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Richard Glazar
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Richard Glazar
Richard Glazar (29 November 1920 – 20 December 1997) was a Czech-Jewish inmate of the Treblinka extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. One of a small group of survivors of the camp's prisoner revolt in August 1943, Glazar described his experiences in an autobiographical book, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka (1992).
Glazar was born Richard Goldschmid in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to a Jewish-Czech family who spoke both Czech and German. His father served in the Austro-Hungarian Army before independence. His parents divorced in 1932, and his mother married a wealthy leather merchant, Quido Bergmann, who already had two children, Karel and Adolf. Karel died in the Austrian Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp on 17 May 1942. Adolf went in October 1939 to Denmark with the Youth Aliyah organization, escaped in October 1943 to Sweden (Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940–1945). In 1944–1945, he served as a volunteer in the Free Czechoslovak Army in the United Kingdom and France, and was later awarded the Czechoslovak War Cross. He later earned the degree of B.Sc. in dairy technology at the Agriculture University of Denmark. Richard and Adolf met after World War II and continued to have contact until the end of Richard's life.
Glazar's father died of pneumonia in the Soviet Union, to which he had escaped from the Nisko reservation in the General Government of occupied Poland; some 1,100 Czech Jews had been deported there by the Nazis in 1939.[citation needed] Glazar's mother survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and was the only member of his family left when he returned to Prague in 1945. His stepbrother Adolf Dasha Bergmann also survived after having served in the Czechoslovak army in France and was in Prague, when Richard returned to Prague in 1945.
Glazar was accepted into the Charles University in Prague in June 1939. He was originally enrolled as a philosophy student, but anti-Jewish legislation after the German occupation forced him into a course reading economics. His entire family had the chance to move to England at Christmas in 1938, when his stepfather obtained a permit. His stepfather did not take this opportunity, as he did not want to leave behind all that he had built up in Czechoslovakia.
On 17 November 1939, all Czech universities were closed until the end of the war, following student demonstrations against the execution of a number of their fellow students. This act would have been one of the Glazar family's first warnings of the horrific events to follow, and fearing for his safety, his family sent him to a farm outside Prague in 1940. Glazar stayed there for two years. On 12 September 1942, he was transported to the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto (previously the fortified town of Terezín, located 35 miles north of Prague). Following the German occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, Theresienstadt became a holding area for transports to other concentration camps, such as Auschwitz.
In Terezín, Glazar met Karel Unger, who became a close friend. Glazar was to stay in Terezín for only one month, before he and Unger were transported to Treblinka on 8 October1942.
Glazar wrote his story down after the war, and had part of it published in 1967 in a Czech magazine, Mezinárodní politika. In 1979 he was interviewed by Claude Lanzmann for the documentary Shoah (1985). When Glazar moved to Switzerland after the Prague Spring, his memoir was published in full in German as Die Falle mit dem grünen Zaun: Überleben in Treblinka (1992). An English translation, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka, was published in 1995 by Northwestern University Press.
In Shoah, Glazar described his arrival at Treblinka:
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Richard Glazar
Richard Glazar (29 November 1920 – 20 December 1997) was a Czech-Jewish inmate of the Treblinka extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. One of a small group of survivors of the camp's prisoner revolt in August 1943, Glazar described his experiences in an autobiographical book, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka (1992).
Glazar was born Richard Goldschmid in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to a Jewish-Czech family who spoke both Czech and German. His father served in the Austro-Hungarian Army before independence. His parents divorced in 1932, and his mother married a wealthy leather merchant, Quido Bergmann, who already had two children, Karel and Adolf. Karel died in the Austrian Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp on 17 May 1942. Adolf went in October 1939 to Denmark with the Youth Aliyah organization, escaped in October 1943 to Sweden (Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940–1945). In 1944–1945, he served as a volunteer in the Free Czechoslovak Army in the United Kingdom and France, and was later awarded the Czechoslovak War Cross. He later earned the degree of B.Sc. in dairy technology at the Agriculture University of Denmark. Richard and Adolf met after World War II and continued to have contact until the end of Richard's life.
Glazar's father died of pneumonia in the Soviet Union, to which he had escaped from the Nisko reservation in the General Government of occupied Poland; some 1,100 Czech Jews had been deported there by the Nazis in 1939.[citation needed] Glazar's mother survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and was the only member of his family left when he returned to Prague in 1945. His stepbrother Adolf Dasha Bergmann also survived after having served in the Czechoslovak army in France and was in Prague, when Richard returned to Prague in 1945.
Glazar was accepted into the Charles University in Prague in June 1939. He was originally enrolled as a philosophy student, but anti-Jewish legislation after the German occupation forced him into a course reading economics. His entire family had the chance to move to England at Christmas in 1938, when his stepfather obtained a permit. His stepfather did not take this opportunity, as he did not want to leave behind all that he had built up in Czechoslovakia.
On 17 November 1939, all Czech universities were closed until the end of the war, following student demonstrations against the execution of a number of their fellow students. This act would have been one of the Glazar family's first warnings of the horrific events to follow, and fearing for his safety, his family sent him to a farm outside Prague in 1940. Glazar stayed there for two years. On 12 September 1942, he was transported to the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto (previously the fortified town of Terezín, located 35 miles north of Prague). Following the German occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, Theresienstadt became a holding area for transports to other concentration camps, such as Auschwitz.
In Terezín, Glazar met Karel Unger, who became a close friend. Glazar was to stay in Terezín for only one month, before he and Unger were transported to Treblinka on 8 October1942.
Glazar wrote his story down after the war, and had part of it published in 1967 in a Czech magazine, Mezinárodní politika. In 1979 he was interviewed by Claude Lanzmann for the documentary Shoah (1985). When Glazar moved to Switzerland after the Prague Spring, his memoir was published in full in German as Die Falle mit dem grünen Zaun: Überleben in Treblinka (1992). An English translation, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka, was published in 1995 by Northwestern University Press.
In Shoah, Glazar described his arrival at Treblinka: