Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Isaac Engel - June 16 & 25, 1992

Underground Movement in Zwoleń

To Treblinka.

From our, from ours.

You said there was a resistance in Zwoleń? There was an underground?

Yes, there was an underground. And uh, but uh, they were--it wasn't exactly in Zwoleń. It was out, they went in the...

So what did they do?

...in the woods. What did they do, they uh, they blew up a train, stuff like this!

What would happen...

Explosive.

...if they blew up a train, what would happen?

Nothing.

There wouldn't be any reprisals?

Oh yeah, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. They did, they did. Like uh, they killed one time uh, a soldier from the Volksdeutschen. See all the Volksdeutschen they joined the, the army right away, of course. And, and the police and the army and the SS, some of 'em. And, and uh, there was a guy came, about five, six miles from our city, maybe. And he came a vacation. Guy--Olaf in German. And they kill 'em in that village. So what they did the next day, a few thousand. If you saw a few thousand SS came in with trucks and small cars and jeeps and all these uh, army cars and stuff. And there, they went into that village. They took out all the men. They killed all the men there and they burned down the whole village.

When that happened, what happened in your house?

When this--nothing.

Did anybody say anything about it? Were you surprised?

What you, can you say? There was no--we were not surprised.

Did you talk to each other? Did your father say anything?

Oh sure, sure. ???. We're not surprised. This is uh, this was their plan. We had no place where to go.

So you didn't talk about running.

Running? Where?

Okay.

We had no place where to run. Nobody would let us in. There were no place where to run.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn