Rajchman was born on June 14, 1914, in
Łódź. His mother died when he was young, and he was one of six children (four boys and two girls) raised by his widowed father. They struggled to make enough money to live. As tensions increased in Europe, he said good-bye to his brother Moniek in 1939, encouraging him to flee to the Soviet Union. All Pruszków Jews were deported to the
Warsaw Ghetto. With the work-permit issued by the
Judenrat on German orders, Rajchman was sent to live and work in
Ostrów Lubelski, in eastern Poland. He was rounded up on October 10, 1942, along with other ghetto inmates, loaded onto a
Holocaust train, and sent to
Treblinka extermination camp. Upon his arrival there the following day, Rajchman was separated from his sister Anna (she died at the camp), and put to work with the Jewish
Sonderkommando. He was ordered to cut the hair of disrobed women before they were gassed. Later he extracted gold teeth from dead victims at the
Totenlager and disposed of thousands of their bodies, mostly by burning. On August 2, 1943, Rajchman was among 700 Sonderkommandos who revolted against the guards. He was with some one hundred prisoners who escaped during this attack. The death camp was closed in October 1943. Rajchman had reached
Warsaw, where he joined the resistance. He was among the 70 men from the revolt to survive through the end of the war. During his time in Warsaw, he joined the
Polish Socialist Party and the
underground resistance. On January 17, 1945, he was liberated by the advancing Soviets. He was stripped of U.S. citizenship. and later extradited to Germany. There he was charged with other crimes related to his documented service at the
death camp Sobibor. Lila Rajchman died in an accident in 1991. Rajchman died in 2004 in
Montevideo, Uruguay, survived by their three children and eleven grandchildren, ==Legacy and honors==