Kalmen Wewryk
Kalmen Wewryk (born 1906 in Chełm , Poland ; died 1989 in Canada ) was a book author and survivor of the uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp .
Life
Kalmen Wewryk was born in Chełm, Poland in 1906 to a traditionally Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a simple grain dealer, he had a brother and two sisters. The brother died of malnutrition during the First World War. Kalmen Wewryk married his girlfriend Jocheved, their son Jossele was born in 1934 and their daughter Pesha in 1939.
In 1942 his family was picked up during an "action" in the ghetto. After that, Kalmen Wewryk never heard from his wife and two children again. The majority of the 12,000 Jews from Chełm were murdered in Sobibor.
In autumn 1942 Kalmen Wewryk was also deported to Sobibor from a forced labor camp in Chełm . There he was selected by the SS for forced labor in the death camp and thus escaped immediate murder. On October 14, 1943, he took an active part in the prisoners' uprising . During the uprising he managed to escape into the woods. There he hid for months in the area of Chełm from his German, Polish and Ukrainian persecutors. Eventually he came across and joined Soviet partisans.
In 1946 he married Perla Laja Fuchs, an Auschwitz survivor. They had 2 children. Since 1950 he and his new family tried to leave Poland. In 1956 they emigrated to Paris and in 1968 they emigrated to Canada, where Kalmen Wewryk worked as a carpenter until he retired.
In 1984 he wrote his autobiography in Yiddish . Howard Roiter translated it into English and published the book To Sobibór and Back: An Eyewitness Account in Canada in 1999.
Web links
- Kalmen Wewryk - To Sobibor and back In May 2020, the Stanisław Hantz educational institute published Kalmen Wewryk's report.
- Account - Kalmen Wewryk, survivor of Sobibor at www.auschwitz.dk/Sobibor (English)
- Literature from survivors of Sobibór on sobibor.de
- 75th anniversary of the uprising in Sobibor, in the footsteps of Kalmen Wewryk (reading)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Kalmen Wewryk: To Sobibor and back, publisher Bildungswerk Stanisław Hantz, Bahoe Books, Vienna 2020, ISBN 978-3-903022-87-4 . and Metropol Verlag, Berlin, 2020, ISBN 978-3-86331-517-7
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wewryk, Kalmen |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish concentration camp survivor and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chełm , Poland |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1989 |
| Place of death | Canada |