Chil Meyer Rajchman

Chil was born to a Jewish family in the industrial city of Łódź. His mother died before World War II, leaving his father to raise the family. Chil worked to help his father support his siblings.

1933-39: On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Chil fled Łódź with his younger sister Rivka to Pruszków, a small town 10 miles southwest of Warsaw.  

1940-45: In October 1940, German authorities established an open ghetto in Pruszków. In January 1941, the Germans transported most of the Jews imprisoned in the Pruszków ghetto, including Rivka, to the Warsaw ghetto. At first, German authorities held Chil at Pruszków to perform forced labor at the rail yards. Eventually he was sent to the Warsaw ghetto, where he reunited with Rivka. 

Chil and Rivka made their way to the Ostrów Lubelski ghetto. German authorities liquidated this ghetto in October 1942. They forced the ghetto inhabitants, including Chil and Rivka, to walk to Lubartów. In Lubartów, Chil and Rivka were forced into an overcrowded freight car bound for the Treblinka killing center. 

At Treblinka, camp authorities forcibly separated Rivka and Chil. Rivka was murdered in the gas chambers. Chil was among the group of about 100 young, physically fit men selected for forced labor. While most of these men were killed later the same day, Chil was temporarily spared because he volunteered to work as a barber. Camp authorities later assigned Chil to carry corpses from the gas chambers to mass graves. Then he was forced to extract false teeth (often made of precious metals) from the mouths of the murdered victims. Despite the extreme violence and horrific conditions in Treblinka, Chil survived there for about 10 months. 

In August 1943, Chil escaped the killing center during the Treblinka uprising. He survived the initial manhunt for escapees conducted by the SS by hiding in the woods and then with Polish farmers. Fearing he would be discovered, Rajchman decided to make his way to Warsaw. There, a Polish friend helped him acquire false papers under the name Henryk Ruminowski. He survived the Warsaw uprising in August 1944. After the uprising, he hid in a bunker in the ruins of Warsaw until the Soviets entered the city and liberated him on January 17, 1945. 

From his immediate family, only Chil and his brother Moshe survived. Chil later married, immigrated to Uruguay and raised three sons. Chil wrote a memoir, documenting what he had experienced in Treblinka. It is published in English as The Last Jew of Treblinka.