TESTIMONY OF OSCAR STRAWCZYNSKI Survivor of Treblinka Oscar

TESTIMONY OF OSCAR STRAWCZYNSKI (Survivor of Treblinka)

Oscar was born in Lodz Poland in 1906 – 1966, he received primary education in Lodz and attended a polish public school at about fourteen years of age when he started to work in his father’s Tinsmith shop. He got married and had two children, and they lived with her father , mother, brother (Zigmunt) and sister.

He and his family were reported to Treblinka like other 15. 000 Jewish. In the camp he was separated from his family by soldiers of SS and never saw them again (his family was taken to the camp 2 to the gas chambers), except his father and brother who were assigned in the same group of work.

One day he was finishing work on the rooftops when he saw the other side of the wall. Others men were working to move the bodies from 4 o´ clock to nightfall, but he couldn´t do anything… if you didn’t have a job in Treblinka you died.

He didn’t know if his family had been murdered but he knew what happened to people in camp 2 of Treblinka. He heard about all the things that happened in Treblinka, the bodies in the gas charmbers and the burning of bodies, he also saw the women who cut hair for pillows and all the jobs Jewish people did in the camp. (barber , dentist , work man for the bodies , etc).

He worked in Camp 2 for four months and escaped during the uprising. He and her brother met in the forest ten months later. He made contact with the partisan movement, he testified against the Nazis at the trial Dusseldorf (1964 – 65). After the war, he remarried and the surviving family emigrated to Canada.

� � � Course: 5 to DSÑ Teacher: Cynthia Mauas DORA CUAN ACOSTA