On September 22, 1942, the night before the liquidation of the Large Ghetto in Czestochowa, the last meeting of the Council took place at Moshe Y. Lubling’s apartment on 11 Katedralne Street. According to testimony by Dr. Binyamin Orenstein, the author of the 1948 book Hurban Czenstochow (The Destruction of Czestochowa), representatives of the Polish Popular Army Underground Organization offered Moshe Y. Lubling assistance in escaping the Ghetto without his family. He refused and declared that his fate will be the same as his Jewish comrades.
The next day the liquidation of the ghetto started. His wife Zelda and daughter Ester Lubling were deported to Treblinka the same day where they were immediately murdered. Moshe and Pinchas Lubling were kept by the Nazis as forced laborers in Hutta Czestochowa (a steel factory). After 10 days, during a further selection, Moshe Y. Lubling was deported to Treblinka as well. Upon arrival in Treblinka Moshe Y. Lubling was kept alive as a slave worker sorting the clothes of the murdered Jews and later as a Goldjuden. In Treblinka Moshe Y. Lubling immediately organized a resistance cell together with David Brat Gershon Frendke, two other members of the former Czestochowa Workers’ Council. Their first plan was to smuggle weapons into Treblinka by making contact with the remaining members of the Czestochowa Resistance Organization in the Small Ghetto.
To achieve this end the cell facilitated the escape of Aron Gelberd from Treblinka 19 days after his arrival together with Lubling, Brat, and Frendke. Mr. Gelberd successfully escaped Treblinka and made his way back to the Small Ghetto in Czestochowa where he contacted the Resistance Organization. However, the task of smuggling weapons into Treblinka proved to be impossible. As a result, three months later (November 1942), the resistance cell in Treblinka, led by Moshe Y. Lubling, facilitated the escape of another prisoner from Czestochowa and a member of the Workers’ Council by the name of Moshe Rappaport. The latter’s escape was also successful and in January 1943 he arrived back at the Small Ghetto in Czestochowa and reported the request by Moshe Y. Lubling. This time the attempt was to organize a group of resistance fighters, both Jewish and Polish, to attack Treblinka from the outside. Although the Czestochowa Resistance Organization failed to organize the fighters, they offered to smuggle Moshe Y. Lubling out of Treblinka and to provide him with forged documents so he can live on the Aryan side of Czestochowa; Moshe Y. Lubling refused the offer and chose to remain in Treblinka in order to organize the revolt.
