Simon Srebnik - Biography

Simon (Shimon, Szymon) Srebnik (10 April 1930 — 16 August 2006) was a Polish Jew who was one of only two or three survivors of the Nazi death camp known as Chełmno extermination camp.

Camp life

Srebnik witnessed his father killed in the Lodz Ghetto. Simon was thirteen years old when he was taken to the Chelmno extermination camp. His mother died in a gas van at the camp. Simon, however, was assigned by the camp SS to a Jewish work detail which maintained the camp.

During his time in the camp, Srebnik participated in the disposal of bodies by gathering bones that had not been burned and then rowing a flat-bottomed boat down the river every day to dump sacks of crushed bone into the Narew River. While rowing, Srebnik entertained the Nazi SS guards by singing Prussian military songs that the guards had taught him. Some of the bones were those of people who had been gassed. Srebnik also won jumping contests and speed races which the SS organized and forced the chained prisoners of Chelmno to participate in (those who lost these contests were usually killed).

On January 18, 1945, two days before Soviet troops arrived and liberated the camp, all prisoners who remained in the camp were executed by being shot in the head. Srebnik was shot but somehow survived. According to the documentary Shoah, the bullet "missed his vital brain centers."

Post-Holocaust years

After the Holocaust, Srebnik settled in Ness Ziona, Israel. He was interviewed by French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann in 1985. According to the Jerusalem Post, Srebnik died in 2006 at age 76.

Witness in the Adolf Eichmann Trial (session 66-68)