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The Sonderkommando had planned the revolt for a long time, accumulating weapons and following the schedules of the SS officers. They planned to kill the SS officers first and then lead the prisoners out the gates, but plans went awry after a few officers were killed, and chaos ensued.
Taigman escaped during the uprising of 2 August 1943 by climbing over the barbed-wire fence under machine-gun fire by the guards. He reached Warsaw after weeks.
Soon after the war ended, he married in Warsaw. A year later Taigman joined his father in
Kalman Taigman also Teigman he, קלמן טייגמן ( – ) was an Israeli citizen who was born and grew up in
Holocaust Survivors: Former Nazi Ghetto Workers Get Cheated – Again
''Der Spiegel'' 22/2005. In 1942, both of them were deported to Treblinka during the ''
Warsaw Ghetto Calendar of Events: 1942
''Timeline: the beginning of the great deportation action in the
Witness: Kalman Teigman.
The Trial of Adolf Eichmann. Part 4 of 9. The Nizkor Project. The
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, H.E.A.R.T. Retrieved August 11, 2013. During this time, more than 800,000
Four broadcast.
He described how the Germans had designed the camp to conceal its true purpose:
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
, Poland. One of the former members of the Jewish '' Sonderkommando'' who escaped from the Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
during the prisoner uprising of August 1943, Taigman later testified at the 1961 Eichmann Trial held in Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
.
After his escape and emigration from Poland, Taigman did not return to the country for more than 60 years. He returned to Treblinka for the first time in 2010 (two years before his death), asked by film director Tzipi Beider to take part in a documentary, along with another Treblinka revolt survivor and friend of his, Samuel Willenberg. Taigman's second wife of 26 years, Lea Lipshitz, who went along with them, said that Taigman was happy to be in Poland once more and much to her surprise spoke Polish again with ease.
Biography
Kalman Teigman (Taigman) studied at a technical school in Warsaw, where he was taught by Adam Czerniaków among others. In 1935, his father emigrated to Mandate Palestine intending to arrange for the family to join him, but the war broke out and he was unable to achieve that. After the Nazis invaded Poland and began to set up ghettos in major cities, the young Kalman and his mother were trapped in theWarsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
. It was the largest Jewish ghetto in all of Nazi Germany-occupied Europe, eventually holding 500,000 inmates.
They worked for the ghetto branch of Germany's ''Chemnitzer Astrawerke'' AG factory.Christoph Schult (28 May 2005)Holocaust Survivors: Former Nazi Ghetto Workers Get Cheated – Again
''Der Spiegel'' 22/2005. In 1942, both of them were deported to Treblinka during the ''
Grossaktion Warsaw
The ''Grossaktion'' Warsaw ("Great Action") was the Nazi code name for the deportation and mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the summer of 1942, beginning on 22 July. During the ''Grossaktion'', Jews were terrorized in daily rou ...
''. Barbara Engelking:Warsaw Ghetto Calendar of Events: 1942
''Timeline: the beginning of the great deportation action in the
Warsaw ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
; transports leave from Umschlagplatz for Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
.'' Publisher: Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów IFiS PAN.Session 66Witness: Kalman Teigman.
The Trial of Adolf Eichmann. Part 4 of 9. The Nizkor Project. The
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
near Treblinka was built as part of the Nazis' Operation Reinhard (the most deadly phase of the "Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
"). It operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 officially.Treblinka Death Camp Day-by-DayHolocaust Education & Archive Research Team, H.E.A.R.T. Retrieved August 11, 2013. During this time, more than 800,000
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
– men, women, and children – were murdered there, gassed upon arrival.
Kalman's mother was sent directly from the Holocaust train
Holocaust trains were Rail transport, railway transports run by the ''Deutsche Reichsbahn#1939-1945: The Reichsbahn in the Second World War and the Holocaust, Deutsche Reichsbahn'' national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and Co ...
to the gas chambers, which were disguised as showers. Kalman was put to work with the '' Sonderkommando'' in the ''Auffanglager'' sorting barracks. Of his experience at Treblinka, Taigman said on film: "It was hell, absolutely hell. A normal man cannot imagine how a living person could have lived through it – killers, natural-born killers, who without a trace of remorse just murdered every little thing."''Death Camp Treblinka: Survivors Stories'' (2012), BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
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The Sonderkommando had planned the revolt for a long time, accumulating weapons and following the schedules of the SS officers. They planned to kill the SS officers first and then lead the prisoners out the gates, but plans went awry after a few officers were killed, and chaos ensued.
Taigman escaped during the uprising of 2 August 1943 by climbing over the barbed-wire fence under machine-gun fire by the guards. He reached Warsaw after weeks.
Soon after the war ended, he married in Warsaw. A year later Taigman joined his father in Mandate Palestine
Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 i ...
. In trying to reach the territory, he was first arrested by the British and transferred to a Jewish refugee camp set up in Cyprus
Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...
.
Taigman became a businessman in Israel, where he developed a successful import business. For a number of years in Israel, Taigman used to meet with other Holocaust survivors
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...
on the anniversary of the Treblinka uprising. Among the guests at the home of his friends Samuel (Szmuel) Willenberg and his wife Ada were Pinhas (Pinchas) Epstein and Eliahu Rosenberg. Together with Taigman, they testified at the 1961 trial of Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Later both Rosenberg and Epstein were star witnesses for the Israeli prosecution at the 1986–88 trial in Israel of John Demjanjuk
John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, ...
, who had been living in the United States since 1952. He was identified as a Trawnkiki camp guard, who drawn from Soviet POWs
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...
held by the Germans, who had been nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible" by Treblinka prisoners. A guard at the gas chamber, "Ivan" was accused of committing murder and acts of extraordinary cruelty and violence at Treblinka against the Jewish prisoners in .
But when asked, Taigman refused to testify against him. He said that Demjanjuk had not worked as a guard at Treblinka. He was convicted but appealed the verdict, saying he had never worked at Treblinka. While the case was under appeal, the Soviet Union fell and it opened many of its archives to researchers. Investigators discovered in those Soviet-held archives that Demjanjuk appeared to have served at Sobibor
Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland.
As an ...
''SS'' death camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
, according to an ID with his photo. Rosenberg and Epstein had identified Demjanjuk as "Ivan" from photographs that were decades old. To make matters worse, Rosenberg's testimony in his case from 1981 was shown to have been coached by the interrogators and wholly illegitimate.
Kalman Taigman died in 2012 of a brain tumor
A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...
, survived by his second wife Lea, a son, and two grandchildren.
Legacy and honors
*Taigman was featured in two documentary films: ''Despite Treblinka'' (2002), a Uruguayan documentary in which he was featured along with Treblinka revolt survivorChil 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 Tr ...
of Montevideo.
*He and his friend Samuel Willenberg were featured in BBC Four's ''Death Camp Treblinka: Survivors Stories'' (2012), aired also in the US that year as ''Treblinka's Last Witness. ''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taigman, Kalman 1923 births 2012 deaths Sonderkommando Treblinka extermination camp survivors Warsaw Ghetto inmates Polish emigrants to Israel