FRANZ SUCHOMEL SS Unterscharführer
''Looking squarely ahead, brave and joyous,
''at the world.
''The squads march to work.
''All that matters to us now is Treblinka.
''lt is our destiny.
''That's why we've become one with Treblinka
''in no time at all.
''We know only the word of our Commander.
''We know only obedience and duty.
''We want to serve, to go on serving
''until little luck ends it all. Hurray!''
Once more, but louder!
We're laughing about it but it's so sad!
No one's laughing.
Don't be sore at me.
You want History. l'm giving you History.
Franz wrote the words.
The melody came from Buchenwald.
Camp Buchenwald, where Franz was a guard.
New Jews who arrived in the morning
New ''worker Jews''?
They were taught the song
and by evening all of them had to sing it.
Sing it again.
All right.
lt's very important. But loud!
''Looking squarely ahead, brave and joyous,
''at the world.
''The squads march to work.
''All that matters to us now is Treblinka.
''lt is our destiny.
''That's why we've become one with Treblinka
''in no time at all.
''We know only the word of our Commander.
''We know only obedience and duty.
''We want to serve, to go on serving
''until little luck ends it all. Hurray!''
Satisfied?
That's unique. No Jews knows that today!
How was it possible in Treblinka
in peak days
to ''process'' 18,000 people?
18,000 is too high.
But l read that figure in court reports.
Sure.
To ''process'' 18,000 people.
To liquidate them.
Mr Lanzmann, that's an exaggeration.
Believe me.
How many?
12,000 to 15,000.
But we had to spend half the night at it.
ln January, the trains started arriving at 6 a.m.
Always at 6 a.m.?
Not always. Often.
Yes.
The schedules were erratic.
Yes.
Sometimes one came at 6 a.m. then another at noon,
maybe another late in the evening. You see?
So a train arrived.
l'd like you to describe in detail
the whole process.
During the peak period.
The trains left Malkinia station,
for Treblinka station.
How many miles from Malkinia to Treblinka?
About six miles.
Treblinka was a village.
A small village.
As a station, it gained
in importance because of the transports of Jews.
They were divided into sections of 10 or 12
or 15 cars.
Or 15 cars?
And shunted into Treblinka Camp,
and brought to the ramp.
The other cars waited, loaded with people,
in Treblinka station.
The windows were closed off with barbed wire,
so no one could get out.
On the roofs were the ''hellhounds'',
the Ukrainians or Latvians.
The Latvians were the worst.
On the ramp, for each car, there stood
two Jews from Blue Squad
to speed things up.
They said : ''Get out, get out. Hurry, hurry!''
There were also Ukrainians and Germans.
How many Germans?
3 to 5.
No more?
No more. l can assure you.
How many Ukrainians?
Ten.
10 Ukrainians, 5 Germans.
2... 20 people from the Blue Squad.
Men from the Blue Squad were here
and here. They sent the people inside.
The Red Squad was here.
So the Red Squad was here.
What was the Red Squad's Job?
The clothes... to carry the clothes
taken off by the men
and by the women
up here immediately.
How much time elapsed between unloading at the ramp
and the undressing, how many minutes?
For the women,
let's say an hour in all.
An hour, an hour and a half.
A whole train took 2 hours.
Yes.
ln 2 hours, it was all over.
Between the time of arrival
and death.
lt was all over in 2 hours?
2 hours, 2 1/2 hours, 3 hours.
A whole train?
Yes, a whole train.
And for only one section, for 10 cars, how long?
l can't calculate that
because the sections came one after another
and people flooded in constantly, understand?
Usually, the men waiting who sat there, or there,
were sent straight up via the ''funnel''.
The women were sent last.
At the end.
They had to go up there too, and often waited here.
5... at a time.
50 people. 60 women with children.
They had to wait here until there was room here.
Naked.
Naked. ln summer and winter.
Winter in Treblinka can be very cold.
Well, in winter, in December anyway after Christmas.
But even before Christmas it was cold as hell.
Between 15 and minus 4.
l know : at first it was cold as hell for us, too.
We didn't have suitable uniforms.
lt was cold for us too.
But it was colder for.
For those poor people.
ln the ''funnel''.
ln the ''funnel'', it was very, very cold.
Can you...
describe this ''funnel'' precisely? What was it like?
How wide? How was it for the people in this ''funnel''?
lt was about 13 feet wide.
As wide as this room.
On each side were walls this high or this high.
Walls?
No, barbed wire.
Woven into the barbed wire
were branches of pine trees.
You understand?
lt was know as ''camouflage''.
There was a ''Camouflage Squad'' of 20 Jews.
They brought in new branches every day.
From the woods?
That's right.
So everything was screened.
People couldn't see anything to the left or right.
Nothing.
You couldn't see through it.
lmpossible.
Here and here too.
Here, too.
lmpossible to see through.
Treblinka, where so many people were exterminated
wasn't big, right?
lt wasn't big.
1600 feet at the widest point.
lt wasn't a rectangle, more like a rhomboid.
You must realize that here the ground was flat,
and here it began to rise.
And at the top of the slope was the gas-chamber.
You had to climb up to it.
The ''funnel'' was called the ''Road to Heaven'', right?
The Jews called it the ''Ascension''.
Also ''The Last Road''.
l only heard those two names for it.
l need to see it.
The people go into the ''funnel''.
Then what happens? They're totally naked?
Totally naked. Here
stood two Ukrainians guards.
Yes.
Mainly for the men.
lf the men wouldn't go in,
they were beaten
with whips. Here too. Even here.
Ah, yes.
The men were ''driven'' along. Not the women.
No, they weren't beaten.
Why such humanity?
l didn't see it.
l didn't see it. Maybe they were beaten too.
Why not?
They were about to die anyway.
Why not?
At the entrance to the gas-chambers, undoubtedly.
ABRAHAM BOMBA - lSRAEL -
ln the ''funnel'', the women had to wait.
They heard the motors of the gas-chamber.
Maybe they also heard people screaming and imploring.
As they waited, ''death-panic'' overwhelmed them.
''Death-panic'' makes people let go.
They empty themselves, from the front of the rear.
So often, where
the women stood, there were 5 or 6 rows
of excrement.
They stood?
They could squat or do it standing.
l didn't see them do it. l only saw the feces.
Only women?
Not the men, only the women.
The men were chased through the ''funnel''. The women
had to wait until
a gas-chamber was empty.
And the men?
No, they were whipped in first.
You understand?
The men were always first?
Yes, they always went first.
They didn't have to wait.
They weren't given time to wait, no.
And this ''death-panic''...
When this ''death-panic'' sets in,
one lets go.
lt's well-known when someone's terrified,
and knows he's about to die. lt can happen in bed.
My mother was kneeling by her bed.
Your mother?
Yes. Then there was a big pile.
That's a fact. lt's been medically
proved.
Since you wanted to know :
as soon as they were unloaded,
if they'd been loaded in Warsaw, or elsewhere,
they'd already been beaten.
Beaten hard, worse than in Treblinka,
l can assure you.
Then during the train journey, standing in cars,
no toilets, nothing, hardly any water.
Fear.
Then the doors opened and it started again,
''Bremze, bremze!''
''Czipsze, czipsze!''
l can't pronounce it : l have
false teeth. lt's Polish.
''Bremze'' or ''czipsze''.
What does ''bremze'' mean?
lt's a Ukrainian word. lt means ''faster''.
Again the chase... a hail of whiplashes.
The SS man Kuttner's whip was this long.
Women to the left, men to the right.
And always more blows.
No respite?
None.
Go in there, strip. Hurry, hurry!
Always running.
Running and screaming.
That's how they were finished off.
That was the technique.
Yes, the technique.
You must remember : it had to go fast.
And the Blue Squad also had the task
of leading the sick and the aged...
To the ''infirmary'',
so as not to delay the flow of the people to the gas-chambers.
Old people would have slowed it down.
Assignment to the ''infirmary''
was decided by Germans.
The Jews of the Blue Squad
only implemented the decision :
leading the people there,
or carrying them on stretchers.
Old women, sick children,
children whose mother was sick,
or whose grandmother was very old,
were sent along with the grandma
because she didn't know about the ''infirmary''.
lt had a white flag with a red cross.
A passage led to it.
Until they reached the end, they saw nothing.
Then they'd see the dead in the pit.
They were forced to strip,
to sit on a sandbank,
and were killed with a shot in the neck.
They fell into the pit.
There was always a fire in the pit.
With rubbish, paper and gasoline,
people burn very well.
RlCHARD GLAZAR - S WlTZERLAN D -
The ''infirmary'' was a narrow site
very close to the ramp
to which the aged were led.
l had to do this too.
This execution site wasn't covered,
just an open place with the roof,
but screened by a fence,
so no one could see in.
The way in was a narrow passage,
very short, but somewhat similar
to the ''funnel''.
A sort of tiny labyrinth.
ln the middle of it, there was a pit.
And to the left as one came in,
there was a little booth,
with a kind of wooden plank in it,
like a springboard.
lf people were too weak to stand on it,
they'd have to sit on it,
and then, as the saying went
in Treblinka jargon,
SS man Miete would ''cure each one
''with a single pill'' :
a shot in the neck.
ln the peak periods,
that happened daily.
ln those days, the pit...
and it was at least
10 to 12 feet deep...
was full of corpses.
There were also cases
of children who for some reason arrived alone
or got separated from their parents.
These children were led to the ''infirmary''
and shot there.
The ''infirmary'' was also for us,
the Treblinka slaves,
the last stop.
Not the gas-chamber.
We always ended up in the ''infirmary''.
AUSCHWITZ today. The sorting station.
RUDOLF VRBA Su rv ivor of AU SC HWlTZ
Before each gassing operation,
the SS took sterned precautions.
The crematorium was ringed with the SS men.
Many SS men patrolled the court
with dogs and machine-guns.
To the right were the steps
that led underground to the ''undressing room''.
ln Birkenau, there were 4 crematoria,
crematorium ll, lll and lV, V.
Crematorium ll was similar to lll.
ln ll and lll, the ''undressing room'' and
the gas-chambers were underground.
A large ''undressing room''
of about 3000 square feet
and a large gas-chamber
where one could
gas up to 3000 people at a time.
Crematorium lV and V were of a different type
in that they weren't located underground.
Everything was at ground level.
ln lV and V, there were 3 gas-chambers
with a total capacity
of at most 1800 to 2000 people at a time.
AU SC HWlTZ Museum Model of crematoriums ll and lll
E lev ators hoisted bod ies to the ovens
Crematorium ll and lll had 15 ovens each.
Crematorium lV and V had 8 ovens each.
As people reached the crematorium,
they saw everything
this horribly violent scene.
The whole area was ringed with SS men.
Dogs barked.
Machine-guns.
They all, mainly the Polish Jews, had misgivings.
They knew something was seriously amiss.
But one of them had the faintest
of notions
that in 3 or 4 hours they'd be reduced to ashes.
When they reached the ''undressing room'', they saw
that it looked like
an lnternational lnformation Center!
On the walls were
hooks
and each hook had a number.
Beneath the hooks were
wooden benches.
So people could undress
''more comfortably'', it was said.
And on the numerous pillars
that held up this underground ''undressing room'',
there were signs with slogan
in several languages :
''Clean is good!''
''Lice can kill!''
''Wash yourself!''
''To the disinfection area.''
All those signs
were only there
to lure people into the gas-chambers already undress.
And to the left, at a right-angle,
was the gas-chamber
with its massive door.
C rematorium lll : the und ressing room
The gas chamber
ln Crematoria ll and lll, Zyklon gas cystals were
poured in by a so-called ''SS-disinfection squad'',
through the ceiling,
and in Crematoria lV and V through side openings.
With 5 or 6 cannisters of gas,
they could kill around 2000 people.
This so-called ''disinfection squad''
arrived in a truck marked with a red-cross
and escorted people along
to make them believe
they were being led to take a bath.
But the red-cross was only a mark to hide
the cannisters of Zyklon gas and the hammers to open them.
The gas took about
10 to 15 minutes to kill.
The most horrible thing was,
once the doors of the gas- chambers were opened...
the unbearable sight.
People were packed together like basalt,
like block of stone.
How they tumbled out of the gas-chamber?
l saw that several times.
That was the toughest thing to take.
You could never get used to that.
lt was impossible.
C rematorium lV.
lmpossible
Yes. You see, once the gas was poured in,
it worked like this :
it rose from the ground upwards.
And in the terrible struggle that followed,
because it was struggle.
The lights were switched off in the gas-chambers.
lt was dark, no one could see.
So the strongest people tried to climb higher.
Because they probably realized
that the higher they got, the more
air there was.
They could breathe better.
That caused the struggle.
Secondly, most people tried to push their way to the door.
lt was psychological : they knew where
the door was, so maybe they could force their way.
lt was instinctive
a death struggle.
Which is my children... and weaker people,
and the aged, always wound up at the bottom.
The strongest were on top.
Because in the
death struggle...
a father didn't realize his son lay
beneath him.
And when the doors were opened?
They fell out.
People fell out like blocks of stone,
like rocks falling out of a truck.
But near the Zyklon gas, there was a void.
There was no one where the gas crystals went in.
An empty space.
Probably the victims realized that
the gas worked strongest there.
And the people were...?
The people were battered.
They struggled and fought
in the darkness.
They were covered in excrement,
in blood,
from ears and noses.
One also sometimes saw
that the people lying on the ground,
because of the pressure of the others,
were unrecognizable.
Children had their skulls crushed.
Yes.
How?
lt was awful.
Vomit.
Blood from the ears and noses.
Probably even menstrual fluid... sure of it.
There was everything in that struggle for life
that death struggle. lt was terrible to see.
That was the toughest part.
FlLlP MU LLER, C zech Jew, su rv ivor of the 5 liqu idations
of the AU SC HWlTZ ''special detail''
lt was pointless
to tell the truth to anyone
who crossed the threshold of the crematorium.
You couldn't save anyone there.
lt was impossible to save people.
One day, in 1943
when l was already in Crematorium V,