Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling

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Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling

Mark S. Smith

Language: English

Pages: 256

ISBN: 0752463713

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The story of a man who survived Treblinka, to be haunted by his memories for 50 years—and ultimately, to be killed by them
 
More than 800,000 people entered Treblinka and fewer than 70 came out. Hershl Sperling was one of them. He escaped. Why then, 50 years later, did he jump to his death from a bridge in Scotland? The answer lies in a long-forgotten, published account of the Treblinka death camp, written by Hershl Sperling himself in the months after liberation, discovered in his briefcase after his suicide, and reproduced here for the first time. Including previously unpublished photographs, this book traces the life of a man who survived five concentration camps, and details what he had to do to achieve this. Hershl's story, from his childhood in a small Polish town to the bridge in faraway Scotland, is testament to the lasting torment of those very few who survived the Nazis' most efficient and gruesome death factory. The author personally follows in his subject's footsteps from Klobuck, to Treblinka, to Glasgow.

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Entered. Howard Falksohn was expecting us. He stood up to greet us from his desk, and shook our hands. ‘So, the book,’ he said, pulling it out of a brown Manila envelope. He handed it to me and I passed it to Sam. ‘My God, that’s it,’ said Sam, running a hand over the faded green cover, its large Hebrew type drawing attention to itself. In roman type at the bottom, it read, ‘Nr. 4’ and the date ‘1947’. Sam bit his bottom lip. ‘Can you read any of it, the Yiddish I mean?’ I asked. ‘Just a few.

The terrified children cling to their mothers. At last the people have been divided into two groups. Then comes the order: undress, and tie your clothes up in a bundle, tie your shoes together in pairs. The huge crowd just stands there as if waiting for something, until the savage SS let fly with their rubber truncheons and force the people to undress. Some more slowly, some more quickly, with greater or lesser degrees of embarrassment, the men and women undress and lay their clothes aside. Some.

Into a large van. This vehicle, they were told, would take them to a bathhouse. Some sensed the danger. Yet those who attempted to stop before the ramp were driven, some savagely beaten, into the van. When the van was full, the door was locked, the engine started, and carbon monoxide was pumped into the interior through a specially constructed pipe. Four or five minutes later, when the cries and struggles of the suffocating victims were heard no more, the van was driven to the Chelmno wood about.

Distributed among the Underground members. At the same time, a young man named Bendin, whose day-to-day job was to disinfect the buildings and clothing in the camp, filled his spray canister with gasoline. He went about the camp spraying the barracks, workshops, storerooms and huts. The guards smelled nothing except the burning bodies in the extermination area. Messengers ran to and fro to different parts of the camp. At around 2.00pm, word passed around the camp that no more Jews would be.

Then – to Wiesau, about ten miles west, and then east to Prague, and on to Poland. He would have had to be careful.’ ‘Why?’ ‘It was a crazy time on the roads in Germany, just after the war. The confusion and population movement were incredible. The roads were jammed with a tidal wave of refugees – and not just Jews, who’d been forced inside Nazi Germany towards the end of the war. There were foreign conscript workers and freed prisoners, as well as Germans, expelled from various territories in.

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