Samuel Willenberg was born in 1923 in Częstochowa, Poland. In October 1942, he arrived at the Treblinka camp in a transport of 6,000 Jews deported from the Opatów ghetto. Most perished immediately; he was the only one who remained alive. On his first night in the camp, Willenberg heard “a familiar voice, as if from a great distance”; it was Professor Merring, his elementary school history teacher. Merring urged him, “You’ve got to escape from here and tell the world what you’ve seen. That will be your duty.”

 

Samuel saw with his own eyes the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Jews and thousands of Roma and witnessed them being sent to death in the gas chambers; his own sisters, Itta and Tamara, also perished there. Willenberg himself suffered humiliation, violence, cruelty and extreme viciousness at the hands of the German SS staff and the Ukrainian “SS-Wachmänner” guards.

 

Willenberg was in Treblinka until the outbreak of the rebellion on 2 August 1943. Inmates in the camp organised the rebellion with the objective of avenging the murders and destroying the extermination facilities. Willenberg took part in the uprising and was shot in the leg. Wounded and under gunfire, he managed to escape and reached occupied Warsaw.

 

Under the assumed name of Ignacy Popov (“Igo”), he took part in the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, first within the ranks of the Home Army and then the Polish People’s Army. After the war, he remained in Poland. In 1950, following his father’s death, he emigrated to Israel with his mother and his wife, Ada.

 

Willenberg wrote his memoir of the camp and the uprising, commemorating them in his book “Surviving Treblinka” (1984). He made pencil drawings and cast bronze sculptures based on his memories of the murder site. He and his wife accompanied youth delegations and tours to Poland to give testimony about what he had experienced in Treblinka.

 

Samuel Willenberg became the spokesman for good Polish-Jewish relations, speaking openly about both the tragic and beautiful events, linking these two groups of Polish citizens during the criminal German occupation.

 

For his activities during and after the Second World War, Samuel Willenberg received the highest national honours of the Republic of Poland, including:

• the Virtuti Militari,

• the Cross of Merit with Swords,

• the Cross of Valour, the Warsaw Uprising Cross,

• the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland,

• the Order of Polonia Restituta, 

• the Polish Army Medal.

 

In January 2020, the Institute of National Remembrance initiated the exhibition and educational project “The Image of Treblinka in the Eyes of Samuel Willenberg”, presenting his sculptures, drawings and testimony. 

 

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Source: Institute of National Remembrance Facebook post

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