Chil Rajchman Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Chil Rajchman was a published author who also went by Henryk Reihman or Henryk Ruminowski.

He was a survivor of the Polish-Jewish Holocaust and was a former prisoner at the Treblinka extermination camp. The camp has the distinction of being the location where 800,000 Jews were exterminated during Operation Reinhard during the second World War. He was part of a group of inmates who were able to successfully attempt escape during the Treblinka revolt, something that led to the closing of the camp in October of 1943.

After going through the Treblinka trials he ended up emigrating to Uruguay, which would be the site of his passing in 2004. He is known for writing a memoir of his time in the camp, titled The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir. It was originally released in Yiddish but was re-released in 2009 and published in German and French for the first time. The English translation materialized in 2011, with the preface written by Elie Wiesel.

He was born in Poland on June 14, 1914 and passed away on May 7, 2004.

The Last Jew of Treblinka is a 1997 book by Chil Rajchman and translated by Solon Beinfeld. If you have been looking for a nonfiction book to read that is historically important, this is the one for you. In it Chil recalls his memories of his time in an extermination camp in a surreal retelling of events that is relevant today.

This book takes a closer look at the question why some are able to live while others die. They include old men, young children, gorgeous girls. In the gas chambers erected at Treblinka, everyone is equal. Chil Rajchman goes into detail about how the fires of Treblinka were kept burning night and day as a central part in the Final Solution’s wheel.

In this camp, there was not the pretense of any work being done as was being put on at Auschwitz or Birkenau. Here there is just a train platform and a road that is covered with sand that only leads to death. Chil does not want this to be his end.

Chil is a young man at this time and he had made it through so far working as a type of barber and dentist. But seeing these atrocities has affected him deeply and he is heartsick by it all. Despite all of this he took part in an escape attempt with others that ended up being successful, all so that he could tell the world about the horrific things that he had seen.

He found the dress of his younger sister abandoned in the woods. He was forced to act as a dentist and extract the gold teeth from the dead bodies of those who had been taken by Treblinka. Every night he was sent to work to cover the body pits with sand, and despite this how each morning saw the blood of those who had been killed come to the surface.

This book joins the many other important tales of survivors and in this book, the author provides the only survivors’ record of what happened at Treblinka. The book was written in Yiddish originally in 1945 with the intent of bearing witness. This story shows that remembering can often be the bravest thing that you can do. Check out this incredible work by getting a copy of The Last Jew of Treblinka by Chil Rajchman today.