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| Yad Vashem Home ► | The Last Survivor of Chelmno - Shimon Srebrnik, z"l |
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| Yad Vashem Home ► | The Last Survivor of Chelmno - Shimon Srebrnik, z"l |
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Contents
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Now More Than Ever |
Shimon Srebrnik was born in Lodz in 1930. A few months after witnessing
his father’s murder on the streets of the Lodz ghetto in 1943, Simon was
deported to the Chelmno extermination camp. At the camp, he was forced to
pull gold fillings from the teeth of victims, and given various other
sorting activities. His legs were fettered with a 40cm-long chain, which
he and the other prisoners were kept in day and night to prevent them from
escaping. In January 1945, as the Red Army approached, the Nazis destroyed
the camp. They then forced the remaining prisoners—Srebrnik among them—to
lie down, and shot them in the back of the neck. The bullet intended to
kill Srebrnik exited through his mouth, but he remained conscious. After
the Nazis left, he crawled to the stable of a Polish farmer, where he
collapsed. A Red Army physician gave him a few hours to live but, to the
doctor’s astonishment, Srebrnik recovered. |
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Copyright © 2006 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority |
