Grim Anniversary - Tomorrow is

Grim Anniversary - Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of one of history's greatest examples of pure, unadulterated, doomed courage.

On August 2, 1943, inmates at the Treblinka death camp, knowing their turn in the gas chambers was coming soon, rebelled, killing enough guards to force the fences and make a run for the neighboring forests.

85 Germans and nearly 900 prisoners were killed in the battle that followed. Dozens of prisoners made it to the woods, where they were mercilessly hunted by Germans - and Poles, many of whom, indoctrinated by the incredibly caustic anti-Semitic Catholic dogma of the day, hated Jews even worse than they did their German occupiers. The war still had nearly two years to go, and it is estimated fewer than two dozen Treblinka inmates survived the war (the inmates of the Sobibor death camp, who rebelled the following year, benefitted from nearby Russian lines, and hundreds survived).

One - Samuel Wilenburg - is still alive, and gave an interview with the BBC:

Fortunately, they had got their hands on a copy of the key to the weapons store. One night they stole in and removed some arms. Child prisoners hid hand grenades and rifles in baskets and prams.

The revolt began at 0400 on 2 August, after a German guard became suspicious and the prisoners had to kill him.

As the alarm sounded the prisoners had to act quickly. They set fire to the barracks and began to cut the fences. Many were picked off by sentries atop the guard towers.

The BBC story leaves out a lot. The prisoners had to destroy a German armored car, which decimated the fleeing prisoners. The guard towers, armed with machine guns, had to be picked off by starving prisoners armed with rifles, pistols, knives and their own hands.

Somehow, some made it:

Seeing a hole in the fence Samuel Wilenberg scrambled over the bodies of his dead friends through the barbed wire. His good friend fell beside him under the hail of bullets and pleaded with him to end his agony. Reluctantly, he did so.

"It was like flying on wings. I was shot in leg. My shoe was full of blood. I don't know how long I had to run for," he recalled.

The examples of people like Wilenberg - and the Iraqis who've survived nearly as bad, and the North Koreans who are doing the same today - should shame us, and inspire us at the same time.

They do for me, anyway.

Posted by Mitch at August 1, 2003 07:48 PM