Professor of philosophy Yoram Lubling has recently published a book about his grandfather, a Holocaust victim and leader of the Treblinka revolt in Poland, with a foreword by world-renowned Holocaust writer Elie Wiesel.

Lubling’s book focuses on the story of his grandfather, Moshe Y. Lubling, who lived in the Czestochowa ghetto with his wife, daughter and son, Yoram Lubling’s father, until he, his wife, and his daughter were deported to Treblinka.

Lubling began working on his book in the early 90s, when he developed an obsession for finding out what happened during the Treblinka uprising, the only successful act of Jewish rebellion during the Holocaust, which holds a great deal of symbolic weight for the Jewish people.

“It was the act of fighting back rather than accepting your fate,” Lubling said. “It was the most symbolic act that led to the creation of the State of Israel.”

Treblinka was a Nazi death camp in Poland with 700 to 1,400 prisoners living there at any given time, acting as slaves to facilitate the camp’s operation.

After being undressed, shaved and surrendering all their property, new arrivals were taken to gas chambers that could fit between 400 and 500 individuals.

There, they were killed within 45 minutes, after which their gold teeth were removed, their bodies burnt and their ashes buried.

On some days, as many as 30,000 to 32,000 people were murdered; within 13 months of operation, nearly one million Jewish people were killed at Treblinka.

The research and writing process proved challenging for Lubling, particularly since so much of the information he needed was buried in Polish archives.

“I’m not a historian,” Lubling said. “I’m a philosopher. Historical research was something I had to learn by myself.”

Because there is only one living Treblinka survivor left, Lubling spent the past 15 years sifting through pieces of writing left by survivors in the last 60 years.

Eyewitness testimonies in four different languages: Polish, Hebrew, German and Yiddish, have driven Lubling’s research.

Lubling has taken five trips to Europe in the past 15 years and has visited Polish archives and read books written just after the end of the war. In Poland, he found “a wealth of information” about his grandfather that he hadn’t even known existed.

“There were times in Poland when I went into archives and opened boxes that hadn’t been opened since the end of World War II,” Lubling said.

Lubling said that the writing of the book was the easiest part of the process, while the most difficult step was collecting information and making judgments about it.

A great danger exists, he said, in missing something and then cutting off someone’s name from history.

“There’s nothing more difficult for the writer or the historian than to create a balance between evidence and interpretation about what it might or might not mean,” Lubling said. “Historical or non-fiction research is the most difficult thing in scholarship.”

Sifting through all of the information and compiling it into one book, Lubling said, might help clear up the cloud around all of the surviving information about Treblinka.

“I took it upon myself to put it all together and tell his story,” Lubling said. “In the story of humankind, there are a few people who are willing to lead with their bodies and pay the ultimate sacrifice. My grandfather never intended to save himself. He literally sacrificed himself.”

Lubling’s grandfather, Moshe Lubling, was active in the labor Zionist movement, and was a leader of several Zionist organizations, as the chairman of the Workers’ Council in the Czestochowa ghetto, where he lived with his family during the early years of the Holocaust.

On Jan. 22, 1942, the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the Nazi government began the process of liquidating the Czestochowa ghetto. Within a week or two, the majority of the ghetto’s Jewish inhabitants were deported to Treblinka and murdered.

Moshe Lubling, his wife and his daughter were deported to Treblinka while his son, Lubling’s father, remained behind in the ghetto. At Treblinka, Moshe Lubling’s wife and daughter were murdered and Moshe Lubling was kept alive as a slave laborer within the camp. During his time in Treblinka, Moshe Lubling began to organize the Treblinka revolt.

The Treblinka uprising occurred on Aug. 2, 1943, two hours earlier than planned. For purposes of secrecy, only 60 of the 700 prisoners at the camp knew about the revolt, and among those 60, only a handful knew the revolt’s leaders.

During the uprising, the prisoners succeeded in burning down the camp, and in the ensuing chaos, 200 to 300 prisoners escaped. Of these, only 40 were still alive at the end of the war.

Eighty percent of the escapees were killed after Polish locals caught them and returned them for ransom money. By 1945, only 27 of the 40 survivors gave eyewitness testimonies about the uprising, and of these 27, only 10 knew any information about the revolt’s organizing committee.

For Lubling, this meant that there was a very limited amount of information available about his grandfather and his grandfather’s role in the revolt.

While he lived in the ghetto, Lubling’s father had received letters from Lubling’s grandfather, sent through underground networks connected to Treblinka. But by the time Lubling began work on the book, his father’s one remaining letter had been lost.

Yoram Lubling’s primary piece of information was a 1945 article written by Stanislaw Kon, a Treblinka survivor that appeared in a Polish-Jewish newspaper.

In the article, the survivor named Lubling’s grandfather as one of the leaders in the uprising. Moshe Lubling was 38 at the start of the war and 41 at his death.

Eyewitness testimonies indicate that Moshe Lubling blew up the camp’s main gate, yelled to the other prisoners to escape, and then returned to the camp himself.

The cover of “Twice Dead,” drawn by Elon University Art Professor Anne Simpkins, depicts this scene with abstract beauty, showing Moshe Lubling walking back into the camp as his fellow prisoners flee. The book also includes a moving poem by Professor Kevin Boyle of Elon University’s English Department.

“There is no higher price than giving your life for the collective,” Lubling said. “Selfishness, or simply surviving, is not heroic. The book tells, in my view, an extraordinary story of heroism that Jewish people, and especially the state of Israel, have the moral obligation to remember.”

The book’s title, “Twice Dead,” refers to a new philosophical line of inquiry called the Ethics of Memory. The theme emerged in a book by the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit, about a community’s obligation to remember the names of its heroes.

The philosopher raised the question: Why is forgetting someone’s name an ethical failure?

“When we remember the names of others who died, especially those close to us as a community, not just individuals, we breathe eternity into their lives,” Lubling said. “In communities that care about each other, we must have that ethical obligation.”

Lubling also said that this obligation is not universal, but is instead community-based.

How a community remembers its heroes is based around how “thick” the community’s relationships are. In communities like Israel, people are connected to each other by “thick” relationships, meaning they share a common past and common future, carry a deep sense of responsibility to each other, and care for one another in ways that transcend acquaintances and mere communications.

Americans, then, have no ethical obligation to remember Moshe Lubling, but Israeli Jews do have that obligation. Once they forget, they have failed morally.

“The book deals with the issue of our commitment or obligation to remember,” Lubling said.

Lubling also said that he feels blessed by the kindness and generosity of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, reputable writer and Nobel Prize winner. Lubling met Wiesel when he visited Elon in 2004.

“When I was done, I sent him the manuscript and he wanted to express his support by writing the foreword,” Lubling said.

Since their meeting in 2004, the two have kept in touch and formed a strong friendship.

Reporter: Alyse Knorr - 08/29/07