How Did the Treblinka Inmates Escape? 2 August 1943

Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard –the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews. Treblinka was located 90 kilometres northeast of the city Warsaw and operated from July 1942 to October 1943. It was divided into Camp 1 and Camp 2. In the first camp, the victims were sent to the gas chambers and in the second camp their bodies were burned. Many of the victims, mainly Jews, came from the Warsaw Ghettos, and did not know where or for what reason they were travelling. Soon they found out the horrors they were about to face. As people arrived, men, women and children were separated. They were screamed at, whipped, stripped of their clothing and belongings, their hair was cut, before being sent to gas chambers that could kill several thousand a day. Those who were sick, old and newborns that would not stop crying, were taken away to be shot. Some men were taken as workers, called “Sonderkommandos”. These people had many jobs around Treblinka ranging from having to move the dead bodies and to checking for gold teeth, shaving the heads of those who were to die, rooting through the belongings for valuables, and cleaning the gas chambers. Their day-to-day jobs pushed them toward suicide, which was not uncommon. Life was unbearable and soon the inmates to realised that their only chance of leaving the camp alive was if they escaped. Zelo Bloch. Dr. Julian Chorazycki, Zev Kurlan and the carpenter Jankiel Wiernik were the leaders in this escape and began to organise the escape. The plan was for one group of rebels to storm the watchtowers, where the “”Wachmanner” sat with their machine guns. A second group was to attack the sentries who patrolled the paths between the various camp squares. A third group was to attack the armoured vehicles. A fourth was to cut the telephone lines and the fifth was to seize control of the barracks. A sixth would cut the passages through the barbed wire. A seventh was to lay bridges across the anti-tank ditches. An eight group would destroy whatever else could be destroyed. The dentists had the task of gathering as much gold as possible to take along with them. When the signal for the revolt was given, those who had to search through belongings had to gather as much money as possible without being caught. They acquired some gasoline from trucks and tanks in the garage through one of their comrades. By luck, a locksmith from within the rebel group was asked to repair the door to the camp’s arsenal and was able to obtain a wax impression of the lock. After four months he was able to fashion a key. On the day of the escape, the disinfector filled his disinfectant bottle with gasoline instead. Now with access to arsenal and a means to ignite the camp, the date for escape was set for the 2nd of August 1943. Until noon on the day of the escape, work went on as usual. The men prepared extra clothing and money and valuables that would be useful once they were outside the camp. As it happened, on the day of the escape, a group of four SS men and sixteen Ukrainians, headed by Kurt Franz left the camp to go bathing in the nearby Bug River. Two revolver shots signalled the start of the escape. This shot was followed by the detonations of hand grenades hurled at previously "disinfected" objects and the group working in the potato silo hurled more hand grenades at the SS quarters.. The groups of fighters acted separately. Rudick Lubernicki and Stenda Lichtblau set fire to the large fuel tanks, and when they exploded all the nearby buildings caught fire. The prisoners’ quarters and the warehouses were also set aflame. The weapons of Ukrainian and SS guards who had been killed were seized. The camp was in total disarray as it went up in flames. The prisoners had begun to break through the fences throwing blankets and coats on the barbed wire to get over the anti-tank fences. Many of the people were hurt and those who fell were trampled on by others seeking their escape. Of the 850 prisoners in the camp, about half, including most of the leaders and those who were actively involved in the uprising, were killed trying to escape between the fences or near them. About 100 prisoners decided to remain in the camp and made no attempt to escape but were nevertheless executed by the Germans.

As Treblinka blazed, the S.S. and police units were rushed in from all directions to track them down. Police dogs were sent after them and aeroplanes were called in to locate and capture the escapees. The combing of the area and the setting up of roadblocks resulted in the capture of most of the escapes, many of whom were shot on the spot. There were many conflicting testimonies of the treatment of the escapees by the locals. Some claimed that the peasants in the region caught the prisoners, took their money and gold and handed them over to the Germans. While alternatively, others have said that the peasants, who risked their lives to help them, are the reason that they survived at all. It is estimated that no more than one hundred people survived the escape of Treblinka.
One survivor, Samuel Willenburg, was shot in the leg while escaping from Treblinka. But he kept on running, ignoring dead friends in his path. His blue eyes and non-Jewish features allowed him to survive in the countryside before making his way to Warsaw. There he joined the Polish underground and fought against the Nazis in the 1944 Warsaw uprising. After the war, Willenburg made his was to Israel, where he became a surveyor in Israel’s housing ministry. He also immortalised his memories in drawings and bronze sculptures, including one of Ruth Dorfmann, a young woman whose hair he shaved before her death. He is one of only two left to tell the horrifying tale that is Treblinka.

The gas chambers survived the revolt, and continued to function until its last victims were claimed three weeks later. The Germans burned the remaining corpses, dismantled the stone building, and the equipment was blown up. They removed the barbed wire and torched the wooden barracks that hadn’t been burned down. The station buildings were completely destroyed and last of all, the track was dismantled and the sleepers were removed. Lupins were sown on the site of the camp.

The escape from Treblinka is testimony to the courage of the inmates. Although the casualties suffered were vast, the Treblinka Revolt miraculously succeeded in destroying the notorious death camp. The Jewish prisoners, having rightfully concluded that they were going to die in any case, chose instead defiance. I can think of no greater act of heroism.