Rudolf Reder, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Rudolf Reder

Belzec extermination camp survivor

Date of Birth: 04-Apr-1881

Place of Birth: Galicia, Ukraine

Date of Death: 01-Jan-1968

Profession: chemist

Nationality: Canada, Poland

Zodiac Sign: Aries

Rudolf Reder a.k.a.
Roman Robak (April 4, 1881 in Debica – 1968 in Toronto) was one of only two Holocaust survivors of the Belzec extermination camp who testified about his experience after the war.
He submitted a deposition to the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in January 1946 in Kraków.
In terms of the number of Polish Jews who perished in its gas chambers, Belzec had the third highest death toll among the six Nazi death camps located in occupied Poland, estimated between 500,000 and 600,000 men, women and children.
Only Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka had more victims.The postwar testimony of Reder was of special significance, because Chaim Hirszman who also survived Belzec, joined the new communist militia in Stalinist Poland tasked with the crushing of Polish underground, torture, makeshift executions, and mass deportation to Siberia of over 50,000 political undesirables.
Hirszman was shot in March 1946 at his residence by the Cursed soldiers from TOW, in the course of an anti-communist insurrection against the new regime, before he was able to give a full account of his camp experience.