Shackles worn by Chelmno inmate

Shackles worn by Shimon Srebnik, one of the three survivors of the Chelmno extermination camp, where 320,000 Jews were murdered.

On a Saturday morning, during the summer of 1943, Shimon Srebnik, age 13,was walking with his father through the streets of the Lodz Ghetto. Suddenly Shimon heard shots and watched his father, mortally wounded, fall to the ground. Within a few months of his father’s murder, Shimon was seized off the streets of the ghetto and deported to the Chelmno death camp. He was not even allowed to notify his mother of his fate. 

Upon arrival in Chelmno, Shimon was sent to join a group of slave laborers. His legs were shackled- the length of the chain between his legs was about 40 centimeters. The prisoners were forced to wear the chains 24 hours a day to prevent escape.  For the first two or three months he put up tents and prepared the crematorium. Once the transports of Jews from Lodz began arriving regularly for extermination, Shimon was assigned the job of extracting the gold from the teeth of the victims. He also was involved in general sorting operations. It was when he was sorting through the victims’ personal possessions, that he came across pictures belonging to his mother and he realized that she too had been murdered in Chelmno.

Shimon Srebnik was transferred and made to bury the murdered victims. People in this work detail were regularly killed and replaced.  The war was nearing its end, and when the battle sounds drew closer the Germans decided to liquidate the camp and destroy all the evidence.  One night they executed all the workers, shooting them in the back of the neck.  Shimon was badly wounded and in the ensuing commotion managed to flee and find refuge in the barn of a farmer who took care of him and cut off his shackles.  The following day, the Germans offered a large cash reward in return for turning Srebnik in.  The Poles, however, who already feared the approaching Russians more than the Germans, did not betray Shimon and so, badly wounded and feverish, he reached the Russian forces. 

Shimon Srebnik received his shackles back from the Polish farmer in the village when he went to the site of the extermination camp with Claude Lanzman in 1978 for the filming of “Shoah”. Srebnik, who lives in Ness Ziona, Israel, testified in the Eichmann trial and in other trials against Chelmno commandants.  He gave the shackles to Yad Vashem in October 2001.

Click here to see artifacts from the Chelmno death camp