Holocaust Survivor Will Recall Treblinka Escape in Kent Talk

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Source: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?n...d=478976&rfi=6

Holocaust Survivor Will Recall Treblinka Escape in Kent Talk

By: Kathryn Boughton 09/06/2007

KENT-We've all heard the names-Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz-a litany of terror that seems to encompass all that is terrible in human nature. But few realize that there were many more German concentration camps dotted across that fair land and in neighboring countries overrun during the Nazi blitzkrieg.

Perhaps less familiar to the ear is Treblinka, a death camp once located about 60 miles northeast of Warsaw, Poland, and one of the most vicious of the facilities instituted to effect the "final solution." Treblinka, which was in operation from July 1942 until October 1943, was the site of approximately 800,000 Jewish deaths.

"Dachau was like a hotel," said Treblinka survivor Edi Weinstein. "Treblinka was worse than Auschwitz. In Auschwitz they killed the women, children and older men right away, but there were hundreds of thousands of others working in the industries [around the concentration camp]. When you see pictures of the prisoners with numbers, those are the workers. In Treblinka there were no names, there were no numbers-they killed everyone. [A few Jews were] put to work, but only to kill others."

Indeed, during its final months 99 percent of the victims died within two hours of reaching Treblinka. Mr. Weinstein made a near-miraculous escape from the camp, becoming one of fewer than 100 former inmates to survive the horror. Now in his 80s and living on Long Island, he will present a program at Kent Memorial Library Sept.15 at 4 p.m. Mr. Weinstein, will present his story as part of the "Those Who Have Made a Difference" series offered at the library.

Yad Vashem published Mr. Weinstein's story in Hebrew in 2001 under the name "Plada Rotahat" and in English in 2002 under the title of "Quenched Steel-the Story of an Escape from Treblinka." He speaks at colleges, high schools and Holocaust museums, dedicating his post-retirement years to educating others by telling his story.

"I go around and talk at schools," Mr. Weinstein said. "Most of the students have already read books about the Holocaust or have had classes about it. They are very connected and ask good questions."

The students Mr. Weinstein addresses are about the same age he was when he was swept up in the drama of World War II. He was the son of a poor Jewish family living in a shetl in the interior of Poland. Losice, then a town of about 4,000, was already suffering before the Germans marched in on their way to Russia. It had been used as a transit route for Russians and German soldiers in the First World War and its economy had ground to a stop during those war years.
The years between the two great global conflicts had been little better. During the war between Russia and Poland, Losice was occupied by the Red Army, and many Jews and Poles were pressed into the militia. After the Red Army withdrew, Polish troops usurped and destroyed Jewish possessions and homes. The Polish police apprehended Jews who wanted to escape and imprisoned them; there were reports of Losice streets full of wounded and beaten Jews.
Anti-Semiticism was rife. Jewish craftsmen sold their merchandise in the marketplaces and were often victims of violence by their Christian competitors. Despite this backdrop of intolerance, the Jewish population of Losice persevered and some even prospered. Mr. Weinstein, born Yehuda Jakob Wajnsztajn, said he finished five grades of public school and attended Hebrew School before becoming very ill. "It was a long disease," he said, "but I survived and was working one year before the war in a wholesale grocery. Then war broke out when I was 15."

As a young male he was prime material for the German war effort and was soon pressed into labor, helping the Germans provide transport routes for their military. "In 1939 there was a lot of snow," he remembered, "and we used to keep the roads open for the German army. It was hard work but we had to do it."
In 1940, exactly one year after the non-aggression pact was signed by Russia and Germany, dividing Poland between the two countries, the Germans invaded Russia. "The Russian border was only 12 miles from Losice," he explained, "and the railroad station was only nine miles away. The Germans decided to invade Russia and they demanded that the men and boys work on the railroad lines in preparation for the invasion."

Mr. Weinstein was assigned to a labor camp but after four days was roughed up by the German guards and "the next day I escaped." He was captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp but after 23 days escaped again and made his way back to his hometown. By then the Germans had established a ghetto in Losice and the Jewish police were required to turn him over. His father, Uszer Wajnsztajn, feared that his son would be killed if the Germans had him back in their hands and offered to go in his stead.

His father's sacrifice was almost made in vain. By 1940, many Jews from neighboring towns were flooding into the little shetl, swelling the Jewish population from its pre-war level of 2,900-about two-thirds of the town's population-to more than 5,500. Most of these immigrants were taken in by Losice families, stretching municipal resources to the limit.

Conditions in the ghetto were very hard, and worsened more with each new wave of refugees.

But as yet, most of the Losice Jews were not aware of the murderous intent of their oppressors. "The older people used to say, 'It will cool down,'" Mr. Weinstein remembered. "In 1940, they started to empty the towns near the German border, so 1,500 Jews came to our town, but there were no ghettos yet. When they started taking people in 1942, they said they were taking them to work in the occupied territories of Russia. In the beginning, the people didn't know. The Germans killed here and there a few people-in my town they killed six Jewish men in one night to put fear into the Jewish people-but it was nothing like extermination."

Then the destruction of the Jews took on a frightening new efficiency. "It started in Russia," Mr. Weinstein recalled. "The Einsatzgruppen were shooting people but then they realized that was not such a good system, what they were doing. It was clear that the method was not efficient and that everyone in the non-Jewish population could see it. So they came up with the death camps."
In August 1942, the S.S. sealed the ghetto and rounded up the Jewish families in the central square. They were herded in the direction of the town of Mordy, but on the outskirts of Losice, German soldiers opened fire, murdering about 200, mostly women and children. The remainder of the Jews walked on in rows in the direction of the train station of Siedlce, a march that saw another 800 killed. The surviving Jews were transported by train to Treblinka.

After the deportation, the Germans reduced the Losice ghetto's scope to contain some 200 Jews still hidden in the environs. The Germans made no effort to round them up, but advised all hidden Jews to return to the ghetto, assuring them that they would not be harmed. Many believed them and came back in from the forests. They lived in improvised wooden shacks and worked at different jobs, including assembling the possessions left behind by their fellow Jews. On Nov. 27, 1942, the "Small Ghetto" was destroyed and the last Jews of Losice were deported to Treblinka. Three hundred years of Jewish history in the town had ended.

Mr. Weinstein, his brother, Israel, and his mother were among those rounded up in the first wave of deportation. "We stayed together while we were being rounded up by the Nazis," he has written. "On Aug. 22 1942 we were force-marched 32 kilometers to Siedlce. Two days passed before the cattle train arrived to transport us to Treblinka. We were among the first ones to get into the train."

The boys, aged 16 and 15, soon realized they must extricate themselves or be suffocated by the press of humanity. "The cattle cars were so overcrowded that the people were passing out because of lack of air," he wrote. "... We pushed ourselves on the peoples' heads and with a super-human effort managed to get out. Better to be killed from a bullet than suffocate."

Hundreds of people remained on the platform and the SS troopers continued to pack them into the cattle cars. More than half would die during transport. Those that survived were so overcome by thirst that when the train pulled into Treblinka they tore open the windows, jumping out and running toward a water pump. The Germans opened fire, killing many.

Mr. Weinstein was struck in his right chest, the bullet piercing a lung and exiting his back. Within minutes his brother found him and, with the help of a cousin, dragged the wounded boy into a nearby building. The building was full of bundles of clothing and his brother found a bottle of iodine hidden in a pocket. The boys poured the iodine into his wound and bandaged him with a towel. They then covered him with bags of others' belongings and went in search of water. Mr. Weinstein never saw Israel again and never learned his fate.

Mr. Weinstein stayed in the building for several days without water before he forced himself up and out into the camp. He sidled into a group of Jews that were busy dragging bodies to the cremation pits. Gradually, he integrated himself into the workers assigned to clean the transport trains that arrived and to load the large bundles of clothing from the murdered Jews.

"There was so much clothing from the dead," he remembers. "They would take them into a big building where they were told to undress and go into showers for disinfection." There the Jews were poisoned and the designated Jewish workers made bundles from their clothing.

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Continued:

Although still weak from his wound, Mr. Weinstein was determined to live. The Germans running the camp were totally capricious and workers were pulled daily from the ranks and killed for no reason. On two occasions Mr. Weinstein was selected to be murdered, but on both occasions managed to elude his captors.
Soon, Mr. Weinstein was back loading bundles of victims' clothing onto the empty trains.

"We knew that the goods were going to be shipped to the central warehouse in Warsaw, or perhaps to Germany," he wrote. "Several times I tried to enter a car and hide under the suitcases, but the loaders working in the train did not let me in. ... When the car was partially filled, I carried a bundle inside. But instead of going back out, I hid in a corner near the window. When the car filled up halfway, Michael Fischmann and Gedalia Rosenzweig climbed in and joined me ... . Michael was the oldest of us, about 24. Evidently anticipating our future needs, he had concealed several belts filled with gold coins that he had taken from corpses."

The boys lay there, anxious and tense, while their comrades added more bundles. At the end, the SS men inspected the car, rummaging through the bundles. "[Finally,] he said, 'in Ordnung'-everything's OK-and jumped onto the platform. ... Some time later, we heard the heavy door being slammed shut and locked. We lay in total darkness for about half an hour more until the locomotive lurched into action and the cars began to move. I climbed up a bit and peered through the slats of the grate. The platform began to fade into the distance. .... Suddenly I realized that I was outside. I had escaped from Treblinka."
The boys later jumped from the moving train and made their way back to Losice. The people in the small ghetto could not believe the tale they told of mass deaths. "How could they believe that-especially from Germany, the most civilized country in Europe?" he asked.

He did not know where to go, but eventually decided the safest thing to do would be to join his father in the forced labor camp. "I was with my father in one day."
The two escaped together and went into hiding for the next two years. "We made a hiding place in a pig sty," he recalled. "After about three weeks the poor farmer was afraid and chased us out. My father sent me to a friend who was head of fish hatcheries on big estates. ..."

Father and son hid out at the hatchery for 17 months, living the last few months in the forest where Szczebunskis and Helena Biernacki supplied them with food and shelter until their liberation. "I was very lucky," he concluded. "Later I fought the Germans with the Polish Army."

Mr. Weinstein immigrated to the United States in 1949, assisted by his paternal uncle who had come here before World War I. He worked in the garment business, forming his own successful company. "I saved some money and took a chance going into business. I worked a lot of hours and made good. I was 45 years in business [before closing the business several years ago]. My oldest son came into my business later, but it was a dying business because you can't compete with China."

"I have been very lucky," he concluded. "I have two sons-my older son is a biochemist, and my younger is a professor of mathematics at Columbia. I have seven grandchildren-one grandson is a graduate student in biophysics at Stamford and another granddaughter is a senior at Columbia. This is the best country in the world."

The talk is free to the public and refreshments will be served. Signed copies of Mr. Weinstein's book will be for sale. For more information, call the library at 860-927-3761 or visit the Web site at kentmemoriallibrary.org.