[Srebnik Singing In Polish] ♪ A little white house ♪
♪ Lingers in my memory;
♪ Of that little white house ♪
♪ I dream each night;
♪ The windows of that little house ♪
♪ Beautifully shine in the sun ♪
♪ As if someone's eyes ♪
♪ Were filling with tears ♪
♪ There was so much happiness in that little house ♪
♪ And so many joyous days ♪
♪ When I remember those blissful moments ♪
♪ My heart trembles ♪
♪ A little white house ♪
♪ Lingers in my memory;
♪ Of that little white house ♪
♪ I dream each night;
[ Man #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Man #2 Speaking Polish] - [ Man #1 Continues ]
[ Female Interpreter, In French] He was 13 1/2 years old.
He had a lovely singing voice and we heard him.
♪ A little white house ♪
♪ Lingers in my memory;
♪ Of that little white house ♪
♪ I dream each night;
♪ The windows of that little house ♪
♪ Beautifully shine in the sun ♪
♪ As if someone's eyes ♪
♪ Were filling with tears ♪♪
[ Man #3 Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter, In French] When I heard him again, my heart beat faster,
because what happened here... was a murder.
I really relived what happened.
[ Sighs, Coughs ]
[ In German] it's hard to recognize, but it was here.
They burned people here.
A lot of people were burned here.
Yes, this is the place.
[ Crow Caws ]
No one ever left here again.
The gas vans came in here...
There were two huge ovens,
[ Sighs ]
And afterward, the bodies were thrown
into these ovens,
and the flames reached to the sky.
- [ Lanzmann, In German ] To the sky? - Ja.
It was terrible.
No one can describe it.
No one can...
recreate what happened here.
Impossible! And no one can understand it.
Even I, here, now.
I can't believe I'm here.
No, I just can't believe it.
It was always this peaceful here.
When they burned 2,000 people... Jews... every day,
it was just as peaceful.
No one shouted. Everyone went about his work.
It was silent. Peaceful.
Just as it is now.
♪♪ [ Srebnik Singing In German]
[Cattle Lowing ]
♪ You, girl, don't you cry;
♪ Don't be so sad ♪
♪ For the dear summer is nearing ♪
♪ And I'll return with it ♪
♪ A mug of red wine, a slice of roast ♪
♪ That's what the girls give their soldiers ♪
♪♪ [ Continues ]
♪ When the soldiers march along ♪
♪ The girls open their doors and windows ♪
♪♪ [ Continues ]
[ Man #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter, In French] They thought the Germans made him sing on the river.
- [ Man #2 Speaking Polish] - [ Man #3 Speaking Polish]
He was a toy to amuse them.
- [ Man #2 Continues] - He had to do it.
He sang, but his heart wept.
[ Lanzmann, In French] Do their hearts weep thinking about that now?
- [ Men Reply] - [ Interpreter] Certainly, very much so.
[ Man #2 Continues]
They still talk about it around the family table.
[ Man #2 Continues]
It was public, so everyone knew of it.
I Polish 1
[ Interpreter] He said that was true German irony,
people were being killed, and he had to sing.
That's what I thought.
[ Lanzmann ] What died in him in Chelmno?
[Speaking Yiddish ]
[ Female Interpreter #2, In French] Everything died.
But he's only human, and he wants to live.
So he must forget.
__ The other survivor: MICHAEL PODCHLEBNIK - ISRAEL
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish ]
He thanks God for what remains and that he can forget.
And let's not talk about that.
[ Lanzmann ] Does he think it's good to talk about it?
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish ]
For me it's not good.
[ Lanzmann] Then why is he talking about it?
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish ]
Because you're insisting on it.
He was sent books on the Eichmann trial, where he was a witness,
and he didn't even read them.
[ Lanzmann] He survived, but is he really alive, or...?
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish ]
At the time, he felt as if he were dead,
because he never thought he'd survive,
but... he's alive.
[ Lanzmann ] Why does he smile all the time?
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish ]
What do you want him to do... cry?
Sometimes you smile, sometimes you cry.
And if you're alive, it's better to smile.
[ Lanzmann, In French] Why was she so curious about this story?
[ Female Interpreter #3, In Hebrew]
[Speaking Hebrew]
HANNA ZATDL - ISRAEL -
Daughter of Motke Zaidl, survivor of Vilna (Lithuania)
[ Interpreter #3, In French] it's a long story.
As a child, I had little contact with my father.
He went out to work, and I didn't see much of him.
Besides, he was a silent man, he didn't talk to me.
And when I grew up and was strong enough to face him,
I questioned him. I never stopped questioning him
until I got at the scraps of truth he couldn't tell me.
It came out haltingly.
I had to tear the details out of him,
and finally, when Mr. Lanzmann came,
I heard the whole story for the second time.
MOTKE ZATDL
BEN SHEMEN FOREST (ISRAEL)
[ Motke Speaking Hebrew]
[ Interpreter #3, In French] The place resembles Ponary: the forest, the ditches.
It's as if the bodies were burned here.
Except there were no stones in Ponary.
Ponary: forest where most of the Vilna Jews were massacred
[ Lanzmann, In French] But the Lithuanian forests
are denser than the Israeli forest, no?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
- [ Motke Replies] - Of course.
[ Motke Continues]
The trees are similar, but taller and fuller in Lithuania.
FOREST OF THE EXTERMINATION CAMP AT SOBIBOR (POLAND)
[ Lanzmann, In French] ls there still hunting here in Sobibor forest?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Man Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1, In French] Yes, there are lots of animals of all kinds.
[ Lanzmann ] Was there hunting then?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Man Replies]
Only man hunting.
JAN PIWONSKI
Some victims tried to escape.
But they didn't know the area.
At times people heard explosions in the minefield.
Sometimes they'd find a deer
and sometimes a poor Jew who tried to escape.
[ Piwonski Continues ]
That's the charm of our forests: silence and beauty.
[ Piwonski Continues]
But it wasn't always so silent here.
There was a time when it was full of screams
and gunshots,
of dogs' barking.
[ Piwonski Continues]
And that period especially
is engraved on the minds of the people
who lived here then.
[ Piwonski Continues]
After the revolt, the Germans decided to liquidate the camp,
and early in the winter of 1943,
they planted pines that were three or four years old
to camouflage all the traces.
That screen of trees?
- Tak. - Yes.
[ Lanzmann ] That's where the mass graves were?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- Tak. - Oui.
[ Piwonski Continues]
When he first came here in 1944,
you couldn't guess what had happened here,
that these trees were hiding the secret of a death camp.
[ Lanzmann ] How did he react, the first time he unloaded corpses,
when the gas van doors were opened?
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish ]
What could he do? He cried.
The 3rd day, he saw his wife and children.
He placed his wife in the grave and asked to be killed.
The Germans said he was strong enough to work,
that he wouldn't be killed yet.
[ Lanzmann ] Was the weather very cold?
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish]
[ Podchlebnik Replies ]
It was in the winter of 1942, in early January.
[ Lanzmann ] At that time, the bodies weren't burned, just buried?
[ Interpreter #2 Speaking Yiddish]
[ Podchlebnik Replies ]
No, they were buried, and each row was covered with dirt.
They weren't being burned yet.
There were around four or five layers.
The ditches were funnel-shaped.
[ Podchlebnik Continues]
They dumped the bodies in these ditches,
and they had to lay them out like herrings, head to foot.
[ Lanzmann ] So it was they who dug up and burned all the Jews of Vilna?
- [ Podchlebnik Replies] - Yes.
[ Man Speaking Hebrew]
[ Interpreter #3, In French] In early January 1944,
we began digging up the bodies.
[ Man Continues]
When the last mass grave was opened,
I recognized my whole family.
[ Lanzmann, In French] Whom in his family did he recognize?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
Morn and my sisters. 3 sisters with their kids.
They were all in there.
[ Lanzmann] How could he recognize them?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
ITZHAK DUGIN: Survivor of Vilna
They'd been in the earth 4 months,
and it was winter.
They were very well preserved.
I recognized their faces, their clothes too.
[ Lanzmann] They'd been killed relatively recently?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
Oui.
[ Lanzmann ] And it was the last grave?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
- [ Dugin Replies] - Oui.
[ Lanzmann ] The Nazi plan was for them to open the graves
starting with the oldest?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
Oui.
The last graves were the newest,
and we started with the oldest, those of the first ghetto.
In the first grave, there were 24,000 bodies.
[ Motke Speaking Hebrew]
[ Interpreter #3, In French] The deeper you dug, the flatter the bodies were.
Each was almost a flat slab.
[ Motke Continues]
When you tried to grasp a body, it crumbled,
it was impossible to pick them up.
We had to open the graves, but without tools.
They said, “Get used to working with your hands.”
[ Lanzmann, In French] With just their hands?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
Oui.
When we first opened the graves,
we couldn't help it, we all burst out sobbing.
But the Germans almost beat us to death.
We had to work at a killing pace for two days,
beaten all the time, and with no tools.
[ Lanzmann ] They all burst out sobbing?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
[ Motke Continues]
The Germans even forbade us
to use the words “corpse” or “victim.”
The dead were blocks of wood, shit,
with absolutely no importance...
[ Dugin Speaking Hebrew]
Anyone who said “corpse” or “victim” was beaten.
[ Dugin Continues]
The Germans made us refer to the bodies as “Figuren,”
that is, as puppets, as dolls...
- Schmattes. - or as “Schmattes,” which means “rags.”
[ Lanzmann ] Were they told at the start!
how many “Figuren” there were in all the graves?
[ Interpreter #3 Speaking Hebrew]
[ Motke Replies ]
The head of the Vilna Gestapo told us,
“There are 90,000 people lying there,
and absolutely no trace must be left of them.”
[ In German] It was at the end of November 1942.
They chased us away from our work
and back to our barracks.
Suddenly,
from the part of the camp called
the death camp,
flames shot up very high.
In a flash, the whole countryside,
the whole camp seemed ablaze.
It was already dark.
We went into our barracks
and ate...
And from the window,
we kept on watching the fantastic backdrop of flames
of every imaginable color,
red, yellow, green, purple.
And suddenly one of us stood up.
We knew he'd been an opera singer in Warsaw.
His name was Salve, and...
- [ Lanzmann, In German] Salve? - Salve.
Facing that curtain of fire,
he began chanting a song
I didn't know:
“My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken us?”
RICHARD GLAZAR - BASEL (SWITZERLAND)
“We have been thrust into the fire before,
but we have never denied Thy Holy Law.”
He sang in Yiddish,
while, behind him,
blazed the pyres
on which they had begun then, in November 1942,
to burn the bodies in Treblinka.
That was the first time it happened.
We knew that night
that the dead would no longer be buried,
they'd be burned.
TREBLINKA
When things were ready, they poured on fuel
and touched off the fire.
They waited for a high wind.
The pyres usually burned for 7 or 8 days.
[ Srebnik, In German] There was a concrete platform some distance away,
and the bones that hadn't burned,
the big bones of the feet, for example,
we took...
There was a chest with two handles.
We carried the bones there,
where others had to crush them.
It was very fine,
that powdered bone.
Then it was put into sacks,
and when there were enough sacks,
we went to a bridge on the Narew river
and dumped the powder.
The current carried it off.
It drifted downstream.
♪♪ [ Srebnik Singing In Polish: “Little White House”]
[ Lanzmann, In English] You never returned to Poland since?
[ Woman, In English] No.
I wanted many times.
But, what will I see?
How can I face it?
My grandparents are buried in Lodz.
And, at one point, I heard from somebody that visited Poland
that they want to level off the cemetery,
do away with the cemetery.
Now how can I return to that, to visit?
[ Lanzmann ] When did they die, your grandparents?
- My grandparents? - Mm-hmm.
My grandparents died in the ghetto, quickly.
They were elderly, and within a couple years...
Within a year, my grandfather died.
- And my grandmother the next year. - In the ghetto?
In the ghetto, yes.
PAULA BIREN - CINCINNATI U.S.A. survivor of Auschwitz
THE JEWISH CEMETERY IN LODZ TODAY
[Crows Cawing ]
[Church Bells Ringing ]
AUSCHWITZ: THE TOWN
[ Lanzmann, In French] Mrs. Pietryra, you live in Auschwitz?
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [ Pietryra Replies In Polish]
[ Interpreter #1, In French] Yes, I was born here.
[ Lanzmann ] And you've never left Auschwitz?
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [ Pietryra Replies ]
No, never.
[ Lanzmann ] Were there Jews in Auschwitz before the war?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Pietryra Replies ]
They made up 80% of the population.
[Speaking Polish]
They even had a synagogue here.
- [ Lanzmann ] Just one? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- Just one, I think. - [ Lanzmann ] Does it still exist?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
No, it was wrecked.
There's something else there now.
[ Lanzmann ] Was there a Jewish cemetery in Auschwitz?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
It still exists. it's closed now.
- It still exists? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes.
[ Lanzmann ] Closed? What does that mean?
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [ Pietryra Replies ]
They don't bury there now.
♪♪ [ Congregation Singing Polish Hymn]
[ Lanzmann, In French] Was there a synagogue in Wlodawa?
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1, In French] Yes, and it's very beautiful.
I Polish 1
When Poland was ruled by the czars,
that synagogue already existed.
It's even older than the Catholic church.
♪♪ [ Continues, Faint]
- [ Man Speaking Polish] - It's no longer used.
[ Man Continues]
There's no one to go to it.
[ Lanzmann, In French] These buildings haven't changed?
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [ Man Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1, In French ] Not at all. There were barrels of herrings here,
and the Jews sold fish.
[ Man Continues]
There were stalls, small shops,
Jewish business, as the gentleman says.
- [ Man Continues] - That's Barenholz's house.
- [ Man Continues] - He sold wood.
[ Man Continues]
Lipschitz's store was there. He sold cloth.
- [ Man Continues] - [ Lanzmann ] This was Lichtenstein's.
- Lichtenstein, tak. - [ Interpreter #1 ] Lichtenstein, oui.
- [ Lanzmann ] What was there, opposite? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
A food store.
- [ Lanzmann ] A Jewish store? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1 ] Oui.
There was a notions shop here,
it sold thread, needles, odds and ends,
and there were also three barbers.
PAN FILIPOWICZ
- [ Lanzmann ] Was that fine house Jewish? - [ Interpreter #1 ] it's Jewish.
[ Filipowicz Replies]
- And this small one? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Filipowicz Replies ] - Also.
- And the one behind it? - [ Filipowicz Replies]
These were all Jewish.
- This one on the left, too? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Filipowicz Replies] - That one too.
- [ Filipowicz Continues] - [ Lanzmann ] Who lived in it? Borenstein?
[ Filipowicz] Borenstein.
- [ Filipowicz Continues] - He was in the cement business.
He was very handsome, and cultivated.
[ Filipowicz Continues ]
Here there was a blacksmith named Tepper.
- [ Lanzmann] Oui. - [ Interpreter #1 ] It was a Jewish house.
A shoemaker lived here.
- [ Lanzmann ] What was his name? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Filipowicz Replies] - [ Lanzmann ] Yankel?
- [ Filipowicz Replies] - [ Interpreter #1 ] Yes.
[ Lanzmann ] You get the feeling Wlodawa was a Jewish city.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Filipowicz Replies] - Yes, because it's true.
[ Filipowicz Continues ]
The Poles lived farther out, the center was wholly Jewish.
[ Lanzmann, In French] What happened to the Jews of Auschwitz?
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [ Pietryra Replies ]
They were expelled and resettled,
but I don't know where.
- [ Lanzmann ] What year was that? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Pietryra Replies ]
It began in 1940, which was when I moved here.
This apartment also belonged to Jews.
[ Lanzmann ] According to our information,
the Auschwitz Jews were “resettled,” as they say,
nearby, in Benzin and Sosnowiec, in Upper Silesia.
[ Interpreter #1 ] Yes, because those were Jewish towns.
[ Lanzmann ] Does she know what happened to the Jews of Auschwitz?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
I think they all ended up in the camp.
- [ Lanzmann ] That is, they returned to Auschwitz? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Oui.
AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU
[ Pietryra Continues]
All kinds of people from everywhere were sent here.
- [ Pietryra Continues] - All the Jews came here... to die.
[ Lanzmann ] What did they think when Wlodawa's Jews were all deported to Sobibor?
[Speaking Polish]
Wlodawa - Sobibor: 10 miles
[ In French] What could we think?
That it was the end of them, but they had foreseen that.
[ Lanzmann ] How so?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Even before the war, when you talked to the Jews,
they foresaw their doom.
He doesn't know how.
Even before the war, they had a premonition.
[ Lanzmann ] How were they taken to Sobibor? On foot?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ F ilipowicz Replies ]
It was frightful. He watched it himself.
[ Filipowicz Continues]
They were herded on foot to a station called Orkrobek.
[Train Clacking ]
[ Filipowicz Continues]
There, they put the old people first into waiting cattle cars...
[ Filipowicz Continues]
then the younger Jews...
[ Filipowicz Continues]
and finally the kids.
That was the worst: They threw them on top of the others.
[ Lanzmann ] Were there a lot of Jews in Kolo?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Man Speaking Polish] - [ Interpreter #1, In French ] A great many.
- [ Man Continues] - More Jews than Poles.
[ Lanzmann ] And what happened to the Kolo Jews?
Was he an eyewitness?
PAN FALBORSKI
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [Speaking Polish] - Yes. It was frightful.
Frightful to see.
Even the Germans hid, they couldn't see that.
When the Jews were herded to the station, they were beaten,
some were even killed.
A cart followed the convoy to pick up the corpses.
- [ Lanzmann ] Those who couldn't walk, the slain? - Yes, those who'd fallen.
- Where did this happen? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
The Jews were collected in the Kolo synagogue.
Then they were herded to the station,
where the narrow-gauge railroad went to Chelmno.
[ Lanzmann ] It happened to all the Jews in the area, not just in Kolo?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Falborski Replies ]
Absolutely.
- Everywhere. - [ F e/borsk/ Continues j
Jews were also murdered in the forests
near Kalisz, not far from here.
[ Locomotive Chugging ]
[Train Whistle Blows]
[ Man, In English] There was a sign.
There was a small sign on the station of Treblinka.
I don't know if we were at the station or if we did not go up to the station.
ABRAHAM BOMBA - TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, survivor of Treblinka
On the line over there where we stayed,
there was a small sign, very small sign, which say “Treblinka.”
That was the first time in my life I heard about that name “Treblinka,”
because nobody know.
It is not a place. There is not a city.
Or it is not even a small village.
TREBLINKA BY ROAD
Jewish people always dreamed,
and that was part of their life.
It was part of their messiah...
to dream that someday they're going to be free.
That dream was mostly true in the ghetto.
Every day, every single night,
I dreamed about a thing that's going to be good.
Not only the dream,
but the hope conserved in a dream.
The first transport from Czestochowa
was sent away at the day of the Yam lfijopur.
The day before Sukkoth, there was the second transport.
I was together with them.
I know, only in my heart I know, that there's something that is not good,
because, if they take children,
if they take old people and they send them away,
that means it is not good.
What they said is the y'd take them away to a place where they would be working.
But, on the other hand,
an old woman or a little child from a week or four weeks or five years,
what is he going to work?
That was a foolish thing, but, still, we had no choice.
We believed in that.
[ Parking Brake Latches]
[ Door Closes ]
- [ Man Speaking Polish] - [ Interpreter #1, In French ] He was born here...
- [Man Continues] - in 1923...
- [ Man Continues] - and has been here even since.
[ Lanzmann, In French] He lived at this very spot?
- Tak. Oui. - [ Interpreter #1 ] R/jght here.
[ Lanzmann] Then he had a front-row seat for what happened.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Man Replies] - Naturally.
[ Man Continues]
You could go up close or watch from a distance.
CZESLAW BOROWI
They had land on the far side of the station.
To work it, he had to cross the track,
so he could see everything.
[ Lanzmann ] Does he remember the first convoy of Jews from Warsaw
on July 22, 1942?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Borowi Replies ] - Yes.
[ Borowi Continues ]
He recalls the first convoy very well...
[ Borowi Continues ]
and when all those Jews were brought here...
[ Borowi Continues ]
people wondered, “What's to be done with them?”
[ Borowi Continues ]
Clearly, they'd be killed, but no one yet knew how.
When people began to understand what was happening,
they were appalled,
and they commented privately that since the world began,
no one had ever murdered so many people that way.
[ Lanzmann ] While all this was happening before their eyes,
normal life went on?
- They worked their fields? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Borowi Replies ]
Certainly they worked,
but not as willingly as usual.
They had to work,
but when they saw all this, they thought,
“What if our house is surrounded and we're arrested?”
[ Lanzmann ] Were they afraid for the Jews, too?
Well, he says it's this way:
If I cut my finger, it doesn't hurt him.
They saw what happened to the Jews:
The convoy came in and then went to the camp,
and the people vanished.
I Polish 1
[ Interpreter #1 ] He had a field less than 100 yards from the camp.
[ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase]
[ Interpreter #1 ] He also worked during the German occupation.
- [ Lanzmann ] He worked his field? - [ Interpreter #1 ]Yes.
He saw how they were asphyxiated,
he heard them scream, he saw that.
There's a small hill: He could see quite a bit.
- [ Polish Men All Laughing ] - [ Lanzmann ] What did he say?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
They couldn't stop and watch.
It was forbidden. The Ukrainians shot at them.
[ Lanzmann ] But they could work a field 100 yards from the camp?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
They could.
- So occasionally he could steal a glance... - [ Lanzmann] Oui.
If the Ukrainians weren't looking.
- [ Lanzmann ] He worked with his eyes lowered? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes.
I Polish 1
He worked by the barbed wire and heard awful screams.
- [ Lanzmann ] His field was there? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes, right up close.
It wasn't forbidden to work there.
- [ Lanzmann ] So he worked, he farmed there? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes.
Where the camp is now was partly his field.
[ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase]
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
It was off limits, but they heard everything.
[ Lanzmann ] It didn't bother him to work so near those screams?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
At first it was unbearable. Then you got used to it.
- [ Lanzmann ] You get used to anything? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes.
Now he thinks... it's impossible.
Yet it was true.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
So he saw the convoys arriving.
There were 60 to 80 cars in each convoy,
and there were two locomotives
that took the convoys into the camp,
taking 20 cars at a time.
And the cars came back empty?
[Speaking Polish]
- Yes. - Does he remember...?
Here's how it happened:
The locomotive picked up 20 cars
and took them to the camp.
That took maybe an hour,
and the empty cars came back here.
Then the next 20 cars were taken,
and meanwhile, the people in the first 20 were already dead.
[ Man Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1 ] They waited, they wept...
- [ Man Continues] - they asked for water, they died.
[ Man Continues]
Sometimes they were naked in the cars, up to 170 people.
[ Man #2 Speaking Polish]
This is where they gave the Jews water, he says.
[ Lanzmann ] Where was that?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Polish ] - Here.
When the convoys arrived, they gave water to the Jews.
- [ Lanzmann ] Who gave the Jews water? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
We did, the Poles.
There was a tiny well, we took a bottle and...
- [ Lanzmann] Wasn't it dangerous to give them water? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Very dangerous.
You could be killed for giving a glass of water.
But we gave them water anyway.
[ Lanzmann ] Is it very cold here in winter?
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [ Man Replies In Polish]
- It depends. - [ Man Continues]
It can get to minus 15, minus 20.
[ Lanzmann ] Which was harder on the Jews, summer or winter?
- Waiting here, I mean. - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Man Replies ]
He thinks winter, because they were very cold.
[ Man Continues]
They were so packed in the cars, maybe they weren't cold.
- [ Man Continues] - In summer they stifled: It was very hot.
The Jews were very thirsty. They tried to get out.
[ Lanzmann ] Were there corpses in the cars on arrival?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Obviously.
Oui.
They were so packed in
that even those still alive sat on corpses for lack of space.
[ Lanzmann ] Didn't people here who went by the trains
look through the cracks in the cars?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes, they could look in sometimes as they went by.
When they were allowed, they gave them water, too.
[ Lanzmann] Oui. How did the Jews try to get out?
The doors weren't opened. How'd they get out?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- Through the windows. - [ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase]
- They removed the barbed wire... - [ Repeats Phrase]
- Oui. - Oui?
- and came out of the windows. - [ Repeats Phrase]
They jumped, of course.
Sometimes they just deliberately sat down on the ground,
and the guards came and shot them in the head.
I Polish 1
They jumped from the cars... What a sight!
Jumping from the windows.
There was a mother and child.
- [ Lanzmann ] Jewish? - Yes.
She tried to run away,
and they shot her in the heart.
- Shot who... the mother? - Yes, the mother.
This gentleman has lived here a long time, he can't forget.
He says that now he can't understand
how a man can do that to another human being.
It's inconceivable, beyond understanding.
Once when the Jews asked for water, a Ukrainian went by
and forbade giving any.
The Jewish woman that had asked for water...
threw her pot at his head.
- Oui. - Alors...
The Ukrainian moved back,
maybe ten yards, and opened fire on the car.
Blood and brains were all over the place.
[ Borowi Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1 ] Lots of people opened the doors...
[ Borowi Continues ]
or escaped through the windows.
[ Borowi Continues ]
Sometimes the Ukrainians fired through the car walls.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
It happened chiefly at night.
When the Jews talked to each other, as he showed us,
the Ukrainians wanted things quiet,
and they asked... yes, asked them to shut up.
So the Jews shut up and the guard moved off.
Then the Jews started talking again, in their language,
as he says, ra-ra-ra, and so on.
What's he mean, la-la-la? What's he trying to imitate?
- Their language. - No, ask him.
Was the Jews' noise something special?
- They spoke Jew. - [ Repeats Phrase]
Oui.
- Does Mr. Borowi understand “Jew”? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
No.
[Train Clacking ]
[ Bomba, In English] We were in that wagon.
The wagon was rolling, rolling in the direction east.
A funny thing happened right there.
Maybe it's not nice to say, but I will say it.
Most of the people, not only most, but 99% of the Polish people,
when they saw the train going through...
We looked really like animals in that wagon,
just our eyes looked outside.
And they were laughing, and they were all...
They had a joy, because they took the Jewish people away.
What was going on in the wagon between the people,
and the pushing and the screaming...
“Where is my child?” and, “Where is my this?”
and “A little bit Of water!”
And people were not only starving, but they were choking.
It was hot. It happened... Just it happened...
The Jewish luck...
in September, at that time, usually when it is rainy, when it is cool,
that it was hot like hell.
We had nothing inside.
For a child, you know, like my own child about the age of three weeks,
there was not a drop of water.
There wasn't a drop of water for the mother, but there wasn't a drop of water for anybody else.
[Whistle Blows]
[ Lanzmann, In French] Did he hear screams behind his locomotive?
[Whistle Blows]
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Man Replies In Polish ]
Obviously, since the locomotive was next to the camp.
They screamed, asked for water.
[ Man Continues]
The screams from the cars closest to the locomotive
could be heard very well.
[ Lanzmann ] Can one get used to that?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Man Replies ]
No.
[ Man Continues]
It was extremely distressing to him.
He knew that the people behind him were human, like him.
- [Whistle Blows] - [Man Continues]
The Germans gave him and the other workers vodka to drink.
Without drinking, they couldn't have done it.
[ Man Continues]
There was a bonus...
[ Man Continues]
that they were paid not in money, but in liquor.
[ Man Continues]
Those who worked on other trains didn't get this bonus.
[Whistle Blows]
HENRIK GAWKOWSKI
He drank every drop he got
because without liquor he couldn't stand the stench
when he got here.
They even bought more liquor on their own
to get drunk on.
[ Bomba ] We arrived in the morning.
We arrived, I would say, about 6:00, maybe 6:30.
On the other side of the tracks,
I saw more trains standing there,
and I was watching through...
I saw about 18, 20, maybe more, wagons going away.
And after about an hour or so,
I saw the wagons coming back, but without the people.
My train stayed there until about 12:00.
[ Lanzmann ] From the station to the unloading ramp in the camp,
how many miles?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Four.
[ Bomba ] While we stayed there, at that station over there,
waiting to go in Treblinka camp,
some of those German SS, they came around,
and they were asking us what we have.
So we said, “We got...
Some of the people, they have, uh, gold.
They have diamonds.
But we want water.”
So they said, “Good.
Give us the diamonds, we bring you water.”
Yeah, they took away. They didn't bring any water at all.
[ Lanzmann, In English] How long did last the trip?
The trip lasted from Czestochowa to Treblinka
about 24 hours,
with interruption waiting in Warsaw
and also waiting at Treblinka to go into Treblinka.
ABRAHAM BOM BA
At the last train, we went in over there.
But, like I mentioned before,
I saw many trains coming back,
but the trains were without the people.
So I said to myself, “What happened to the people?
We don't see any people, just trains coming back.”
[Train Clacking ]
[ Glazar, In German] We traveled for two days.
On the morning of the second day
we saw that we had left Czechoslovakia
and were heading east.
[Train Whistle Blows]
It wasn't the SS guarding us,
but the Schutzpolizei,
the police, in green uniforms.
We were in ordinary passenger cars.
All the seats were filled.
You c0uldn't choose.
They were all numbered and assigned.
In my compartment there was an elderly couple.
I still remember:
The good man was always hungry and his wife scolded him,
saying the y'd have no food lefi for the future.
RICHARD GLAZAR
[Whistle Blows]
Then, on the second day,
I saw a sign for Malkinia.
We went on a little farther.
Then, very slowly,
the train turned off 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.
- [ Lanzmann, In German ] A Pole? - A Pole.
Where was this? At the station?
It 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.
[ Dog Barking ]
[ Man Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1, In French] Once there were foreign Jews...
They were this fat...
[ Lanzmann, In French] This fat?
[ Interpreter #1 ] 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 what kind of a factory it was.
[ Men Speaking Polish]
We'd gesture...
- [ Lanzmann ] Gesture how? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
That they'd be killed.
[ Lanzmann ] These people made that sign?
He says the Jews didn't believe it.
[ Lanzmann ] But what does that gesture mean?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
That death awaited them.
The people who had a chance to get near the Jews
did that to warn them...
- [ Lanzmann ] He did it too? - That they'd be hanged, killed, slain.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes.
Even foreign Jews from Belgium, Czechoslovakia,
from France too, surely.
And from Holland...
These didn't know,
but the Polish Jews knew.
In 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.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
He says the foreign Jews arrived here in passenger cars,
they were well dressed, in white shirts,
there were flowers in the cars, and they played cards.
[ Lanzmann, In French] From what I know, that was very rare,
Jews shipped in passenger cars.
Most arrived in cattle cars.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
It's not true.
- [ Interpreter #1 Repeats Phrase] - [ Lanzmann ] it's not true?
[Woman Speaking Polish]
[ Lanzmann ] What did Mrs. Gawkowska say?
[ Interpreter #1 ] She said he may not have seen everything.
[ Lanzmann ] Oui.
[ Interpreter #1 ] 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...
[ Lanzmann ] To catch up to it.
[ Interpreter #1 ] Oui.
So he went past these “Pullmans,” as he calls them,
those Jews who were calm, unsuspecting,
and he made that gesture to them.
[Speaking Polish]
Oui.
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.
[ Lanzmann ] Ask Mr. Gawkowski why he looks so sad.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Because I saw men marching to their death.
[ Lanzmann ] Precisely where are we now?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
It's not far... a mile and a half from here.
- [ Lanzmann ] What, the camp? - Oui.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Oui.
[ Lanzmann ] What's that dirt road he's indicating?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
That's where the rail line into the camp was.
[ Lanzmann ] Did Mr. Gawkowski, aside from the trains of deponees
he drove from Warsaw or Bialystok to the Treblinka station...
Did he ever drive the deportee cars
into the camp from the Treblinka station?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Gawkowski] 'Yak. - Oui.
'Yak.
[ Lanzmann ] Did he do it often?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Gawkowski Replies ]
Two or three times a week.
- [ Lanzmann ] Over how long a period? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Gawkowski Replies ]
Around a year and a half.
[ Lanzmann] That is, throughout the camp's existence?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Gawkowski] 'Yak. - Oui.
'Yak.
- [ Lanzmann] This is the ramp. - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Here he is, he goes to the end with his locomotive,
and he has the 20 cars behind him.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
No, they're in front of him.
- He pushed them? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- That's right, he pushed them. - [ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase]
[ Interpreter #1 ] Oui.
[ Piwonski Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1 ] In February 1942,
I began working here as an assistant switchman.
[ Lanzmann] The station building, the rails, the platforms
are just as they were in 1942?
- Nothing's changed? - [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Piwonski Replies] - Nothing.
Exactly where did the camp begin?
JAN PIWONSKI
I'll show you exactly.
Here,
there was a fence that ran to those trees you see there.
[ Lanzmann ] Oui.
And another fence that ran to those trees over there.
So I'm standing inside the camp perimeter, right?
[ Interpreter #1 ] That's right.
Where I am now is 50 feet from the station,
and I'm already outside the camp.
- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish] - [ Piwonski] Tak. Tak.
Yes.
So this is the Polish part, and over there was death.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
Yes.
[ Piwonski Continues ]
On German orders, Polish railmen split up the trains.
[ Piwonski Continues ]
So the locomotive took 20 cars
and headed toward Chelm.
[ Piwonski Continues ]
When it reached a switch...
[ Piwonski Continues ]
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 station here is part of the camp.
- [Speaking Polish] - Tak. Tak.
Tak?
And at this point, we are inside the camp.
[ Piwonski Speaking Polish]
[ Interpreter #1 ] This track was inside the camp.
And it's exactly as it was? Hmm?
Yes, the same track.
It hasn't changed since then.
Where we are now is what was called the ramp, right?
Yes, those to be exterminated were unloaded here.
So where we're standing
is where 250,000 Jews were unloaded before being gassed.
Yes.
[ Lanzmann ] Did foreign Jews arrive here in passenger cars, too?
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
- [ Piwonski Replies ] - Not always.
[ Piwonski Continues ]
Often the richest Jews...
[ Piwonski Continues ]
from Belgium, Holland, France...
[ Piwonski Continues ]
arrived in passenger cars...
- [ Piwonski Continues ] - sometimes even in 1st class.
[ Piwonski Continues ]
They were usually better treated by the guards.
[ Piwonski Continues ]
Especially the convoys of Western European Jews
waiting their turn here,
Polish railmen saw the women putting on make-up, combing their hair,
wholly unaware of what awaited them minutes later.
Oui.
They dolled up.
And the Poles couldn't tell them anything:
The guards forbad contact with the future victims.
[ Lanzmann ] I suppose there were fine days like today.
[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]
[ Piwonski Replies ]
Unfortunately, some were even finer.
RUDOLF VRBA - NEW YORK, USA, survivor of Auschwitz
[ Vrba, In English] There was a place called the ramp,
where the trains with the Jews were coming in, in Auschwitz.
They were coming in day or night,
and sometimes one per day, and sometimes five per day,
from all sorts of places in the world.
I worked there from August 18, 1942
until June 7, 1943.
I saw those transports rolling one after the other,
and I am sure that I have seen at least two hundred of them, in this position.
I have seen it so many times that it became a routine.
Constantly, people from the heart of Europe were disappearing,
and they were arriving to the same place
with the same ignorance of the fate of the previous transports.
And that people in this mass...
And I knew, of course, that within a couple of hours after they arrived there,
90% of them will be gassed, or something like that. I knew that.
And somehow, in my thinking, it... I could...
It was difficult for me to comprehend that people can disappear in this way,
and nothing is going to happen,
and then there comes the next transport,
and they don't know anything about what happened to the previous transport,
and this is going on for months and months, on and on.
AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU
So what happened was the following:
Say, a transpon of Jews was announced to come at 2:00.
So when the transport arrived to close stations from Auschwitz,
the announcement came to the SS.
Now, one SS man came and woke us up.
We had to get up and, uh, move to the ramp.
We immediately got an escort in the night,
and we were escorted to the ramp.
Say, we were about 200 men.
And lights went on.
There was a ramp.
Around the ramp were lights,
and under those lights were the cordon of the SS.
There was one e very 10 yards, with a gun in the hand.
So, we were in the middle, the prisoners,
and we were waiting,
waiting for the train, waiting for the next order.
Now, when all this was done, everybody was there,
the transport was rolled in.
This means in a very slow fashion.
The locomotive, which was always at the front,
was coming to the ramp,
and that was the end of the railway line.
That was the end of the line for everybody who was on the train.
And, now, the train stopped,
and
the gangster elite marched on the ramp.
And in front of every second or every third wagon,
and sometimes in front of every wagon,
one of those UnterscharfiJhrers
was standing with a key
and opened the locks,
because the wagons were locked.
Now, inside, there were people, of course,
and you could see the people looking through the windows,
because they didn't know what's happening.
They had many stops on their journey.
Some of them were 10 days on the journey. Some were two days on the journey.
And they didn't know what this particular stop means.
Now, the door was opened.
And the first order they were given was,
“AIIe heraus!” “Everybody out!”
In order to make it quite clear,
they usually started with those walking sticks
to hit the first, the second, the third, who were...
They were... They were...
They were like sardines in those cars.
If they expected on that day four, five, six transports,
the pressure of getting out from the wagons was high.
Then the y used sticks, clubs, cursing, e! cetera, e2' cetera.
But, sometimes, the SS, if it was good weather, they used to deal with it differently.
I mean, I was not surprised if they were in a different mood and...
and, uh, exhibited a lot of humor,
like saying, “Good morning, Madam,”
and, “Will you please walk out?”
- [ Lanzmann, In English] It happened? - Oh, yes! Oh, yes.
And, “How nice that you arrived.
We are so sorry that it wasn't too convenient,
but now things will become different.”
[ Bomba ] When we came into Treblinka,
we didn't know who the people were.
Some of them, they had armbands, some of them red.
Some of them, they had blue, Jewish kommando.
Falling out from the train
and pushing out each other
and, over there, losing each other,
and the... and the... and the crying and the hollering.
And, coming out,
we started on one way to the right, one to the left,
the women to the left and the men on the right.
And...
we had no time to even look at each other,
because they start hitting over the head
with all kinds of things.
And...
it is very, very...
Painful, it was.
You didn't know what had happened.
You had no time to think.
All you heard is crying.
And all you heard, all the time, was the hollering of the people.
[ In German] 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.
It was irresistible.
It had to move to another place.
I saw the others undressing.
And I heard, “Get undressed! You're to be disinfected!”
As I waited, already naked,
I 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.”
[ Bomba ] At my transport, I was waiting, already naked.
A man came over and asked, “You, you, you, step out.”
We stepped out,
and they took us a little bit on the side.
Some of the people from the transport,
they had an idea what is going on,
and they know already that they will not stay alive.
Pushing the people, they didn't want to go,
or they knew already where they go,
to that big door.
The hollering and the crying and the shouting
what was going over there on,
it was impossible.
The cries and the hollers was in your ears and in your mind
for days and days,
and, at night, the same thing.
From that hollering, you could not even sleep a couple night of that.
All of a sudden, at one time, everything stopped,
like by a command.
It was all quiet,
the place where the people went in.
Just like on a command.
Like everything was dead.
Then, they told us to make clean the whole place.
It was about 2,000 people
which they undressed on the outside.
To take the whole thing away and to clear up the place,
and that has to be done in minutes.
Some of the Germans, some of the other people that were there,
the Ukrainians or the other ones,
they start shouting and hitting us that we should do it faster,
to carry the bundles on our backs faster to the main place,
where it was big places of clothes,
of shoes, of other things.
In no time, this was clean,
just like it never happened,
that never was people on that place again.
There was no trace, not at all.
Like a magic thing, everything disappeared.
BIRKENAUI THE RAMP
[ Vrba ] Whenever a new transport came,
the ramp was cleaned absolutely to zero point.
No trace from the previous transport was allowed to remain.
Not one trace.
[ Glazar, In German] We were taken to the barracks.
The whole place stank.
Piled about five feet high
in a jumbled mass,
were 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.
I was turned over to one of these men.
His armband said, “Squad Leader.”
He shouted,
and I understood that I was also to pick up clothing, bundle it,
and take it somewhere.
As I worked, I asked him,
"What is going on? The undressed ones... Where are they?”
And he replied, “Dead! AH dead!”
But it still hadn't sunk in, I didn't believe it.
He'd used the Yiddish word.
It was the first time I'd heard Yiddish spoken.
He didn't say it very loud,
and I saw he had tears in his eyes.
Suddenly he started shouting
and raised his whip.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw an SS man coming.
And I understood that I was to ask no more questions,
but just to rush outside with the package.
[ Bomba ] At that time, we start working
in that place which they call Treblinka.
And still, I couldn't believe what had happened
over there on the other side of the gate,
where the people went in, disappeared,
or everything got quiet.
But in a minute, we find out,
when we start to ask the people which they worked before us
what had happened with them.
They said, “What do you mean, what happened? Don't you know that?
They're all gassed. They're all killed.”
It was impossible to say something
because we were just like stones.
We couldn't mention what had happened to the wife,
what had happened to the kid.
“What do you mean, wife? What do you mean, kid?
Nobody is anymore alive!”
“What do you mean, they're not alive? How could they...
How could they kill, how could they gas so many people at once?”
But they had their way how to do it.
[ Glazar] All I could think of then was my friend Care! Unger.
He'd been at the rear of the train,
in a section that had been uncoupled and left outside.
I needed someone. Near me. With me.
Then I 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.
[ Lanzmann, In German] Your meeting with Carel:
how long after your arrival did it happen?
It was... around 20 minutes after we reached Treblinka.
Then I left the barracks
and had my first look at the vast space
that I soon learned was called “the sorting place.”
It was buried under mountains of objects of all kinds.
Mountains of shoes, of clothes, 30 feet high.
I though! about' it and said to Carrel,
“I! is" 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.”
That's how the day went through,
without anything.
No drinking.
We were 24 hours without water, without anything.
We couldn't drink.
We couldn't have anything taken into our mouths,
because it was impossible.
Just the meaning that before...
a minute, an hour before,
you were part of a family,
you were part of a wife or a husband,
and now, all of a sudden, everything is dead.
We went into a special barrack,
where I was sleeping right next to the wall.
And over there, that night,
it was the most horrible night for all the people,
because the memory of all those things,
what people went through with each other,
all the joys and the happiness,
and the births and the weddings and other things,
and all of a sudden, in one second,
to cut that through without anything,
and without any guilt of the people,
because the people were not guilty at all.
The only guilt from them was because they were Jewish people.
Most of us, we were all up at night,
trying to talk to each other, which was not allowed.
The commandant was sleeping in the same barrack.
We were not allowed to talk to each other
or to express our view or our minds to each other
until the morning, at 5:00,
we start going out from the barracks.
In the morning,
when they had an Appell to go out from the barracks,
from our group,
I would say at least four or five were dead.
I don't know how the thing happened that, what?
They must have with them some kind of Zyanka/I or some kind of poison
in which they poisoned themselves.
Some of them there,
I would say at least of them were me/ne friends...
two of my close friends.
They didn't say anything.
We didn't even know that they have with them poison.
[ Glazar, In German] Greenery, sand everywhere else.
At night, we were put into barracks.
It just had a sand floor.
Nothing else.
Each of us simply dropped where he stood.
Half asleep, I heard some men hang themselves.
We didn't react then. It was almost normal.
Just as it was 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.
I already knew that,
three hours after arriving at Treblinka.
♪♪ [ Schlager ]
♪♪ [ Man Singing In German: “Mandolinen um MitternachF]
♪♪ [ Continues ]
♪♪ [ Fades ]
BERLIN
[ Woman, In English] This is no longer home, you see?
And, uh, especially, it's no longer home
when they start telling me that they didn't know, they didn't know.
They say they didn't see.
“Yes, there were Jews living in our house.
One day, they were no longer there.
We didn't know what happened.”
They couldn't help seeing it.
It was not a matter of one action.
These were actions that were taking place over almost two years.
There was always... Every fortnight people were torn out of the houses.
How could they escape it? How could they not see it?
I remember that day on which they made Berlin JudenreKn.
The people hastened in the streets. They... They didn't want to be in the street.
You could see the streets were absolutely empty.
They didn't want to look, you know?
They thought of hastening to buy what they had to buy.
It was Saturday, and they had to buy something for the Sunday, you see?
So they went shopping and hastened back into their houses.
And I remember this day very vividly,
because we saw police cars, uh, rushing through the streets of Berlin,
taking people out of the houses.
They had herded together from factories, from the houses,
wherever they could find the Jews,
and had put them into something that was called Klu.
KIu was a dance, um, restaurant, a very big one.
From there, they were deported in various transports.
They were going off not far from here, on one of the tracks of the Bahnhof Grunewald.
And this was a day when I felt so...
suddenly so utterly alone,
so utterly left alone,
because now I knew we would be one of the very few people left.
I didn't know how many more would be underground.
And this was a day when I felt very guilty that I didn't go myself,
that I tried to escape a fate that the others could not escape.
There was no more warmth around, no more soul akin to us, you understand?
And we talked about this.
“What happened to Elsa, and what happened to Hans?”
“Where is he, and where is she? Do you know this?”
“My God, what happened to the child?”
You know, these... these were our talks on that horrible day.
And this feeling of being terribly alone
and terribly guilty that we did not go... - [ Lanzmann ] Guilty?
That we did not go with them.
[ Man Shouting In German]
Why did we try? Why? Why?
What made us do this,
to escape a fate that was really our destiny or the destiny of our people?
INGE DEUTSCHKRON Born in Berlin
Lived there through the war
(In hiding beginning in February 1943)
Now lives in Israel
FRANZ SUCHOMEL: SS UnterscharfiJhrer
- [ Lanzmann, In German ] Are you ready? - [ Suchomel, In German] Yes.
- Then we can... - We can begin.
[ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase ]
[ Lanzmann ] How's your heart? Is everything in order?
[ Suchomel] Oh, my heart... For the moment, ifs all right.
If I have any pain, I'll tell you.
We'll have to break off.
[ Lanzmann ] Of course.
But your health, in general, is...
- [ Suchome/ j The weather tode y suits me fine. - J a.
The barometric pressure is high: That's good for me.
[ Lanzmann ] You look to be in good shape, anyway.
Let's begin with Treblinka. - Certainly.
[ Lanzmann ] I think that's best.
If you could give us
a description of Treblinka.
How did it look when you arrived?
- I believe you got there in August? - Mme August.
- Was it August 20 or 24? - [ Suchome! Replies ]
- The 18th? - I don't know exactly.
Around August 20.
[ I anzmann j J a .
I 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.
Ja.
Three trains arrived in two days...
Ja.
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. - Kielce?
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...
Ja.
made of steel.
So that while 5,000 Jews arrived in Treblinka,
3,000 were dead.
- In the... - In the cars.
They had slashed their wrists,
or just died.
The ones we unloaded were half-dead
and half-mad.
In 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.
Ja.
On the ramp? - On the ramp.
Stacked like wood.
In 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. it'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.
They hadn't told us.
- You didn't know? - No!
Incredible!
But true. I didn't want to go.
Ja.
- That was proved at my trial. - Ja.
I was told,
“Mr. Suchomel,
there are big workshops there for tailors and shoemakers,
and you'll be guarding them.”
- Ja. - Nothing more.
But you knew it was a camp?
Yes. We were told,
“The Fuhrer ordered a resettlement program.” - Ja.
- “It's an order from the Fuhrer.” - Jaja.
- Understand? - Resettlement program...
- [ Repeats Phrase] - Ja.
No one ever spoke of killing.
[ Lanzmann ] I understand.
Mr. Suchomel, we're not discussing you,
only Treblinka.
You are a very important eyewitness,
and you can explain what Treblinka was.
[ Suchomel] But don't use my name.
No, I promise.
[ Suchomel] Und Dortmund...
[ Lanzmann ] All right, you've arrived at Treblinka.
[ Suchomel] So Sta-die, 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.
In the evening, the Ukrainians drove those Jews into the gas chambers
or shot them.
Every day!
It was in the hottest days of August.
The ground undulated like waves
because of the gas.
From the bodies?
: 3%:
Bear in mind, the graves were maybe 18, 20 feet deep...
Ja.
all crammed with bodies!
A thin layer of sand and the heat. You see?
It was hell up there.
You saw that?
Yes, just once, the first day.
We puked and wept.
- You wept? - We wept too, yes.
[ Lanzmann ] Ja.
- The smell was infernal. - [ Repeats Phrase]
Yes, because gas was constantly escaping.
It stank horribly, for miles around.
- Miles? - Miles!
- You could smell it all around... - [ Repeats Phrase]
Not just in the camp?
Everywhere. It depended on the wind.
The stink was carried on the wind.
Understand?
[ Suchomel] 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? go on this way. I can? 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.
Widh 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 of,
for days and days,
the bodies piled up around the gas chambers.
Under this pile of bodies was a cesspool:
3 inches deep, full of blood, worms...
and shit.
Ja.
- Where? - In front of the gas chamber.
- Ja. - Nicht wahr?
No one wanted to clean it out.
The Jews preferred to be shot
rather than work there.
- Preferred to be shot? - [ Repeats Phrase]
It was awful. Burying their own people, seeing it all...
The dead flesh came off in their hands.
Ja.
So Wirlh 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! - [ Repeats Phrase]
- Jews too? - Jews too!
What did the Germans do?
They forced the Jews to...
They beat them?
Or they themselves helped with the cleanup.
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.
[ Lanzmann ] I think the Jews did it.
In that case, the Germans had to lend a hand.
THE BLACK EXECUTION WALL IN THE COURTYARD OF BLOCK ll
AT AUSCHWITZ I, THE ORIGINAL CAMP
[ Lanzmann, In German] Filip, on that Sunday in May 1942,
when you first entered the Auschwitz crematorium,
how old were you?
[ Man, In German] Twenty.
It was a Sunday in May.
We were locked in an underground cell in Block 11.
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,
I suddenly saw a building.
It had a flat roof, and a smokestack.
I saw a door in the rear.
I thought they were taking us to be shot.
FILIP MULLER - CZECH JEW
Survivor of the 5 liquidations of the Auschwitz “special detail”
Suddenly, before a door
under a lamp in the middle of this building,
a young SS man told us,
“Inside, 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 I 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 I at Auschwitz.
From there,
they herded us to another big room,
and told us to undress the corpses.
I looked around me.
There were hundreds of bodies,
all dressed.
Piled with the corpses
were suitcases, bundles
and, scattered everywhere,
strange, bluish-purple crystals.
I couldn't understand any of it.
It was like a blow to the head... as if you'd been stunned.
I didn't even know where I was.
Above all, I 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”?
I entered the cremation chamber.
There was a Jewish prisoner,
Fischel, who later became a squad leader.
He looked at me,
and I watched him poke the fire with a long rod.
He told me, “Do as I'm doing
or the SS will kill you.”
I picked up a poker
and did as he was doing.
[ Lanzmann ] A poker?
A steel poker.
I obeyed Fischel's order.
At that point I was in shock as if I'd been hypnotized,
ready to do
whatever I was told.
I was so mindless, so horrified
that I 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. - Mm-hmm.
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...
I 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 fire truck
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, I grasped a woman,
but her hands...
Her hand was slippery, slimy.
I tried to pull her,
but I fell over backward, into the water, the mud.
It was the same for all of us.
Up above, at the edge of the pit, Aumeyer and Grabner yelled,
“Get cracking, you filth, you bastards!
We'll show you, you bunch of shits!”
These were the names they were calling us.
And in these...
[ Repeats Phrase]
How shall I say? ...circumstances,
2 of my “friends” couldn't take any more.
One was a French student.
- Ja? -Juden?
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.
[ Lanzmann ] There was no crematorium at Birkenau then?
[ MUIIer] No, there weren't any there yet.
Birkenau still wasn't completely set up.
Only Camp BI, which was the late women's camp, existed.
It 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.
TREBLINKA
[ Suchomel, In German] The new gas chambers were built in September 1942.
[ Lanzmann, In German] 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.
I think they were brought from Bialystok,
from some Russian bunkers.