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Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka (Jewish Lives)

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None of the previous reviewers seem to know that Richard Glazar, a young Czech, is one of the most effective eyewitnesses in Claude Lanzmann's epic masterpiece, 'Shoah.' He appears at numerous points during the parts of the film that deal with Treblinka. What comes across is his vitality, integrity, and self-awareness. He was one of the few to survive the Treblinka revolt in August 1943 in which several hundred prisoners finally managed to break out, although most did not finally survive. Glazar appears too in interviews with Gitta Sereny, 'Into that Darkness,' in her study of Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka. Glazar's work is utterly authentic and a MUST READ.

Richard Galzar, a Jew from Prague, survived for 10 months as a clothes-sorter in Trebinka, until his escape in the breakout of August 1943. While not a professional writer, his clear, strongly written account is an excellent source for true students of Holocaust history. The above reviewer either has not read the book or clearly seeks to defame this author, as is typical with Holocaust Deniers.

Richard Glazar was one of the few people to have survived the Treblinka death camp. He was around 23 years old at the time. In his account of the 10 months or so that he was there, he does not dwell on things he did not have direct experience of, but describes what life was like for him and the people around him. He does not attempt to explain or analyze or give the big picture. This, for me, is what makes his story so powerful. Moreover, he does not overwhelm the reader with gruesome details, but at the same time manages to give the reader a strong understanding of the total inhumanity of the camp and its operations, and the casual and systematic brutality of the guards. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in a first hand account of this terrible time in world history. (For a very readable history of the Third Reich, I recommend Richard Evans' trilogy on the subject, beginning with "The Coming of the Third Reich".)

Glazar's account of survival in Treblinka is one of the three best accounts of death camp survival I have read. The others were written by Filip Muller and Rudolph Vrba about Auschwitz. Glazar's account is detailed and insightful...a can't put it down book.

This book is just as excellent and disturbing as Willenburg's "Surviving Treblinka", but it has a different feel about it. Its almost as if he is telling the story as a detached observer, which, in some cases, caused the survival of many Nazi victims. It is very detailed but, amongst the suffering among the few prisoners chosed to sort the clothing of the dead, there is a hope you get out of it. There were of course prisoners who has to work in Camp 2, where the gas chambers were located and those prisoners has to unload the chambers and put them in mass graves, later replaced by huge pyres, also called the roasts. But Glazar worked in Camp One, first sorting clothes, and then getting a better position working in one of the sheds where packaged belongings were stored until the objects could fill up a train to head back to Lublin headquarters. One of the most interesting chapters is called "The Hangmen and the Gravediggers", where Glazar, while working in this shed, encountered and actually had relatively normal conversation and mingling with SS men who worked the camp. This chapter describes many SS men, calling some terrible, while others were not as bad as others. Corruption was the name of the game; that is, SS men would come to this shed to get fine clothing and other objects and would often keep them of send them home to their families. This practice was extremely against SS regulations, but it happened anyway. The rest of the book is very interesting as well, such as when Glazar was assigned to the forest brigage, who would collect pine branches and such to camoflauge the fences of the camp. The evolution of the revolt is great, despite terrible things that happended in the course of organizing the revolt, such as military leader of the revolt, Zhelo Bloch, a Jewish captain of the Czech Army, being sent to Camp 2, with its gas chambers and dead bodies everywhere, as punishment for numerical errors that occured one day when trains were being loaded up with the stolen goods of the Jews, trains that would go to Lublin and spread from there. And there was also the death of Dr. Chorozycki. He was found in possession of money that to be used in the purchase of arms to be used in the revolt. Kurt Franz made the discovery and the doctor attacked Franz with a surgical knife and blows from his fist, a great act of courage. The doctor managed to slip some cyanide tablets and he died before the SS could torture him, to try to get information from him. Terrible indeed, but the revolt still took place...ive said enough, just read this book! You will not be disappointed, particularly if you are already interested in the subject of the Holocaust. I would suggest anyone read it though. The book is depressing, but, to me atleast, the way it is told seems almost detached, and theres even monents of dark humor thrown in here and there, atleast thats how i percieve it. A moving book to say the least. Get it!

I read everything there is about Treblinka and I can tell you that this is one of the best accounts yet. Other alternatives are "A year in Treblinka" and Arad's "Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka: Aktion Reinhard Death Camps". Steiner's Treblinka is a very enjoyable work of fiction (but historicaly inacurate).

Richard Glazer, a Czech Jew, mentions his life in German-occupied Prague and then his arrival at Treblinka. Naked for the "shower", he gets pulled out of the line to the gas chamber by an SS man, and diverted to forced labor. Glazer then elaborates his experiences in Treblinka, giving a particularly good description of typhus and how it flourishes under the unsanitary conditions and is spread by lice (pp. 72-73). Glazer escapes Treblinka during the famous August 1943 revolt. He eventually gets caught by a Volksdeutsche, but avoids the death sentence for being a Jew, and ends up a forced laborer in Germany, where he is liberated. Glazer also recounts his "reunion" with 54 still-living Treblinka escapees during the trials of the Nazi war criminals in West Germany in the 1960's (pp. 195-196).

Some Polish Jews discussing the possibility of escaping from Treblinka tried to discourage it by sinking to new lows of Polonophobic mythmaking. They actually asserted that Poles who help Jews no longer exist at all, and that 9 out of 10 Poles betray Jews (p. 84)--all without even stopping to think about the self-refuting nature of their absurdities. Just two sentences earlier, they had spoken about Jews who had escaped from Treblinka and returned to the Ghettos to warn the remaining Jews there (p. 83). If anything other than a trivial fraction of Poles betrayed Jews (let alone 9/10) then no Jews who escaped from Treblinka would've survived more than a day!

In contrast, some Jews who contemplated the possibility of escaping from Treblinka had a realistic view of the situation. They recognized the fact that killers of fugitive Jews in the areas surrounding Treblinka were not, as often alleged, members of the Polish Underground (the AK and NSZ). They were simply bandits, many of whom pretended to be members of the AK and NSZ, and who killed both Jews and non-Jews at will: "A few kilometers farther into the woods you would come upon the partisans, and then a gang with nothing in common with partisans than the name. They rob, and they murder; they don't care whom they attack by night." (p. 105)

When Richard Glazer actually escaped from Treblinka, he spent much time traversing the Polish countryside. He describes his peregrinations and the help he received from Poles. He passed by a long series of Polish villages, including Ostrow (p. 149), Wiszkow, Radzymin (p. 150), Rembertow, Solejuwky (p. 151), "...Piaseczno, Gora Kalwaria, Grojec, Mogielnica--those are the exotic-sounding names of towns passed through, more or less without incident." (p. 153). He had to evade a column of Germans. Yet not once did he indicate any threat from Polish blackmailers or denouncers. And, when he was finally caught, it was not by a Pole but by a Volksdeutsche. (p. 153)