Dozens of survivors have participated in the documentary "Despite Treblinka" (most appear in collective sequences), for various reasons connected to the main story. The three protagonists are, naturally, Treblinka survivors. Let us point out a few crucial facts on their lives.

Chil Rajchman
Chil Rajchman, a uruguayan citizen, was born on June 14th, 1914, in Lodz. He had three brothers and two sisters. His mother died in 1931. His father could not support the family. Chil remembers that time: he worked very hard to help his father, he had dreams and a girlfriend.

The war would end all that. Chil had to endure several ghettos, including the Warsaw ghetto, then he was deported to Treblinka with his younger sister. She was taken to the gas chambers right away. He was selected to work at the camp (one of five in a transport of 12,000 people, all of whom perished by dusk), as a hairdresser for the female prisoners in their way to the gas chambers.

During the uprising, he was in charge of spreading the word out (many prisoners did not know an uprising was taking place; leaks were common). After he escaped, he managed to survive through the end of war at various hideouts, only to discover that he did not really want to live. The will to live came later, slowly. Reuniting with his brother helped -his brother Moniek was the only survivor among his family; Chil sent him to Russia as war was breaking; they met in Poland, in 1946, by coincidence, in the same corner where they said goodbye in 1939.

Chil got married in Poland and immigrated to Uruguay with his wife Lila and with his brother (there is an hilarious discussion among Chil and Moniek on the later's legal status at the time of arrival). Chil Rajchman is one of the most active members within the Jewish community. He is behind the Museum of the Holocaust and the Holocaust Memorial, both in Montevideo. He wrote a book Un Grito por la Vida, on his experiences in Treblinka. He was a witness at international trials in Düsseldorf (1965), Cleveland (1981) and Jerusalem (1987).

He is now an 88 year-old widower, a proud father of three and grandfather of eleven. An accident took Lila's life in 1991. He still sits in the cemetery and talks to Lila's grave.

Kalman Teigman
Kalman Teigman, an Israeli citizen, was born in Warsaw, 1922, and pledged to never return there. He came back, though, after his grandson and his second wife asked him to go with them. He found no traces, not even glimpses of his neighborhood, but lots of the discrimination he felt in Poland from early childhood.

He was a student in a technical school, taught by Adam Czerniakow (Czerniakow was chosen as the Warsaw ghetto Jewish Authority's chair; he committed suicide in 1942, as transports started to Treblinka). In 1935, Kalman's father immigrated to Israel, with hopes of bringing his mother and Kalman along. War started.

Teigman survived the Warsaw ghetto until his deportation in 1942, with his mother, who was separated from him at the ramp and gassed in the chambers. That was one of the first transports to reach Treblinka. Kalman, therefore, is one of two or three witnesses of early crucial episodes in the history of Treblinka, like the assassination of SS Max Biela by Jewish prisoners, which led to brutal retaliations, then deep changes, the most important of which, was the establishment of a stable group of prisoners in the camp (before, selected workers were eliminated after a few days and new were recruited from the transports).

Kalman participated in the Treblinka uprising, then escaped and hided in a bunker surrounded by German forces He enlisted in the Polish army in 1944 (where he suffered further discrimination and was sent to a Jewish-only unit) and got to Warsaw right after the German surrendered. He married a Bergen-Belsen survivor and emigrated to Israel, where he reunited with his father -however, he had to wait for a year in a refugee camp in Cyprus, where he was taken by the British after the ship that carried him and other refugees was bombarded on the entrance to an Israeli port.

He was a witness at the Eichmann trial in 1961. After his first wife died, Kalman re-married and moved to Bat Yam, where he still lives. He has a son and two grandchildren.

Schmuel Willengerg
Willenberg, an Israeli citizen, was born in Czestochowa, 1923, where his father, a painter, taught art at a local Jewish school. His mother, a Russian of Orthodox faith and aristocratic background, had settled in Poland during the Russian Revolution and converted to Judaism.

Willenberg could hardly be more different from his friend Teigman. Up until a few years ago, he used to travel to Poland every year, with his wife Ada (she survived the Warsaw ghetto, climbing the walls back in 1943) and high school students from a kibbutz. Schmuel claims he feels at ease in Poland and he shows the students not only the remains of the ghettos and concentration camps, but also the beautiful landscape where he grew up.

Willenberg volunteered for the army at age 16. He was wounded. He kept fighting until his two sisters were taken in 1940. Helpless, he was taken to Treblinka, where he got selected for work. In 1943, he helped organize the uprising, fought the Germans and escaped. He was able to reunite with his parents, both of whom survived the war, and participated in the partisan movement.

He was involved in sabotage actions in Warsaw and took part in the Warsaw uprising of 1944. When the uprising failed, he kept fighting on the outskirts of the city, as a member of the Polish army. He got married in Poland after the war and managed to get discharged from the army, so he could emigrate to Israel.

He emigrated to Israel in 1950, with his mother and wife. Retired from his job as a chief surveyor in a development company, he now lives in Tel Aviv and became a full time painter. His daughter, an architect, designed the Israeli Embassy in Berlin. He has two grandchildren. He is a happy person, and so is Ada. They fight often and don't mind the camera.

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