Death Camp Treblinka: Survivor Stories Page #3

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Then, break out en masse

into the woods by nightfall.

But the oppressive regime

made planning near impossible.

The Jews who were part

of the killing machine,

they were being culled regularly

so there were constant searches.

The Work Jews were kept under

very close supervision,

and there were,

what were called "squealers"

in their ranks

Jews who thought that they

could extend the life expectancy

if they co-operated with the Nazis.

If they told them that they'd

heard rumours

about an underground in the camp,

a resistance.

One day, Samuel was ordered to

the lazarette where a sick man

had just been taken for execution.

The arrival of giant cranes

and excavators that spring

signalled a new stage of horror.

Himmler had recently toured

Treblinka's camp too,

and discovered that three

quarters of a million bodies

lay uncremated within the pits.

Stangl was ordered to exhume and to

burn them on giant open-air pyres.

An SS technician

nicknamed "The Artist"

constructed the so-called "roasts",

which burned day and night

for months.

All prisoners knew

that the burning of the last corpse

would trigger camp closure

and their own execution.

We know that as we are going,

finished the last one...

they will put us too.

Don't wait for it,

they will take you too.

And so it begins.

A day for the revolt was chosen...

The uprising was not just

a gesture of resistance,

it was the effort of men

who had seen hellish things,

who had seen criminality

on an unbelievable scale.

It was their determination

to get out, to stay alive

and to tell the truth to the world.

The Germans,

they saw what was going on

and called to one another...

..they are Jewish, start shooting.

Jewish - we are broken people.

Almost dead.

And the Ukrainian soldiers,

they begin to run after us...

There were scenes of absolute chaos.

Tragically,

one of the leaders of the revolt,

Rudi Masarek was one of the first

to be shot, went down near the wire.

But the chaos itself

served a purpose.

There were so many people

running in so many directions.

There were flames, smoke,

explosions, gunfire

that dozens and dozens of Jews

were able to get to the fence,

get over the fence

and then plunge into the minefield

and into the forests.

After 15 minutes of running, we stop,

turn back and look at how

everything is burning.

The swastika was burning and falling

down. Everything was burning.

The feeling was...

..unbelievable.

Me? Outside?

How?!

Stangl launched a massive manhunt.

By nightfall, fewer than 200 rebels

were still alive and on the run.

And we ran all night long.

No lights, nothing.

Next morning we saw a guy

and I asked him,

"Where are we? What is here?"

And he told us...

"Jews burned the camp and ran away.

"Run away too, because you are Jews."

We are looking for food, for water

and we found a farmer.

I ask him if we can stay there

for one night.

He said, "OK. Come."

Kalman and his friends decided

to lie low in the wild.

To survive a year-long ordeal,

they would dig a makeshift bunker

and live underground.

Samuel went solo.

Trusting in his charm and looks,

he set out for Warsaw

to find his artist father.

This perilous journey took months,

but eventually Samuel traced

Perec to an apartment block

where he was living

under a false name.

Samuel learned that his mother

Manifa was also alive.

He was then asked for news

of his sisters.

The time for revenge

would soon come.

On 1 August 1944, almost a year

after Treblinka's revolt,

a great uprising

by the Armia Krajowa -

the Polish Home Army -

began in Warsaw.

Already with the resistance,

Samuel volunteered to fight

against his old SS tormentors

in bloody street fighting.

The battle raged for over 60 days.

No mercy was given.

Yet, when Warsaw's uprising was

finally crushed,

Samuel managed to slip out

of the devastated city.

He fought on as a partisan,

based in the Campinos woods.

For Kalman, the sound of Russian

tank engines

had augured the gassing

of innocents.

But the roar of Soviet tanks

now heralded

liberation.

One day in the morning, a tank...

..came in...

..and stopped, the tank,

near our place.

Everything was...

trembling there.

We didn't know

what kind of tank it is.

Finally, one of us...

..understood...

Russian.

Samuel was freed form Nazi rule

in January 1945.

Both he and Kalman joined

the Soviet-led Polish army,

and fought on, through to

the final defeat of Hitler.

At war's end, Treblinka

was desolate,

and forgotten.

It had been completely demolished

soon after the prisoners' revolt,

back in 1943.

Only war crimes investigators

now visited

the wasteland.

A stunned world focussed more

on the Nazi concentration camps

which had been liberated intact,

and with many survivors.

Yet fewer than 70

had survived Treblinka.

And they were now scattered,

seeking to rebuild shattered lives.

Samuel had met a young girl

in the city of Lodz.

Ada Lubelchik,

sheltered through the war

by a Polish family,

was looking for accommodation when

she met a dashing army officer.

I went to the office where my

friends worked. I came there,

and in this place was sitting

a very nice-looking Polish officer.

You know, with all this uniform

and with the cap -

a soldier, how it looks.

And he was very nice.

He was blond, with blue eyes.

But my matter was to

ask about an apartment.

And they ask.

And he told me, "Yeah -

I have an apartment.

"I have a very nice one - two rooms,

"but one condition.

"You have to marry me."

It was the first time

that I met him.

It's supposed to be a joke.

There eyes were set on "aliyah" -

emigration to Israel.

Kalman's new life in Israel

had begun in 1948,

when he was finally reunited

with his father, Shimon.

A successful businessman,

he had married Rivka -

herself a survivor of

a Nazi concentration camp.

They had a son, Haim.

Yet, in 1960,

the Israelis brought the world's

attention back to the Nazi genocide

by sensationally kidnapping

Adolf Eichmann from Argentina.

Kalman and three other Treblinka

survivors were summoned

to be part of a huge trial,

held on the stage of Jerusalem's

biggest auditorium.

It was a time for revelation

and justice.

LAWYER:
Was there any law authorizing

you to carry out the mass

deportations?

TRANSLATOR:
I had received orders

and instructions from my direct

superiors...

Eichmann by himself

never shot people.

He was a good organiser

of trains.

Was there any law

authorizing the commander

of an extermination camp

to murder people?

That law, of course, did not exist.

But I know that those who did it

referred to the maxim

according to which

the words of the Fuhrer

have the force of law.

This is what those people say.

I think the uniform

make from him a man.

He was not a man.

He was nothing.

On June 6th, 1961,

Kalman confronted Eichmann

with the crimes of Treblinka.

TRANSLATOR:

Lazarette was a kind of grave -

a big dugout, fenced off

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