Yom Kippur 1942. A Day Remembered in Testimony
Albert Stankowski
This year, Yom Kippur falls on exactly the same dates as it did 84 years ago. In 1942, it began on the evening of Sunday 20 September and lasted until the evening of Monday 21 September. In 2026, the dates fall on the same days of the week. For the history of Treblinka, this coincidence is particularly significant, as the festival then fell during one of the most intense periods of deportation and mass murder at the German Nazi extermination camp Treblinka II.
One of those who survived and, after the war, spoke about what he had witnessed was Szyja Warszawski. He was about 31 years old at the time. He was a prisoner at Treblinka, survived the camp and took part in the uprising of 2 August 1943. On 9 October 1945, he testified: “I am unable to determine the number of victims brought in each day, but I believe that at least 10,000 people were killed daily, while on the Day of Judgment 18,000 people were gassed.” “The Day of Judgment” was one of the Polish expressions used at the time within Jewish communities to refer to Yom Kippur.
On that same day, 21 September 1942, the mass deportation operation from the Warsaw Ghetto was drawing to a close. Since 22 July, approximately 265,000 Jews from Warsaw had been deported to Treblinka. Prayers were still being held in the ghetto. Hillel Seidman left an account of people praying as street after street emptied, entire families disappeared in the deportations, and transports continued to leave the Umschlagplatz. For many, it was the last such prayer they would say in Warsaw.
An account by Aron Czechowicz, another survivor of Treblinka, also dates from this period. Recalling one particular day, he stated: “I remember one day when we worked until three o’clock in the morning. It was said that 21,000 people had been killed in the chambers that day.” Czechowicz did not give a date, so there are no grounds for linking this recollection directly to 21 September. His words nevertheless convey the scale of what was taking place in the camp at that time.
Today, we are unable to determine precisely how many people were murdered at Treblinka on that particular day. The surviving documentation is incomplete, and the figures given by survivors should be read as testimony to their experience rather than as an exact statistical record of the camp. We do know, however, that this was a period of almost continuous transports: the deportations from Warsaw were coming to an end, while another wave of deportations from the Radom District was beginning.
Eighty-four years later, the calendar once again marks 20 and 21 September. This coincidence alone is reason enough to return to those testimonies. They remind us that behind every number was a person — with a name, a family, a home and a story of their own.