JERUSALEM — Samuel Willenberg, the last survivor of Treblinka, the Nazi death camp where 875,000 people were systematically murdered, has died in Israel at the age of 93.
Only 67 people are known to have survived the camp, fleeing in a revolt shortly before it was destroyed.
Unlike at other camps, where some Jews were assigned to forced labor before being killed, nearly all Jews brought to Treblinka were immediately gassed to death.
Only a select few — mostly young, strong men like Willenberg, who was 20 at the time— were spared from immediate death and assigned to maintenance work instead.
On Aug. 2, 1943, a group of Jews stole some weapons, set fire to the camp and headed to the woods. Hundreds fled, but most were shot and killed by Nazi troops in the surrounding mine fields or captured by Polish villagers who returned them to Treblinka.
In a 2010 interview, Willenberg described how he was shot in the leg as he climbed over bodies piled at the barbed wire fence and catapulted over. He kept running, ignoring dead friends in his path. He said his blue eyes and “non-Jewish” look allowed him to survive in the countryside before arriving in Warsaw and joining the Polish underground.
After the war, Willenberg moved to Israel. Later in life, he took up sculpting to describe his experiences.
His two sisters were killed at Treblinka.
