RlCHARD GLAZAR
Then, on the second day,
l saw a sign for Malkinia.
We went on a little farther.
Then, very slowly, the train
turned off of the main track,
and rolled at a walking pace through a wood.
While he looked out,
we'd been able to open a window.
The old man in our compartment saw a boy...
Cows were grazing...
And he asked the boy in signs,
''Where are we ?''
And the kid made a funny gesture. This !
Across the throat.
A Pole ?
A Pole.
Where was this ? At the station ?
lt was where the train had stopped.
On one side was the wood,
and on the other were fields.
And there was a farmer in a field ?
We saw cows
watched over by a young man,
a farmhand.
And one of you questioned him ?
Not in words, but in signs, we asked,
''What's going on here ?''
And he made that gesture. Like this.
We didn't really
pay much attention to him.
We couldn't figure out what he meant.
Once there were foreign Jews -- they were this fat...
This fat ?
Riding in passenger cars.
There was a dining car, they could drink,
and walk around, too.
They said they were going to a factory.
On arrival they saw kind of a factory it was.
We'd gesture...
Gesture how ?
That they'd be killed.
These people made that sign ?
He says the Jews didn't believe it.
But what does that gesture mean ?
That death awaited them.
The people who had a chance
to get near the Jews did that to warn them...
He did it too ?
That they'd be hanged, killed, slain.
Yes.
Even foreign Jews from Belgium, Czechoslovakia,
from France too, surely.
And from Holland...
These didn't know,
but the Polish Jews knew.
ln the small cities in the area,
it was talked about.
So the Polish Jews were forewarned, but not the others.
Who'd they warn, Polish Jews or the others ?
All the Jews.
He says the foreign Jews arrived here in passenger
they were well dressed, in white shirts,
there were flowers in the cars, and they played cards.
From what l know, that was very rare,
Jews shipped in passanger cars.
Most arrived in cattle cars.
lt's not true.
lt's not true ?
What did Mrs. Gawkowska say?
She said he may not have seen everything.
He says he did.
Once, at the Malkinia station, for example,
a foreign Jew left the train
to buy something at the bar.
The train pulled out and he ran after it...
To catch up to it.
So he went past these ''pullmans'', as he calls them
those Jews who were calm, unsuspecting,
and he made that gesture to them.
To all the Jews, in principle.
He just went along the platform ! Ask him !
Yes. The road was as it is now.
When the guard wasn't looking,
he made that gesture.
Ask Mr. Gawkowski why he looks so sad.
Because l saw men marching to their death.
Precisely where are we now ?
lt's not far... a mile and a half from here.
What, the camp ?
What's that dirt road he's indicating ?
That's where the rail line into the camp was.
Did Mr. Gawkowski, aside from the trains of deportees
he drove from Warsaw or Bialystok
to the Treblinka station...
Did he ever drive the deportee cars
into the camp from the Treblinka station ?
Did he do it often ?
Two or three times a week.
Over how long a period ?
Around a year and a half.
That is, throughout the camp's existence ?
This is the ramp.
Here he is, he goes to the end with his locomotive,
and he has the 20 cars behind him.
No, they're in front of him.
He pushed them ?
That's right, he pushed them.
ln February 1942, l began
working here as an assistant switchman.
The station building, the rails, the platforms
are just as they were in 1942 ? Nothing's changed ?
Nothing.
Exactly where did the camp begin ?
JAN PlWONSKY
l'll show you exactly.
Here,
there was a fence that ran to those trees you see there.
And another fence, that ran to those trees over there.
So l'm standing inside the camp perimeter, right ?
That's right.
Where l am now is 50 feet from the station,
and l'm already outside the camp.
Yes.
So this is the Polish part, and over there was death.
Yes.
On German orders, Polish railmen split up the trains.
So the locomotive took 20 cars,
and headed toward Chelm.
When it reached a switch,
it pushed the cars into the camp on the other track we can see.
The ramp began there.
So here we're outside the camp,
and back here we enter it.
Unlike Treblinka, the statio here is part of the camp.
And at this point we are inside the camp.
This track was inside the camp.
And it's exactly as it was ?
Yes, the same track.
lt hasn't changed since then.
Where we are now is what was called the ramp, right ?
Yes, those to be exterminated were unloaded.
So where we're standing is
where 250,000 Jews were unloaded before being gassed.
Yes.
Did foreign Jews arrive here in passenger cars, too ?
Not always.
Often the richest Jews,
from Belgium, Holland, France,
arrived in passenger cars,
sometimes even in 1st class.
They were usually better treated by the guards.
Especially the convoys of Western European Jews
waiting their turn here,
Polish railmen saw the women making up, combing their hair
wholly unaware of what awaited them minutes later.
They dolled up.
And the Poles couldn't tell them anything : the guards
forbad contact with the future victims.
l suppose were there fine days like today.
Unfortunately, some were even finer.
RUDOLF VRBA, survivor of AUSCHWlTZ - NEW YORK
AUSCHWlTZ - BlRKENAU
And suddenly it started : the yelling and screaming.
''All out, everybody out !''
All those shouts, the uproar, the tumult !
''Out ! Get out !
''Leave the baggage !''
We got out stepping on each other.
We saw men
wearing blue armbands.
Some carried whips.
We saw some SS men.
Green uniforms,
black uniforms...
We were a mass,
and the mass swept us along.
lt was irresistible.
lt had to move to another place.
l saw the others undressing.
And l hear : ''get undressed! You're to be disinfected !''
As l waited, already naked,
l noticed the
SS men separating out some people.
These were told to get dressed.
A passing SS man suddenly stopped in front of me,
looked me over, and said :
''Yes, you too, quick, join the others, get dressed.
''You're going to work here, and if you're good,
''You can be a kapo -- a squad leader.''
BlRKENAU : the ramp
We were taken to a barracks.
The whole place stank.
Piled about five feet high
in a jumbled mass,
where all the things people could conceivably have brought.
Clothes, suitcases,
everything
stacked in a solid mass.
On top of it, jumping around like demons.
People were
making bundles,
and carrying them outside.
l was turned over to one of these men.
His armband said, ''Squad Leader''.
He shouted, and l understood
that l was also to pick up clothing, bundle it,
and take it somewhere.
As l worked, l asked him :
''What's going on ? The undressed ones... Where are they ?
And he replied : ''Dead ! All dead !''
But it still hadn't sunk in, l didn't believe it.
He'd used the Yiddish word.
lt was the first time l'd heard Yiddish spoken.
He didn't say it very loud,
and l saw he had tears in his eyes.
Suddenly he started shouting,
and raised his whip.
Out of the corner of my eyes, l saw an SS man coming.
And l understood that l was to ask no more questions,
but just to rush outside with the package.
All l could think of then was my friend Carel Unger.
He'd been at the rear of the train,
in a section that had been uncoupled and left outside.
l needed someone. Near me. With me.
Then l saw him. He was in the 2nd group.
He'd been spared too.
On the way, somehow, he had learned, he already knew.
He looked at me,
all he said was : ''Richard, my father, mother, brother...
He had learned on the way there.
Your meeting with Carel :
how long after your arrival did it happen ?
lt was... around 20 minutes after we reached Treblinka.
Then l left the barracks,
and had my first look at the vast space
that l soon learned was called
''the sorting place''.
lt was buried under mountain of objects of all kinds.
Mountains of shoes, of clothes, 30 feet high.
l thought about it and said to Carel :
''lt's a hurricane, a raging sea.
''We're shipwrecked. And we're still alive.
''We must do nothing
''but watch for every new wave,
''float on it,
''get ready for the next wave,
''and ride the wave at all costs. And nothing else.''
Greenery, sand everywhere else.
At night, we were put into a barracks.
lt just had a sand floor.
Nothing else.
Each of us simply dropped where he stood.
Half-asleep, l heard
some men hang themselves.
We didn't react then. lt was almost normal.
Just as it wast normal that for everyone
behind whom the gate of Treblinka closed,
there was death, had to be death,
for no one was supposed
to be left to bear witness.
l already knew that,
three hours after
arriving at Treblinka.
BERLlN
lNGE DEUTSCHKRON. Born in BERLlN
Lived there throught the war.
(in hiding beginning in February 1943)
Now lives in lSRAEL
FRANZ SUCHOMEL : SS unterscharfuhrer
Are you ready ?
- Yes. - Then we can...
We can begin.
How's your heart ? ls everything in order ?
Oh, my heart... For the moment, it's all right.
lf l have any pain, l'll tell you.
We'll have to break off.
Of course.
But your health, in general, is...
The weather today suits me fine.
The barometric pressure is high : that's good for me.
You look to be in good shape, anyway.
Let's begin with Treblinka.
Certainly.
l think that's best.
lf you could give us
a description of Treblinka.
How did it look when you arrived ?
l believe you got there in August ?
Was it August 20 or 24 ?
The 18th ?
l don't know exactly. Around August 20.
l arrived there with seven other men.
From Berlin ?
From Berlin.
From Lublin ?
From Berlin to Warsaw, from Warsaw to Lublin,
from Lublin back to Warsaw and from Warsaw to Treblinka.
What was Treblinka like then ?
Treblinka then was operating at full capacity.
Full capacity ?
Full capacity !
Trains arrived...
The Warsaw ghetto was being emptied then.
Three trains arrived in two days,
each with three, four, five thousand people aboard,
all from Warsaw.
But at the same time, other trains came in
from Kielce and other places.
So three trains arrived,
and since the offensive against Stalingrad was in fear,
the trainloads of Jews were left on a station siding.
What's more, the cars were French,
made of steel.
So that while 5,000 Jews arrived in Treblinka,
3,000 were dead.
ln the...
ln the cars. They had slashed
their wrists, or just died.
The ones we unloaded were half-dead
and half-mad.
ln the other trains from Kielce
and elsewhere,
at least half were dead.
We stacked them here, here,
here and here.
Thousands of people
piled one on top of another.
On the ramp ?
On the ramp.
Stacked like wood.
ln addition,
other Jews, still alive, waited there for two days :
the small gas-chambers could no longer handle the number.
They functioned day and night in that period.
Can you please describe, very precisely,
your first impression of Treblinka ?
Very precisely. lt's very important.
My first impression of Treblinka,
and that of some of the other men, was catastrophic.
For we had not been told
how and what... that people were being killed there.
That they hadn't told us.
You didn't know ?
No !
lncredible !
But true. l didn't want to go.
That was proved at my trial.
l was told :
''Mr. Suchomel, there are big workshops there
''for tailors and shoemakers,
''and you'll be guarding them.''
But you knew it was a camp ?
Yes. We were told :
''The Fuhrer ordered a ressettlement program.
''lt's an order from the Fuhrer.''
Understand ?
Ressetlement program...
No one ever spoke of killing.
l understand.
Mr. Suchomel, we're not discussing you,
only Treblinka.
You are a very important eye-witness,
and you can explain what Treblinka was.
But don't use my name.
No, l promised.
All right, you've arrived at Treblinka.
So Stadie, the sarge,
showed us the camp
from end to end.
Just as we went by, they were
opening the gas-chamber doors,
and people fell out like potatoes.
Naturally, that horrified and appalled us.
We went back and sat down on our suitcases
and cried like old women.
Each day, 100 Jews were chosen
to drag the corpses to the mass graves.
ln the evening, the Ukrainians drove those Jews
into the gas-chambers or shot them.
Every day !
lt was in the hottest days of August.
The ground undulated
likes waves because of the gas.
From the bodies ?
Bear in mind, the graves were maybe 18,
20 feet deep,
all crammed with bodies !
A thin layer of sand and the heat. You see ?
lt was a hell up there.
You saw that ?
Yes, just once, the first day.
We pucked and wept.
You wept ?
We wept too, yes.
The smell was infernal.
Yes, because gas was constantly escaping.
lt stank horribly, for miles around.
Miles ?
Miles !
You could smell it all around, not just in the camp ?
Everywhere. lt depended on the wind. The stink
was carried on the wind.
Understand ?
More people kept coming, always more,
whom we hadn't the facilities to kill.
Those gents were in a rush to clean out the Warsaw ghetto.
The gas-chambers couldn't handle the load.
The small gas-chambers.
The Jews had to wait their turn for a day,
2 days, 3 days.
They foresaw what was coming.
They foresaw it.
They may not have been certain, but many knew.
There were Jewish women who
slashed their daughters' wrists at night,
then cut their own.
Others poisoned themselves.
They heard the engine feeding the gas-chamber.
A tank engine was used in that gas-chamber.
At Treblinka the only gas used was engine exhaust.
Zyklon gas, that was Auschwitz.
Because of the delay,
Eberl, the camp commandant,
phoned Lublin and said :
''We can't go on this way. l can't do it any longer.
''We have to break off.''
Overnight, Wirth arrived.
He inspected everything and then left.
He returned with people from Belzec,
experts.
Wirth arranged to suspend the trains.
The corpses lying there were cleared away.
That was the period of the old gas-chambers.
Because there were so many dead
that couldn't be gotten rid off,
the bodies piled up around the gas-chambers
and stayed there for days.
Under this pile of bodies was a cesspool :
3 inches deep, full of blood, worms...
and shit.
No one wanted to clean it out.
The Jews preferred to be shot
rather than work there.
Preferred to be shot ?
lt was awful. Burying their own people, seeing it all...
The dead flesh came off in their hands.
So Wirth went there himself
with a few Germans
and had long belts rigged up
that were wrapped around the dead torsos to pull them...
Who did that ?
SS men.
Wirth ?
SS men and Jews.
SS men and Jews !
Jews too ?
Jews too !
What did the Germans do ?
They forced the Jews to...
They beat them ?
Or they themselves helped with the clean-up.
Which Germans did that ?
Some of our guards who were assigned up there.
The Germans themselves ?
They had to.
They were in command !
They were in command, but they were also commanded.
l think the Jews did it.
ln that case, the Germans had to lend a hand.
The black execution wall in the courtyard of block ll
at AUSCHWlTZ l, the original camp
Filip, on that Sunday in May 1942,
when you first entered
the Auschwitz creatorium, how old were you ?
Twenty.
lt was a Sunday in May.
We were locked in an underground cell in Block 1 1
We were held in secret.
Then some SS men appeared
and marched us along a street in the camp.
We went through a gate,
and around 300 feet away,
300 feet from the gate,
l suddenly saw a building.
lt had a flat roof, and a smokestack.
l saw a door in the rear.
l thought they were taking us to be shot.
FlLlP MULLER : survivor of the 5 liquidations
of the AUSCHWlTZ ''special detail''.
Suddenly, before a door
under a lamp in the middle of this building.
a young SS man told us :
''lnside, filthy swine !''
We entered a corridor.
They drove us along it.
Right away, the stench, the smoke choked me.
They kept on chasing us
and then l made out the shapes
of the first two ovens.
Between the ovens, some Jewish prisoners were working.
We were in the crematorium's incineration chamber
in Camp l at Auschwitz.
From there, they herded us
to another big room,
and told us to undress the corpses.
l looked around me.
There were hundreds of bodies,
all dressed.
Piled with the corpses
were suitcases, bundles
and, scattered everywhere,
strange, blueish-purple crystals.
l couldn't understand any of it.
lt was like a blow on the head... as if you'd been stunned.
l didn't even know where l was.
Above all, l couldn't understand how they
managed to kill so many people at once.
When we undressed some of them,
the order was given to feed the ovens.
Suddenly, an SS man rushed up and told me :
''Get out of here ! Go stir the bodies !''
What did he mean,
''Stir the bodies'' ?
l entered the cremation chamber.
There was a Jewish prisoner,
Fischel, who later became a squad leader.
He looked at me and l watched him
poke the fire with a long rod.
He told me, ''Do as l'm doing
''or the SS will kill you.''
l picked up a poker
and did as he was doing.
A poker ?
A steel poker.
l obeyed Fischel's order.
At that point l was in shock as if l'd been hypnotized,
ready to do
whatever l was told.
l was so mindless, so horrified
that l did everything Fischel told me.
So the ovens were fed,
but we were so inexperienced
that we left the fans on
too long.
The fans ?
Yes. There were fans to make the fire hotter.
They worked too long...
The firebrick suddenly exploded,
blocking the pipes linking
the Auschwitz crematorium
with the smokestack.
Cremation was interrupted.
The ovens were out of action.
That evening, some trucks came,
and we had to load the rest,
some 300 bodies,
into the trucks.
Then we were taken...
l still don't know where...
but probably to a field at Birkenau.
We were ordered to unload the bodies
and put them in a pit.
There was a ditch, an artificial pit.
Suddenly, water gushed up from underground
and swept the bodies down.
When night came,
we had to stop that horrible work.
We were loaded into the trucks
and returned to Auschwitz.
The next day, we were taken to the same place
but the water had risen.
Some SS men came with a firetruck
and pumped out the water.
We had to go down into that muddy pit
to stack up the bodies.
But they were slimy.
For example, l grasped a woman, but her hands...
Her hand was slippery, slimy l tried to pull her,
but l fell over backward, into the water, the mud.
lt was the same for all of us.
Up to, at the edge of the pit, Aumeyer and Grabner yelled,
''Get cracking, you filth, you bastards !
''We'll show you, you bunch of shits !''
And in these...
how shall l say ? -circumstances- 2 of my ''friends''
couldn't take any more. One was a French student.
All Jews ! They were exhausted.
They just lay there in the mud.
Aumeyer called
one of his SS men :
''Go on, finish off those swine !''
They were exhausted. And they were shot in the pit.
There were no crematorium at Birkenau then ?
No, there weren't any there yet.
Birkenau still wasn't completely set up.
Only Camp Bl, which was late the women's camp, existed.
lt wasn't until the spring of 1943 that skilled workmen
and unskilled laborers, all Jews,
must have gone to work here
and built the 4 crematorium.
Each crematorium had 15 ovens,
a big undressing room, around 3,000 square feet,
and a big gas-chamber
where up to 3,000 people at once could be gassed.
TREBLlNKA
The new gas-chambers were built in September 1942.
Who built them ?
Hackenhold and Lambert supervised
the Jews who did the work
the bricklaying, at least.
Ukrainian carpenters made the doors.
The gas-chamber doors themselves
were armored bunker doors.
l think they were brought from Bialystok,
from some Russian bunkers.