Adek Stein (Bulkowstein), b. 1910, Bialystock, Poland. Immigrated to Australia 1950.

Adek Stein's fighting spirit fuelled his determination to survive. Neither the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto nor the Germans after the war could believe what he did. “With no help from the rest of the world, I did the impossible,” he declared. In August 1942 he escaped from Treblinka death camp.

Adek Stein in 1946

He had smelled the horror of the gas chambers, saw thousands marched to their death and was forced to sort their left-over clothing. He had seen a hundred of his fellow workers shot every night and he knew his time was running out. While loading a train with the clothes of those who had been killed, he hid himself in a wagon amongst the clothes. Days later, he managed to jump off the train during the night and make it back to the Warsaw ghetto. He told the Jewish Council there of the horrors that he had witnessed. No one would believe him. Ever incredulous, he said, “I was accused of spreading gruesome propaganda.”

Instinct told him to find a way out of the ghetto. He found secret refuge for himself, his future wife Hela and two others behind a secret wall in a room on the Aryan side of the city. However, after living in this confined space for eighteen months, the advance of the Russians forced them to leave and go underground into Warsaw's storm-water tunnels. They hid there for three and a half months in appalling conditions. At night Adek would go up into the bombed streets to search for food. They managed to survive in their underground bunker until Warsaw was liberated in 1945.

Adek counted his rebirth from the day he escaped from Treblinka. He immigrated to Australia in 1950 and in 1992 celebrated his ‘fiftieth’ birthday together with the best miracle of all - his grandchildren. Adek Stein passed away in 1999.