Resistance
On September 11, 1942, camp guard Max Biala was stabbed to death by inmate Meir Berliner.
On August 2, 1943, the prisoners in the work details rebelled. They seized small arms, sprayed kerosene on all the buildings and set them ablaze. A number of guards were killed but many more prisoners perished. Of 1,500 prisoners, about 600 managed to escape the camp, but only 40 are known to have survived until the end of the war. There was also a revolt at Sobibor two months later.
One year after the revolt, Treblinka ceased operation. Camp commander Kurt Franz recalled during his testimonies: "After the uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp single-handedly for a year; however, during that period no gassings were undertaken. It was during that period that the original camp was levelled off and lupins were planted." The camp had been badly damaged during the uprising, and the murder of the Polish Jews was also largely complete. It was decided to shoot the last of the Jewish prisoners and shut down the camp. Odilo Globocnik wrote to Himmler: "I have (on October 19, 1944), completed Operation Reinhard, and have dissolved all the camps." The final group of about 30 Jewish girls at Treblinka was shot at the end of November.
Read more about this topic: Treblinka Extermination Camp
Famous quotes containing the word resistance:
“The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed August 1789, published September 1791)
“The greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so constructed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... resistance to tyranny is man’s highest ideal.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)