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Obituaries from page 73
I
sraeli President Reuven Rivlin was
among those attending the funeral of
Samuel Willenberg, the last remaining
survivor of the revolt at the Treblinka death
camp in Poland, who died on Feb. 20, 2016,
at the age of 93.
The funeral took place at Moshav Udim
on the coastal plain on Feb. 22.
Willenberg was born in 1923 in
Czestochowa in southern Poland. He was 16
when World War II broke out with the Nazi
invasion of Poland in 1939.
At the age of 19, he was rounded up with
the Jews during the liquidation of the ghetto
in Opatow in southern Poland and sent to
Treblinka.
Acting on the advice of another Jewish
prisoner, he posed as a bricklayer upon his
arrival at the extermination camp. He was
the only person from his transport not to
perish in the gas chambers.
Willenberg took part in the 1943 revolt
at Treblinka, becoming one of the few hun-
dred who managed to escape the camp.
Wikimedia Commons/Jerusalem Post
Times of Israel
Mark Neyman/GPO/Times of Israel
Last Survivor Of The Revolt At Treblinka Death Camp
Samuel Willenberg
He went to Warsaw, found his father
and joined the underground resistance,
using his mother’s maiden name of
Popow. He also took part in the 1944
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the
Nazis.
Willenberg moved to Israel in 1950
with his wife and his mother, where he
joined the civil service. After retirement,
he found success as a sculptor and held
President Reuven Rivlin, center, with
widow Ada Willenberg at the funeral for
Samuel Willenberg on Feb. 22.
several international exhibits of his work,
which focused on the Holocaust and his
own experiences in Treblinka.
In his eulogy, Rivlin recalled meeting
Willenberg for the first time just over a
year ago during a trip to inaugurate the
Jewish Museum in Warsaw.
“Samuel described courageously and
with endless compassion what had hap-
pened to him… The entire transport
which arrived with Samuel to Treblinka
— 6,000 people — were sent to the gas
chambers,” he said.
“He told me about his two sisters who
were murdered. Seventy years have passed
since then, but when he talked about his
sister, aged 6, whom he left and to whom
he could never return — how he found her
coat that their mother had sewed, among
the belongings of Jews sent to their deaths
at Treblinka — Samuel still cried. He
never stopped missing them.”
Rivlin added: “One of his sculptures is
located at the president’s residence. Every
time I walk past that statue I remembered
what Samuel told me. ‘I will not live for-
ever. But my sculptures will speak for me.’
“And now they will speak in his place.
Every month, a thousand survivors pass
away. The number of firsthand witnesses
is dwindling. Time is running out. We
must do everything possible to help the
survivors live out the rest of their lives
with dignity.”
More than 850,000 Jews were murdered
at Treblinka in a period of just 13 months,
Rivlin said.
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74 February 25 • 2016