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| Podchlebnik |
Mordechai (Michael) Podchlebnik (Podklebnik, Podchlewnik) was a Jew from the village of
Bugaj, north of
Kolo
(German:
Warthbrücken) and
Chelmno (German:
Kulmhof)
in the annexed Warthegau. As part of the
action to make the Warthegau, like the rest of the Greater German
Reich, "
judenrein" (free of Jews),
the Jews of many towns and villages in the area were deported to the extermination camp in
Chelmno between December 1941
and mid-April 1942, and murdered there. The Gypsies in the area, also “
Untermenschen”
in the Nazi racial hierarchy, were to meet the same fate.
Podchlebnik was a prisoner in
Chelmno
during the first phase of the extermination camp. He was selected with 29 others in a round-up, around
New Year 1942. He applied for work in the
Waldkommando
(forest command), a grave-diggers squad. He and his fellow prisoners had to dig the pits in the forest, in
which the victims of the
Chelmno
gas vans
(Gypsies and Jews) were buried. There were about 8 or 9 gas van transports
per day, according to the account of fellow digger
Szlamek Bajler (also known by the name of
Yakov Grojanowski), each of them containing some 50 - 70 corpses.
After only a few days Podchlebnik discovered that his wife, his seven year-old son and his five year-old
daughter were among the victims. Overwhelmed by grief, he asked to be shot in the same pit in which his
family was interred, but an SS guard refused the appeal: “You have enough strength, you can work.”
Podchlebnik is mentioned in
Bajler’s account of
Thursday 15 January 1942, as joining with
Bajler’s in saying the mourner’s prayer over the pit in which
Bajler’s brother and parents had been buried that day.
Podchlebnik eventually escaped from the
Waldkommando, as did
Bajler.
Bajler was later deported to
Belzec and gassed there. Podchlebnik survived the war. He gave evidence at the
Eichmann trial in
1961 in
Jerusalem. He is also to be seen in
Lanzmann's
film "Shoah", in two short appearences in the beginning.
Sources:
Gilbert, Martin.
The Holocaust – The Jewish Tragedy, William Collins Sons & Co. Limited, London, 1986
www.nizkor.org/
© ARC 2006
