Survivors of the Extermination Camps

(1943-45)


Very few people survived the death camps.

  • Only two Jews survived Chelmno.
  • Two Jews, Rudolf Rader and Haim Hirshman, survived Belzec.
  • Treblinka was razed after the revolt on August 2, 1943. About 70 prisoners were alive at the end of the war.
  • Approximately 50-70 Jews survived Sobibor.
  • The Soviet army liberated Majdanek in July 1944. The few Jewish survivors had been transferred from the camp earlier. Approximately 12,000 other prisoners greeted their liberators.
  • When Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets on January 27, 1945, 1,200 people remained alive in Auschwitz, 5,800 in Birkenau and 650 in Monowitz.

Source: Ephraim Kaye, Desecraters of Memory: Confronting Holocaust Denial, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1997, pp. 45-46.