Language:
English
Year of publication:
2014
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
42,1 (2014) 47-81
Keywords:
Grojnowski, Jakub (Szlamek)
;
Krzepicki, Yaakov
;
Chelmno (Concentration camp)
;
Treblinka (Concentration camp)
;
Ringelblum-Archiv
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Personal narratives
;
Jewish ghettos
;
Nazi concentration camps
Abstract:
In 1942 two Jews, Jakub (Szlamek) Grojnowski (an alias, his real name is unknown) and Yaakov Krzepicki, escaped from Chełmno and Treblinka respectively. Several days later each of them testified before members of the Oneg Shabbat underground archive in the Warsaw ghetto. Theirs were the first detailed and comprehensive accounts on the mass murders in both death camps, given at the peak of the Holocaust in Poland. Compares the two testimonies, their semantic representation of the terror and the aims that both Grojnowski and Krzepicki posited for themselves as survivors and eyewitnesses. Grojnowski lends to the murder domain a dimension of sanctity, and sees the victims as holy martyrs. He claims that he escaped in order to warn his fellow Jews of the murder that lay in wait for them; he burns with a sense of mission to testify and warn others. Krzepicki, however, dissociates from the victims (with the exception of the children), and often remarks contemptuously on their weakness, and especially their belief of Nazi lies and their failure to confront the brutal truth and act accordingly. Krzepicki expressed a fierce desire to take revenge and to die a natural death. Both witnesses did not survive the war; Krzepicki died as a fighter during the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April 1943. Reflects also on the questions of how the documenters of Oneg Shabbat affected the nature of the testimonies and which groups of the ghetto population were ready to believe their accounts and which were not. Contains many quotations from both testimonies.
Note:
In English and in Hebrew.
URL:
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