
At just over a hundred pages I read it this afternoon in a single sitting, in just over an hour. I could not stop. The horror is not new to me; it’s the immediacy of the horror that Rajchman manages to convey that it makes it so utterly compelling. This is not a book to be enjoyed, but it is a book to be read.
In a way I think it was probably, for him, a kind of catharsis, too personal to be published on his lifetime, a way of coping and forgetting, a personal memory that could only be revealed after death when no further probing was possible. The very control he shows in his style, his economy of words, his total lack of embellishment, may very well have been the minimum that was possible to say. This is the top of the iceberg of horror, with so much unsaid, so much that is impossible to say, below.
The edition I have is the paperback version, published this year by Maclehose Press, translated by Solon Beinfeld and introduced by Samuel Moyn. It also includes Grossman’s essay on Treblinka, another revelation if you are coming to it for the first time. I do have a criticism. I’m raising this with considerable reluctance especially as it has no bearing at all on the five star rating I give this book. But when it comes to the horrors inflicted by the Nazis I feel that the most pedantic forms of exactness are necessary, tight enough to prevent the deniers getting through the cracks.
Moyn, I regret to say, is not the complete master of his brief. It’s completely wrong to suggest, as he does, that the western concentration camps, the ‘non extermination’ facilities, only became lethal in the last months of the war as the regime lost its ability to feed the prisoners. That may be true, to an extent, of Belsen, but it is most certainly not true of places like Dachau and, above all, Mauthausen.
No matter. It takes nothing away from a testimony that will both break your heart and leave you numb. There are things almost beyond the imagination. I am so sorry that Rajchman had to live through this horror. I’m so glad that he survived to tell his story, a fitting memorial to him and the countless thousands who did not.
June 2, 2012
Treblinka is less infamous compared to Auschwitz. The main difference between the two is that Auschwitz was a work as well as an extermination camp but on the other hand, Treblinka was solely an extermination camp. Nobody that arrived at Treblinka survived more than a few hours, as they were gassed immediately. So, after the war, there were very few eyewitnesses who could recount the horrors of Treblinka. This is the reason why Treblinka didn’t surpass the infamy of Auschwitz. Only Jews that were able to survive death on arrival were those who were assigned to dispose off any traces of the corpses. Chil Rajchman was one of them.
‘Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory’ is the most harrowing account I have ever read of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the concentration camps. And I should mention the fact that there were even Ukrainian guards (144 of them) along with the SS (100 numbers) at Treblinka who “ran” the camp.
So, why should anyone read this piece of history that might give them nightmares for a very longtime? Renowned Russian war reporter and writer Vasily Grossman lays it very aptly:
It is the writer’s duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader’s civic duty to learn this truth. To turn away, to close one’s eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who perished.
‘Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory’ is the most harrowing account I have ever read of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the concentration camps. And I should mention the fact that there were even Ukrainian guards (144 of them) along with the SS (100 numbers) at Treblinka who “ran” the camp.
So, why should anyone read this piece of history that might give them nightmares for a very longtime? Renowned Russian war reporter and writer Vasily Grossman lays it very aptly:
It is the writer’s duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader’s civic duty to learn this truth. To turn away, to close one’s eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who perished.
February 24, 2013
I've met Jews who survived Auschwitz. I have never met anyone who survived Treblinka, never even heard of someone who survived. Now I know why. This book is a testament of unimaginable, incomprehensible horror.
July 30, 2011
rather hard to rate this, because - "I liked it" is not an accurate representation of my reaction. Instead, I was appalled thoroughly, which means the book did its job. And as a piece of historical evidence, this is an incredible work; Rajchman is one of very few Jews to 1) arrive at Treblinka and not be killed 2) survive working at Treblinka and 3) survive the revolt and escape from Treblinka. As one of the dedicated death camps, existing solely to exterminate European Jews, Treblinka was kept largely undocumented by Nazis; part of Rajchman's work, in fact, consisted of making sure that all traces of dead bodies (even small bits of bone) were erased, reduced to the finest of fine ash, buried under sand and dirt. No Jew was supposed to make it out of Treblinka alive; the fact that Rajchman lived there for a *year* is miraculous enough. The fact that he managed to escape and survive through to the end of the war (ultimately emigrating to Uruguay; he died in 2004, clearly having lived a long, and I fervently hope, a happy, life) and record his experiences in such clean prose is beyond miraculous.
Not recommended for casual or light reading, obviously.
Not recommended for casual or light reading, obviously.
May 16, 2017
I always find it difficult to rate memoirs, and especially Holocaust/WWII memoirs. The subject matter is something we've all learned about in history class and would probably rather not discuss more than we absolutely have to, and yet I still find myself drawn to these stories -- every single survivor's story deserves to be told and heard, just as every single victim deserves to be remembered.
February 6, 2017
This was by far the most difficult book I've read about the Holocaust to date. While I have heard all about what happened at the Treblinka death camp, reading this detailed, heartbreaking, gruesome, disturbing account of what Chil Rajchman survived there literally made me sick and it was devastating. This book tells the awful truth. The tale of the lives of the men who were forced to destroy the evidence the sadistic evil men that ran that camp wanted to hide. Hundreds of thousands of corpses they had to cut the hair from, remove from gas chambers, remove gold teeth from, bury in pits and cover with sand, only to dig them back up months later to burn them, etc, etc...
"The blood of tens of thousands of victims, unable to rest, thrust itself upwards to the surface."
And the whole time they are forced to do these horrific things, they are constantly whipped and starved. If they made a mistake or got a bruise or a cut on the face they would be forced to strip, stand in the pit, and get a bullet in the head. It is truly a miracle that anyone survived this HELL.
My heart was in my throat the entire book. I wept throughout the entire book. I was physically ill through the entire book. This is not a book to be enjoyed, but a book to learn from.
To quote Samuel Moyn, who wrote the preface, "That Rajchman bore witness to Treblinka's horrors and that his memoir has belatedly appeared is a gift, but it is a bleak and discomfiting testament, not a redemptive and uplifting one."
I couldn't agree more. I'm so glad I read this story, but damn, it was very hard to read. My heart is heavy tonight. It was the perfect way to remember the victims and survivors of this tragedy on Holocaust Memorial Day.
"The blood of tens of thousands of victims, unable to rest, thrust itself upwards to the surface."
And the whole time they are forced to do these horrific things, they are constantly whipped and starved. If they made a mistake or got a bruise or a cut on the face they would be forced to strip, stand in the pit, and get a bullet in the head. It is truly a miracle that anyone survived this HELL.
My heart was in my throat the entire book. I wept throughout the entire book. I was physically ill through the entire book. This is not a book to be enjoyed, but a book to learn from.
To quote Samuel Moyn, who wrote the preface, "That Rajchman bore witness to Treblinka's horrors and that his memoir has belatedly appeared is a gift, but it is a bleak and discomfiting testament, not a redemptive and uplifting one."
I couldn't agree more. I'm so glad I read this story, but damn, it was very hard to read. My heart is heavy tonight. It was the perfect way to remember the victims and survivors of this tragedy on Holocaust Memorial Day.
September 1, 2018
" خون ده هزار قربانى نميتواند در صلح و آرامش باشد، خونشان مرتبا تا سطح زمين بالا مى آيد. "
ص ٩٤
داستانى بسيار تلخ و غم انگيز و آزاردهنده.
متن روان و خوشخوان.
ص ٩٤
داستانى بسيار تلخ و غم انگيز و آزاردهنده.
متن روان و خوشخوان.
March 12, 2014
Jean Amery, Tadeusz Borowski, Imre Kertesz, Primo Levi, Boris Pahor, Elie Wiesel…
The list of authors who survived Nazi concentration and extermination camps finding the strength to tell the world about them could have been longer. Had beautiful minds such as Janusz Korczak, Irene Nemirovsky and Antal Szerb not been among those drowned by the Holocaust, we could have had more masterful first hand accounts on the atrocities perpetrated in the lagers. And who knows how many strikingly important diaries and memories were shattered and burned.
For sixty-five years Chil Rajchman's memoirs were not included in any bibliography about the Holocaust. In fact, they were not even published and were kept in a drawer somewhere between the US and Uruguay where Rajchman died in 2004. Then someone opened that drawer, read those Yiddish written pages and translated them into French. It is likely that what had happened a few years ago with the notebooks of Irene Nemirovsky being rediscovered and becoming an international bestseller played a part in this process.
However, it must be stressed out that whereas Nemirovsky's unfinished 'Suite Française' was a work of fiction (even though deeply interconnected with history in its making), Rajchman's writings deal with the darkest reality human beings could find themselves in.
Rajchman doesn't tell us who he was, what he was doing, how he was taken and put on a cattle waggon on October 1942. What the author tells us is where he was brought: Treblinka.
Now, there are still many former Nazi concentration camps which can be visited nowadays. I've only been to Dachau that was the first KZ (Konzentrationlager) the Nazis converted into a death gearwheel and that visit still haunts me. Even though I'll never stop looking for Holocaust and concentration camps related diaries, memoirs, poems and - to some extent - novels, I don't feel like visiting another lager. The wickedness I perceived in Dachau was more than enough.
And yet, if I wanted to pull myself together to go and see the horrors of Treblinka, I would find no barbed wires, no iron gates, no turrets, no barracks, no gas chambers, no crematories. What I'd see is just an ample clearing in a thick forest with a few stone memorials dotting the barren landscape.
Unlike Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen Belsen, Majdanek and Sachsenhausen which were called 'concentration' or even 'labor' camps where Jewish and non Jewish prisoners had to work themselves to death, Treblinka (and Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno) was an extermination camp.
Whereas luck, physical strength, inner determination and sometimes scheming could keep you alive in a concentration lager, you had no chances to survive in an extermination camp. 99% of those who arrived to Treblinka were killed within a few hours. And this is the reason why the Nazis were so eager to leave no visible trace of such a hell on Earth. Before leaving Treblinka behind, the executioners meticolously razed the whole camp to the ground, burning hundreds of thousands of bodies and crushing their charred bones with bulldozers. They had the mass graves filled with soil and planted them with lupins. I don't know why the Nazis bothered to cover all that up, but it's a fact that no extermination camp in Poland was left behind untouched.
Chil Rajchman was among those few Jews who were left alive by the executioners to put the evil doings under the carpet. And he spares no unpleasant detail of what he had to do to survive in Treblinka. Cutting the hair of thousands of women on their way to the gas chambers, bringing out the dead bodies, putting corpses into deep graves and covering them with lime, extracting gold teeth and eventually destroying any proof of a gigantic methodical massacre.
As you might have understood this is an extremely difficult book to read through. Rajchman doesn't let you take a single breather and never hides his hatred for the Nazi executioners around him. At a first glance, the author doesn't show any hint of hope for his future, but looking between and beyond the sharp lines he left us, the anger and desperation of Rajchman gradually turn into the willingness to fight back. And that's what eventually happens with the prisoners planning an uprising within the camp leading to Chil Rajchman and others managing to escape from Treblinka.
'Treblinka - A Survivor's Memory' is an extraordinary document on human evilness taken from the bottom of the abyss it could lead us to and - at the same time - an exceptional story of human resilience that everyone might be aware of.
The list of authors who survived Nazi concentration and extermination camps finding the strength to tell the world about them could have been longer. Had beautiful minds such as Janusz Korczak, Irene Nemirovsky and Antal Szerb not been among those drowned by the Holocaust, we could have had more masterful first hand accounts on the atrocities perpetrated in the lagers. And who knows how many strikingly important diaries and memories were shattered and burned.
For sixty-five years Chil Rajchman's memoirs were not included in any bibliography about the Holocaust. In fact, they were not even published and were kept in a drawer somewhere between the US and Uruguay where Rajchman died in 2004. Then someone opened that drawer, read those Yiddish written pages and translated them into French. It is likely that what had happened a few years ago with the notebooks of Irene Nemirovsky being rediscovered and becoming an international bestseller played a part in this process.
However, it must be stressed out that whereas Nemirovsky's unfinished 'Suite Française' was a work of fiction (even though deeply interconnected with history in its making), Rajchman's writings deal with the darkest reality human beings could find themselves in.
Rajchman doesn't tell us who he was, what he was doing, how he was taken and put on a cattle waggon on October 1942. What the author tells us is where he was brought: Treblinka.
Now, there are still many former Nazi concentration camps which can be visited nowadays. I've only been to Dachau that was the first KZ (Konzentrationlager) the Nazis converted into a death gearwheel and that visit still haunts me. Even though I'll never stop looking for Holocaust and concentration camps related diaries, memoirs, poems and - to some extent - novels, I don't feel like visiting another lager. The wickedness I perceived in Dachau was more than enough.
And yet, if I wanted to pull myself together to go and see the horrors of Treblinka, I would find no barbed wires, no iron gates, no turrets, no barracks, no gas chambers, no crematories. What I'd see is just an ample clearing in a thick forest with a few stone memorials dotting the barren landscape.
Unlike Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen Belsen, Majdanek and Sachsenhausen which were called 'concentration' or even 'labor' camps where Jewish and non Jewish prisoners had to work themselves to death, Treblinka (and Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno) was an extermination camp.
Whereas luck, physical strength, inner determination and sometimes scheming could keep you alive in a concentration lager, you had no chances to survive in an extermination camp. 99% of those who arrived to Treblinka were killed within a few hours. And this is the reason why the Nazis were so eager to leave no visible trace of such a hell on Earth. Before leaving Treblinka behind, the executioners meticolously razed the whole camp to the ground, burning hundreds of thousands of bodies and crushing their charred bones with bulldozers. They had the mass graves filled with soil and planted them with lupins. I don't know why the Nazis bothered to cover all that up, but it's a fact that no extermination camp in Poland was left behind untouched.
Chil Rajchman was among those few Jews who were left alive by the executioners to put the evil doings under the carpet. And he spares no unpleasant detail of what he had to do to survive in Treblinka. Cutting the hair of thousands of women on their way to the gas chambers, bringing out the dead bodies, putting corpses into deep graves and covering them with lime, extracting gold teeth and eventually destroying any proof of a gigantic methodical massacre.
As you might have understood this is an extremely difficult book to read through. Rajchman doesn't let you take a single breather and never hides his hatred for the Nazi executioners around him. At a first glance, the author doesn't show any hint of hope for his future, but looking between and beyond the sharp lines he left us, the anger and desperation of Rajchman gradually turn into the willingness to fight back. And that's what eventually happens with the prisoners planning an uprising within the camp leading to Chil Rajchman and others managing to escape from Treblinka.
'Treblinka - A Survivor's Memory' is an extraordinary document on human evilness taken from the bottom of the abyss it could lead us to and - at the same time - an exceptional story of human resilience that everyone might be aware of.
November 26, 2020
A quick but deeply disturbing read which needs to be read for the reasons given at the start:
“It is a writer’s duty to tell the terrible truth and it is a reader’s civic duty to learn this truth.
To turn away, to close one’s eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who have perished”
Amazing that anyone survived to tell the story of what happened.
I read this after watching these programmes which I would also recommend to anyone in the U.K.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
“It is a writer’s duty to tell the terrible truth and it is a reader’s civic duty to learn this truth.
To turn away, to close one’s eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who have perished”
Amazing that anyone survived to tell the story of what happened.
I read this after watching these programmes which I would also recommend to anyone in the U.K.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
November 18, 2017
Entender tal aberración humana es algo imposible. No se puede pensar que exista tal maldad en la humanidad para que haya pasado lo que pasó... un libro que te deja mudo pero al mismo tiempo te hace gritar desde el fondo de tu ser buscando la razón en vano.
December 24, 2020
Warning: this book is not for the faint of heart, nor for those disturbed by descriptions of horrific violence and mass murder.
The Last Jew of Treblinka earns its five stars out of respect for the millions killed, those that survived, and for the miracle that the author, Chil Rajchman, survived to tell it. This is a very difficult book, emotionally painful to read. It is only uplifting only in that Rajchman survived. The experience of reading this book is much darker than reading Elie Wiesel's Night.
Treblinka, together with Chelmno, Belzec and Sobibor were Nazi extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) or death camps (Todeslager). Two others - Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau - were extermination camps within a larger complex of concentration camps.
These were distinct from from concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen, which were prison labor camps for people defined as “undesirable,” the largest group of which were Jews. In the concentration camps, prisoners were selected for slave labor first; they were kept alive on starvation rations and made available to work as required. Those who were not selected were exterminated.
The extermination camps by contrast, were built exclusively for the rapid and systematic extermination of entire communities of people (primarily Jews) within hours of their arrival, delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. This was death on an industrial scale.
The prisoners sent to extermination camps were murdered within a few hours of arrival. A very small number of men were chosen as slave laborers - preparing arrivals for the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies afterwards). Many of these men were killed as they worked; others committed suicide in despair of their situation. Chil Rajchman was one of these individuals, and his story, no matter how bleak is one we cannot forget.
The Last Jew of Treblinka earns its five stars out of respect for the millions killed, those that survived, and for the miracle that the author, Chil Rajchman, survived to tell it. This is a very difficult book, emotionally painful to read. It is only uplifting only in that Rajchman survived. The experience of reading this book is much darker than reading Elie Wiesel's Night.
Treblinka, together with Chelmno, Belzec and Sobibor were Nazi extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) or death camps (Todeslager). Two others - Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau - were extermination camps within a larger complex of concentration camps.
These were distinct from from concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen, which were prison labor camps for people defined as “undesirable,” the largest group of which were Jews. In the concentration camps, prisoners were selected for slave labor first; they were kept alive on starvation rations and made available to work as required. Those who were not selected were exterminated.
The extermination camps by contrast, were built exclusively for the rapid and systematic extermination of entire communities of people (primarily Jews) within hours of their arrival, delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. This was death on an industrial scale.
The prisoners sent to extermination camps were murdered within a few hours of arrival. A very small number of men were chosen as slave laborers - preparing arrivals for the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies afterwards). Many of these men were killed as they worked; others committed suicide in despair of their situation. Chil Rajchman was one of these individuals, and his story, no matter how bleak is one we cannot forget.
November 8, 2011
For those who advocate that man is inherently good should have those illusions put to rest with the reading of this short memoir of the suffering at Treblinka death camp (no it was NOT a labor camp). Chil Rajchman gives a harrowingly detailed account of the operations of the Treblinka camp in present day Poland. Day and night, this hell on earth revealed the ultimate in the sinful nature of man. Beatings, roberries, mass executions and overall misery were heaped on these people who were caught between the twin monsters of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union.
As for some details of the narrative, there was some doubt in the mind of Rajchman that the Katyn forest massacre could be carried out by anyone other than the Nazis, yet it was so, thus the Nazis did not corner the atrocity market. It is indeed a lesson to us that war can bring out the cruel beast in men. Murderers as Rajchman called the SS guards and allied Ukrainains, were not neanderthals, but rather educated men who went to universities and one was even an evangelical pastor. Rajchman was one of the few who survived the camp and lived to leave this message to us who cry for justice and yearn for peace.
The details of this book is left for you to read. Make no mistake, man is inherently evil and this is solid proof for that fact.
As for some details of the narrative, there was some doubt in the mind of Rajchman that the Katyn forest massacre could be carried out by anyone other than the Nazis, yet it was so, thus the Nazis did not corner the atrocity market. It is indeed a lesson to us that war can bring out the cruel beast in men. Murderers as Rajchman called the SS guards and allied Ukrainains, were not neanderthals, but rather educated men who went to universities and one was even an evangelical pastor. Rajchman was one of the few who survived the camp and lived to leave this message to us who cry for justice and yearn for peace.
The details of this book is left for you to read. Make no mistake, man is inherently evil and this is solid proof for that fact.
October 12, 2011
This is one of the most haunting and riveting books I have read about the holocaust. Rajchman escaped Treblinka after 11 of the most horrifying months. Starved, beaten and used as a barber to shave the heads of the women before they were gassed, or a "dentist" to extract the gold teeth from the mouths of the dead. His account of the brutality, and sadism of his captors was horrifying. Yes I've read accounts of camps before but none so vivid and detailed. His details are almost detached as he watched men cover the pathways with sand to cover the blood so the next victims wouldn't see what was about to happen. Having to sing to the cries and screams of Jews being gassed to death, removing bodies to be burned or buried. That this man had enough hope to participate in an uprising and escape, to go on living, after what he had seen and been forced to do is amazing. Most would have broken under much less. He survived to reveal what what happened, so that we can remember all those that were lost.
February 5, 2017
What a gut-wrenching tale of one who survived the Holocaust! The fact that the Holocaust happened should never be forgotten and those who were murdered innocently should always be remembered. A definite must read!
December 26, 2015
وای خدای من!
دردناک ترین کتابی که خوندم!
با هرفصلش گریه کردم....
بنظرم همه باید بخوننش!
دردناک ترین کتابی که خوندم!
با هرفصلش گریه کردم....
بنظرم همه باید بخوننش!
August 27, 2012
Like all Holocaust books, at one point the story becomes absurd, as if a surrealist wrote it. After all, how can a human being come up with tortures - so unimaginable to most good-hearted people - and then execute their perverse fantasies? How can anyone sane think up 10,000-15,000 murders in a day? Or grinding up 800,000 people's bones to hide all evidence?
This book especially sounds like de Sade's most notorious work - the Nazi obsession with numbers, the permission withheld for prisoners needing to do number two, the grotesque tortures.
Raichman calls the Nazi camp masters for what they were: murderers, he never refers to them as Germans or Nazis. Thus this simply told book sounds like a fable, with stock figures acting out morals for us. The introduction mentions how Raichman starts his memoir with the train taking him and his sister to Treblinka, while others in the train try to delude themselves that they are going to the Ukraine for a life of mere farming. This abrupt start to the story eliminates all life before as this new hellish life takes over almost immediately when the train empties its poor inmates at the station.
Indeed the book is about grossly frustrated small favours, none of which are granted. An old woman begs to have her hair shorn more slowly so she can walk to the gas chamber with her daughter who has more hair and will take longer. In the winter, the pretty young women kept outside in freezing temperatures for the Nazis to gawk at, they beg to be allowed in the warmth of gas chamber sooner. At the end of a twelve-hour workday, the Nazis demand an hour of happy songs from their slaves before they can get some soup and rest.
One of the reasons I recommend this book and others like it, is to remember what happened and to remember the victims. It is also important to read these books in order to be constantly aware of human rights violations, to make oneself a better guard against one's own inclination to cruelty and racism. We Canadians and Americans think that this can't happen here, but we are exactly the same people as the Germans of the 1930s and 1940s. We are just as capable of this if we let ourselves be swept into a maelstrom of knee-jerk reactions.
This book especially sounds like de Sade's most notorious work - the Nazi obsession with numbers, the permission withheld for prisoners needing to do number two, the grotesque tortures.
Raichman calls the Nazi camp masters for what they were: murderers, he never refers to them as Germans or Nazis. Thus this simply told book sounds like a fable, with stock figures acting out morals for us. The introduction mentions how Raichman starts his memoir with the train taking him and his sister to Treblinka, while others in the train try to delude themselves that they are going to the Ukraine for a life of mere farming. This abrupt start to the story eliminates all life before as this new hellish life takes over almost immediately when the train empties its poor inmates at the station.
Indeed the book is about grossly frustrated small favours, none of which are granted. An old woman begs to have her hair shorn more slowly so she can walk to the gas chamber with her daughter who has more hair and will take longer. In the winter, the pretty young women kept outside in freezing temperatures for the Nazis to gawk at, they beg to be allowed in the warmth of gas chamber sooner. At the end of a twelve-hour workday, the Nazis demand an hour of happy songs from their slaves before they can get some soup and rest.
One of the reasons I recommend this book and others like it, is to remember what happened and to remember the victims. It is also important to read these books in order to be constantly aware of human rights violations, to make oneself a better guard against one's own inclination to cruelty and racism. We Canadians and Americans think that this can't happen here, but we are exactly the same people as the Germans of the 1930s and 1940s. We are just as capable of this if we let ourselves be swept into a maelstrom of knee-jerk reactions.
September 4, 2011
Let's face it, a book about the Holocaust and it's survivors are grim. It is a period in our world's history that is so undeniably wrong and filled with horror that to read any account is heart wrenching.
This is a very short read and I completed it in less than two hours. However, unlike other stories told on this subject this one did not bring me to tears, it is told in a pointedly direct manner and almost devoid of emotion. I dare not suggest that the experience was less emotive, it's just the way the story is told. In all fairness, I would expect any survivor of Treblinka, as there were very few, to process their time spent at this slaughter camp in a way that no other human who has not experienced the same atrocities could probably imagine. So to have the story (which was originally written in Yiddish and subsequently translated) to be blunt is almost welcoming. I am not sure if this particular account was shared more deeply on a different level if reading it would not leave the reader with nightmares.
If you are interested in the history of this general time period in Germany and the leadership and actions during that time, it is well worth adding this to your library.
Stories like this become embedded in your person and part of the learning experience then becomes part of you. Perhaps I am fascinated with this as I come from some German heritage, I joined the military and specifically asked to be stationed in Germany; it is part of my "cleansing of guilt" for the behaviors of those who shared some of what my ancestors may/may not have agreed with?
This is a very short read and I completed it in less than two hours. However, unlike other stories told on this subject this one did not bring me to tears, it is told in a pointedly direct manner and almost devoid of emotion. I dare not suggest that the experience was less emotive, it's just the way the story is told. In all fairness, I would expect any survivor of Treblinka, as there were very few, to process their time spent at this slaughter camp in a way that no other human who has not experienced the same atrocities could probably imagine. So to have the story (which was originally written in Yiddish and subsequently translated) to be blunt is almost welcoming. I am not sure if this particular account was shared more deeply on a different level if reading it would not leave the reader with nightmares.
If you are interested in the history of this general time period in Germany and the leadership and actions during that time, it is well worth adding this to your library.
Stories like this become embedded in your person and part of the learning experience then becomes part of you. Perhaps I am fascinated with this as I come from some German heritage, I joined the military and specifically asked to be stationed in Germany; it is part of my "cleansing of guilt" for the behaviors of those who shared some of what my ancestors may/may not have agreed with?
March 30, 2013
This book is very, very difficult to read but, like other first hand accounts of the Holocaust, it needs to be read, remembered, and shared with future generations
I think the author says it best in his last paragraph:
"Yes, I remained alive and find myself among free people. But I often ask myself why. Is it so that I might tell the world about the millions of innocent murdered victims, to be a witness to the innocent blood that was spilled by the hands of the murderers?"
I can't know exactly why Chil Rajchman was able to survive Treblinka but, that he lived and had the courage to tell his story is as important a contribution to humankind as any other.
I think the author says it best in his last paragraph:
"Yes, I remained alive and find myself among free people. But I often ask myself why. Is it so that I might tell the world about the millions of innocent murdered victims, to be a witness to the innocent blood that was spilled by the hands of the murderers?"
I can't know exactly why Chil Rajchman was able to survive Treblinka but, that he lived and had the courage to tell his story is as important a contribution to humankind as any other.
January 19, 2019
Projectos Enquadrados: #hol74 / #vozesdoholocausto / #esvaziarestantes (Livro que Quero Trocar) / #aviciadadoslivros (Autor Desconhecido)
Não sei se me vou fazer entender... Apesar de ser um relato completamente horripilante, a forma como está descrito não me cativou e as expectativas acabaram por sair defraudar... :(
Não sei se me vou fazer entender... Apesar de ser um relato completamente horripilante, a forma como está descrito não me cativou e as expectativas acabaram por sair defraudar... :(
August 15, 2020
What a heartbreaking memoir. It's difficult to imagine that a group of people can be so murderous to kill such a great number of people in the mist horrendous manner possible. May the world never experiences the likes of Hitler or Stalin again.
Five stars for the author's courage in writing this account.
Five stars for the author's courage in writing this account.
January 28, 2015
Interesting book to read for Remember the Holocaust Day!
Survival depended upon using your wits and little things that people would do to help you. Light loads, crust of bread, day off, getting oppertunity to clean oneself.
Good to read this book, I have forgotten what camp life was like.
The waste of life and the Nazi ideal of destroying people and ways of life.
Idea that many had food and jewels on them when they came to camp, the idea that this can't be happening to me.
Survival being prepared and having something worth while to trade.
Again having gold, silver or jewels of value was better than paper money. People think I am crazy to say that we should have "Hard" currency v. soft.
You can't see your CD when the banks are closed. YOur credit/debit card isn't going to nothing except maybe open some locked doors.
Survival depended upon using your wits and little things that people would do to help you. Light loads, crust of bread, day off, getting oppertunity to clean oneself.
Good to read this book, I have forgotten what camp life was like.
The waste of life and the Nazi ideal of destroying people and ways of life.
Idea that many had food and jewels on them when they came to camp, the idea that this can't be happening to me.
Survival being prepared and having something worth while to trade.
Again having gold, silver or jewels of value was better than paper money. People think I am crazy to say that we should have "Hard" currency v. soft.
You can't see your CD when the banks are closed. YOur credit/debit card isn't going to nothing except maybe open some locked doors.
January 21, 2023
(Audiobook) Had read this book before, and the impact now, like then, was overwhelming. While we are coming up on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces, there is something to be said for reading/re-reading books about the Holocaust, especially with the rise of antisemitism and other hate crimes. Below is what I felt when I read/listened to this book the 1st time. It still hold true today:
"As of late, when I read a book or listen to an audiobook, I will try to do a brief review of the material on Goodreads, a website dedicated to book readers who can offer their reviews of various books/audiobooks/etc…without the pretense associated with the major newspapers/periodicals. Most tend to be okay to good, with a few that are incredible reads. Yet, every now and then, you come across a book that when you read it or listen to it, it somehow stops you in your tracks, forcing you to consider the implications of those words, and what it means not only for you, but for the world around you.
In the past few days, I managed to come across such a book: The Last Jew of Treblinka. This work is the memoir of a man, Chil Rajchman, and the experiences of his life, at least what he had lived through in his first 31 years when he originally wrote this in 1945. As he recounts his life to that point, the primary focus centers on the period from October 1942 to August 1943, where, as a young Polish Jew, he found himself at the epicenter of one the most horrific places to ever scar the face of the Earth: Treblinka. As a young man with no particular background in writing, Rajchman describes his experiences in a concise, direct prose. It is a rather short work, with most editions topping out at 130-150 pages. Originally, Rajchman wrote his memoir in Yiddish in 1945, which kept its distribution relatively limited. However, in 2009, this work found itself translated into French and German, offering a wider audience. In 2011, it finally appeared in English, with a forward penned by famed Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel. Unfortunately, Rajchman never saw the expanded distribution of his work, having passed away in 2004.
However, while the work remained in obscurity for nearly 65 years, it has made up for lost time. The simple, yet brutal description of life at this relatively unknown camp has made its mark on Holocaust literature. It is comparable to Wiesel’s legendary Night in content and message. Yet, what gives The Last Jew of Treblinka such a place of significance is that it is one of the few eyewitness accounts of what happened at Treblinka.
The Holocaust claimed an estimated 11 million people, with the majority of the deaths distributed over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos throughout the Third Reich. The make-up and nature of the concentration camps varied based on location and intent. Many of the camps in the western part of the Nazi regime were designed more for slave labor, where the victims were housed to perform some form of work for the Nazi war efforts/economy. In the far eastern reaches of the Nazi regime, many of the camps were but fields with barbed wire and armed guards. Yet, in Poland, there were six camps whose primary raison d’etre was not slave labor or economic gain or mere internment. These camps have become synonymous with the worst of the Holocaust: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. At these six sites, the Nazis specifically designed the camps with the primary goal for efficient and effective execution and disposal of those humans deemed unworthy to live in the Third Reich (note: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek did develop extensive slave labor operations, but are lumped into the death camps based on the infrastructure for mass extermination).
While the largest and most well-known was Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps the most effective at the mission of mass extermination was Treblinka. Exact figures of total executions at these six camps are not totally known, but even amid these morbid stats (3.5 million of the 11 million killed in the Holocaust), Treblinka stands out. Auschwitz-Birkenau had approx 1.3 million come through its gates, with 1.1 million killed. The other four extermination camps saw death totals estimated within the range of 250,000-600,000 each. As for Treblinka, the death totals range between 750,000 and 920,000, with most of those killed (~99%) within an hour of arrival. After the war, under 80 people are thought to have survived (67 individuals are officially recorded having survived, but there are still individuals being identified as having lived through the hell at that site). The vast majority of those killed at the camp died within a 10 month period (Oct 1942-Aug 1943), at a rate that varied between 15,000-25,000 a day.
It is during this period that Rajchman arrived at Treblinka. Having already lived through hellish conditions at several ghettos throughout Poland, to include the Warsaw ghetto, he had no idea what we was about to face. The book describes the long, cold train ride from Warsaw to Treblinka, and upon arrival, he is caught in a whirlwind of activity, managing to be one of the few individuals selected to work as a Sonderkommando, forced to aid the Nazis in their efforts to maximize the economic efficiency of their extermination. He starts out rounding up the clothes of those who were sent off to the “showers” (euphemism for gas chambers), not knowing for a few days the fates of his fellow passengers, to include his sister. The beatings and cruel treatment start at once, and throughout his time at Treblinka, Rajchman is fortunate to avoid the fate that befell so many at the camp. From cleaning up a face wound to the efforts of a fellow Sonderkommando who was a doctor to prevent blood poisoning, he manages to evade death, usually by the narrowest of margins. Eventually, he finds his sister’s clothing, confirming her death. Shortly afterwards, he volunteers to become a “barber” and despite zero experience or training, he is immediately pressed into that task.
It is as a “barber” that the full impact of the horrors of Treblinka starts to dawn on the young man. His job consists cutting off the hair of all the women who are on their way to the showers as quickly and thoroughly as possible. The general procedure at Treblinka was for the Nazis, after separating the men and women at the train station and having them remove their clothing in designated buildings, to send the men, via a sand-strewn path (“The Path to Heaven” ), to the showers/gas chambers first. The women were held back so that their hair could be cut and collected for future use. As Rajchman cuts their hair, he finds himself hearing the final words of the women, from answering questions about what will happen and will it be quick to hearing the last pronouncements of women, telling him to survive to that he may tell of what was happening, to beat the Nazis and their evil they perpetrated.
From there, Rajchman moves on to other aspects of aiding the processing and disposal of the victims. He becomes a “dentist,” tasked with removing the teeth of the recently dead (gold, silver, false), as well as working body disposal, removing the bodies from the gas chambers after the carbon monoxide completed its task. All the while, Rajchman continues to observe the cruelty and torture that the Nazis inflict on the victims, from forcing nude women and children to stand outside in sub-freezing temperature, before being forced into the gas chambers to observing the guards slap the faces of the Sonderkommando, which resulted in scarring, which in turn, lead to the immediate execution of said victims (facial wounds were not allowed for Sonderkommando).
As his time at the camp continues, he faces increased torment. At first, the Nazis, after gassing their victims, just buried the bodies in a series of pits for mass graves. Additionally, new arrivals who could not walk to the changing rooms/gas chambers, as well as the Sonderkommando who the Nazis deemed no longer able to work, were shot and dumped into those pits. However, in spring 1943, the Nazis, after the discovery of the Katyn massacre site and seeing that their fortunes in the war were shifting after the loss at Stalingrad, decided that it was time to eliminate the evidence of the camps. Thus, the Sonderkommando now had to burn the bodies, dealing with both the recently executed as well as having to exhume the long dead bodies, all for cremation. At the same time, the Nazis forced the Sonderkommando to keep all the facilities clean, keeping up the deception to the victims as well as allowing the Nazis to continue executing massive numbers of inbound victims.
With 1943 progressing, and the Nazis starting to shift more of their efforts to Auschwitz, Rajchman and his fellow prisoners could sense that after they completed the cremation of the previous prisoners, and fewer transports arriving, they would be next to go. Thus, the prisoners, at great risk, coordinated an escape. They had to change their first attempt, but on August 2, 1943, they managed to lead a massive breakout. Rajchman and his fellow inmates flee the camp, and while most did not make it out alive, Rajchman, through good fortune, manages to escape and make his way to the Polish Resistance, where he would spend the rest of the war fighting against the Nazis.
All of this is condensed in a relatively short volume. The language of the writing is not excessively descriptive, but almost matter-of-fact, as Rajchman recounted his experiences. However, in the midst of his language, he provides enough details to offer the read a description of the camp, one that is especially helpful, given that the Nazis effectively destroyed the camp before the Soviet Army liberated it in early 1944. The pain he suffers physically, emotionally and psychologically…all come across in this writing. The work was edited in 1946, but as mentioned earlier, it was not seen by non-Yiddish readers until 2009.
Admittedly, this work is not the end-all/be-all about Treblinka, as he can only speak to what he experienced and knew. However, given the dearth of material about Treblinka, and the lack of first-hand accounts from the prisoners and the camp guards, this work serves as one of the few primary sources. However, the quality and its message go well beyond the pages. As a book, especially about a critical and not well-known aspect of one of the worst events in human history, this qualifies as a must read. Many books, movies, documentaries and other forms of media offer various stories and insights into places such as Auschwitz, and the fact that much of that camp still remained intact upon its liberation in January 1945. Yet, Auschwitz does not have the monopoly on the horrors of the Holocaust, and Treblinka should not be regulated to merely a historical footnote, but needs to be known, understood and serve as the warning of the worst of mankind.
Unfortunately, the lessons that we as the human race should take from Treblinka do not seem to be resonated with us today. Worldwide, there is an increase in the instances of hate speech of all types. For those of the Jewish faith, there is an alarming rise in Anti-Semitism, a form of hate that crosses both ends of the political spectrum. This hatred is not limited to one country or continent, as it is prevalent in America, Europe and the Middle East, locations with significant Jewish populations.
Additionally, there is an even more alarming trend that many people do not know much, if anything about the Holocaust, in spite of the increased efforts of education and greater access to previously undiscovered archives. This past year, surveys in America indicate that nearly 45% of the population could not identify Auschwitz, and just about the same percentage couldn’t even identify one concentration camp or ghetto location. A recent survey from Europe this very week indicates that as many as 33% of the European population knows little to nothing about the Holocaust, which took place on their continents, and with a number of people still alive who still live in Europe who have direct knowledge and experience with the event.
The European surveys are especially disturbing, given recent trends in Central Europe. Anti-Semitism is a major part of the platform for the current Hungarian government, and the rise of the Far Right within other countries, especially in Austria, France and Germany, does not bode well for fighting hate crimes. Additionally, Poland has enacted a series of laws which limit what history can be discussed about the Holocaust, especially if it does anything to paint Poland or the Polish people in a negative light. While many Poles died at the six extermination camps, there were Poles that willingly worked with the Nazis to help implement the Final Solution. Ignorance of history propagates abuse of history, thus the rise of Holocaust deniers, and the ever present specter of a repeat of the horror of places like Treblinka. That is why works like The Last Jew of Treblinka are so important to read and study, so that we can learn the right lessons and work to make sure that those lessons stick, so that future generations do not have to relearn what we learned in the worst possible way."
(1/24/2021) This may become an annual ritual to re-read/listen to this work. This matched up closely with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, but Treblinka was perhaps even more effective in its mission of destructive hate. It is not fun to read, but so critical to understand that when you say you “hate” something, you have to have caution, as the manifestation of hate can lead to such horrors as this. The gut punch this book gives the reader never lessens, no matter how many times it is read. As it should be.
(1/20/2023) Another re-listen/re-read. Still as powerful and disturbing. Unfortunately, with the rise of antisemitism across the country and world, works like this are all-too-useful to understand just how far words and simple acts of expression fueled by hate can lead. Should take its place among “Night” for Holocaust literature. It pulls no punches, but where the Holocaust is concerned, you can’t study it/learn about it without the brutal details.
"As of late, when I read a book or listen to an audiobook, I will try to do a brief review of the material on Goodreads, a website dedicated to book readers who can offer their reviews of various books/audiobooks/etc…without the pretense associated with the major newspapers/periodicals. Most tend to be okay to good, with a few that are incredible reads. Yet, every now and then, you come across a book that when you read it or listen to it, it somehow stops you in your tracks, forcing you to consider the implications of those words, and what it means not only for you, but for the world around you.
In the past few days, I managed to come across such a book: The Last Jew of Treblinka. This work is the memoir of a man, Chil Rajchman, and the experiences of his life, at least what he had lived through in his first 31 years when he originally wrote this in 1945. As he recounts his life to that point, the primary focus centers on the period from October 1942 to August 1943, where, as a young Polish Jew, he found himself at the epicenter of one the most horrific places to ever scar the face of the Earth: Treblinka. As a young man with no particular background in writing, Rajchman describes his experiences in a concise, direct prose. It is a rather short work, with most editions topping out at 130-150 pages. Originally, Rajchman wrote his memoir in Yiddish in 1945, which kept its distribution relatively limited. However, in 2009, this work found itself translated into French and German, offering a wider audience. In 2011, it finally appeared in English, with a forward penned by famed Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel. Unfortunately, Rajchman never saw the expanded distribution of his work, having passed away in 2004.
However, while the work remained in obscurity for nearly 65 years, it has made up for lost time. The simple, yet brutal description of life at this relatively unknown camp has made its mark on Holocaust literature. It is comparable to Wiesel’s legendary Night in content and message. Yet, what gives The Last Jew of Treblinka such a place of significance is that it is one of the few eyewitness accounts of what happened at Treblinka.
The Holocaust claimed an estimated 11 million people, with the majority of the deaths distributed over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos throughout the Third Reich. The make-up and nature of the concentration camps varied based on location and intent. Many of the camps in the western part of the Nazi regime were designed more for slave labor, where the victims were housed to perform some form of work for the Nazi war efforts/economy. In the far eastern reaches of the Nazi regime, many of the camps were but fields with barbed wire and armed guards. Yet, in Poland, there were six camps whose primary raison d’etre was not slave labor or economic gain or mere internment. These camps have become synonymous with the worst of the Holocaust: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. At these six sites, the Nazis specifically designed the camps with the primary goal for efficient and effective execution and disposal of those humans deemed unworthy to live in the Third Reich (note: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek did develop extensive slave labor operations, but are lumped into the death camps based on the infrastructure for mass extermination).
While the largest and most well-known was Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps the most effective at the mission of mass extermination was Treblinka. Exact figures of total executions at these six camps are not totally known, but even amid these morbid stats (3.5 million of the 11 million killed in the Holocaust), Treblinka stands out. Auschwitz-Birkenau had approx 1.3 million come through its gates, with 1.1 million killed. The other four extermination camps saw death totals estimated within the range of 250,000-600,000 each. As for Treblinka, the death totals range between 750,000 and 920,000, with most of those killed (~99%) within an hour of arrival. After the war, under 80 people are thought to have survived (67 individuals are officially recorded having survived, but there are still individuals being identified as having lived through the hell at that site). The vast majority of those killed at the camp died within a 10 month period (Oct 1942-Aug 1943), at a rate that varied between 15,000-25,000 a day.
It is during this period that Rajchman arrived at Treblinka. Having already lived through hellish conditions at several ghettos throughout Poland, to include the Warsaw ghetto, he had no idea what we was about to face. The book describes the long, cold train ride from Warsaw to Treblinka, and upon arrival, he is caught in a whirlwind of activity, managing to be one of the few individuals selected to work as a Sonderkommando, forced to aid the Nazis in their efforts to maximize the economic efficiency of their extermination. He starts out rounding up the clothes of those who were sent off to the “showers” (euphemism for gas chambers), not knowing for a few days the fates of his fellow passengers, to include his sister. The beatings and cruel treatment start at once, and throughout his time at Treblinka, Rajchman is fortunate to avoid the fate that befell so many at the camp. From cleaning up a face wound to the efforts of a fellow Sonderkommando who was a doctor to prevent blood poisoning, he manages to evade death, usually by the narrowest of margins. Eventually, he finds his sister’s clothing, confirming her death. Shortly afterwards, he volunteers to become a “barber” and despite zero experience or training, he is immediately pressed into that task.
It is as a “barber” that the full impact of the horrors of Treblinka starts to dawn on the young man. His job consists cutting off the hair of all the women who are on their way to the showers as quickly and thoroughly as possible. The general procedure at Treblinka was for the Nazis, after separating the men and women at the train station and having them remove their clothing in designated buildings, to send the men, via a sand-strewn path (“The Path to Heaven” ), to the showers/gas chambers first. The women were held back so that their hair could be cut and collected for future use. As Rajchman cuts their hair, he finds himself hearing the final words of the women, from answering questions about what will happen and will it be quick to hearing the last pronouncements of women, telling him to survive to that he may tell of what was happening, to beat the Nazis and their evil they perpetrated.
From there, Rajchman moves on to other aspects of aiding the processing and disposal of the victims. He becomes a “dentist,” tasked with removing the teeth of the recently dead (gold, silver, false), as well as working body disposal, removing the bodies from the gas chambers after the carbon monoxide completed its task. All the while, Rajchman continues to observe the cruelty and torture that the Nazis inflict on the victims, from forcing nude women and children to stand outside in sub-freezing temperature, before being forced into the gas chambers to observing the guards slap the faces of the Sonderkommando, which resulted in scarring, which in turn, lead to the immediate execution of said victims (facial wounds were not allowed for Sonderkommando).
As his time at the camp continues, he faces increased torment. At first, the Nazis, after gassing their victims, just buried the bodies in a series of pits for mass graves. Additionally, new arrivals who could not walk to the changing rooms/gas chambers, as well as the Sonderkommando who the Nazis deemed no longer able to work, were shot and dumped into those pits. However, in spring 1943, the Nazis, after the discovery of the Katyn massacre site and seeing that their fortunes in the war were shifting after the loss at Stalingrad, decided that it was time to eliminate the evidence of the camps. Thus, the Sonderkommando now had to burn the bodies, dealing with both the recently executed as well as having to exhume the long dead bodies, all for cremation. At the same time, the Nazis forced the Sonderkommando to keep all the facilities clean, keeping up the deception to the victims as well as allowing the Nazis to continue executing massive numbers of inbound victims.
With 1943 progressing, and the Nazis starting to shift more of their efforts to Auschwitz, Rajchman and his fellow prisoners could sense that after they completed the cremation of the previous prisoners, and fewer transports arriving, they would be next to go. Thus, the prisoners, at great risk, coordinated an escape. They had to change their first attempt, but on August 2, 1943, they managed to lead a massive breakout. Rajchman and his fellow inmates flee the camp, and while most did not make it out alive, Rajchman, through good fortune, manages to escape and make his way to the Polish Resistance, where he would spend the rest of the war fighting against the Nazis.
All of this is condensed in a relatively short volume. The language of the writing is not excessively descriptive, but almost matter-of-fact, as Rajchman recounted his experiences. However, in the midst of his language, he provides enough details to offer the read a description of the camp, one that is especially helpful, given that the Nazis effectively destroyed the camp before the Soviet Army liberated it in early 1944. The pain he suffers physically, emotionally and psychologically…all come across in this writing. The work was edited in 1946, but as mentioned earlier, it was not seen by non-Yiddish readers until 2009.
Admittedly, this work is not the end-all/be-all about Treblinka, as he can only speak to what he experienced and knew. However, given the dearth of material about Treblinka, and the lack of first-hand accounts from the prisoners and the camp guards, this work serves as one of the few primary sources. However, the quality and its message go well beyond the pages. As a book, especially about a critical and not well-known aspect of one of the worst events in human history, this qualifies as a must read. Many books, movies, documentaries and other forms of media offer various stories and insights into places such as Auschwitz, and the fact that much of that camp still remained intact upon its liberation in January 1945. Yet, Auschwitz does not have the monopoly on the horrors of the Holocaust, and Treblinka should not be regulated to merely a historical footnote, but needs to be known, understood and serve as the warning of the worst of mankind.
Unfortunately, the lessons that we as the human race should take from Treblinka do not seem to be resonated with us today. Worldwide, there is an increase in the instances of hate speech of all types. For those of the Jewish faith, there is an alarming rise in Anti-Semitism, a form of hate that crosses both ends of the political spectrum. This hatred is not limited to one country or continent, as it is prevalent in America, Europe and the Middle East, locations with significant Jewish populations.
Additionally, there is an even more alarming trend that many people do not know much, if anything about the Holocaust, in spite of the increased efforts of education and greater access to previously undiscovered archives. This past year, surveys in America indicate that nearly 45% of the population could not identify Auschwitz, and just about the same percentage couldn’t even identify one concentration camp or ghetto location. A recent survey from Europe this very week indicates that as many as 33% of the European population knows little to nothing about the Holocaust, which took place on their continents, and with a number of people still alive who still live in Europe who have direct knowledge and experience with the event.
The European surveys are especially disturbing, given recent trends in Central Europe. Anti-Semitism is a major part of the platform for the current Hungarian government, and the rise of the Far Right within other countries, especially in Austria, France and Germany, does not bode well for fighting hate crimes. Additionally, Poland has enacted a series of laws which limit what history can be discussed about the Holocaust, especially if it does anything to paint Poland or the Polish people in a negative light. While many Poles died at the six extermination camps, there were Poles that willingly worked with the Nazis to help implement the Final Solution. Ignorance of history propagates abuse of history, thus the rise of Holocaust deniers, and the ever present specter of a repeat of the horror of places like Treblinka. That is why works like The Last Jew of Treblinka are so important to read and study, so that we can learn the right lessons and work to make sure that those lessons stick, so that future generations do not have to relearn what we learned in the worst possible way."
(1/24/2021) This may become an annual ritual to re-read/listen to this work. This matched up closely with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, but Treblinka was perhaps even more effective in its mission of destructive hate. It is not fun to read, but so critical to understand that when you say you “hate” something, you have to have caution, as the manifestation of hate can lead to such horrors as this. The gut punch this book gives the reader never lessens, no matter how many times it is read. As it should be.
(1/20/2023) Another re-listen/re-read. Still as powerful and disturbing. Unfortunately, with the rise of antisemitism across the country and world, works like this are all-too-useful to understand just how far words and simple acts of expression fueled by hate can lead. Should take its place among “Night” for Holocaust literature. It pulls no punches, but where the Holocaust is concerned, you can’t study it/learn about it without the brutal details.
May 30, 2024
Of Chil Rajchman, the author of this book, I recall first seeing his face on a small screen in the tiny museum office on the grounds of the former Treblinka extermination camp just south of Warsaw, Poland. It was a wet April morning in 2023, and I had hired a guide to drive me the handful of hours from Warsaw to Treblinka. He said I should sit and watch the looped interview with Rajchman until I had watched in full, which lasted less than 15 minutes. He was one of the very few people walk away alive, yet it took him decades longer than his year there to be able to talk about it at such a length that would necessitate a written memoir.
It was muddy that early morning in April, and the air was wet with light snowfall. I could see nobody else walking the grounds but the guide and me. Asking him to illuminate me on things a group of tourists would not really have the time for, he therefore obliged by taking me on a slow march through what the average deportee would experience in their short time there, taking moments away to lead me into the forest thickets or to tell stories he had grown up with as a lifelong resident of Warsaw. He would go on to explain the functions of the long, lonely route at Treblinka and then disappear by himself to the warmth of his car, agreeing to meet me in another spot on the grounds after I’d walked around by myself. With a map in my hand and some words of advice to see the space and feel it, I spent a lot of alone time at Treblinka.
Months later, I discovered Chil Rajchman had written this book, ‘The Last Jew of Treblinka,’ describing in detail his year at the death camp (an average stay here was less than 3 hours unless you managed to survive work detail, which Rajchman and few others did). I noticed that fear and isolation still embraced Treblinka in 2023; it is estimated around 900,000 people were liquidated here in just about 15 months (almost all of them Jews), and without ever knowing why.
Years later, we know the story of Treblinka and are prepared for what stories about it will tell. But how does a person describe the unknowing of what is to come? The fear the future holds?
https://muzeumtreblinka.eu/en/
It was muddy that early morning in April, and the air was wet with light snowfall. I could see nobody else walking the grounds but the guide and me. Asking him to illuminate me on things a group of tourists would not really have the time for, he therefore obliged by taking me on a slow march through what the average deportee would experience in their short time there, taking moments away to lead me into the forest thickets or to tell stories he had grown up with as a lifelong resident of Warsaw. He would go on to explain the functions of the long, lonely route at Treblinka and then disappear by himself to the warmth of his car, agreeing to meet me in another spot on the grounds after I’d walked around by myself. With a map in my hand and some words of advice to see the space and feel it, I spent a lot of alone time at Treblinka.
Months later, I discovered Chil Rajchman had written this book, ‘The Last Jew of Treblinka,’ describing in detail his year at the death camp (an average stay here was less than 3 hours unless you managed to survive work detail, which Rajchman and few others did). I noticed that fear and isolation still embraced Treblinka in 2023; it is estimated around 900,000 people were liquidated here in just about 15 months (almost all of them Jews), and without ever knowing why.
Years later, we know the story of Treblinka and are prepared for what stories about it will tell. But how does a person describe the unknowing of what is to come? The fear the future holds?
https://muzeumtreblinka.eu/en/
August 29, 2018
به معنای واقعی کلمه دردناک
خون ده ها هزار قربانی نمیتواند در صلح و ارامش باشد. خونشان مرتب تا سطح زمین بالا می اید.
ماجرای زنده ماندن شیل رایشمن یک یهودی به نام به طور معجزه اسا از اردوگاه مرگ تریبلانکا. نمیدونم در توصیف وحشی گری نازی ها چی میشه گفت واقعا. فقط همیشه بعد از خوندن این ماجراها به این نتیجه میرسم که چجور میشه بشر به این مرحله برسه . برای اینکه هم نوعش رو به طرز وحشتناکی از بین ببره بیرحمانه.. به هیچ بچه ای حتی رحم نکنه. زن های برهنه رو توی سرمای منهای بیست درجه نگه داره بهشون بخنده از لرزیدنشون لذت ببره و بعداون ها روببره به اتاق گاز. چجور میتونه بشر این اندوه رو تحمل کنه. همیشه فک میکنم اگر خدایی هست چجور میبینه و دم نمیزنه. من حتی با خوندن و تصور بعضی قسمت ها تنم میلرزید. وقتی که بی رحمانه وقتی تعداد واگن های قطار ورودی کم بود و اون ها مدت زمان بیشتری قربانی ها رو توی اتاق نگه میداشتند تا مدت مرگشون طولانی تر باشه و بقیه یهودی هارو مجبور میکردن توی طول این مدت شعر بخونن. چه راه حلی هست که بشر از این همه وحشی گری خلاصی پیدا کنه؟ دین؟ مذهب؟ علم؟ عقل و فکر ؟ چرا هیچ کدوم جواب نمیده .
خون ده ها هزار قربانی نمیتواند در صلح و ارامش باشد. خونشان مرتب تا سطح زمین بالا می اید.
ماجرای زنده ماندن شیل رایشمن یک یهودی به نام به طور معجزه اسا از اردوگاه مرگ تریبلانکا. نمیدونم در توصیف وحشی گری نازی ها چی میشه گفت واقعا. فقط همیشه بعد از خوندن این ماجراها به این نتیجه میرسم که چجور میشه بشر به این مرحله برسه . برای اینکه هم نوعش رو به طرز وحشتناکی از بین ببره بیرحمانه.. به هیچ بچه ای حتی رحم نکنه. زن های برهنه رو توی سرمای منهای بیست درجه نگه داره بهشون بخنده از لرزیدنشون لذت ببره و بعداون ها روببره به اتاق گاز. چجور میتونه بشر این اندوه رو تحمل کنه. همیشه فک میکنم اگر خدایی هست چجور میبینه و دم نمیزنه. من حتی با خوندن و تصور بعضی قسمت ها تنم میلرزید. وقتی که بی رحمانه وقتی تعداد واگن های قطار ورودی کم بود و اون ها مدت زمان بیشتری قربانی ها رو توی اتاق نگه میداشتند تا مدت مرگشون طولانی تر باشه و بقیه یهودی هارو مجبور میکردن توی طول این مدت شعر بخونن. چه راه حلی هست که بشر از این همه وحشی گری خلاصی پیدا کنه؟ دین؟ مذهب؟ علم؟ عقل و فکر ؟ چرا هیچ کدوم جواب نمیده .
December 17, 2024
the lowest pit of hell that even Dante could not imagine.
it is, in fact, beyond imagination. after all thought and all the research all I can say is just that it's really unbelievable to what degree did mankind ever stooped, and how little faith in mankind does one have after reading it all. and how heroic are the survivors who kept on living. evidently still holding to some hope in mankind, weren't they?
this book is not a book, these people are not authors, they are prisoners eagerly telling the world what they've witnessed. those are prisoners who had to cut women's hair before the gas chambers and promise them that one day they'll tell the world what's going on here in this evil camp while we're lead to death. they were their brothers and sisters, this book is not a book nor it's art or exercise on style. no.
it's a pieace of terror, of the worst horrors of it all. along with Jankiel Wiernik's testimony, his impressive comrade, it is what it is - a report. sometimes it's written even dryly while describing the worst imaginable crimes in simple language. it's a mission for those few desperate survivors of the worst of the nazi machine, that they will be the only ones who can tell this camp's reality and to bear witness. to bear witness was their number one priority of existence after all those years, and for humanity's sake, you simply cannot look away. there were only 70 people who survived this unimaginable hell.
the only light of this horrific story, and it's a small one, is his escape story, which is not only depressing and dangerous, but also bares with it a little kindle of light, a very little one, as if faith can be possibly restored, as if that even mean anything after those hellish years. I just can't imagine. and I can never forgive.
it is, in fact, beyond imagination. after all thought and all the research all I can say is just that it's really unbelievable to what degree did mankind ever stooped, and how little faith in mankind does one have after reading it all. and how heroic are the survivors who kept on living. evidently still holding to some hope in mankind, weren't they?
this book is not a book, these people are not authors, they are prisoners eagerly telling the world what they've witnessed. those are prisoners who had to cut women's hair before the gas chambers and promise them that one day they'll tell the world what's going on here in this evil camp while we're lead to death. they were their brothers and sisters, this book is not a book nor it's art or exercise on style. no.
it's a pieace of terror, of the worst horrors of it all. along with Jankiel Wiernik's testimony, his impressive comrade, it is what it is - a report. sometimes it's written even dryly while describing the worst imaginable crimes in simple language. it's a mission for those few desperate survivors of the worst of the nazi machine, that they will be the only ones who can tell this camp's reality and to bear witness. to bear witness was their number one priority of existence after all those years, and for humanity's sake, you simply cannot look away. there were only 70 people who survived this unimaginable hell.
the only light of this horrific story, and it's a small one, is his escape story, which is not only depressing and dangerous, but also bares with it a little kindle of light, a very little one, as if faith can be possibly restored, as if that even mean anything after those hellish years. I just can't imagine. and I can never forgive.
July 4, 2018
A blood-chilling and harrowing book. I am not going to be original stating that these books, despite their effect, or because of their effect, need to be on everyone's reading list, not everyone's who reads, but simply mandatory list that qualifies you to be human.
Many of us know about the atrocities during WWII, but regardless of our knowledge, our human hearts need to be broken again and again to stay in touch with the pain those people experienced and not to repeat the same mistakes again.
The most powerful punch comes from the tone of the story - detached, neutral, and impartial, as if one is reading the script for the black-and-white newsreel chronicle. This emotional distance could be the only thing that helped the author to survive, but it also carries an enormous emotional force that leaves you numb with pain.
Many of us know about the atrocities during WWII, but regardless of our knowledge, our human hearts need to be broken again and again to stay in touch with the pain those people experienced and not to repeat the same mistakes again.
The most powerful punch comes from the tone of the story - detached, neutral, and impartial, as if one is reading the script for the black-and-white newsreel chronicle. This emotional distance could be the only thing that helped the author to survive, but it also carries an enormous emotional force that leaves you numb with pain.
February 7, 2025
Talvez um dos relatos mais difíceis de ler sobre o holocausto. Treblinka não era um campo de concentração, mas sim um matadouro industrial cheio de bestas das SS e guardas ucranianos. Estes com mais brio no seu trabalho de selvajaria até que os alemães. Não há frase mais patética que a do "só estavam a cumprir ordens" no que respeita ao tratamento dado aos judeus nos campos de morte. Que a vergonha dure mil anos, como Hitler queria que durasse o Reich. Infelizmente, hoje em dia, a escumalha nazi sai cada vez mais do buraco. E nada disto pode ser esquecido, perdoado ou relativizado. Morte a todos os nazis do planeta.
November 20, 2025
Cruda, crudissima testimonianza di un sopravvissuto a Treblinka.
Di capitolo in capitolo Chil Rajchman racconta la sua esperienza di sopravvissuto: cosa ha visto e, soprattutto, cosa ha fatto per sopravvivere.
Ci sono tante storie come questa, ma ognuna è unica.
Di capitolo in capitolo Chil Rajchman racconta la sua esperienza di sopravvissuto: cosa ha visto e, soprattutto, cosa ha fatto per sopravvivere.
Ci sono tante storie come questa, ma ognuna è unica.
Read
August 10, 2011Chil Rajchman first recorded his recollection of the horrors at Treblinka in 1945 in Yiddish; many years later it was translated and published in English.
Treblinka wasn’t a concentration camp or a relocation camp; it was a death camp, plain and simple. It was estimated that as many as 99% of the people who entered the camp were exterminated. Although the camp only operated for about one year, approximately 800,000 people, predominately Jews, were put to death at Treblinka by the Nazis.
As soon as they are off the train at the camp, Chil is separated from his 19-year-old sister. He will never see her again.
Chil’s life is spared for the time being when he gets chosen at random to be a worker. He is whipped and beaten if he doesn’t work fast enough. Workers who are slow or balk are shot immediately and thrown into the mass graves with the gassed victims.
He works sorting clothes. He works as a “barber” shaving the heads of the women who are about to be gassed. He works as a “dentist” removing gold fillings and false teeth from the corpses. He works as a stretcher bearer moving the dead from the gas chambers to the cremation piles. He does whatever he has to do to stay alive.
From the time a trainload of victims arrives, they are stripped, sheared and gassed all within a few hours.
Against all odds, Chil and some of the other workers plan an escape. Although most of the workers trying to escape are mowed down by machine gun fire, Chil and a few others manage to get through the wire to “freedom.” They are hunted relentlessly and have to hide in the forests and fields. The local peasants are afraid to help them or are eager to accept a reward for turning them in. Miraculously, Chil manages to live to tell his story of survival.
This book is short enough to be read in one evening, if you can stomach the horror.
It’s a gruesome story, but a story that has to be told. History should not whitewash the atrocities the Nazis committed.
Treblinka wasn’t a concentration camp or a relocation camp; it was a death camp, plain and simple. It was estimated that as many as 99% of the people who entered the camp were exterminated. Although the camp only operated for about one year, approximately 800,000 people, predominately Jews, were put to death at Treblinka by the Nazis.
As soon as they are off the train at the camp, Chil is separated from his 19-year-old sister. He will never see her again.
Chil’s life is spared for the time being when he gets chosen at random to be a worker. He is whipped and beaten if he doesn’t work fast enough. Workers who are slow or balk are shot immediately and thrown into the mass graves with the gassed victims.
He works sorting clothes. He works as a “barber” shaving the heads of the women who are about to be gassed. He works as a “dentist” removing gold fillings and false teeth from the corpses. He works as a stretcher bearer moving the dead from the gas chambers to the cremation piles. He does whatever he has to do to stay alive.
From the time a trainload of victims arrives, they are stripped, sheared and gassed all within a few hours.
Against all odds, Chil and some of the other workers plan an escape. Although most of the workers trying to escape are mowed down by machine gun fire, Chil and a few others manage to get through the wire to “freedom.” They are hunted relentlessly and have to hide in the forests and fields. The local peasants are afraid to help them or are eager to accept a reward for turning them in. Miraculously, Chil manages to live to tell his story of survival.
This book is short enough to be read in one evening, if you can stomach the horror.
It’s a gruesome story, but a story that has to be told. History should not whitewash the atrocities the Nazis committed.
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