Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling (38 page)
Read Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling Online
Authors: Mark S. Smith
At the appointed hour, all three of us are in her house. This time her husband and daughter are also there. We discuss the situation and decide that the best thing would be to go to a particular place and jump onto the roof of the moving train. At that particular point the train moves with a speed of ten kilometres per hour at most. We have no other way out and we agree to try this. They give us a substantial supper and bread and eggs for our journey. As an expression of our gratitude we leave them twenty gold dollars.
Under cover of darkness we set out on our way. We come to the agreed place but we decide not to jump onto the roof of the moving train after all, because we might fall through into the train itself. Instead, we carry on on foot until we reach Rembertow. We have decided to go on from there by train, but we haven’t any Polish money. We sell a diamond ring worth twenty thousand zlotys to a peasant, getting only five hundred zlotys for it. Quaking with fear we buy our tickets and manage to get to Warsaw safely.
A great number of the escapees were soon killed or captured. The suffering of the others was to be long and terrible. Only a few of the escapees from Treblinka, round about twenty, got to freedom. I later met some of them personally in the American zone of Germany. They were: Shmuel Rajzman from Wegow; Kudlik from Częstochowa; Schneiderman who now lives in Foehrenwald Camp; Turowski, who now lives in Berchtesgaden.
House of the Wannsee Conference. The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform senior Nazis and senior Governmental administrators of plans for the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’.
Reinhard Heydrich, the man who chaired the Wannsee Conference and presented the plan for the deportation and annihilation of Europe’s Jews. After his assassination in Prague on 27 May 1942 the code name for the secret building of the death camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka was made ‘Operation Reinhard’ in his honour.
Jews prepare to board a train to an unknown destination. During mid-1942 a whole series of resettlement ‘actions’ were being conducted across occupied Poland. The majority of Jews were sent to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. (HITM ARCHIVE)
Deportation of Jews from the General Government of Poland in the late winter of 1942, or early 1943. (HITM)
A Jewish man waits to board a train for an unknown destination in the East. Having been told that they were to be re-settled, many Jews brought all the valuables they could carry. (HITM)
The remains of the Klobuck shtetl where Hershl spent his childhood. (Author)
The ruined synagogue at Krepice, about four kilometres from Klobuck. In 1939, more than 100 Jews were forced into the building and killed with machine-guns. (Author)
Częstochowa – The New Synagogue at the heart of the town (destroyed 25 December 1939).
Częstochowa Ghetto – Rynek Warszawski Square, where Jews were assembled for forced labour and deportation (circa 1944). Hershl and his family spent months in the ghetto before their deportation to Treblinka.
Częstochowa Ghetto – A German soldier and two Jewish men who are clearing snow on a street.
Dr Irmfried Eberl, the first commandant of Treblinka. Approximately 245,000 Jews were deported and murdered during his reign. He was replaced by Franz Stangl following accusations of corruption and inefficiency. (H.E.A.R.T. Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team)
Franz Stangl, the second commandant of Treblinka, former commandant of another Operation Reinhard death camp, Sobibor, and former superintendent of the T-4 Euthanasia Program. (H.E.A.R.T.)
Kurt Franz, second in command at Treblinka under Franz Stangl. He was nicknamed
Lalke
(‘doll’) by the prisoners because of his deceptively handsome face, and was feared for his relentless sadism. (H.E.A.R.T.)