Treblinka: A Survivor's Memory, 1942-1943 (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
To anyone who has read as many survivor's memoires of the Holocaust as I have, it is plainly obvious why this one was not as widely read as the others. Authors like Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel made bestseller lists because they have an innate literary talent that Chil Rajchman is sorely missing, which does much to make their books accessible to a global audience. That being said, a way with words or lack-there-of should not detract from this book. Rajchman is one of the few survivors of Treblinka, so we must look past his brusque delivery to see the incredible story of survival within. Rajchman's straightforward narrative actually betrays much about his experience, thus doing the book a favour, by exposing the emotionally deadening caused by the attrocities of his experience. I imagine if hell accompanied by its legions of demons were allowed temporary reign of a small piece of land it would probably resemble the killing factory known as Treblinka. Good Lord, that such a place ran by such evil people was allowed to exist and do the evil they did is beyond comprehension. This brief and to the point memoir is shocking to say the least. Unlike other survivor memoirs whose accounts of life and death at other concentration camps are plentiful, there are only rare survivor stories from Treblinka because surviving Treblinka was nothing short of a miracle. It was an industrialized factory of death and this account of the author's survival up to and following the uprising in which he escaped is stunning in its brevity and detail.
What do You think about Treblinka: A Survivor's Memory, 1942-1943 (2009)?
Everyone should read this book, so no one forgets what happened.
—barbralover81
Short story. Was okay but not what I expected.
—KoriRenee
