by Chad S.A. Gibbs
University of Wisconsin Press, 2026
Cloth: 978-0-299-35600-2
eISBN: 978-0-299-35608-8 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-0-299-35603-3 (PDF)
On August 2, 1943, prisoners at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, located in occupied Poland, launched an uprising against their captors, during which hundreds successfully escaped while guards killed as many in the process. In this groundbreaking work, Chad S.A. Gibbs draws upon recently discovered sources and novel research methods to fundamentally reassess Jewish resistance at Treblinka—both before and during the revolt.
Using the testimonies of revolt survivors, prior escapees, those who passed through the camp, and a handful of bystander witnesses and former SS guards, Gibbs sheds new light on the events of August 2 as well as many prior acts of resistance. Critical to these new interpretations of the revolt are the actions of women prisoners, who here assume a central place in this story for the first time.
“Through his exploration of the role that masculinity played in the resistance, Gibbs is able to uncover the hitherto almost completely ignored subject of women’s experiences at Treblinka. This is an extraordinary feat and one that is genuinely exciting.”
— Zoë Waxman, University of Oxford“Gibbs illuminates the gendered, spatial, and social dynamics that shaped the revolt and its memory and challenges readers to rethink Holocaust survivorship more broadly. . . . Slim and readable, Survival at Treblinka will interest scholars of the Holocaust as well as laypeople curious to understand how heroism takes shape and takes flight in the most desperate of circumstances.”
— Jewish Book CouncilLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
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