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doc_k55's review against another edition
5.0
You’re familiar with Auschwitz, right? Bergen-Belsen? Dachau? Believe it or not, those were “work” camps. Treblinka had one purpose only: death. From the trains, Jews stripped, were shaved, and were herded, naked and beaten, to gas chambers. They were packed in so tightly it was hard to draw breath - and then they were gassed - a horrific process that took as much as forty five minutes. The Nazis could watch through a small window to make sure that everyone was dead - bloated and discolored - before the chambers were opened. Then and only then did tortured Jewish workers rush in to pull the bodies out. At first they were tossed into pits where they were laid head to foot and then the Nazis decided to eliminate all traces of their genocide. The same Jews were forced to dig up rotting corpses and place them in ovens to burn, seeking even the smallest bone fragments so no trace of the three quarters of a million Jews who had perished there would be left behind.
The reason you don’t know much about this camp?
Almost everyone died. Only sixty-seven survived.
This is the first hand account written by one of the survivors. Beware, it’s disturbing and gruesome. It’s short, but you won’t be able to read it at one time. I can’t describe this as a book I “loved,” but it’s one everyone should read
Never forget
The reason you don’t know much about this camp?
Almost everyone died. Only sixty-seven survived.
This is the first hand account written by one of the survivors. Beware, it’s disturbing and gruesome. It’s short, but you won’t be able to read it at one time. I can’t describe this as a book I “loved,” but it’s one everyone should read
Never forget
laurenbdavis's review against another edition
4.0
Yes. Brutal. Simple prose describing the unspeakable. We are both crushed and uplifted by this account of horror and survival.
emma_not_watson_reads's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
vlodko62's review against another edition
5.0
Warning: this book is not for the faint of heart, nor for those disturbed by descriptions of horrific violence and mass murder.
The Last Jew of Treblinka earns its five stars out of respect for the millions killed, those that survived, and for the miracle that the author, Chil Rajchman, survived to tell it. This is a very difficult book, emotionally painful to read. It is only uplifting only in that Rajchman survived. The experience of reading this book is much darker than reading Elie Wiesel's Night.
Treblinka, together with Chelmno, Belzec and Sobibor were Nazi extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) or death camps (Todeslager). Two others - Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau - were extermination camps within a larger complex of concentration camps.
These were distinct from from concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen, which were prison labor camps for people defined as “undesirable,” the largest group of which were Jews. In the concentration camps, prisoners were selected for slave labor first; they were kept alive on starvation rations and made available to work as required. Those who were not selected were exterminated.
The extermination camps by contrast, were built exclusively for the rapid and systematic extermination of entire communities of people (primarily Jews) within hours of their arrival, delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. This was death on an industrial scale.
The prisoners sent to extermination camps were murdered within a few hours of arrival. A very small number of men were chosen as slave laborers - preparing arrivals for the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies afterwards). Many of these men were killed as they worked; others committed suicide in despair of their situation. Chil Rajchman was one of these individuals, and his story, no matter how bleak is one we cannot forget.
The Last Jew of Treblinka earns its five stars out of respect for the millions killed, those that survived, and for the miracle that the author, Chil Rajchman, survived to tell it. This is a very difficult book, emotionally painful to read. It is only uplifting only in that Rajchman survived. The experience of reading this book is much darker than reading Elie Wiesel's Night.
Treblinka, together with Chelmno, Belzec and Sobibor were Nazi extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) or death camps (Todeslager). Two others - Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau - were extermination camps within a larger complex of concentration camps.
These were distinct from from concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen, which were prison labor camps for people defined as “undesirable,” the largest group of which were Jews. In the concentration camps, prisoners were selected for slave labor first; they were kept alive on starvation rations and made available to work as required. Those who were not selected were exterminated.
The extermination camps by contrast, were built exclusively for the rapid and systematic extermination of entire communities of people (primarily Jews) within hours of their arrival, delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. This was death on an industrial scale.
The prisoners sent to extermination camps were murdered within a few hours of arrival. A very small number of men were chosen as slave laborers - preparing arrivals for the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies afterwards). Many of these men were killed as they worked; others committed suicide in despair of their situation. Chil Rajchman was one of these individuals, and his story, no matter how bleak is one we cannot forget.
carlita_is_probably_reading's review against another edition
I can not even give this a rating. It's just too unfathomable and disheartening that evil to this extent is even possible.
lyle's review against another edition
5.0
I always find it hard to rate and review peoples memoirs/autobiographies
The way he shares his story is very detailed, despite how short it is
I think it is worth a read for everyone especially being that he is only one of so few that lived to tell the stories of Treblinka
The way he shares his story is very detailed, despite how short it is
I think it is worth a read for everyone especially being that he is only one of so few that lived to tell the stories of Treblinka