Richard Glazar
Richard Glazar | |
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Treblinka survivor, author of Treblinka memoir |
Richard Glazar (November 29, 1920 – December 20, 1997) was a Czech-Jewish inmate of the
Early life and family
Glazar (Goldschmid)
Glazar's father died of pneumonia in the Soviet Union, to which he had escaped from the
Education
Glazar was accepted into the
On November 17, 1939, all Czech universities were closed until the end of the war, following student demonstrations against the execution of a number of their fellow students. This act would have been one of the Glazar family's first warnings of the horrific events to follow, and fearing for his safety, his family sent him to a farm outside Prague in 1940. Glazar stayed there for two years. On September 12, 1942, he was transported to the Nazi concentration camp or ghetto at
In Terezin, Glazar met Karel Unger, who became a close friend. Glazar was to stay in Terezin for only one month, before he and Unger were transported to Treblinka on October 8, 1942.[5]
Treblinka
Glazar wrote his story down after the war,[6] and had part of it published in 1967 in a Czech magazine, Mezinárodní politika.[7] In 1979 he was interviewed by Claude Lanzmann for the documentary Shoah (1985). When Glazar moved to Switzerland after the Prague Spring, his memoir was published in full in German as Die Falle mit dem grünen Zaun: Überleben in Treblinka (1992).[7] An English translation, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka, was published in 1995 by Northwestern University Press.
In Shoah, Glazar described his arrival at Treblinka:
We were taken to a barracks. The whole place stank. Piled about five feet high in a jumbled mass, were all the things people could conceivably have brought. Clothes, suitcases, everything stacked in a solid mass. On top of it, jumping around like demons, people were making bundles and carrying them outside. It was turned over to one of these men. His armband said "Squad Leader". He shouted, and I understood that I was also to pick up clothing, bundle it, and take it somewhere. As I worked, I asked him: "What's going on? Where are the ones who stripped?" And he replied: "Dead! All Dead!" But it still hadn't sunk in, I didn't believe it. He'd used the Yiddish word. It was the first time I'd had heard Yiddish spoken. He didn’t say it very loud, and I saw he had tears in his eyes. Suddenly, he started shouting, and raised his whip. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an SS man coming. And I understood that I was to ask no more questions, but just to rush outside with the package.[4]
New arrivals at Treblinka were ordered to strip, then herded into
The revolt
After the big transports from Grodno and Białystok Ghettos in January 1943, in February and March 1943 no transports came into the camp. The Sonderkommando had virtually no food, which made the Jewish inmates realize that their lives depended on the transports arriving regularly.[3][8]
It was this knowledge that drove them to try to escape. The first escape attempt was planned for January 1943 and was code-named "The Hour". The idea was that at a specified time, all those working for the camp would attack the SS and Ukrainian guards, steal their weapons, and attack the camp
While on the run, they were arrested by a forester, but managed to convince him that they were Czechs working for "Organisation Todt" (a Nazi construction and engineering group in Poland). Both men were later sent to Mannheim in Germany, to work for Heinrich Lanz as immigrant workers, using falsified papers.[3][9]
Life after the war
Following the end of the war, when Glazar and Unger were liberated by the Americans, Glazar attended the trials of many of the Nazis associated with Treblinka, including Franz Stangl. Glazar also went on to study in Prague, Paris and London, and received a degree in economics. In 1968 he and his family moved to Switzerland after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact.
Death
Glazar helped Michael Peters, the founder of the Aktion Reinhard Camps (a network of private Holocaust researchers), build a model of Treblinka. Glazar committed suicide on December 20, 1997, by jumping out of a window in Prague after the death of his wife, leaving the model unfinished.[3]
See also
References
- ^ Geni (29 November 1920). "Richard Glazar (Goldschmid)". Geni. Retrieved 31 July 2022.
- ^ a b Wolfgang Benz, "Foreword", in Richard Glazar, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995, viii–viii.
- ^ a b c d e "Richard Glazar (Goldschmid)". Aktion Reinhard Camps. August 17, 2005. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- ^ ISBN 0306806657.
- ^ "Richard Glazar: Treblinka Recalled". Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- ^ Benz 1995, ix.
- ^ a b Samuel Moyn, A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France, University of New England Press, 2005, 137.
- ^ Glazar 1995, 91.
- ^ "Richard Glazar—Treblinka". Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive. Retrieved August 14, 2015.