August 2: Treblinka Uprising

An uprising in the Treblinka death camp, located some 60 miles from Warsaw and inspired, in part, by news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, was launched on this date in 1943. At least 900,000 people, nearly all Jews (as well as Gypsies and Romani people), had been killed at Treblinka since July, 1942. Hundreds of prisoners were involved in the revolt, seizing weapons from the SS storeroom, setting many buildings on fire, and killing about forty German and Ukrainian guards. Some three hundred escaped, and about a hundred survived the SS manhunt that followed. In October, the camp was shut down, razed and hidden under new landscaping. (In part, the uprising had been sparked by the fear that the Nazis, facing military defeat, would soon be killing all remaining prisoners and covering up the evidence of their genocidal crimes.) Two months after the Treblinka revolt, an uprising in the Sobibor extermination camp led to its destruction as well.

“We capture new weapons and machine guns. Rudolf Masaryk is located on the roof and is shooting at the frightened Germans. Among the sound of the shots we hear his voice: ‘This is for my wife and my child who never saw the world!’”--testimony of Stanislaw-Shulem Kon; Masaryk was a non-Jew who accompanied his Jewish wife to Treblinka.