Abram Jakub Krzepicki – T2 prisoner

Abram Jakub Krzepicki was born in 1915 in Praszka (Łódź Voivodeship at that time, Poland). From 1928, he lived with his family in Gdańsk (Poland), and 10 years later he joined the Polish Army. After the outbreak of World War II, he fought in the September campaign, during which was taken captive but managed to escape.

On August 25, 1942, Krzepicki was sent from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka II Extermination Camp, where he avoided immediate death only because he was included in the commando working on transferring and burying bodies. During his almost three-week stay in the camp, he performed many different activities; in addition to burying the dead and sorting looted property, he also worked in the group responsible for cutting down trees and cleaning the road leading to the gas chambers. Abram witnessed the extermination of his nation. He managed to save his life several times during the selection carried out among the workers of the commandos. He decided that he had to survive, escape, convey what he saw and take revenge.

 “Seeing the scenes in the barrack, hearing the conversations and the crying, I was suffering immeasurably. I was looking at beautiful children, like small angels, at blooming young girls, and my heart was breaking out of pain and anger – how come can one destroy so much beauty. At the same time, I was learning one lesson: to escape, escape from there, to see my revenge […]”

The long-awaited opportunity arose on September 13. Krzepicki was assigned to load the train with the clothes of those murdered in the gas chambers. He managed to hide unnoticed in one of the carriages, from which he jumped out when it was at a safe distance from Treblinka II. He reached Warsaw at the end of September. He gave an account of his stay in extermination camp to Rachela Auerbach from the secret organization Oneg Shabbat. While in Warsaw, he joined the military underground movement in Ghetto and took part in uprising which soon broke out. Abram Jakub Krzepicki probably died on April 22, 1943. Memories of his stay in the Treblinka II Extermination Camp were published in the book “Man escaped from Treblinka”.

The quotation comes from the book: Abram Jakub Krzepicki, “A man escaped from Treblinka. Conversations with a returnee”, Warsaw 2017.

A.S

Translation: P.M