Chil Rajchman

Chil (Enrique) Meyer Rajchman a.k.a. Henryk Reichman, nom de guerre Henryk Ruminowski (June 14, 1914 – May 7, 2004) was one of about 70 Jewish prisoners who survived the Holocaust after participating in the August 2, 1943, revolt at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland.

He reached Warsaw, where he participated in the resistance in the city, before it was captured by the Soviet Union.

After the war, in which he lost all his family but one brother, Rajchman married.

The couple and his brother soon emigrated from Poland, first to France and then to Montevideo, Uruguay, where they later became citizens.

There he was active in the Jewish community and helped establish the Museum of the Holocaust and the Holocaust Memorial, both in Montevideo.

Rajchman was born on June 14, 1914, in Łódź.

His mother died when he was young, and he was one of six children (four boys and two girls) raised by his widowed father.

They struggled to make enough money to live.

As tensions increased in Europe, he said good-bye to his brother Moniek in 1939, encouraging him to flee to the Soviet Union.

After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany that year, Rajchman and younger sister Anna joined the family in Pruszków, a small town in central Poland.

The Jewish ghetto was created there in October 1940, and liquidated in February 1941.

All Pruszków Jews were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto.

With the work-permit issued by the Judenrat on German orders, Rajchman was sent to live and work in Ostrów Lubelski, in eastern Poland.

He was rounded up on October 10, 1942, along with other ghetto inmates, loaded onto a Holocaust train, and sent to Treblinka extermination camp.

Upon his arrival there the following day, Rajchman was separated from his sister Anna (she died at the camp), and put to work with the Jewish Sonderkommando.

He was ordered to cut the hair of disrobed women before they were gassed.

Later he extracted gold teeth from dead victims at the Totenlager and disposed of thousands of their bodies, mostly by burning.

On August 2, 1943, Rajchman was among 700 Sonderkommandos who revolted against the guards.

He was with some one hundred prisoners who escaped during this attack.

The death camp was closed in October 1943.

Rajchman had reached Warsaw, where he joined the resistance.

He was among the 70 men from the revolt to survive through the end of the war.

During his time in Warsaw, he joined the Polish Socialist Party and the underground resistance.

On January 17, 1945, he was liberated by the advancing Soviets.

Fourteen days later, he returned to his hometown of Łódź, where most Jews had already been exterminated.

His father and all siblings but Moniek had died in the war.

He and Moniek happened to meet again in Poland, near where they had said good-bye.

Rajchman married Lila in Warsaw in 1946.

Together with Moniek, the three soon emigrated to France, and relatively soon to Uruguay, where they settled in Montevideo in their early 30s.

Rajchman and his wife had three children together.

In 1980, Rajchman was contacted by the United States Justice Department through the consulate.

He was among several survivors who testified against John Demjanjuk, by then a naturalized US citizen, who was suspected of having been a notorious Trawniki, or guard at Treblinka known as "Ivan the Terrible".

His testimony contributed to Demjanjuk being prosecuted and convicted in Israel, but this was overturned on appeal.

New records from Soviet archives raised questions about his identity.

(Demjanjuk was later convicted of charges in Germany related to his documented service at the death camp Sobibor.)

While living in Warsaw, Rajchman wrote a memoir in Yiddish about his time at Treblinka.

It was published in Spanish in Uruguay in 1997 as Un grito por la vida: memorias ("A cry for life: memories").

In 2002 he was featured in a Uruguayan documentary, Despite Treblinka, interviewed as one of three survivors of the Treblinka revolt.

In addition to other editions in Spanish, his memoir was published posthumously in 2009 in both France and Germany.

An English translation was published in 2011 with a preface by noted writer and activist Elie Wiesel.