We Remember the Heroes of Treblinka!

A resistance group was organized at the part of the camp called Treblinka II and involved 10 persons. The leader of this group was a captain of the Polish army Galewski from Nowy Dwor. The other members of the group were Dr. Choronzycki, engineer Sadowicz, Zeew Kurland, Rudolf Masaryk (cousin of Masaryk, the president of Czechoslovakia), Zelomir Bloch and Ber Gutman from Plock. There were also other people from Plock in the groups: Rudek Lubraniecki, Abram Koziebrodzki, Haskiel and Szmul Rosenberg, Perl Motek and Marian Platkiewicz. The crucial thing was to get weapon. For collected money and jewelleries they manage to buy some weapon from the Ukrainian soldiers.

They worked out a plan to break into the store with weapons. Brothers Budnik from Nowy Dwor managed at the workshop to do some copies of the keys to the weapon store, after they got a finger-print of the key from one in the secret organization, Zylberberg.

The August 1, 1943 in the camp Treblinka II were about three thousand prisoners guarded by 22 SS-man and 80 Ukrainian soldiers. The rest was on vacation. The August 2, 1943 at 2 pm, Haskiel and Szmul Rosenberg, father and son, both from Plock, opened the store with weapons and managed to get out one hundred of pistols and rifles, 25 granats, some amount of dynamit and some petrol.

The revolt started the same day, August 2 at 4pm when Waksman from Kielce killed a known from cruelty Hauptscharfurer Kutner. Later Ber Gutman, Abram Koziebrodzki, Rudek Lubraniecki and Perel Gryc Motek attacked other guards. The responsible for the delivery of the weapon was Rudek Lubraniecki, together with brothers Jakub and Jacek Miller from Wlodzimierz Wolynski. Rudek Lubraniecki, known in Plock as sportsman of Macabi, was the most brave fighter. He killed the Sturmfuhrer Kurt Meizler but was killed by the Germans while puting fire on the petrol station. The fire spread to the whole camp. During the fightings were killed 20 SS-men, 60 Ukrainian soldiers but also about 800 Jewish fighters. The Germans got help by soldiers and SS-men groups from the neighbourhood. The commander of the revolt, Galewski gave order to escape from the camp to the forests. Around 600 fighters left the camp, most of them were later killed during the action by the Germans, among them Haskiel and Szmul Rosenberg, Ber Gutman and Kryczek, all from Plock, but also Galewski, the commander of the revolt.

A group of 30 people managed to survive in the forest, among them Marian Platkiewicz, the only one from Plock. The group reached the village Leczna, close to Kielce, one of them died on the way. Some of them in the forests around Serdynki organized a partisant group, later crashed by a group of NSZ. (NSZ polish extremely right wing, very nationalistic group, known as extremely anti-Semitic and is accused for killing of a lot of Jews or Jewish partisans during the war). Marian Platkiewicz managed to survive and later joint a group of GL partisans (GL, later AL, partisans, communistic group, not the largest among the resistance but the one which probably most helped Jews).

After the war Marian Platkiewicz returned to Plock and later emigrated to Israel. While in Treblinka Marian Platkiewicz together with Mojzesz Laks in secret made a map over the camp Treblinka II. After the war Mojzesz Laks gave a copy of this map to the Central Jewish Historical Committee. The Germans destroyed all documentation over Treblinka, but thanks to people like Szymon Goldberg, Samuel Rajzman, Mojzesz Laks and Marian Platkiewicz, who could reveal the truth.

Year 1964 Marian Platkiewicz witnessed in the trial in Dusseldorf against Kurt Franz and other murderes from the Treblinka death camp.