The World Will Tremble

I just finished watching the 2025 Film “The World Will Tremble.”

It is a true story about two Jews (Szlama Ber Winer and Mordechaï Podchlebnik) who escaped the Chełmno (called Kulmhof by the Germans) Death Camp in German-Occupied Poland in 1942.

The Chełmno Death Camp was operational from December 8, 1941 to April 11, 1943 and again from June 23, 1944 to January 18, 1945 and saw 200,000 Men, Women and Children murdered in that time.

Chełmno used Gas Vans to murder People.

Men, Women and Children arrived at the Camp, told to mark their bags so they could get them back after they were “Disinfected” from Typhus.

They then went inside the Mannor where they took off their clothes and walked down the hallways until they found themselves looking at the back of a large Van where they were then beaten into it.

The doors were closed and locked and exhaust gas was pumped into the back while the Van drove out of the Camp, into the forest and to large Open Pits.

The People inside could be heard screaming, praying and banging on the doors for about 20 minutes until they were all dead.

The doors were then opened and the Sonderkommando (Special Unit– a Group of 15 Jewish Prisoners forced by the Germans to dig the large Pits, bury the Bodies and then go through the Personal Belongings of the dead to send back to Germany.

Many of the Sonderkommando had to bury the bodies of their own Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, Wives and Children.

Szlama Ber Winer and Mordechaï Podchlebnik were part of the Sonderkommando.

Szlama Ber Winer was born in Izbica Kujawska, Poland on September 23, 1911.

On January 10, 1942 Winer was deported from the Izbica Ghetto to Chełmno to work in the Sonderkommando.

On January 14, 1942 the Germans liquidated the Izbica Ghetto sending Winer’s Wife and Children and the rest of the Ghetto Population to the Gas Vans at Chełmno. Winer had to bury his own Family.

Mordechaï Podchlebnik was born on June 16, 1907 in Kolo, Poland.

On January 3, 1942 he was deported to Chełmno.

On January 13, 1942 he was forced to bury his Parents, his Wife and his Children.

On January 19, 1942 both Szlama Ber Winer and Mordechaï Podchlebnik escaped from Chełmno and went to the Grabow Ghetto where they described in detail the death process at Chełmno.

The Report made it to the Polish Government-In-Exile in London and was broadcast on the BBC in 1942. It was the first account of the Holocaust to the outside World.

The two then separated.

On April 10, 1942 Szlama Ber Winer was caught by the Germans and sent to the Bełżec Death Camp where he was gassed. He was 30 years old.

Mordechai Podchlebnik went to different Ghettos in German-Occupied Poland telling the People there about the murders going on.

When the Soviets liberated Poland in 1945 Podchlebnik when to Lublin and then back to Kolo.

In September 1945 he went to a Displaced Person’s Camp in Germany.

He married Dora Kurzfeld from Będzin, a Seamstress and Former Prisoner of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In 1946, their Son Jakob was born.

 In 1949, he and his Family left for Israel (where their Second Son, Jon, was born.)

On June 5, 1961, Podchlebnik was a Witness in the Trial of Adolf Eichmann, and two years later in the Trial of the Staff of the Chełmno Camp in Bonn, West Germany.

Mordechai Podchlebnik died in Israel on September 11, 1985. He was 78 years old.