Richard Glazar Richard Glazar born Richard Goldschmid ( November 29 , 1920 – December 20 , 1997 ) was a Czech Jew who lived through World War II . He was one of only a small group of survivors of the Treblinka death camp prisoner revolt . He portrayed the horror of Treblinka in his autobiographical book titled " Trap with a Green Fence " . Glazar had committed suicide at the age of 77 suffering from survivor guilt syndrome . Family . Glazar was born in Prague , Czechoslovakia . His family was Jewish Bohemian , his father having served in the Austro - Hungarian Army . As such , the family spoke both Czech and German — a skill that would stand him in good stead later in life . In 1932 Glazar ’ s parents divorced . His mother married a wealthy leather merchant , Quido Bergmann and four years later they had two children , Karel and Adolf . Karel died in the Austrian concentration camp at Mauthausen on May 17 , 1942 . Adolf was captured by the Nazis , but later rescued by the Danish Red Cross . Hugo , Glazar ’ s father , died of pneumonia in the Soviet Union , to where he had escaped from Nisko in the General Government of Poland . 1100 Czech Jews had been deported there by the Nazis in 1939 . The only member of his family still alive when he returned to Prague in 1945 was his mother , who had survived both Auschwitz and Bergen - Belsen . Early life and Terezin . Richard Glazar was accepted into the Charles University of Prague in June 1939 . He was originally enrolled as a philosophy student , but anti - Jewish legislation after the German occupation forced him into a course reading economics . His entire family had the chance to move to England at Christmas in 1938 , when his stepfather obtained a permit . Glazar however did not take this opportunity , as he did not want to leave behind all that he had built up in Czechoslovakia . At this stage there could have been little understanding of the horrors that were to occur in the coming years . On November 17 , 1939 , all Czech universities were closed until the end of the war following student demonstrations against the execution of a number of their fellow students . This terrible act would have been one of the Glazar family ’ s first warnings of the horrific events to follow , and fearing for his safety , his family sent him to a farm outside Prague in 1940 . Glazar stayed there for two years . But on September 12 , 1942 he was transported to the Nazi concentration camp or ghetto at Theresienstadt ( previously the fortified town of Terezin . It was located 35 miles north of Prague ) . Following the German occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia on March 15 , 1939 , Theresienstadt became a holding area for transports to other concentration camps , such as Auschwitz . In Terezin , Glazar met Karl Unger who became a close friend . He was to stay in Terezin for only one month , before he and Unger were transported to Treblinka on October 8 , 1942 . Treblinka . Glazar describes his arrival at Treblinka : “ We were taken to the barracks . The whole place stank . Piled high in a jumbled mass were all the things people could conceivably have brought . . . As I worked I asked him : ‘ What ’ s going on ? Where are the ones who stripped ? ’ He yelled in Yiddish : ‘ Dead ! All Dead ! ’ ” New arrivals to Treblinka were told to strip so that they could go to the disinfectant baths . Herded into communal “ baths ” , gas was pumped in instead of water — an efficient method of mass extermination . About a month after Glazar arrived in Treblinka , as an alternative to mass burial , the burning of bodies began . Glazar and Unger were “ fortunate ” that the commandant of the camp , Franz Stangl , had decided to train some inmates as workers to sort the belongings of those sent to the gas chambers . Glazar ’ s command of both the Czech and German languages may have helped him to secure one of these jobs . Packs of clothes were sent to Germany or to the fighting fronts , gold from teeth was extracted and added to coins and jewelry Jews had brought with them and added to the wealth of the Reich . Food and luxuries helped sustain both the German guards and any workers who could steal them . Glazar and Unger were to spend the next several months working in the camp , knowing that they were working for a cause that killed thousands of their people every month . From January to March 1943 , no transports came into the camp . The captives had virtually no food . This brought a horrible realisation to these Jewish workers that their lives depended entirely on the transports arriving regularly : their own survival depended on the ongoing deaths of their fellow countrymen , for food and clothing . It was this kind of knowledge that drove them to try and escape . With no Jews to do the work , the Nazis would have had a lot more trouble running such camps so efficiently . The first escape attempt was planned for January 1943 , and was code - named “ The Hour ” . The idea was that at a specified time , all those working for the camp would attack the SS and Ukrainian guards , steal their weapons and attack the camp Kommandantur . Unfortunately , this did not go ahead as typhus broke out and many inmates either died , were hospitalized or were too sick to participate . The escape that actually worked was slightly less violent and ambitious . On August 2 , 1943 , men broke out through a damaged gate during a prisoner ’ s revolt . While most of the escapees were arrested close to the camp , Glazar and Unger fled from the area and made their way across Poland . While on the run , Glazar and Unger were arrested by a forester , but they managed to convince him that they were Czechs working for “ Organisation Todt ” ( a Nazi construction and engineering group in Poland ) . Both men were later sent to Mannheim , in Germany , to work for Heinrich Lanz as immigrant workers , using incorrect papers . Life after the War . Following the end of the war , when Glazar and Unger were liberated by the Americans , Glazar attended the trials of many of the Nazis concerned with Treblinka , including Franz Stangl . Glazar also went on to study in Prague , Paris , and London , and received a degree in economics — the field he had been forced into by anti - Jewish legislation in 1939 . In 1968 he and his family moved to Switzerland after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact . Glazar also helped Michael Peters , the founder of the Aktion Reinhard Camps ( ARC , a network of private Holocaust researchers ) , build a model of the Treblinka death camp . Glazar committed suicide on December 20 , 1997 by jumping out of a window in Prague after the death of his wife , leaving the model incomplete .