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    The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir

    By Chil Rajchman

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From one of the lone survivors of the Treblinka concentration camp comes a devastating memoir of the Holocaust in the tradition of Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz.
     
    Why did some live while so many others perished? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls—in the gas chambers of Treblinka, all were equal. A central cog in the wheel of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, the fires of Treblinka were kept burning night and day.
     
    Chil Rajchman was twenty-eight when he arrived at Treblinka in 1942. At the extermination camp, he was forced to work as a “barber,” shaving the heads of victims, and a “dentist,” pulling gold teeth from corpses. But he escaped eleven months later and survived to tell the shocking and heartbreaking tale of his experience—and of those who didn’t make it out alive.
     
    Elie Wiesel calls The Last Jew of Treblinka “an important, heart-rending contribution to our search for truth.” Poignant and powerful, this memoir provides the only survivors’ record of the horrifying Polish extermination camp. Originally written in Yiddish in 1945, without hope or agenda other than to bear witness, Rajchman’s story shows that remembering is sometimes the bravest and most painful act of all.  
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPegasus Books
    Release dateMay 1, 2012
    ISBN9781453249253
    Unavailable
    The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir
    Author

    Chil Rajchman

    Chil Rajchman was born in Lodz, Poland, where he was an active member of the Jewish community. He survived for a year in the notorious Treblinka death camp and was part of the Treblinka workers’ revolt. Rajchman was also a key witness in the prosecution of a Treblinka guard known as “Ivan the Terrible” during a war-crime tribunal in Germany. He emigrated to Uruguay, where passed away in 2004.

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    Reviews for The Last Jew of Treblinka

    4.5/5

    24 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Really good story. Tells a heartfelt means of survival during this historical event. As well as gives you chilling details of the horror that the Jewish people endured.
    • 4/5
      This is not "great literature" and does not pretend to be. It makes a modest case for being an eyewitness account but far exceeds that to be a historically valuable document. This should be required reading on everyone's list.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      The significance of Rajchman’s personal memoir is made clear with the title. Treblinka was a notorious death camp with most Jews facing immediate extermination upon arrival. Rajchman, along with a few others chosen to perform slave labor at the camp, suffer brutality, humiliation, and unbelievable atrocities. His account of his year in Treblinka and survival is overshadowed by his own feelings of guilt of being the one to survive. His memoir is an important part of history.
    • 5/5
      frightening. How any individual could be so sadistic is beyond my comprehension.