Samuel Willenberg, one of last survivors of Treblinka, dies at 93

Corrections and clarifications:An earlier version of this story did not accurately describe Samuel Willenberg, who was one of the last known survivors.

Samuel Willenberg, one of the last known survivors of the Treblinka Nazi death camp in Poland where 875,000 were systematically murdered, died Friday in Israel at the age of 93.

Only 67 people survived the death camp in Poland, according to the Associated Press. It was designed and built almost entirely for the factory-like killing of human beings, nearly all Jews. The Nazis worked to destroy and erase all evidence of the camp and genocide before advancing Soviet armies could find it.

Willenberg, the son of an Orthodox Christian mother and Jewish father, was brought to the camp in 1942. As an able-bodied 19-year-old, he was spared death and was given the task of sorting through the belongings of those murdered in the gas chambers.

In August of 1943, Willenberg joined a group of Jews who stole weapons, set fire to the camp and tried to escape. Most of them were killed. Willenberg was shot in the leg but managed to clamber over a pile of bodies, climb over a fence and make his way into the woods. He later joined the Polish resistance and took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Film: Survivors' kin tell Holocaust stories

Five years after the war, he moved to Israel where he worked for the Housing Ministry, according to Haaretz. After retirement, Willenberg turned to sculpting with a special focus on images of Jews during the Holocaust. He wrote about his experiences at the death camp in the book Revolt in Treblinka published in 1986.