The last Jew of Treblinka A survivor's memory 1942-1943

The extermination center Treblinka was located approximately 50 miles from Warsaw and became operational in June 1942. The sole purpose of the camp was the murder of Jews, a process which began immediately following disembarkation from the railway cars. The Nazis kept a few Jews temporarily alive to assist them in advancing the machinery of death. Rajchman was sent to Treblinka in 1942 at age 28. Until his escape 11 months later, he survived by working as a barber who shaved the hair of victims and as a dentist extracting gold teeth from corpses. His memoir, originally in Yiddish, is a hellish, heartbreaking account, as expected. Guards are consistently brutal and sadistic as they beat helpless victims on their way to the gas chambers. Rajchman presents horrifying, almost surreal images of piles of corpses, sand saturated with blood, and protruding bone fragments. At times, his descriptions are clinical and curiously detached; at others, rage at his oppressors surfaces. He eventually emigrated to Uruguay, where he died in 2004, leaving a memorable contribution to Holocaust scholarship.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist

A survivor of industrialized genocide describes the housekeeping details and the management of business in a Nazi death camp.There were, of course, many concentration camps that worked prisoners to death in Poland and elsewhere. Treblinka, where Rajchman (who died in 2004) survived for more than a year, was a little different. It was established only to kill Jews and other undesirables. The author was selected to sort valuables and clothing of the deadearly on he found his younger sister's dressand he carried the remains of the victims, body parts intermingled, to mass graves. The cadavers of small children were dismissed as "trinkets" by their murderers. Pitchforks supplemented earth-moving equipment to transfer disintegrating corpses. Rajchman lived because he worked as a "barber" and then as a "dentist," shearing the heads of those on the way to the gas chambers and plucking gold from their teeth. It was grueling, noxious employment. On busy days, the camp could eliminate as many as 10,000 with efficiency. Methods were regularly improved and systems upgraded, all under the sportive supervision of some 100 SS men and about 150 Ukrainian henchmen. In Treblinka, life and death merged; illness was not tolerated; there were many suicides. Still, Rajchman had the supernatural will to survive and to bear witness. The author wrote this book in Yiddish in 1945, within a few months after the workers' revolt and his escape from the camp, and he lived to give evidence against "Ivan the Terrible," one of the most notorious of the guards at Treblinka. Rajchman's searing story, frequently narrated in the present tense, has a powerful authenticity and should not be forgotten.A Holocaust testament of heart-rending immediacy.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.