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| From Wikipedia |
There are men and there are men. Samuel Willenberg is a lion of a man and I shed a tear and felt the world become a bit smaller when I heard he had died in Israel on 19 February 2016. Not because at 93 he had not lived a long life, he had. But as he said he had two lives. The life of now and the one before and the one before was the near ten months he survived the death camp of Treblinka. He was sent there in October 1942. Samuel Willenberg put his survival down as pure chance. It is estimated nearly 900,000, mostly Jews were murdered at Treblinka in its short and brutal existence. Samuel Willenberg was also one of a small number of people who survived the escape from Treblinka on 2 August 1943. The uprising included breaking into the SS armoury and taking weapons so as to be able to fight.
Shot in the leg he was still able to make his escape into woodlands and find the Polish resistance army. Later he took part in the August 1944 Warsaw uprising, another brutal death fight, survived. Warsaw was also where he met his wife Ava and started the now. The now included bearing witness to the atrocity that is Treblinka, images he captured in drawings and sculptures.
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| From Vad Yasham |
His father Perec Willenberg a teacher and artist, his mother Maniefa Popow converted to Judaism following her marriage to Perec. Both survived the Second Worl War but Samuel Willenberg's sisters were murdered in Treblinka. In what must have been a moment of intense trauma he described finding the coat of one of his sisters in his job of sorting clothes at Treblinka. The coat was unique and by its empty presence he knew they were dead.
Of the many powerful images he created as an artist. To help others remember, himself to immortalise the small acts of courage and even beauty in those last moments. Things the Nazis could not steal or despoil. Such as the sculpture of the father helping his young son to undo his shoelaces to remove his shoes is ordinary; a touching example of parental care - a shared moment of intimacy captured by the artist. Until you realise this was at Treblinka and a scene witnessed by Samuel Willenberg before both father and son were murdered in this factory of death. Then its poignancy is overwhelming.
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| From Sydney Herald "Who do you think you are" episode |
Samuel Willenberg has been in a number of documentaries relating his experiences. This one on SBS (Australia) with Andrew Denton (an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?) was moving. It is worth spending recorded time in the memory of this man and his words remain an inspiration and an eternal flame to decency - not to mention he was a curmudgeon and entertainer as well as historian and archivist of memories.
And Treblinka? It remains beyond comprehension. Samuel Willenberg has described and drawn its shape, given it a visual identity. As all that remained following its erasure by the Nazis and their collaborators was an empty space surrounded by woods and a farm. To embark on such evil and then set out to remove any evidence from existence was a further denial of the identities of all those killed. Samuel Willenberg never stopped giving witness to those whose voices and being were ripped from the earth at Treblinka. For that I honour him and remember him as a man of courage and deep humanity.
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| Copyright Little Savage 2006 |
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