The Man Who Escaped Hell
- Steven Rodan
- Feb 27, 2023
- 4 min read
By Steve Rodan
Abram Jakub Krzepicki was an ordinary man who did an extraordinary act: He escaped the hell known as Treblinka.
During his brief window of freedom, Krzepicki was able to document the death camp, which the Germans tried hard to erase before the arrival of the Red Army in the summer of 1944. By that time, 920,000 Jews were dead.
Krzepicki was born in 1915 in Lodz, Poland. At age 23, he joined the Polish Army and fought the Germans during their invasion in September 1939. He was captured but escaped. He fled to Warsaw, which quickly became segregated, with Jews confined to a tiny ghetto.
On Aug. 25, 1942, Krzepicki was one of thousands caught in the massive roundup for deportation to Treblinka, which had begun the mass killing only weeks earlier. Somehow, he was selected to work in the Sonderkommando, the unit of Jews who worked in the gas chambers. His job was to remove the bodies and bury them in nearby pits. Later, he was assigned to cut wood in the forest.
"Guys, how do we get out of here?" Krzepicki asked.
"Most of the guys related to this question with a strange apathy, as if there was truly a way to escape this certain death that awaits everyone," Krzepicki recalled. "If not, today, then tomorrow. The amazing thing was the way these people rejected this idea of approaching death. There were those who were totally serious and believed they'd be saved. It would come from the air or ground from close to the battlefield. The conditions of life imposed by the Germans caused most of the young and healthy to be in a trance-like state. They were incapable of any action or decision."
"I thought to myself: Is it possible that all of these youngsters are cut from the same cloth? How they delude themselves. Why are they still waiting?"
The daily nightmare was selection among the Sonderkommandos. They knew the German policy -- work the Jews for a few days or at most weeks and then kill them. There wasn't a day when several of the laborers were shot in the back.
Once, two of the Jewish woodcutters went missing in the forest. The Jewish foreman, known as the kapo, was named Posner. Krzepicki recalled that Posner dismissed the alarm by the Germans that Jews had escaped. He said they were probably still in their barracks.
The Germans didn't take any chances. They sent two Ukrainians to look for the Jews. Soon, the fugitives were found hiding on top of a tall tree. They were brought back an hour later and killed on the spot. Posner was given 25 lashes for lying.
In his testimony, Krzepicki spoke of Meir Berliner. Berliner was regarded as a kind man. He shared his meager bread and water rations. He was always willing to lend a hand.
But Berliner was against escape. "Whatever happens, we'll get killed," he said.
Instead, Berliner, who had already lost his family, wanted revenge. His dream was to attack the Ukrainian guards and grab their weapons. He tried to recruit others. Nobody was interested.
On Sept. 11, 1942, Krzepicki saw his end. He was returning after a day of work in the forest where he saw the Germans waiting. They were in the middle of a selection. Those chosen to live were sent to the right. Krzepicki was sent to the left -- the gas chambers.
Krzepicki looked at his colleagues. Would they fight? He saw no such sign.
Suddenly, Berliner, also slated for death, jumped out of the line with a knife in his hand. He plunged the knife into the SS commander of the selection, Max Kiel. Kiel turned white and fell.
The Germans and Ukrainians were in panic. "What's going on? What's going on?" the SS men shouted. They drew their pistols but didn't know where to fire. For the first time, Krzepicki felt empowered.
"Berliner didn't try to run or hide or anything," Krzepicki recalled. "He stood there quietly and calmly, a strange smile on his face. With both hands, he pulled up his coat and bared his chest. 'Please,' he said. 'I am not afraid. You can kill me.'"
Finally, the Ukrainians arrived. They split Berliner's head with their hoes. He fell bleeding and the guards kept pounding even after they were sure that he was dead.
"There was a moment when we could have escaped, even pounced on the panicked murderers and taken away their weapons," Krzepicki recalled. "Had we been ready to do this in an organized way -- but we squandered the moment."
In the commotion, however, the Germans abandoned the selection. That could wait another day. Now, the Germans and Ukrainians were scared. The Jews could fight and even kill.
"After the assassination by Berliner... I saw Jews pass by the Germans with their hands raised," Krzepicki recalled. "And the Germans commanded, 'Raise your hands!' And as the Jew passed, they looked at their hands. They began to fear the actions to come and from which will come from the hands of Jews."
Krzepicki finally decided that he would escape at the first opportunity. That came two days later when he was assigned to load trains with the clothes of the gassed Jews. He and a boy hid in the pile and the train left Treblinka. As soon as the train was far from the death camp, Krzepicki jumped from the carriage and began to walk toward Warsaw and the Jewish ghetto.
In Warsaw, Krzepicki told his story to Rachel Auerbach, a member of the secret organization Oneg Shabbat, which chronicled the extermination of the Jews in Warsaw and throughout Europe. His account filled 323 pages and was only discovered after World War II.
Krzepicki became an important member of the Warsaw ghetto underground. Unlike many of his colleagues, he urged that the Jews prepare for revolt. They did in January 1943 and drove the Germans and Ukrainians out of the ghetto.
Three months later, the Germans and Ukrainians returned and a full-scale uprising erupted. Krzepicki fought until he was mortally wounded, believed to have taken place on April 22 during a German shelling of Swietojanska St. In August, inmates revolted at Treblinka, which led to the closing of the camp.
Krzepicki’s account, which included maps, has been regarded as the most complete account of Treblinka. His testimony was first published in a Yiddish magazine in 1956. Years later, the story was translated into Hebrew.
Notes
Below: Abram Jakub Krzepicki
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