FRANZ SUCHOMEL SS UnterscharfiJhrer
[ Suchomel Singing In German] ♪ Looking squarely ahead, brave and joyous ♪
♪ At the world ♪
♪ The squads march to work ♪
♪ All that matters to us now is Treblinka ♪
♪ It 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 a little luck ends it all ♪
♪ HurrayJ ♪
[ Lanzmann, In German] Once more, but louder.
[ Suchomel] We're laughing about it but ifs so sad.
- [ L anzmann j No one is" laughing. - [ Suchome/ j Don 7' be sore at' me.
You want History. I'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”? - Ja.
They were taught the song,
and by evening all of them had to sing it.
- [ Lanzmann ] Sing it again. - All right.
[ Lanzmann ] It'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 ♪
♪ It 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 a little luck ends it all ♪
♪ Hurray N'
Satisfied?
That's unique. No Jews know that today!
[Train Approaching ]
[ Lanzmann ] How was it possible in Treblinka
in peak days...
Mm-hmm.
To “process” 18,000 people?
18,000 is too high.
- But I 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 t015,000.
But we had to spend half the night at it. - Ja.
In January, the trains started arriving at 6 A.M.
Ja?
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.
I'd like you to describe in detail
the whole process.
During the peak period. - Uh-huh.
[ Lanzmann ] Hmm?
[ Suchomel ] The trains left Malkinia station,
for Treblinka station.
[ Lanzmann ] How many miles from Malkinia to Treblinka?
[ Suchomel] About six miles.
Treblinka was a village.
A small village.
As a station,
it gained in importance because of the transports of Jews.
There were at least 30 to 50 cars.
They were divided into sections of 10 or 15
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.
[ Lanzmann ] How many Germans?
[ Suchomel ] 3 to 5.
- No more? - No more. I can assure you.
How many Ukrainians?
- Ten. - [ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase]
[ Lanzmann ] 10 Ukrainians, 5 Germans.
Ja, ja.
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. - Ja?
- 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. - [ Repeats Phrase]
An hour, an hour and a half.
A whole train took 2 hours. - Yes.
In 2 hours, it was all over.
- Between the time of arrival... - Und... and...
and death.
It 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?
I 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.
In summer and winter.
- In winter? - In winter.
[ Lanzmann ] Winter in Treblinka can be very cold.
[ Suchomel] Well, in winter, in December, anyway after Christmas.
- J a. - Bu! e van before Christmas it was cold as hell.
Between 15 and minus 4.
I know: At first it was cold as hell for us, too.
We didn't have suitable uniforms.
It was cold for us too.
But it was colder for...
- For those poor people. - In the “funnel.”
In the “funnel,” it was very, very cold.
- [ Repeats Phrase] - Ja.
Can you...
describe this “funnel” precisely?
What was it like? How wide? - Ja. Ja, der Sch/auch. ..
How was it for the people in this “funnel”?
It was about 13 feet wide.
- Das Isl'... - As wide as this room.
[ Repeats Phrase]
On each side were walls this high or this high.
- Walls? - No, barbed wire.
Woven into the barbed wire,
uh, were branches of pine trees.
- Mm-hmm. - You understand?
It was known as “camouflage.”
There was a “Camouflage Squad” of 20 Jews.
They brought in new branches every day.
- From the woods? - That's right.
- Uh-huh. - So everything was screened.
People couldn't see anything to the left or right.
Nothing.
You couldn't see through it. - Impossible.
[ Repeats Phrase]
Here and here too.
Here, too.
- Ja? - Und hier.
[ Suchomel] Impossible to see through.
THE CAMP TODAY
[ Lanzmann ] Treblinka,
where so many people were exterminated,
wasn't big, right?
[ Suchomel] It wasn't big.
1600 feet at the widest point.
It 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.”
I only heard those two names for it.
[ Lanzmann ] I need to see it.
The people go into the “funnel.”
Then what happens?
They're totally naked? - Totally naked.
Here...
stood two Ukrainian guards.
- Yes. - Mainly for the men.
If 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.
- Not the women. - No, they weren't beaten.
Why such humanity?
- I didn't see it. - Ja.
I didn't see it.
Maybe they were beaten too.
Why not?
[ Repeats Phrase] They were about to die anyway. Hmm?
Why not?
Hmm?
At the entrance to the gas chambers,
undoubtedly.
ABRAHAM BOMBA - ISRAEL -
[ Lanzmann, In English] Abraham, can you tell me how did it happen?
How were you chosen?
[ Bomba ] There came an order
from the Germans
to take out the barbers they could get.
And they needed them for a certain job.
What kind ofjob they needed it for, we didn't know at that time.
But, we gathered together as many barbers as we could.
How long did it happen after your arrival in Treblinka?
That... I would say that happened to me about four weeks after I was in Treblinka.
When was it? It was in the morning, in the...
That was in the morning.
It was around 10:00
when a transport came to Treblinka,
and the women went into the gas chambers.
And they chose some people
from the working people over there,
and they asked the question: Who was a barber, and who was not a barber?
I was a barber for quite a number of years.
Some of them, they knew me,
like people from Czestochowa and from other places.
So, naturally, they chose me,
and I selected some more barbers which I know of them,
and we got it together.
- Professional barbers? - Professional, yes.
We got it together, and we were waiting for the order.
And the order came to go with them,
with the Germans.
They took us into the gas chamber,
to the second... part of the camp in Treblinka.
It was far from the first part?
It was not too far, but it was all covered
with gates, barbed wires
and trees covering the gate,
that nobody should see there is a gate,
or there is a place going into the gas chambers.
Is it what the Germans called the 'Schlauch”?
No, the Germans, what they called it, they called...
Like going to...
“Road to the Heaven.”
- 'Himmelweg ?” - "Himmel"... "Himmel way", yeah.
“The Road to the Heaven.”
And we knew about it because we worked for quite a time
before we went in to work in the gas chamber.
Going in over there, they put in some benches
where the women could sit
and not to have the idea
that this is their last way,
or that it is the last time they're going to live
or they're going to breathe,
or they're going to know what is going on.
How long did it last that the barbers cut the hair inside the gas chamber,
because it was not always the case?
We worked inside the gas chamber for about a week or 10 days.
After that,
they decided that we will cut the hair in the undressing barrack.
- How did it look, the gas chamber? - It was a room, not a big room.
The room was, I would say, the size, by feet...
Around...
12 by 12.
But, in that room,
they pushed in a lot of women,
almost one on top of the other one.
But, like I mentioned before,
when we came in, we didn't know what we're going to do.
And then, one of the kapos, he came in and he said,
“Barbers, you have to do a job:
to make to believe all those women that came in
that they are just taking a haircut
and going in to take a shower,
and, from there, they go out from this place.”
But we knew already that there is no way going out from this room.
Because this room is the last place where they went in alive,
and they will never go out alive again.
Can you describe precisely?
Precisely, to describe, is...
When the transport came in...
Waiting there until the transport came in.
The transport came in.
Women with children.
And pushing into that place.
We, the barbers, started to cut the hair,
and some of them, I would say all of them,
some of them, they knew already what's going to happen to them.
We tried to do the best what we could...
- [ Lanzmann ] No, no, no, no. No. - the most human being what we could.
Excuse me. How did it happen?
When the women came into the gas chamber,
were you yourself already in the gas chamber...
- In, in. - or did you come afterwards?
I said we were already in the gas chamber,
because we were waiting over there for the transport to come in.
- You were inside? - Inside, yes.
Inside the gas chamber. We were already in.
And suddenly you saw the women coming?
Yes, they came in.
How were they?
They were undressed, all naked, without clothes, without anything else.
- All of them completely naked? - Completely naked.
All the women and all the children.
- All the children too? - The children too.
Because they came from the undressing barracks.
There was a barracks before going into the gas chamber
where they had undressed themselves.
What did you feel the first time
that it happened that you saw all these naked women coming?
Well, I felt that,
accordingly, I got to do what they told me:
to cut the hair in a way
that it should look like a barber is doing his job,
like he's doing a job for a woman,
a nice haircut to give them,
but to take off as much hair as we could,
because they needed the women's hair
to be transported to Germany.
This means that you didn't shave them?
No, we did not shave them.
We just cut their hair to make them believe
that they're getting a nice haircut.
- But you cut with what? With scissors? - With scissors, yes.
With scissors and with a comb, without any clippers.
Just like a...
a man's haircut, I would say.
Not a... Not a “baldy” one to take out... to take off all the hair,
but just to have the imagination
that they're getting a nice haircut.
- There were no mirrors, no? - No, there were no mirrors.
There were just benches, not chairs,
but just benches where we worked, about 16, 17 barbers,
and we had a lot of women in.
Every haircut, it took about two minutes,
no more than that,
because there was a lot of women to come in
and to get rid of their hair.
Can you imitate now how did you do?
Well, how we did it...
We did it as fast as we could,
because we were quite a number of professional barbers.
And the way we did it, we just stopped this and this,
and we cut...
And we just cut this like this, here and there and there
and this side and this side and the hair was all finished.
- With big movements? - With big...
Naturally, with big movements, because we could not waste any time.
The other party was waiting already outside,
coming in to do the same thing, the same, uh, job, the same procedure.
- You said that you were 16 barbers, about? - Yes.
This means you cut the hair of how many women in one batch?
In one batch, there was about, I would say,
going into that place,
between 60 and 70 women
in the same room at one time.
Afterwards, the doors of the gas chamber were closed?
After that, we were finished with this party, another party came in.
It was around about 140, 150 women.
- You were... - They all were already taken care of.
They told us to leave the gas chamber
for a few minutes, about five minutes,
while they put in the gas and they choked them to death.
- Where did you wait? - Outside the gas chamber.
And, on the other side, where...
On this side, the women went in.
On the other side was a group of working people,
which they took out already the dead bodies.
Some of them, they were not exactly dead.
They took them out,
and, in two minutes...
Not even two minutes. In one rninute, everything was clear.
And it was clean to take in the other party of the other women
to go through the same thing what the first one, they went through.
These women, they had long hair?
Most of them, they had long hair, they had short hair,
but we had to do the job to get rid of the hair.
Like I mentioned, the Germans, they needed the hair for their purposes.
But I asked you, and you didn't answer:
What was your impression
the first time you saw arriving these naked women with children?
What did you feel?
I tell you something. To have a feeling over there...
It was very hard to feel anything or to have a feeling,
because, working there day and night between dead people,
between bodies, men and women,
your feeling disappeared.
You were dead with your feeling. You had no feeling at all.
And matter of fact, I want to tell you something what had happened.
At the gas chamber,
when I was chosen in over there to work as a barber,
some of the women, they came in
from a transport from my town, from Czestochowa.
And, from the women, from the number of women,
I knew a lot of people.
- You knew them? - I knew them.
I lived with them in my town.
I lived with them in my street.
And I was... Some of them, they were my close friends.
And when they saw me, all of them started hugging me.
“Abe!” This and that.
“What are you doing here? What's going to happen with us?”
What could you tell them?
What could you tell?
A friend of mine, he worked as a barber.
He was also a good barber in my hometown.
When his wife and his sister...
came into the gas chamber...
lcannot
[ Lanzmann ] Go on, Abe. You must go.
You have to.
I can't do it.
It's too horrible. - Please.
We have to do it. You know it.
I won't be able to do it.
You have to do it. I know it's very hard.
I know, and I apologize.
Don't keep me long with that, please.
Please. You must go on.
I told you, today it's going to be very hard.
It was taken in with bags,
and it was transported to Germany.
[ Murmuring In Yiddish]
[Yiddish 1
Okay, go ahead.
Yes, what did he answer...
when his wife and sister came?
They tried to talk to him
and the husband,
also from his sister.
They could not tell them
that is the last time they stay alive,
because behind them was the German Nazis,
the SS men,
and they knew, the minute they will say a word,
not only the wife and the women, which they are dead already,
but also they will share the same path with them.
But, in a way, they tried to do the best for them,
to stay with them a second longer, a minute longer,
just to hug them and just to kiss them,
because they knew they will never see them again.
[ Suchomel, In German] In 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” ovem/helmed them.
“Death-panic” makes people let go.
They empty themselves, from the front or 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.
I didn't see them do it.
I only saw the feces.
Only women?
- Not the men, only the women. - [ Repeats Phrase]
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.
- Ah, fa? - 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.
Nein?
And this “death-panic”...
When this “death-panic” sets in,
one lets go.
It's well-known when someone's terrified and knows he's about to die.
It can happen in bed.
My mother was kneeling by her bed.
- Your mother? - Yes. Then there was a big pile.
- Ja. - That's a fact.
- It's been medically... - [ Repeats Phrase]
Proven.
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,
I 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!”
“Szybciej, szybciej!”
I can't pronounce it: I have false teeth.
It's Polish.
“Bremze” or “szybciej.”
What does “bremze” mean?
It's a Ukrainian word. It 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. - 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... - Ja.
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.”
l! 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.
RICHARD GLAZAR - SWITZERLAND -
[ In German] The “infirmary” was a narrow site
very close to the ramp
to which the aged were led.
I had to do this too.
This execution site wasn't covered,
just an open place with a 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.”
Ja. A sort of tiny labyrinth.
In 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.
If 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.
In the peak periods,
that happened daily.
In 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
[ Vrba, In English] There was always an amount of people
who could not get out from the wagons.
There were those who died on the road,
or people who were sick to such a degree
that even a persuasion with violent beating
wouldn't get them moving fast enough.
So those people remained in the wagons.
RUDOLF VRBA Survivor of Auschwitz
So our first job was to get into the wagons
to get out the dead bodies or the dying
and transport them im Laufischr/tt, as the Germans like to say.
This means “running.” - [ Lanzmann ] Laufischritt.
Laufischritt, yeah. Never, never, never walking, or something.
Everything had to be done im Laufischritt.
- Immer Iaufen? - Immer Iaufen.
So...
Very sporty. They are a sporty nation, you see?
And, uh, we had to get out those bodies
and, on the ramp, running, to get them on a truck,
which was at the head of the ramp.
There were already trucks prepared. Trucks were ready.
Say, uh, the trucks were five, six sometimes standing there, sometimes more.
There was no iron rule.
But the first truck was for the dead and the dying.
There was not much, uh,
medical care taken to establish who is dead and who feigns to be dead.
I mean, you know, who is only simulating.
So they were put on the truck, and these trucks went to...
Then, once this was finished, then this was the first truck which move off,
and it went straight to the crematorium,
which was about two kilometers to the left from the ramp.
- At the time, it was two kilometers. - At the time.
- It was before the construction of... - Before the construction of the new ramp.
THE OLD RAMP
[ Vrba ] This was the old ramp.
Through that old ramp,
the first one and three-quarters of a million people went.
Through that old ramp.
I mean the majority.
The new ramp was only built
for the expected murder,
in a very shod time,
of one million Jews from Hungary.
THE NEW RAMP BUILT IN EARLY 1944
The whole murder machinery could work
only on one principle:
that the people came to Auschwitz
and didn't know where they were going and for what purpose.
The new arrivals were supposed to be kept without panic
and orderly marching into the gas chamber.
Especially, the panic was dangerous from women with small children.
So, it was important for the Nazis
that none of us give some sort of a message
which could cause a panic even in the last moment.
And anybody who tried to get into touch with newcomers
was either clubbed to death
or taken behind the wagon and shot.
Because, if a panic would have broken out,
and a massacre would have taken place on the spot, on the ramp,
it would already be a hitch in the machinery.
You can't bring in the next transport with dead bodies and blood around,
because this will only increase the panic.
The Nazis were concentrated upon one thing:
It should go in an orderly fashion,
so that it goes unimpeded.
One doesn't lose time.
[ Muller, In German] Before each gassing operation,
the SS took stern precautions.
The crematorium was surrounded by 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.”
In Birkenau, there were 4 crematoria,
Crematorium II, III and IV, V.
Crematorium II was similar to III.
In II and III,
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 IV and V were of a different type
in that they weren't located underground.
Everything was at ground level.
In IV and V, there were 3 gas chambers
with a total capacity
of at most 1800 to 2000 people at a time.
AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM MODEL OF CREMATORIUMS ll AND Ill
Elevators hoisted bodies to the ovens
Crematorium II and III had 15 ovens each.
Crematorium IV 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 none 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 International Information 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 slogans
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 undressed.
And to the left,
at a right-angle, was the gas chamber
with its massive door.
CREMATORIUM Ill: THE UNDRESSING ROOM
THE GAS CHAMBER
In Crematoria II and III, Zyklon gas crystals were poured in
by a so-called “SS disinfection squad,”
through the ceiling,
and in Crematoria IV and V through side openings.
With 5 or 6 canisters of gas,
they could kill around 2000 people.
This so-catted “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 canisters 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 blocks of stone.
How they tumbled out of the gas chamber!
I saw that several times.
That was the toughest thing to take.
You could never get used to that.
It was impossible.
CREMATORIUM IV
[ Lanzmann ] Impossible.
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 a struggle.
The lights were switched off in the gas chambers.
It 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.
Ja?
That caused the struggle.
Secondly, most people tried to push their way to the door.
It was psychological:
They knew where the door was,
so maybe they could force their way.
It was instinctive,
a death struggle.
Which is why 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...? - Ja.
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. - What?
It 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.
It was terrible to see. That was the toughest part.
FILIP MULLER, Czech Jew
survivor of the 5 liquidations of the Auschwitz “special detail”
It was pointless
to tell the truth to anyone
who crossed the threshold of the crematorium.
You couldn't save anyone there.
It was impossible to save people.
One day, in 1943,
when I was already in Crematorium V,
a train from Bialystok arrived.
A prisoner on the “special detail”
saw a woman in the “undressing room,”
who was the wife of a friend of his.
He came right out and told her,
“You are going to be exterminated.
In 3 hours, you'll be ashes.”
The woman believed him because she knew him.
She ran all over
and warned the other women.
“We're going to be killed.
We're going to be gassed.”
Mothers carrying their children on their shoulders
didn't want to hear that.
They decided the woman was crazy.
They chased her away.
So she went to the men.
To no avail.
Not that they didn't believe her.
They'd heard rumors in the Bialystok ghetto,
or in Grodno, and elsewhere.
But who wanted to hear that!
When she saw that no one would listen,
she scratched her whole face.
Out of despair. In shock.
And she started to scream.
[ Muller Continues ] So what happened?
Everyone was gassed. The woman was held back.
We had to line up in front of the oven.
First they tortured her horribly,
because she wouldn't betray him.
In the end, she pointed to him.
He was taken out of the line and thrown alive into the oven.
We were told, “Whoever says anything will end like that!”
We, in the “special detail,” kept trying to figure out
if there was a way
we could tell people
to inform them.
But our experience,
in several instances where we were able to tell people,
showed that it was of no use.
That it made their last moments even harder to bear.
At most, we thought it might help...
Jews from Poland,
or Jews from Theresienstadt (the Czech family camp),
who'd already spent 6 months in Birkenau,
we thought it might have been of use in such cases
to tell people.
But imagine what it was like in other cases:
Jews from Greece, from Hungary, from Corfu
who'd been traveling for 10 or 12 days,
starving,
without water for days, dying of thirst,
they were half-crazed when they arrived.
They were dealt with differently.
They were only told,
“Get undressed, you'll soon get a mug of tea.”
These people were in such a state
because they'd been traveling so long,
that their only thought
was to quench their thirst.
And the SS executioners knew that very well.
It was all preprogrammed,
a calculated part of the extermination process
that if people were so weak
and weren't given something to drink,
they'd rush into the gas chamber.
But in fact,
all these people were already being exterminated
before reaching the gas chambers.
Think of the children.
They begged their mothers, screaming,
“Mother, please, water, water!”
The adults, too, who'd spent days without water,
had the same obsession.
Informing those people was quite pointless.
CORFU
[ Bells Jingling ]
[ Metal Banging, Distant]
[ Banging Grows Louder]
[ Banging Continues]
[ Banging Continues, Distant]
[ People Chattering In Greek]
[ Metal Banging ]
- [Greek] Grab it from there. - [ Greek] Yes, grab it from there.
- Put it right there. - Okay.
- Right there. - Okay, yes.
Okay, be careful. Wait.
You'll come and pick it up later? - Yes.
- Put it down. - In a second.
Hold on a second.
Just hold on a second.
Maybe if you removed this?
Got it? That's how you'll load it.
Come and pick it up next week.
Understood? Now move the cart away from here.
Move the cart.
Yes, let's make some space.
[ Man ] So you're an actor now.
Let's finish this.
MOSHE MORDO
[ Man, In Italian] These are my nephews.
They burned them in Birkenau.
Two of my brothefs kids.
They took them to the crematorium with their mom.
They were all burned in Birkenau.
My brother. - [ Lanzmann] Si?
He was sick,
and they put him in the oven, in the crematorium, and burned him.
That was at Birkenau.
[ Mordo, In Italian] The oldest boy was 17,
the second was 15.
Two more kids “kaput” with their morn.
Yes, 4 children I lost.
- [ Woman ] Suo flare/lo? - No.
[Women Chattering In Greek]
[ Lanzmann, In Italian ] Your father too?
- [Woman Repeats Phrase] - My dad, him too.
How old was your father?
Dad was 85 years old.
- 85 years old and he died in Auschwitz. - Si.
Auschwitz, that's right.
[Woman Murmuring In Italian]
85 and he died at Birkenau.
My father.
- Your father made the whole trip. - Si.
[ Mordo] The whole family died.
First the gas chamber, then the crematorium.
♪♪ [ Man Singing In Hebrew]
♪♪ [ Mordo Singing In Hebrew]
♪♪ [ Continues ]
♪♪ [ Ends ]
[ In French] On Friday morning, June 9, 1944,
members of the Corfu Jewish community came, very frightened,
and reported to the Germans.
This square was full of Gestapo men and police,
and we went forward.
There were even traitors, the Recanati brothers, Athens Jews.
After the war they were sentenced to life imprisonment.
But they're already free.
We were ordered to go forward.
- [ Lanzmann, In French] By the street? - Yes, by this street.
- How many of you were there? - Exactly 1,650.
[Speaking Greek]
- Quite a crowd? - A lot of people.
Christians stopped there.
Christians, that's right. And they saw.
- Where were the Christians? - La'.
[ Greek ]
- At the street corner? - Yes.
And on the balconies.
After we gathered here,
Gestapo men with machine-guns came up behind us.
What time was it?
- It was 6 A.M. - [ In French] In the morning.
- A fine day? - Yes, the day was fine.
6 o'clock in the morning.
1 ,600. That's a lot of people in the street.
People gathered.
The Christians heard the Jews were being rounded up.
- Why'd they come? - To see the show.
Let's hope it never happens again.
- Were you scared? - Very scared.
There were young people,
sick people, little children,
the old, the crazy, and so on.
When we saw they'd even brought the insane,
even the sick from the hospital,
we were frightened
for the survival of the whole community.
What were you told?
That we were to appear here at the fort
to be taken to work in Germany.
- [Greek] Poland. - [ French] Poland, that's right.
The Germans had put up a proclamation on all the walls in Corfu.
It said all Jews had to report.
And once we were all rounded up,
life would be better without us in Greece.
It was signed by the police chiefs, by officials and by the mayors.
- That it's better without Jews? - Yes.
We found out after we came back.
Was Corfu anti-Semitic?
Corfu's always had anti-Semitism?
It existed, sure,
but it wasn't so strong in the years just before that.
Why not?
Because they didn't think like that against the Jews.
ARMANDO AARON President of the Corfu Jewish community
- And now? - Now we're free.
- How do you get on with the Christians now? - Very well.
- [ Man Speaking Greek] -Hmm?
[ Greek ]
Trés bonnes.
- What'd he say? - He asked me what you said.
He agrees our relations with the Christians are very good.
[ Man #2 Speaking Greek]
- Did all the Jews live in the ghetto? - Most of them.
What happened after the Jews left?
They took all our possessions, all the gold we had with us.
They took the keys to our houses and stole everything.
To whom was all this given? Who stole it all?
By law, it was to go to the Greek government.
But the state got only a small part of it.
The rest was stolen, usurped.
- By whom? - By everybody, and by the Germans.
[ Lanzmann ] Of the 1,700 people deported...
[Aaron ] Around 122 were saved.
95% of them died.
Was it a long trip from Corfu to Auschwitz?
We were arrested here on June 9,
and finally arrived June 29.
Most were burned on the night of the 29th.
It lasted from June 9 to 29?
[ Greek ]
[ In French] We stayed here for around 5 days.
Here in the fort.
No one dared escape and leave his father, mother, brothers.
Our solidarity was on religious and family grounds.
The first group left on June 11.
[ Boat Motor Humming ]
I went with the 2nd convoy, on June 15.
What kind of a boat were you on?
A zattera. That's a boat made of barrels and planks.
It was towed by a small boat with Germans in it.
On our boat there were 1, 2 or 3 guards,
not many Germans, but we were terrified.
You can understand, terror is the best of guards.
- What was the journey like? - Terrible! Terrible!
- No water, nothing to eat. - [ Men Chattering In Greek]
90 cars that were good for only 20 animals,
all of us standing up.
A lot of us died.
Later they put the dead in another car in quicklime.
- [ Men Chattering In Greek] - They burned them in Auschwitz, too.
[Whistle Blows]
Next figure: WALTER STIER Ex-member of the Nazi party
Former head, Reich Railways, Bureau 33 (“Railroads of the Reich”)
[ Lanzmann, In German] You never saw a train?
[ Stier, In German] No, never.
We had so much work, I never left my desk.
We worked day and night.
[ Lanzmann ] “G.E.D.O.B.”
“GEDOB” means “Head office of Eastbound Traffic.” - [ Stier Repeats Phrase, Agrees ]
In January 1940, I was assigned to GEDOB Krakow.
In mid-1943, I was moved to Warsaw.
I was made chief traffic planner.
Chief of the traffic planning office.
But your duties were the same before and after 1943?
The only change: I was promoted to head of the department.
What were your specific duties at GEDOB in Poland during the war?
The work was barely different from the work in Germany:
preparing timetables,
coordinating the movement of special trains with regular trains.
- There were several departments? - Yes.
Department 33 was in charge of special trains
and regular trains.
The special trains were handled by Department 33.
You were always in the Department of Special Trains?
Yes.
What's the difierence between a special and a regular train ?
A regular train may be used
by anyone who purchases a ticket.
Say from Krakow to Warsaw.
Or from Krakow to Lemberg.
A special train has to be ordered.
The train is specially put together
and people PaY---
group fares. - [ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase]
Are there still special trains now?
- Of course. - Ja?
Just as there were then.
For group vacations you can organize a special train?
Yes, for instance,
for immigrant workers returning home for the holidays...
[ Clears Throat]
Special trains are scheduled.
Or else one couldn't handle the traffic. - Ja.
You said after the war you handled trains for visiting dignitaries.
- After the war, yes. - [ Repeats Phrase]
If a king visits Germany by train... - Ja.
That's a special train?
- That's a special train. Mm-hmm. - Ja.
But the procedure isn't the same
as for special trains for group tours, and so on.
State visits are handled by the Foreign Service. - Right.
May I ask you another question?
- Hmm? - Why were there more special trains
during the war, than before or after? - Ja.
I see what you're getting at.
You're referring to the so-called “Resettlement trains.”
- “Resettlement.” That's it. - That's what they were called.
Those trains were ordered
by the Ministry of Transport of the Reich.
You needed an order from the Ministry of Transport of the Reich...
[ Both Repeat Phrase]
- In Berlin? - Correct.
As for the implementation of those orders,
the Head Office of Eastbound Traffic in Berlin dealt with it.
[ Lanzmann ] Yes, Iunderstand.
- [ Stier ] Is that clear? - Perfectly.
But mostly, at that time, who was being “resettled”?
No! We didn't know that.
Only when we were fleeing from Warsaw ourselves,
did we learn that they could have been Jews
or criminals, or similar people.
- Jews, criminals? - Criminals. All kinds.
Special trains for criminals?
No, that was just an expression.
You couldn't talk about that.
Unless you were tired of life,
it was best not to mention that.
[ Lanzmann ] But you knew that the trains to Treblinka or Auschwitz were...
Of course we knew.
I was the last district: - [ Lanzmann Continues Speaking German]
Without me, these trains couldn't reach their destination.
- Ja. Ja. - Um...
For instance, a train that started in Essen
had to go through the district of Wuppertal,
Hannover, Magdeburg, Berlin,
Frankfurt/Oder, Posen, Warsaw, etc.
So I had to.
Did you know that Treblinka meant extermination?
Of course not!
You didn't know?
Good God, no! How could we know?
I never went to Treblinka.
I stayed in Krakow, in Warsaw, glued to my desk.
You were a...
- I was strictly a bureaucrat! - lsee.
[ Lanzmann ] But ifs astonishing
that people in the Department of Special Trains
never knew about the “final solution. ”
[ Stier ] We were at war.
Because there were others who worked for the railroads who knew.
Like the train conductors. - Nein.
Yes, they saw it. They did. - [ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase]
But as to what happened, I know...
What was Treblinka for you? Treblinka or Auschwitz?
Yes, for us Treblinka, Belzec, and all that,
were concentration camps.
- A destination. - Yes, that's all.
- But not death. - No.
People were put up there.
For instance, for a train coming from Essen
or Cologne, or elsewhere, room had to be made for them there.
With the war and the allies advancing everywhere,
those people had to be concentrated in camps.
When exactly did you find out?
When the word got around,
when it was whispered.
- Ja. - It was never said outright.
Good God, no! They'd have hauled you off at once!
We heard things...
- Rumors? - That's it, rumors.
- During the war? - Bitte?
[ Repeats Phrase]
- Towards the end of the war. - [ Repeats Phrase]
Not in 1942? - No!
Good God, no! Not a word!
Towards the end of 1944, maybe. [ Clears Throat]
- End of 1944? - Not before.
What did you...?
It was said that
people were being sent to camps,
and those who weren't in good health probably wouldn't survive.
Extermination came to you as a big surprise?
- Completely. Yes. - [ Repeats Phrase]
You had no idea. - Not the slightest.
Like that camp, what was its name...?
It was in the Oppeln district.
I've got it: Auschwitz! - Yes.
Auschwitz was in the Oppeln district. - Right.
Auschwitz wasn't far from Krakow. - That's true.
We never heard a word about that.
- Auschwitz to Krakow is 40 miles. - That's not very far.
And we knew nothing. Not a clue.
- [ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase] - Nein.
But you knew that the Nazis...
that Hitler didn't like the Jews?
That we did.
It was well-known, it appeared in print.
- [ Lanzmann ] Ja. - It was no secret.
But as to their extermination, that was news to us.
I mean, even today people deny it.
They say there couldn't have been so many Jews.
Is it true? I don't know.
That's what they say. - Ja.
Anyway what was done was an outrage.
- What? - The extermination.
Everyone condemns it. Every decent person.
But as for knowing about it, we didn't.
Ja.
The Poles, for instance.
- Ja? - The Polish people knew everything.
That's not surprising, Dr. Sorel.
They lived nearby, they heard, they talked.
And they didn't have to keep quiet.
[Whistle Blows]
[ Hilberg, In English] This is the Fahrplananordnung Number 587,
which is typical for special trains.
The number of the order goes to show you how many of them there were.
Underneath, “ Nur fUr den Dienstgebrauch. ”
“Only for internal use.”
But this turns out to be a very low classification for secrecy.
Yes.
And the fact that, in this entire document, which, after all, deals with death trains,
0H6 cannot SEE...
not only on this one, but one cannot see it on others...
one cannot see the word “geheim, ” “secret,”
is astonishing to me.
That they would not have done that is very astonishing.
But, on second thought, I believe that, had they labeled it secret,
they would have invited a great many inquiries from people who got hold of it.
They would then have perhaps raised more questions.
They would have focused attention on the thing.
And the key to the entire operation, from a psychological standpoint,
was never to utter the words
that would be appropriate to the action being taken.
“Say nothing. Do these things.
Do not describe them.”
So, therefore, this is “Nur fur den Dienstgebrauch. ”
And now notice to how many recipients this particular order goes.
“Bie Bahnhbfe.
On this stretch, there is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
and here we are in Malkinia... - Malkinia.
Which is, of course, the station near Treblinka.
Of course.
But notice that it takes eight recipients
for this relatively short distance,
through Radom to the Warsaw district.
Eight, because the train passes through these stations.
Therefore, each one has to know.
Not only that, but, of course, you're not going to write two pieces of paper
if you can write one.
So, therefore, we find here not only PKR,
which is a death train going here,
in the plan, labeled thus,
but we also see the empty train after it has arrived in Treblinka,
now originating in Treblinka.
And you can always know when it's an empty train with the word “L” in front of it,
“Leer. ”
- Yes. “Ruckleitung des Leerzuges”... - And now...
Yes. And now... And now... And now... - ...which means “return the empty train.”
And now we're going back. Then we have another train.
Now notice that there's very little subtlety to this numbering system.
We're going from 9228 to 9229,
to 9230, to 9231, to 9232.
Hardly... Hardly any, uh, originality here.
It's just very regular traffic.
[ Lanzmann ] Death traffic.
[ Hilberg ] Death traffic.
And, here, we see that,
starting out in one ghetto, which obviously is being emptied,
the train leaves for Treblinka.
It leaves on the 30th of September, 1942,
18 minutes after 4:00, by schedule at least,
arrives there at 11:24 on the next morning.
This is also a very long train,
which may be the reason that it takes so slow.
It's “50 G.” That's, uh, "funfzig Guterwagen, ”
50 freight cars filled with people.
That's an exceptionally heavy transport.
Now, once the train has been unloaded at Treblinka...
And you notice there are two numbers here:
11:24... that's in the morning...
and 15:59, which is to say, almost 4:00 in the afternoon.
In that interval of time, the train has to be unloaded, cleaned
and turned around. - It has to be... It has to be very fast.
It has to be turned around.
And you see, here, the same numbers appear
as the 'Zeerzug, ” now empty train, goes to another place.
And it leaves at 4:00 in the afternoon
and now goes to that other place, which is yet another small town,
where it picks up victims.
And there you are at 3:00 in the morning.
It leaves on the 23rd at 3:00 in the morning
and arrives there the next day.
What is that? it seems to be the same train, as a matter of fact.
- This is quite obviously the same. - it is the same train,
which gets every time another number. - The number...
The number has to be changed, quite obviously. Correct.
Then it goes back to Treblinka, and this is again a long trip.
It arrives in Treblinka, now goes back to yet another place.
Then the same situation, the same trip.
And then yet another.
It goes to Treblinka
and then arrives in Czestochowa on the 29th of September.
And then the cycle is complete.
And this is called a 'Fahrplananordnung, ”
and if you count up the... the number of, uh,
not empty numbers, but full ones, PKRs...
There's one.
There is one.
Here. - But why?
- That's two. That's three. - Why such a...
- That's four. - Why...
We may be talking here about 10,000 dead Jews
on this one Fahrplananordnung right here.
- More than 10,000. - Well, we will be conservative.
Yes.
But why such a document is so fascinating, as a matter of fact?
Because I was in Treblinka, and to have the two things together,
Treblinka and that document...
Well, you see, when I hold a document in my hand,
particularly if it's an original document,
then I hold something which is actually something
that the original bureaucrat had held in his hand.
It's an artifact. it's a leftover. it's the only leftover there is.
- Yes. - The dead are not around.
[Cattle Mooing ]
[ Dogs Barking ]
TREBLINKA - THE STATION
[ Hilberg ] The Rekzhsbahn was ready to ship, in principle,
any cargo in return for payment.
And, therefore, the basic key, price-controlled key,
was that Jews were going to be shipped to Treblinka,
were going to be shipped to Auschwitz, Sobibor, or any other destination,
so long as the railroads were paid by the track kilometer,
so many pfennig per mile.
And the basic rate was the same throughout the war,
with children under 10 going at half fare, children under four going free.
And the payment had to be made for only one way.
The guards... The guards, of course, had to have return fare paid for them
because they were going back to their place of origin.
Excuse me. The children were shipped in the extermination camps...
The children under four... - ...went free.
They had the privilege to be gassed freely?
Yes, transport was free.
And, in addition to that, because the person who had to pay,
the agency that had to pay, was the agency that ordered the train,
and that happened to have been the Gestapo, Eichmann's office...
Because of the financial problem which that office had in making payments,
the Reichsbahn agreed on group fare.
So the Jews were being shipped in much the same way
as any excursion fare would be granted if there were enough people traveling.
And the minimum was 400, a kind of charter fare.
400 was the minimum.
So even if there were fewer than 400,
it would pay to say that there were 400,
and, in that way, get the half fare for adults as well.
And that was the basic principle.
Now, of course, if there was exceptional filth in the cars,
which might be the case,
if there was damage to the equipment, which might be the case,
because the transports took so long,
and the inmates, to the extent of five or ten percent, died en route,
uh, then there might be an additional bill for that damage.
But, in principle, uh,
so long as payment was being made, transports were being shipped.
Sometimes, the SS got credit.
Sometimes, the transport went out before payment,
because, as you see, the... the whole business was handled,
as in the case of any other charter traffic, especially,
or any really personal traffic of any kind,
through a travel bureau.
Mitteleuropaisches Reisebiiro would handle some of these transactions:
the billing procedure, the ticketing procedure.
Or if a smaller transport was involved, the SS would...
Excuse me. It was the same bureau who was dealing with any kind of normal passenger?
- Absolutely. - It was dealing with the Jews too.
Just the official travel bureau.
Mitteleuropéisches Reisebiiro will ship people to the gas chambers,
or they will ship vacationers to their favorite resorts.
And that was basically the same office and the same operation,
the same procedure, the same billing.
- No difference? - No difference whatsoever.
And, as a matter of course, everybody would do that job
as if it were the most normal thing to do.
But it was not a normal job.
No, it was not a normal job.
As a matter of fact, you know, even, uh...
even the complicated currency procedures were followed
in much the same way as with any other transaction,
if borders had to be crossed, and that was very frequent.
For instance?
Well, I think the most interesting example is, of course, Greece,
the... the transports from Saloniki, Greece, in the spring of 1943,
involving some 46,000 victims over a considerable distance,
so that, even with group fare, the bill came to almost two million marks,
which was quite a sum.
And the basic principle, you see, with such traffic,
is that which is employed in the usual customary way,
even to this day, all over the world.
One pays in the currency of the place of origin,
but, then, one has to pay the participating railroads en route
in their own currencies.
So... - From Saloniki, they had to cross Greece.
- They had to cross Greece. - In Greece, it was drachmas?
In Greece, it was drachma, and then you might have to go through the...
- Yugoslavia. - Yes, the Serbian and Croatian railroads.
And you might have to then go through the Re/chsbahn and pay in mark.
Now, ironically, the problem was, you see, that the military commander in Saloniki,
who was in charge,
so he, in a sense, was the ultimate person responsible for paying for these things,
didn't have the mark.
And he didn't have the Reichsmark, although he did have the drachma.
The drachma, you see, he had from the confiscated Jewish property
which was used to pay for these things.
This was a self-financing principle.
The SS or the military would confiscate the Jewish property
and, with proceeds, especially from bank deposits, would pay for transports.
This means that the Jews themselves...
- Absolutely. - ...would pay for their death?
You have to remember... You have to remember one basic principle:
There was no budget for destruction.
Yes.
So that is the reason that the confiscated property had to be used
in order to make the payments.
All right.
The property of the Jews in Saloniki was confiscated,
but the proceeds were in local Greek currency.
The Reichsbahn, of course, would want payment in mark.
How, then, do you change the drachma into mark?
Now, you have exchange controllers, right within occupied Europe.
The only way it could be done, of course,
is if somebody in this occupied zone obtained mark.
But how could they?
This was not such a simple thing in wartime.
And, therefore, for once, there was a default.
The railroad had shipped all of these Jews to Auschwitz without compensation.
[Whistle Blows]
[ MUIIer, In German] The “special detaifs” life depended
on the trainloads due for extermination.
[Whistle Blows]
When a lot of them came in,
the “special detail” was enlarged.
They couldn't do without the detail,
so there was no weeding-out.
OSWIECIM (AUSCHWITZ) THE STATION TODAY
But when there were fewer trainloads...
[Train Whistle Blows]
It meant immediate extermination for us.
We, in the “special detail,” knew
that a lack of trains
would lead to our liquidation.
[ Train Clacking Continues]
- FILIP MULLER - The “special detail” lived in a crisis situation.
Every day,
we saw thousands and thousands of innocent people
disappear up the chimney.
With our own eyes, we could truly fathom
what it means to be a human being.
There they came,
men, women, children, all innocent.
They suddenly vanished,
and the world said nothing!
We felt abandoned. By the world, by humanity.
But the situation taught us fully
what the possibility of survival meant.
For we could gauge
the infinite value of human life.
And we were convinced
that hope lingers in man as long as he lives.
Where there's life, hope must never be relinquished.
That's why we struggled through our lives of hardship,
day after day, week after week, month after month,
year after year,
hoping against hope to survive,
to escape that hell.
[ Suchomel, In German] At that time,
in January, February,
March,
hardly any trains arrived.
Was Treblinka glum without the trains?
I wouldn't say the Jews were glum.
They became so when they realized...
I'll come to that later, it's a story in itself.
- Yes, it's a story in itself. - it's a story in itself.
Yes, I know.
The Jews,
those in the work squads, thought at first...
- Those in the work squads, yes. - that they'd survive.
But in January,
when they stopped receiving food,
for Wirth had decreed that there were too many of them,
there were a good 500 to 600 of them in Camp I...
- Up there? - Yes.
To keep them from rebelling,
they weren't shot or gassed,
but starved.
Then an epidemic broke out,
a kind of typhus.
The Jews stopped believing they'd make it.
They were left to die. They dropped like flies.
- Ja. - It was all over.
FRANZ SUCHOMEL
They'd stopped believing. - Ja.
It was all very well to say...
We kept on insisting, “You're going to live!”
We almost believed it ourselves.
If you lie enough, you believe your own lies.
Yes.
But they replied to me,
“No, chief, we're just reprieved corpses.”
[ Glazar, In German] The “dead season,” as it was called,
began in February 1943,
after the big trainloads came in from Grodno and Bialystok.
Absolute quiet.
It quieted in late January, February and into March.
Nothing.
Not one trainload.
The whole camp was empty,
and suddenly, everywhere, there was hunger.
It kept increasing.
And one day when the famine was at its peak,
OberscharfUhrer Kurt Franz appeared before us
and told us,
“The trains will be coming in again, starting tomorrow.”
We didn't say anything.
We just looked at each other,
and each of us thought,
“Tomorrow
the hunger will end.”
At that period,
we were actively planning the rebellion.
We all wanted to survive until the rebellion.
The trainloads came from an assembly camp in Saloniki.
They'd brought in Jews from Bulgaria, Macedonia.
These were rich people:
The passenger cars bulged with possessions.
Then an awful feeling gripped us,
all of us, my companions as well as myself.
A feeling of helplessness,
a feeling of shame.
For we threw ourselves on their food.
A detail brought a crate full of crackers,
another full of jam.
They deliberately dropped the crates,
falling over each other,
filling their mouths with crackers and jam.
The trainloads from the Balkans brought us
to a terrible realization:
RICHARD GLAZAR
We were the workers in the Treblinka factory,
and our lives depended
on the whole manufacturing process,
that is, the slaughtering process at Treblinka.
[ Lanzmann, In German] This realization came suddenly
with the fresh trainloads?
Maybe it wasn't so sudden,
but it was only with the Balkans trainloads
that it became...
so stark to us, unadorned.
Why?
24,000 people,
probably with not a sick person among them,
not an invalid, all healthy and robust!
I recall our watching them from our barracks.
They were already naked, milling among their baggage.
And David...
David Bratt said to me,
“Maccabees!
The Maccabees have arrived in Treblinka!”
Sturdy, physically strong people,
unlike the others...
- Fighters! - Yes, they could have been fighters.
It was staggering for us,
for these men and women, all splendid,
were wholly unaware of what was in store for them.
Wholly unaware.
Never before had things gone so smoothly and quickly.
Never.
We felt ashamed,
and also that this couldn't go on, that something had to happen.
Not just a few people acting
but all of us.
The idea was almost ripe back in November 1942.
Beginning in November '42
we'd noticed
that we were being “spared,”
in quotes.
We noticed it
and we also learned
that Stangl, the commandant, wanted, for efficiency's sake,
to hang on to men who were already trained,
specialists in the various tasks:
sorters, corpse-haulers,
barbers who cut the women's hair,
and so on.
This in fact is what later gave us the chance
to prepare,
to organize the uprising.
We had a plan
worked out in January 1943,
code-named “The Time.”
At a set time,
we were to attack the SS everywhere,
seize their weapons and attack the Kommandantur.
But we couldn't do it
because things were at a standstill in the camp,
and because typhus had already broken out.
[ MUIIer, In German] In the fall of 1943,
when it was clear to all of us
that no one would help us
unless we helped ourselves,
a key question faced us all:
For us in the “special detail,”
was there any chance to halt this wave of extermination
and still save our lives?
We could see only one:
armed rebellion.
We thought
that if we could get hold of a few weapons
and secure the participation of all the inmates
throughout the camp,
there was a chance of success.
That was the essential thing.
That's why our liaison men
contacted the leaders of the Resistance movement,
first in Birkenau,
then in Auschwitz I,
so the revolt could be coordinated everywhere.
FILIP MULLER
The answer came
that the Resistance command in Auschwitz I
agreed with our plan
and would join with us.
Unfortunately, among the Resistance leaders,
there were very few Jews.
Most were political prisoners
whose lives weren't at stake,
and for whom each day of life lived through
increased their chances of survival.
For us in the “special detail, ” it was the opposite.
RUDOLF VRBA
[ In English] Auschwitz and Birkenau,
apart from being a Hinrichtung center,
a mass -murder center,
was a normal concentration camp too,
which had its order, like Mauthausen,
like Buchenwald,
like Dachau, like Sachsenhausen.
But whereas, in Mauthausen,
the main product of prisoners' work was stone...
there was a big stone quarry...
the product in Auschwitz was death.
Everything was geared to keep the crematoria running.
This was the aim.
This means that the prisoners would work on the road leading to the crematoria.
They would build the crematoria.
Uh, they would build all barracks necessary for keeping up prisoners.
And, of course, apart from that,
there was an element of a normal German concentration camp,
because the Krupp and Siemens factories moved in and utilized slave labor.
So the Krupp factories and Siemens factories were built partly
directly within the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU
The tradition in the concentration camp was
that there was a considerable amount of political prisoners:
trade unionists, Social Democrats,
Communists,
ex-fighters from Spain.
What happened was a very peculiar development.
The Resistance leadership in Auschwitz
was concentrated in the hands of...
German-speaking anti-Nazis,
who were German by birth,
were considered racially pure by the Nazi hierarchy.
They got a bit better treatment than the rest of the camp.
I don't say that they were treated with gloves.
But they managed, with time,
to gain influence over various Nazi dignitaries from the SS
and to use it in a way
which led systematically to an improvement of conditions
within the concentration camp itself.
Whereas, in 1943... '42...
in Birkenau, in December and January,
a death rate of 400 prisoners per day was common,
by May 1943,
not only because of the weather improvement,
but due to the activities of the Resistance movement,
the improvement was so marked
that the mortality grossly decreased in the concentration camp.
And they considered it a great victory on their side.
And that improvement of living conditions
within the concentration camp
was, perhaps, not so against the policy of the higher echelons of SS ranks,
as long as it did not interfere with the objective of the camp.
This means production of death on the arrivals,
which were not prisoners of the camp.
There was a rule that if there are those people in the transport
who can be utilized for work,
who are in good physical condition,
they are not old, they are not too young, they are not children,
they are not women with children, et cetera, they look healthy,
they should come into the concentration camp
for replacement of those who were dying in the concentration camp,
as a fresh force.
And I could see the following discussions.
I once overheard...
A transport came from...
I think it was from Holland or from Belgium.
I do not guarantee which one it was.
And the SS doctor selected a group
of well-looking Jewish prisoners, newcomers,
from the whole transport, which would be gassed,
which was gassed.
But the representative SS from the concentration camp
said he doesn't want them.
And there was a discussion between them which I could overhear,
in which the doctor was saying, “Why don't you take them?
They are ausgefressene Juden auf der holléndischen Kése. ”
This mean, uh, “Jews full of... very, very nourished on Dutch cheese.”
“They would be good for the camp.”
And Fries, it was, HauptscharfiJhrer Fries, answered him.
[Quoting Fries In German]
“L can't take those people,
because nowadays they don't kick the bucket so fast in the camp.”
- This means they don't die fast enough? - That's right.
In other words, he explained that the stand of the camp was, say, 30,000.
If 500 or 5,000 died,
they were replaced by a new force
from the Jewish transport which came in.
But, if only a thousand died,
well, only a thousand were replaced, and more went into the gas chamber.
So, the improvement of the conditions within the concentration camp itself
made a higher death rate
in the gas chamber, straight into the gas chamber.
It decreased the death rate
among the prisoners in concentration camp.
So, it was clear to me
that the improvement of the situation of the concentration camp
does not impede the process of mass executions
of those people who were brought in into the camp.
Consequently, my idea, then, of the Resistance movement,
of the sense of the Resistance movement, was
that the improvement of the conditions within the camp is only a first step,
that the Resistance movement actually wants... is aware...
that the main thing is to stop the process of mass execution,
the machinery of the killing,
and that, therefore, it is a time of preparation,
of gathering of forces
for attacking the SS from inside,
even if it is a suicidal mission.
But, destroy the machinery.
And in this respect,
I would consider it as a suitable objective,
worthy objective.
And, um, it was also clear to me
that such an objective cannot be achieved overnight,
that there is necessary a lot of preparation and a lot of circumstances
about which, being only a small cog in the whole machinery of resistance,
I could not know or decide.
But it was clear in my mind
that the only objective of any resistance
within a concentration camp of the type of Auschwitz
has to be different from that in Mauthausen or in Dachau.
Because, whereas in Mauthausen and in Dachau,
this policy of resistance improved the survival rate of political prisoners,
the same very noble policy
improved and oiled the machinery of mass annihilation,
as practiced by the Nazis within the concentration camp.