Samuel willenberg biography

Samuel Willenberg – born in 1923 in Częstochowa.
Samuel Willenberg, nom de guerre Igo (16 February 1923 – 19 February 2016), was a Polish Holocaust survivor, artist, and writer.
My name is Samuel Willenberg.

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At the early age of sixteen, in September 1939, Samuel Wilenberg as a volunteer, joined the army. He took part in battles against the Germans and one with the Red Army around Chełm. In 1942, after the arrest of his sisters, who were betrayed by their neighbours, devastated, he went to the ghetto in Opatów. In October 1942 he was transported to the extermination camp in Treblinka.

To his duties belonged also cutting hair of Jewish women, being taken to the gas chambers. He remembered the surname and face of one of the women — a twenty-year-old Rut Dorfman. After decades, he recreated her face in his sculptures.

On August 2, 1943 he took part in a&nbs

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Samuel stressed that he always felt Polish, which is why when the war broke out he joined the Polish army as a volunteer. He was fighting against the Red Army when he was wounded. He escaped from the hospital and left with his family for Opatów, near his hometown of Częstochowa. There they ended up in the ghetto, where Samuel sold pictures painted by his father to the local community.

In the fall of 1942, he was sent from the ghetto to a camp. Samuel recalled the arrival at Treblinka as follows:

Suddenly we found ourselves in a forest. The branches reached all the way to the wagon and the mothers in the wagons lifted the children so they could see a pine tree for the first time in their lives. Happy were the children, with what they were seeing and not knowing what would happen next.

In the square, Samuel, on the advice of one of the prisoners, told a guard that he was a bricklayer, and because he was wearing his father’s paint-stained apron, he was taken out, the only one, from the column going to the gas chamber. With No. 937, he worked in a warehouse for items left behin

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The last known living participant of the uprising in the extermination camp in Treblinka is Samuel Willenberg. At the early age of sixteen in September 1939, as a volunteer, Willenberg, who was from Częstochowa, joined the army. He took part in battles against the Germans and one with the Red Army around Chełm. In 1942, after the arrest of his sisters, who were betrayed by their neighbours, devastated, he went to the ghetto in Opatów. In October 1942 he was transported to the extermination camp in Treblinka.

Pretending to be a bricklayer, he was the only one to avoid instant death and was sent to Sonderkommando. While working in a warehouse with possessions belonging to the murdered, he recognized the clothes of his two sisters. To his duties belonged also cutting hair of Jewish women, being taken to the gas chambers. He remembered the surname and face of one of the women: a twenty-year-o