Berek Lajcher

Berek Lajcher (24 October 1893 – 2 August 1943)

Lajcher was a graduate of the Warsaw University Faculty of Medicine in 1924, and a retired officer of the Polish Army from the Polish–Soviet War. After the German invasion of Poland during World War II, Lajcher was expelled by the Nazis along with all Polish Jews from Wyszków, and relocated to Węgrów, from where he was deported to Treblinka, the secret forest camp where Jewish men, women and children were being murdered in gas chambers. Lajcher was killed in the fighting. Several Trawniki guards were killed and some 150 Jewish prisoners escaped. Gassing operations at the camp ended soon after the revolt. Lajcher was remembered by survivors incorrectly as either (sic),

Life and death Berek Lajcher was born in Częstochowa under the Russian Partition, into a family of assimilated Polish Jews. He was the fourth of six children of Szmul (Shmuel) and Chai (Chaya) Lajcher née Frydman. His father spoke Yiddish, Polish, and Russian. They lived near the city centre in a house at Stary Rynek 11. Berek occasionally used his Polonized name, Bernard. He attended the multicultural State Henryk Sienkiewicz Secondary for boys in 1907. A year after graduation, in 1915, his father died. Berek moved to the capital and enrolled at the Warsaw University Faculty of Medicine. He supported himself financially by working as a part-time tutor.

Lajcher graduated in Medicine in 1924 and married Eugenia Banasz. After two years of internship in Warsaw, in 1927 they relocated to Wyszkow where the Polish and Jewish population was split half and half. The Lajchers remained there until the invasion of Poland. The Lajchers relocated to Węgrów, which was already swelling with hundreds of expellees. with up to 5,000 Jews expelled to Sokołów Podlaski after a wave of ad hoc executions. A small ghetto was created in its place. Following the liquidation of the small ghetto in Wegrów on 26–27 April 1943, during which his wife and son were murdered, Lajcher was brought to Treblinka in a Holocaust train on 1 May 1943. During this time, more than 800,000 Jews – men, women, and children – were murdered there, with other estimates exceeding 1,000,000 victims.

In Treblinka, Lajcher was put in charge of a small infirmary for the SS after the suicide of his predecessor, Dr. Julian Chorążycki (not to be mistaken with the "fake" infirmary called "lazaret" where the hands-on killing took place). The Organizing Committee at Treblinka Totenlager included Zelomir Bloch (leadership), Rudolf Masaryk, Marceli Galewski, Samuel Rajzman, Dr. Irena Lewkowska (sick bay), Leon Haberman, and several others. The timing became imperative after Chorążycki was ambushed by Kurt Franz and swallowed a deadly poison. Lajcher launched the uprising on a hot summer day when a group of Germans and Ukrainians drove off to the Bug River for a swim. Only about 70 Jews are known to have survived until the end of the war, including future authors of published Treblinka memoirs: Jankiel Wiernik, Chil Rajchman, Richard Glazar, and Samuel Willenberg. There was also a revolt at Sobibor two months later.