Treblinka: A Survivor's Memory - Hardcover

Chil Rajchman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1906694206 ISBN 13: 9781906694203

Publisher: MacLehose Press, 2011

Synopsis

Chil Rajchman, a Polish Jew, was arrested with his younger sister in 1942 and sent to Treblinka, a death camp where more than 750,000 were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers. His sister was sent to the gas chambers, but Rajchman escaped execution, working for ten months under incessant threats and beatings as a barber, a clothes-sorter, a corpse-carrier, a puller of teeth from those same bodies. In August 1943, there was an uprising at the camp, and Rajchman was among the handful of men who managed to escape. In 1945, he set down this account, a plain, unembellished and exact record of the raw horror he endured every day. This unique testimony, which has remained in the sole possession of his family ever since, has never before been published in English. For its description of unspeakably cruelty, Treblinka is a memoir that will not be superseded. In addition to Rajchman's account, this volume will include the complete text of Vasily Grossman's 'The Hell of Treblinka', one of the first descriptions of a Nazi extermination camp; a powerful and harrowing piece of journalism written only weeks after the camp was dissolved. Introduction by Samuel Moyn, Professor of History at Columbia University and author of A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France.

About this title

About the Author

Chil Rajchman was born in Lodz in Poland, and was an active member of his Jewish community. After the Treblinka trials he emigrated to Uruguay, where he died in 2004.

From the Back Cover

My poor sister asks me why I am leaving our baggage behind. I reply: - We won't be needing it... I don't manage to say even a few more words to her before we hear a murderous shout: - Men to the right, women to the left! I barely have time to kiss her and we are torn apart for ever.

From the Inside Flap

Chil Rajchman, a Polish Jew, was twenty-eight years old when he was arrested in October 1942 and sent to Treblinka, a death camp where more than 750,000 Jews were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers. His sister travelled with him and was immediately sent to the gas chambers, but Rajchman escaped execution, working for ten months under incessant threats and beatings as a barber, a clothes-sorter, a corpse-carrier, a puller of teeth from those same corpses. In August 1943 there was an uprising at the camp, and Rajchman was among the handful of men who managed to escape.
Even before the war was over, while Rajchman was still in hiding, he set down in a notebook this unembellished and exact record of the raw horror he endured every day at the camp. This unique testimony has remained in the sole possession of his family since then, and has never before been published in English. For its description of unspeakable cruelty, Treblinka is a memoir that will not be superseded.
In addition to Rajchman's account, this volume includes the complete text of Vasily Grossman's 'The Hell of Treblinka', a powerful and harrowing journalistic essay written only weeks after the camp was dissolved, and an introduction by Samuel Moyn, Professor of History at Columbia University.

Edition details

• Publisher: MacLehose Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1906694206
• ISBN 13: 9781906694203
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224