WARSAW
Next figure : Dr FRANZ GRASSLER, deputy to AUERSWALD,
the Nazi Commissioner of the WARSAW ghetto.
You don't remember those days?
Not much.
l recall more clearly my pre-war
mountaineering trips than the entire war period
and those days in Warsaw.
All in all, those were bad times.
lt's a fact : we tend to forget, thank God,
the bad times more easily than the good.
The bad times are repressed.
l'll help you remember...
ln Warsaw you were Dr. Auerswald's deputy.
Yes.
Dr. Auerswald was...
Commissioner of the ''Jewish district'' of Warsaw.
Dr. Grassler, this is Czerniakow's diary.
You're mentioned in it.
lt's been printed, it exists?
He kept a diary
that was recently published.
He wrote on July 7, 1941 :
July 7, 1941 ? That's the first time l've re-learned a date.
May l take notes?
After all... it interests me too.
So in July l was already there!
He wrote on July 7, 1941 :
''Morning in the Community'' -- the Jewish Council HQ --
''and later with Auerswald, Schlosser...''
Schlosser was...
''And Grassler,
''on routine matters.''
That's the first time...
That my name is mentioned...
Yes, but there were 3 of us.
Schlosser... was in... the ''economic department''.
l think he had to do with economics.
And the second time
was on July 22.
C ZERN lAKOW was president of the Warsaw Jewish Council
He wrote every day?
Yes.
Yes, every day.
lt's quite amazing
that the diary was saved.
lt's amazing that it was saved.
BURLlNGTON - VERMONT (U.S.A.)
RAUL HlLBERG
Did you go into the ghetto?
Seldom. When l had to visit Czerniakow.
What were the conditions like?
Awful. Yes, appalling.
Yes?
l never went back when l saw what it was like.
Unless l had to : in the whole period
l think l only went once or twice.
We, at the Commission, tried
to maintain the ghetto for its labor force,
and especially to prevent epidemic, like typhus.
That was the big danger.
Yes.
Yes?
Can you tell us about typhus?
l'm not a doctor. l only know that typhus
is a very dangerous epidemic
that wipes people out like the plague,
and that it can't be confined to a ghetto.
lf typhus had broken out -- l don't think it did,
but there was fear that if might --
it would have it the Poles and the Germans.
Why was there typhus in the ghetto?
l don't know if there was,
but there was a danger, because of the famine.
People didn't get enough to eat.
That's what was so awful.
We at the Commission,
did our best to feed the ghetto,
so it wouldn't become an incubator of epidemics.
Aside from humanitarian factors, that's what mattered.
lf typhus had broken out -- and it didn't --
it wouldn't have stopped at the ghetto.
Czerniakow also wrote :
that one of the reasons the ghetto was walled in
was because of this German fear.
Yes, absolutely! Fear of typhus.
He says Germans always associated Jews with typhus.
Maybe. l'm not sure if there were grounds for it.
But imagine that mass of people
packed in the ghetto... There weren't only
the Warsaw Jews, but others who came later.
The danger kept on growing.
The Germans had a policy on the Warsaw ghetto.
What was that policy?
You're asking more than l know.
The policy that wound up with extermination,
the Final Solution... we knew nothing about it.
Our job was to maintain the ghetto,
and try to preserve the Jews as a work force.
The Commission's goal,
in fact, was very different from
the one that later led to extermination.
Yes, but do you know how many people died
in the ghetto each month in 1941 ?
l don't know now... if l ever knew it.
But you did know. There are exact figures.
l probably knew...
Yes : 5,000 a month.
5,000 a month? Yes, well...
That's a lot.
That's a lot, of course. But there were
far too many people in the ghetto. That was it.
Far too many.
My question is philosophical.
What does a ghetto mean, in your opinion?
History's full of ghettos,
going back centuries, for all l know.
Persecution of the Jews wasn't a German invention,
and it didn't start with World War ll.
The Poles persecuted them too.
But a ghetto like Warsaw's, in a great capital,
in the heart of the city
that was unusual.
You say you wanted to maintain the ghetto.
Our mission wasn't to annihilate the ghetto,
but to keep it alive, to maintain it.
What does ''alive'' mean in such
That was the problem.
That was the whole problem...
But people were dying in the streets.
There were bodies everywhere.
Yes.
That was the paradox.
You see it as a paradox?
l'm sure of it.
Why? Can you explain?
No.
Why not?
Explain what?
But the fact is...
Jews were being exterminated daily in the ghetto.
Czerniakow wrote...
To maintain it properly we'd have needed
more substantial rations,
and less crowding.
Why weren't the rations more humane?
Why weren't they?
That was a German decision, no?
There was no real decision
to starve the ghetto.
The big decision to exterminate came much later.
That's right, later. ln 1942.
Precisely!
3 years later.
Just so. Our mission, as l recall it,
was to manage the ghetto,
and, naturally, with those inadequate rations,
and the overcrowding,
a high, even excessive, death rate was inevitable.
Yes.
What does ''maintain'' the ghetto mean in such condition...
the food, sanitation, etc.?
What would the Jews do against such measures?
They couldn't do anything.
The Final Solution Conference was held here
BELZEC - S ite of the exterm ination camp
Why did Czerniakow commit suicide?
Because he realized
there was no future for the ghetto.
He probably saw before l did that the Jews would be killed.
l suppose the Jews already had
their excellent secret services.
They were too well informed, better than we were.
Think so?
Yes, l do.
The Jews knew more than you?
l'm convinced of it!
lt's hard to believe.
The German administration was never informed
of what would happened to the Jews.
When was the first deportation to Treblinka?
Before Auerswald's suicide, l think.
Auerswald's?
l mean Czerniakow's. Sorry.
July 22.
Those are dates...
So the deportations began July 22, 1942.
Yes.
To... Treblinka.
And Czerniakow killed himself July 23.
Yes, that is...
The next day.
The next day. So that was it, he'd realized
that his idea... lt was his idea, l think
of working in good faith with the Germans,
in the Jews' best interests.
He'd realized this idea, this dream, was destroyed.
That the idea was a dream.
Yes. And when the dream faded,
he took the logical way out.
Did you think this idea of a ghetto was a good one?
A sort of self-management, right?
That's right.
A mini-State?
lt worked well.
But it was self-management for death, no?
We know that now. But at the time...
Even then!
No!
Czerniakow wrote :
''We're puppets, we have no power''.
Yes.
No power.
Sure... that was...
You Germans were the overlords.
Yes.
The overlords. The masters.
Obviously.
Czerniakow was merely a tool.
Yes, but a good tool.
Jewish self-management worked well, l can tell you.
lt worked well for 3 years,
1941 , 1942, 1943... 2 1/2 years... and in the end...
ln the end...
''Worked well'' for what? To what end?
For self-preservation.
No! For death!
Yes, but...
Self-management, self-preservation...
That's easy to say now.
You admitted the conditions were inhuman.
Atrocious... horrible!
Yes.
So it was clear even then...
No! Extermination wasn't clear.
Now we see the result.
Extermination isn't so simple. One step was taken,
then another, and another, and another...
Yes.
But to understand the process, one must...
l repeat : extermination did not take place in
the ghetto, not at first. Only with the evacuations.
Evacuations?
The evacuations to Treblinka.
The ghetto could have been wiped out with weapons,
as was finally done, after the rebellion.
After l'd left. But at the start...
Mr. Lanzmann, this is getting us nowhere.
We're reaching no new conclusions.
l don't think we can.
l didn't know then what l know now.
You weren't a nonentity.
But l was!
You were important.
You overestimate my role.
No.
You were 2nd to the Commissioner
of the Warsaw ''Jewish district''.
But l had no power.
lt was something.
You were part of the vast German power structure.
Correct. But a small part.
You overestimate the authority of a deputy of 28 then.
- You were 30. - 28.
At 30, you were...
you were mature.
Yes, but for a lawyer
who got his degree at 27, it's just a beginning.
You had a doctorate.
The title proves nothing.
Did Auerswald have one too?
No. But the title's irrelevant.
Doctor of Law...
What did you do after the war?
l was with a moutaineering publishing house.
That so?
l wrote and published mountain guide books.
l published a climbers' magazine.
ls climbing your main interest?
Yes.
The mountains, the air...
Yes.
The sun, the pure air...
Not like the ghetto air.
N EW YORK. GERTRU DE SC H N ElDER and her mother.
LOHAME HAGHETTAOT KlBBUTZ MUSEUM.
Ghetto fighters' Kibbutz -- lSRAEL.
The Jewish Combat Organization J.C.O. in the Warsaw ghetto
was officially formed on July 28, 1942.
After the first mass deportation to Treblinka,
wich was interrupted on Sept. 30,
some 60,000 Jews remained in the ghetto.
On January 18, 1943, the deportations were resumed.
Despite a severe lack of weapons,
the members of the J.C.O. called for resistance,
and started fighting, to the Germans' total surprise.
lt lasted 3 days.
The Nazis withdrew with losses,
abandoning weapons the Jews grabbed.
The deportations were stopped.
The Germans now knew
they had to fight to conquer the ghetto.
The battle began on the evening of April 19, 1943,
the eve of Pessach Passover.
lt had to be a fight to as the death.
SlMHA ROTTEM, know as ''Kajik''.
lTZHAK ZUCKERMANN, know as ''Antek'',
2nd in command of the J.C.O.
l began drinking after the war.
lt was very difficult.
Claude, you asked for my impression.
lf you could lick my heart,
it would poison you.
At the request of Mordechai Anielewicz,
commander-in-chief of the J.C.O.,
Antek had left the ghetto 6 days before the German attack.
His mission :
to ask Polish Resistance leaders to arm the Jews.
They refused.
l don't think the human tongue can describe
the horror we went through in the ghetto.
ln the streets, if you can call them that,
for nothing was left of the streets,
we had to step over heaps of corpses.
There was no room to pass beside them.
Besides fighting the Germans we fought hunger
and thirst.
We had no contact with the outside world,
we were completely isolated, cut off from the world.
We were in such a state
that we could no longer understand
the very meaning of why we went on fighting.
We thought of attempting a break-out
to the Aryan part of Warsaw, outside the ghetto.
Just before May l,
Sigmund and l were sent
to try to contact Antek in Aryan Warsaw.
We found a tunnel under Bonifratrska Street
that led out into Aryan Warsaw.
Early in the morning,
we suddenly emerged into a street in broad daylight.
lmagine us on that sunny May 1 ,
stunned to find ourselves in the street, among normal people.
We'd come from another planet.
People immediately jumped on us
because we certainly looked exhausted,
skinny, in rags.
Around the ghetto, there were always
suspicious Poles who grabbed Jews.
By a miracle, we escaped them.
ln Aryan Warsaw,
life went on as naturally
and normally as before.
The cafés operated normally, the restaurants,
buses, streetcars...
The movies were open.
The ghetto was an isolated island amid normal life.
Our job was to contact ltzhak Zuckermann
to try to mount a rescue operation,
to try to save
the few fighters who might still be alive in the ghetto.
We managed to contact Zuckermann.
We found two sewer workers.
On the night of May 8-9,
we decided to return to the ghetto
with another buddy, Riszek, and the 2 sewers.
After the curfew, we entered the sewers.
We were entirely at the mercy of the two workmen,
since only they knew the ghetto's underground layout.
Halfway there, they decided to turn back,
they tried to drop us,
and we had to threaten them with our guns.
We went on through the sewers,
until one of the workmen told us
we were under the ghetto.
Riszek guarded them so they couldn't escape.
MlLA 1 8. J.C.O bun ker headquarters
l raised the manhole cover
to go up into the ghetto.
At bunker Mila 18, l missed them by a day.
l had returned the night of May 8-9.
The Germans found the bunker on the morning of the 8th.
WARS AW the monument to the ghetto figh ters
Most of its survivors committed suicide,
or succumbed to gas in the bunkers.
The replica of the monument to the ghetto figh ters
l went to bunker Francziskanska 22.
There was no answer when l yelled the password,
so l had to go on through the ghetto.
l suddenly heard a woman calling from the ruins.
lt was darkest night, no lights, you saw nothing.
All the houses were in ruins
and l heard only one voice. l thought
some evil spell had been cast on me,
a woman's voice talking from the rubble.
l circled the ruins. l didn't look at my watch,
but l must have spent a half-hour exploring,
trying to find the woman whose voice guided me,
but, unfortunately, l didn't find her.
Were there fires?
Strictly speaking, no, for the flames had died down,
but there was still smoke,
and that awful smell of charred flesh
of people who had surely been burned alive.
l continued on my way,
going to other bunkers in search of fighting units,
but it was the same everywhere.
l'd give the password : ''Jan''.
That's a Polish first name, Jan.
Right. And l got no answer.
l went from bunker to bunker
and after walking for hours in the ghetto,
l went back toward the sewers.
Was he alone then?
Yes, l was alone all the time.
Except for that woman's voice,
and a man l met as l came out of the sewers,
l was alone throughout my tour of the ghetto.
l didn't meet a living soul.
At one point, l recall
feeling a kind of peace, of serenity,
when l said to myself, ''l'm the last Jew.
''l'll wait for morning and for the Germans.''