Samuel Willenberg, who has died aged 93, was the last survivor of the Nazis’ Treblinka extermination camp from which he escaped during an extraordinary prisoner revolt.
“The world cannot forget Treblinka,” Willenberg said in 2010. “I live two lives, one is here and now and the other is what happened there.” The notorious death camp was situated north-east of Warsaw in occupied Poland. From early 1942 to late 1943 some 875,000 people were murdered within its confines.
Willenberg, a 20-year-old Polish Jew from Warsaw, was one of a number of prisoners who, on August 2 1943, stole weapons, set fire to the camp and fled into the surrounding woods. Few got away. Willenberg was shot in the leg as he scrambled over bodies by the barbed wire. “I ran straight ahead, alone. I wasn’t afraid of being alone,” he recalled. “The important thing was to escape.” His blond Aryan looks helped him while he was on the run and he subsequently made it to Warsaw.
Only 67 people are known to have survived Treblinka, and both of Willenberg’s sisters, Ita and Tamara, perished in the camp. Willenberg realised that they had been killed when he saw a pile of their clothes outside the death chamber. “I looked down. My sisters’ clothes. I recognised Tamara’s coat, it was too small for her so my mother had lengthened the sleeves with bright green material,” he recalled. “It was the worst day of my life.”
Samuel Willenberg was born on February 16 1923 in Częstochowa in southern Poland to Perec Willenberg and his wife Maniefa (née Popow). His father taught at a Jewish school and was a painter who decorated synagogues. The family later settled in Warsaw.
In 1939 Willenberg volunteered for the Polish army. He was wounded in action against the Soviet forces and later, in Opatów in south Poland, was arrested and sent to Treblinka. As a young and relatively healthy man he was one of the fortunate few picked out to undertake maintenance work.
The morning roll call at the camp, recalled Willenberg, took place “amidst the sweet, nauseating stench of decomposing bodies which clung to us as if never wanting to part. The smell had become part of our very being; it was all that remained of our families and loved ones.”
Willenberg in 2010 with a map of the Treblinka camp
After his escape he undertook an arduous journey back to Warsaw where he discovered that his parents were still alive. His father had pretended to be mute – he was convinced that his voice would be his undoing – and was earning a living painting pictures of Jesus. Willenberg joined the underground resistance and took part in the Warsaw Uprising.
After serving in the Polish army, he moved with his wife and mother to Israel in 1950 and subsequently retrained as a surveyor. He worked for the rest of his career for Israel’s Ministry of Construction.
Willenberg had a lifelong interest in art and in retirement he studied sculpture in Jerusalem. He produced bronzes of prisoners leaving trains, on stretchers and undressing for the gas chambers. One critic praised “the twisted forms and compressed compositions [which] telegraph with candour the tragic moments and extreme horror”.
His memoir, Revolt in Treblinka (1986), was published in Hebrew, Polish and English.
He received many awards including the Polish Virtuti Militari and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit which was presented to him by President Lech Kaczyński.
When asked in 2011 why he thought he survived the camp he replied: “Chance, sheer chance. It wasn’t because of God. He wasn’t there.”
He is survived by his wife, Ada, and their daughter.
Samuel Willenberg, born February 16 1923, died February 19 2016
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