Avraham Bomba was born in Boyden – Oberslazen, Germany. His family moved from
Germany to Czestochowa, Poland. He was deported from Czestochowa Ghetto,
to the Treblinka death camp, on 25 September 1942.
A
barber by profession, he was selected to work, whilst his wife, son,
brother and other members of his family were murdered on their arrival
at Treblinka. He escaped from Treblinka in January 1943 and returned to
Czestochowa Ghetto. He later settled in Israel, and also appeared in the
Claude Lanzmann film "Shoah" produced in 1985.
(...)
I worked in a barrack where people were hiding. I
did it myself too before I escaped from Treblinka. What was … the
barrack was full of clothes.. bundles made out of clothes. So what we
did we put the bundles in the barrack, one on top of the other until the
roof.
People tried to escape.
What
they did they went in the daytime during the work in the barracks and
they remained there. And they hid themselves between the clothes. But it
happened by accident when the clothes moved, they could never go out
and got choked there. At one time we took out from a barrack the size I
would say maybe about 40, 60… 40,50 meters, over 30 people. Dead ones! I
did the same thing when I escaped. But before that I worked over there
and I tried to help some people any way I could. At one time he came in,
he was a Kapo. His name was in Jewish Ben Yamin Yakoski. Have you heard
that name? You did – he had a brother over there. Very nice, religious
individual boy. He was from a town of Yen Jeif [Jedrzejow] which is not far from Kielce.
He
came in he said, “Abe, I trust you. Tonight, my people, my brother they
are going, they are planning an escape. Eleven of them.” What should I
do?” He said, “You know you have some landsmen from your town working
outside, not in the barrack, but outside?” I said “Yes.” “Tomorrow
morning after the Appell, you bring in your friends. If somebody comes
in to you and tell their friends they are working all the time here.”
Naturally I did whatever he told me.
In
the morning … group I worked with them, eleven of them disappeared.
Then in came the assistant commandant we called him Lalka, that name you
heard already many times. He came in the barrack and he looked at me,
“What are you doing?” I said I am working on the cloth… looking what is
there , cotton, this and that. “Are the same people working here what
worked yesterday?” I said, “Yes, everybody’s the same were working.”
It wasn’t true.
What
those people crouching the other side of the gate, they left some kind
of sign on the trees. At night they couldn’t take away this from the
trees. And he saw that somebody went through that.
He
came over to me, he took my hat he started to knock in a wooden block
which hold... But I was like paralyzed. Didn’t feel at all. Just for the
thing what they had I was scared. They are taking out to kill me. I
didn’t feel it all. Behind him was a friend of mine Eisack Sidman. He
was standing with a knife over there behind him. And if he would take
out the gun, he would kill him.
But
it happened that he knocked and knocked and I didn’t say a word to him,
so he thought maybe I didn’t know nothing. So he let me go.
Then
at night after work, people came in, “What happened?” I told them, for
those people they escaped. After that I found out what happened to them,
from all those eleven people, two were alive when I returned to
Czestochowa. All the other nine were killed by Poles. They went back to
their home town in Yan Jeif [Jedrzejow] and they were very rich. They
were like I would say Rockefeller. They had possessions; they call
themselves I would say in German, the Bundt’s. They got killed.
Two
of the men I met in the ghetto of Czestochowa when I came back from
Treblinka, they couldn’t stay there and they went somewhere away. I
never saw them again. That was one part, but the second part we decide
to run away. The first thing is we had to get money. When you go out,
when you come to the Poles, its impossible to live without it. So we
tried to get some money and that wasn’t a hard job to get. The money
wasn’t a hard job to get the money, but to get the money was our job. If
they find on you one zloty or one dollar you get killed. So about eight
or nine from our hometown. One is still alive, he is 85 years old, he
lives in Israel, Yakia Bisner, a friend of mine.
And
this one, particularly this one, I took him away from the gas chamber
three times. He had such kind of eyes, you look at him and you get
scared. And twice the Germans took him in told him to go to the gate
which goes into the gas chamber. And I was form the side. I threw
clothes on him. I took him away. And the third time he went and he
worked together with me.
We
were together all the time and we collected money together to escape.
And matter of fact, he escaped before me. Also organised this thing, we
decided who’s going to go. He went away with two other ones, the other
ones got killed where he is still alive.
(...)
The
above oral history testimony is the result of a videotaped interview
with Avraham Bomba conducted by Linda Kuzmack on 28 August 1990 on
behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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