FRANZ SUCHOMEL SS UnterscharfiJhrer
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!
Once more, but louder.
We're laughing about it but it's so sad.
No one's laughing.
Don't be sore at me.
You want History. 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”?
They were taught the song,
and by evening all of them had to sing it.
- Sing it again. - All right.
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!
Satisfied?
That's unique. No Jews know that today!
How was it possible in Treblinka
in peak days
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.
In January, the trains started arriving at 6 A.M.
- Always at 6 A.M.? - Not always.
Often. - Yes.
- The schedules were erratic. - Yes.
Sometimes one came at 6 A.M., then another at noon,
maybe another late in the evening.
You see?
So a train arrived.
I'd like you to describe in detail
the whole process.
During the peak period.
The trains left Malkinia station,
for Treblinka station.
How many miles from Malkinia to Treblinka?
About six miles.
Treblinka was a village.
A small village.
As a station,
it gained in importance because of the transports of Jews.
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.
How many Germans?
3to 5.
- No more? - No more. I can assure you.
How many Ukrainians?
Ten.
10 Ukrainians, 5 Germans.
2... 20 people from the Blue Squad.
Men from the Blue Squad were here and here.
They sent the people inside.
The Red Squad was here.
So the Red Squad was here.
What was the Red Squad's job?
The clothes...
to carry the clothes taken off by the men
and by the women
up here immediately.
How much time elapsed between unloading at the ramp
and the undressing,
how many minutes?
For the women,
let's say an hour in all.
An hour, an hour and a half.
A whole train took 2 hours. - Yes.
In 2 hours, it was all over.
Between the time of arrival
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.
Winter in Treblinka can be very cold.
Well, in winter, in December, anyway after Christmas.
But even before Christmas it was cold as hell.
Between 15 and minus 4.
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.
Can you...
describe this “funnel” precisely?
What was it like? How wide?
How was it for the people in this “funnel”?
It was about 13 feet wide.
As wide as this room.
On each side were walls this high or this high.
- Walls? - No, barbed wire.
Woven into the barbed wire
were branches of pine trees.
You understand?
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.
So everything was screened.
People couldn't see anything to the left or right.
Nothing.
You couldn't see through it.
Impossible.
Here and here too.
Here, too.
Impossible to see through.
THE CAMP TODAY
Treblinka,
where so many people were exterminated,
wasn't big, right?
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.
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.
No, they weren't beaten.
Why such humanity?
I didn't see it.
Maybe they were beaten too.
Why not?
They were about to die anyway.
Why not?
At the entrance to the gas chambers,
undoubtedly.
ABRAHAM BOMBA - ISRAEL -
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.
The men were chased through the “funnel.”
The women had to wait
until a gas chamber was empty.
- And the men? - No, they were whipped in first.
You understand?
The men were always first?
Yes, they always went first.
They didn't have to wait.
They weren't given time to wait, no.
And this “death-panic”...
When this “death-panic” sets in,
one lets go.
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.
That's a fact.
It's been medically...
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
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 -
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.”
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
RUDOLF VRBA Survivor of Auschwitz
THE OLD RAMP
THE NEW RAMP BUILT IN EARLY 1944
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
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.
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...?
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.
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
- Grab it from there. - 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.
So you're an actor now.
Let's finish this.
MOSHE MORDO
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.
He was sick,
and they put him in the oven, in the crematorium, and burned him.
That was at Birkenau.
The oldest boy was 17,
the second was 15.
Two more kids “kaput” with their morn.
Yes, 4 children I lost.
Your father too?
My dad, him too.
How old was your father?
Dad was 85 years old.
85 years old and he died in Auschwitz.
Auschwitz, that's right.
85 and he died at Birkenau.
My father.
Your father made the whole trip.
The whole family died.
First the gas chamber, then the crematorium.
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.
- By the street? - Yes, by this street.
- How many of you were there? - Exactly 1,650.
- Quite a crowd? - A lot of people.
Christians stopped there.
Christians, that's right. And they saw.
Where were the Christians?
- 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 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.
- Poland. - 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.
- What'd he say? - He asked me what you said.
He agrees our relations with the Christians are very good.
- 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.
Of the 1,700 people deported...
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?
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.
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.
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.
They burned them in Auschwitz, too.
Next figure: WALTER STIER Ex-member of the Nazi party
Former head, Reich Railways, Bureau 33 (“Railroads of the Reich”)
You ne ver saw a train ?
No, never.
We had so much work, I never left my desk.
We worked day and night.
E. D. O. B. ”
“GEDOB” means “Head office of Eastbound Traffic.”
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.
Are there still special trains now?
Of course.
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,
special trains are scheduled.
Or else one couldn't handle the traffic.
You said after the war you handled trains for visiting dignitaries.
After the war, yes.
If a king visits Germany by train,
that's a special train?
That's a special train.
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?
Why were there more special trains
during the war, than before or after?
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...
- In Berlin? - Correct.
As for the implementation of those orders,
the Head Office of Eastbound Traffic in Berlin dealt with it.
Yes, I understand.
- 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.
But you knew that the trains to Treblinka or Auschwitz were...
Of course we knew.
I was the last district:
Without me, these trains couldn't reach their destination.
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!
I see.
But it's astonishing
that people in the Department of Special Trains
never knew about the “final solution. ”
We were at war.
Because there were others
who worked for the railroads who knew.
Like the train conductors.
Yes, they saw it. They did.
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.
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?
Towards the end of the war.
- Not in 1942? - No!
Good God, no! Not a word!
Towards the end of 1944, maybe.
- 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.
- 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.
But you knew that the Nazis...
that Hitler didn't like the Jews?
That we did.
It was well-known, it appeared in print.
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.
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.
The Poles, for instance.
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.
TREBLINKA - THE STATION
The “special detaifs” life depended
on the trainloads due for extermination.
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,
it meant immediate extermination for us.
We, in the “special detail,” knew
that a lack of trains
would lead to our liquidation.
- 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.
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.
It was all over.
FRANZ SUCHOMEL
They'd stopped believing.
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.”
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.
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.
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
AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU