Richard Glazar (1920–1997)

Richard Glazar, originally Goldschmid, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to a Jewish-Bohemian family that spoke both Czech and German. In June 1939, he entered Charles University in Prague. He was originally enrolled as a philosophy student, but anti-Jewish legislation after Nazi Germany's invasion in World War II forced him into courses on economics. In November that year, all Czech universities were closed, following student demonstrations against the execution of a number of their fellows. Richard's family sent him for safety to a farm, where he stayed for two years. In September 1942, he was arrested by the Nazis and transported to the ghetto and concentration camp Terezín (Theresienstadt). A month later, he was deported to the Treblinka concentration camp. There he was selected for forced labor in the detail that sorted the possessions of murdered Jews. On August 2, 1943, several dozen people broke out of the camp, and Glazar fled with his friend Karel Unger through a damaged gate. The two made their way across Poland and settled in Mannheim, Germany posing as non-Jewish Czech workers, using false identity papers until the war ended. The only member of his family still alive when Richard returned to Prague was his mother, who had survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Glazar later testified at the trials of many of the Nazis associated with Treblinka. He went on to complete his university studies in Prague, Paris, and London, and received a degree in economics. In 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he fled with his wife and two children to Switzerland. Following his wife's death in 1997, Glazar died by suicide, jumping out of a window in Prague. His memoir, entitled Stacja Treblinka, was first published in a Czech magazine in 1967. The English translation, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka, first appeared in 1995. He was featured in two documentary films, Shoah (1985) and To Bear Witness (1983), and contributed to Gitta Sereny's study Into That Darkness (1974).