Samuel Willenberg was born in
Częstochowa, Poland. His father, Perec Willenberg, was a teacher at a local Jewish school before
World War II, a talented painter and visual artist. He also earned money decorating synagogues. His mother, Maniefa Popow, was a
Polish-
Orthodox Christian who
converted to Judaism after their wedding. The family lived in Częstochowa before relocating to
Warsaw.
Nazi invasion of Poland In the course of the Nazi German
invasion of Poland, on 6 September 1939 the 16-year-old Willenberg set off in the direction of
Lublin to join the
Polish Army as a volunteer. Within days, the Soviets invaded from the east. He was severely wounded on 25 September in a skirmish with the
Red Army near
Chełm, and captured. Three months later, he escaped from the hospital back to central Poland to reconnect with his family in Radość (now a part of
Warsaw). With his mother and two sisters, in early 1940 they went to
Opatów, where his father was working on murals for the
synagogue. But at this time, the Nazis began
herding Polish Jews into ghettos all across the country. The
Opatów Ghetto was established in the spring of 1941, originally without a fence. It quickly became hazardous. The Jews deported from Silesia were brought there, and an epidemic of
typhus broke out, due to overcrowding and poor sanitation. Willenberg traded his father's paintings for food and other necessities, but also worked at a steel mill in
Starachowice for several months, along with hundreds of forced laborers supplied by the
Judenrat. In 1942, the Nazis began their secretive
Operation Reinhard — a planned extermination action of Jews in the semi-colonial
General Government district — marking the most deadly phase of
the Holocaust in Poland. The Willenbergs managed to obtain false "Aryan" papers, and escaped back to their hometown. The
Ghetto in Częstochowa was set up on 9 April 1941. At its peak, it held around 40,000 prisoners. Willenberg's two sisters, Ita and Tamara, were transported there. His mother tried to rescue them and sent Willenberg back to
Opatów. But on 20 October 1942 Willenberg was forced to board a
Holocaust train along with 6,500 inmates of the then-liquidated Opatów ghetto, and was sent with them to the
extermination camp at
Treblinka.
Treblinka death camp The camp, which was built as part of
Operation Reinhard (the most deadly phase of the
Final Solution), operated between and . During this time, more than 800,000
Jews—men, women, and children—were murdered there. Other estimates of the number killed at
Treblinka exceed 1,000,000. Upon his arrival at Treblinka, Willenberg received a life-saving piece of advice at the unloading ramp, from one of the Jewish
Auffanglager prisoners. He posed as a seasoned bricklayer to show he could work. At first, he was assigned to the camp's largest
Kommando Rot, unpacking and sorting the belongings of victims already "processed". He later recognized the clothes of his own two sisters there, confirming they had been killed. With time, he was assigned to other squads as number "937" in the
Sonderkommando. Among their tasks was weaving tree branches into the fences in order to hide the grounds, buildings and lines of prisoners. On 2 August 1943 Willenberg participated in the revolt of Sonderkommandos at Treblinka with about 200–300 others. Unlike most of them, he escaped. Wounded in the leg, he journeyed back to Warsaw, where he managed to find his father, who was hiding on the "Aryan" side of the city. Willenberg became involved in the
underground resistance, including acquiring weapons for the left-wing partisan
Polish People's Army PAL (
Polska Armia Ludowa PAL). He used his mother's maiden name, Ignacy Popow. He was hiding at a safe-house on Natolińska street, when the
Warsaw Uprising erupted. In 1950, during the peak years of
Stalinism in Poland, Willenberg emigrated to
Israel with his wife and mother. which he later published in Poland with the preface by
Władysław Bartoszewski (1991 and 2004). On 19 February 2016, Willenberg died in Israel, the last survivor of the Treblinka revolt. He was survived by his wife, Ada, their daughter Orit Willenberg-Giladi, and three grandchildren. An architect, Willenberg-Giladi designed the Israeli embassy in
Berlin after unification; it was completed in 2001. In 2013 she was selected as the architect to design a Holocaust education center on the site of Treblinka. ==Legacy and honors==