Samuel Rajzman (1902–1979) was a Polish

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators before and during World War II ...

. After the war he emigrated to France and then to Canada. He was one of the two Polish witnesses at the

Nuremberg Trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...

. He was also a witness at the Treblinka trials and during the process of Fiodor Fedorenko.

Biography

Szmul Rajzman was born into a Jewish family and lived with his wife and children in

Węgrów Węgrów (; ) is a town in eastern Poland with 12,796 inhabitants (2013), capital of Węgrów County in the Masovian Voivodeship. History First mentioned in historical records in 1414, Węgrów received its city charter in 1441. Between 16th ...

, where he was an accountant and translator. After the German invasion of Poland, together with his family he was resettled and imprisoned in the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...

. In September 1942 he was transferred to the

Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be 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 Mas ...

. He was saved from immediate execution that befell most of those from his transport group by an acquaintance, Marceli Galewski and moved to work in the

Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the di ...

; he was also enlisted in the resistance organization. The resistance organization eventually succeeded in organizing the

Treblinka uprising The Treblinka uprising, also known as the Treblinka revolt, was a rebellion and mass escape of prisoners that took place on 2 August 1943 at the German Nazi Treblinka extermination camp. The uprising was organized by members of the camp's underg ...

on 2 August 1943. Rajzman was one of the few survivors from that incident; familiar with the nearby area, he was sheltered, together with another escapee, by local farmer Edward Gołoś, a pre-war acquaintance of Rajzman, and survived the war. Gołoś was later recognized as one of the

Polish Righteous Among the Nations The citizens of Poland have the highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Yad Vashem as the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, for saving Jews from extermination during the Holocaust in World War II. There are Polish men and w ...

. After the war (which his family did not survive) he moved to France, and later to Canada, where he remarried. On 27 February 1946, Rajzman testified about his experiences in Treblinka at the

Nuremberg Trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...

as one of the three Jews and two Polish witnesses during the proceedings (the other Polish witness being

Seweryna Szmaglewska Seweryna Maria Szmaglewska (Seweryna Maria Szmaglewska-Wiśniewska) (11 February 1916 – 7 July 1992) was a Polish people, Polish writer, known for both books for children and adults alike, and an inmate of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration c ...

). He was also a witness in both of the Treblinka trials (the first was the 1964–1965 trial of members of the German crew of Treblinka, and at second one, in 1969–1970, the trial of the commandant,

Franz Stangl Franz Paul Stangl (; 26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971) was an Austrian police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka in World War II. Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander ...

). In 1978 his testimony also contributed to the stripping of Fiodor Fedorenko’s American citizenship (Fedorenko was a Ukrainian guard at Treblinka; he was eventually deported to

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and executed there). Rajzman died in Montreal in 1979.

References

External links

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Search results
for Samuel Rajzman at Yad Vashem, including "Testimony of Samuel Reizman regarding his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinka" and "Testimony of Samuel Rajzman, born in Wegrow, Poland, 1902, regarding his experiences in Treblinka and Wegrow"
Shmuel Rajzman -A Giant Of Treblinka
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rajzman, Samuel 1902 births 1979 deaths Witnesses to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg Treblinka extermination camp survivors Warsaw Ghetto inmates Polish emigrants to France Polish emigrants to Canada Sonderkommando Treblinka trials People from Węgrów County Polish accountants

Biography

References

Further reading

External links