Samuel Willenberg, the last surviving participant in the Treblinka death camp revolt during World War II, died on February 19 in Tel Aviv, Israel, aged 93.  His death is significant not only because of his role in that difficult and heroic episode of anti-Nazi resistance, but because with his passing goes the last living eyewitness to the event.  In different circumstances, this might not be tremendously important, given that the Treblinka revolt is fairly well documented in World War II history, though perhaps not as well as other significant events.  However, with rising international anti-Semitism, and increasing acceptance of Holocaust denial, the loss of living witnesses means a bit more. Treblinka, like its sister camps of Sobibor and Belzec, was intentionally kept secret by the Nazis in order to hide the scale of the genocide they were perpetrating and also the evidence of it should things go badly for the regime in the end – which, of course, was...(Read Full Post)