A little white house...
Lingers in my memory...
Of that little white house...
I dream each night...
The windows of that little house...
Beautifully shine in the sun...
As if someone's eyes...
Were filling with tears...
There was so much happiness in that little house...
And so many joyous days...
When I remember those blissful moments...
My heart trembles...
A little white house...
Lingers in my memory...
Of that little white house...
I dream each night...
He was 13 1/2 years old.
He had a lovely singing voice and we heard him.
A little white house...
Lingers in my memory...
Of that little white house...
I dream each night...
The windows of that little house...
Beautifully shine in the sun...
As if someone's eyes...
Were filling with tears...
When I heard him again, my heart beat faster,
because what happened here... was a murder.
I really relived what happened.
It's hard to recognize, but it was here.
They burned people here.
A lot of people were burned here.
Yes, this is the place.
No one ever left here again.
The gas vans came in here...
There were two huge ovens,
and afterward, the bodies were thrown
into these ovens,
and the ﬂames reached to the sky.
To the sky?
It was terrible.
No one can describe it.
No one can...
recreate what happened here.
Impossible! And no one can understand it.
Even I, here, now.
I can't believe I'm here.
No, I just can't believe it.
It was always this peaceful here.
When they burned 2,000 people... Jews... every day,
it was just as peaceful.
No one shouted. Everyone went about his work.
It was silent. Peaceful.
Just as it is now.
You, girl, don't you cry.
Don't be so sad.
For the dear summer is nearing...
and I'll return with it.
A mug of red wine, a slice of roast,
that's what the girls give their soldiers.
When the soldiers march along,
the girls open their doors and windows.
They thought the Germans made him sing on the river.
He was a toy to amuse them.
He had to do it.
He sang, but his heart wept.
Do their hearts weep thinking about that now?
Certainly, very much so.
They still talk about it around the family table.
It was public, so everyone knew of it.
He said that was true German irony,
people were being killed, and he had to sing.
That's what I thought.
What died in him in Chelmno?
Everything died.
But he's only human, and he wants to live.
So he must forget.
__ The other survivor: MICHAEL PODCHLEBNIK - ISRAEL
He thanks God for what remains and that he can forget.
And let's not talk about that.
Does he think it's good to talk about it?
For me it's not good.
Then why is he talking about it?
Because you're insisting on it.
He was sent books on the Eichmann trial, where he was a witness,
and he didn't even read them.
He survived, but is he really alive, or...?
At the time, he felt as if he were dead,
because he never thought he'd survive,
but... he's alive.
Why does he smile all the time?
What do you want him to do... cry?
Sometimes you smile, sometimes you cry.
And if you're alive, it's better to smile.
Why was she so curious about this story?
HAN NA ZATDL - ISRAEL -
Daughter of Motke Za'l'dl, survivor of Vilna (Lithuania)
It's a long story.
As a child, I had little contact with my father.
He went out to work, and I didn't see much of him.
Besides, he was a silent man, he didn 7 talk to me.
And when I grew up and was strong enough to face him,
I questioned him. I never stopped questioning him
until I got at the scraps of truth he couldn't tell me.
It came out haltingly.
I had to tear the details out of him,
and finally, when Mr. Lanzmann came,
I heard the whole story for the second time.
M OTKE ZATD L
BEN SHEMEN FOREST (ISRAEL)
The place resembles Ponary: the forest, the ditches.
It's as if the bodies were burned here.
Except there were no stones in Ponary.
Ponary: forest where most of the Vilna Jews were massacred
But the Lithuanian forests
are denser than the Israeli forest, no?
Of course.
The trees are similar, but taller and fuller in Lithuania.
FOREST OF THE EXTERMINATION CAMP AT SOBIBOR (POLAND)
ls there still hunting here in Sobibor forest?
Yes, there are lots of animals of all kinds.
Was there hunting then?
Only man hunting.
JAN PIWONSKI
Some victims tried to escape.
But they didn't know the area.
At times people heard explosions in the minefield.
Sometimes they'd find a deer
and sometimes a poor Jew who tried to escape.
That's the charm of our forests: silence and beauty.
But it wasn't always so silent here.
There was a time when it was full of screams
and gunshots,
of dogs' barking.
And that period especially
is engraved on the minds of the people
who lived here then.
After the revolt, the Germans decided to liquidate the camp,
and early in the winter of 1943,
they planted pines that were three or four years old
to camouﬂage all the traces.
That screen of trees?
Yes.
That's where the mass graves were?
When he first came here in 1944,
you couldn't guess what had happened here,
that these trees were hiding the secret of a death camp.
How did he react, the first time he unloaded corpses,
when the gas van doors were opened?
What could he do? He cried.
The 3rd day, he saw his wife and children.
He placed his wife in the grave and asked to be killed.
The Germans said he was strong enough to work,
that he wouldn't be killed yet.
Was the weather very cold?
It was in the winter of 1942, in early January.
At that time, the bodies weren't burned, just buried?
No, they were buried, and each row was covered with dirt.
They weren't being burned yet.
There were around four or five layers.
The ditches were funnel-shaped.
They dumped the bodies in these ditches,
and they had to lay them out like herrings, head to foot.
So it was they who dug up and burned all the Jews of Vilna?
Yes.
In early January 1944, we began digging up the bodies.
When the last mass grave was opened,
I recognized my whole family.
Whom in his family did he recognize?
Mom and my sisters. 3 sisters with their kids.
They were all in there.
How could he recognize them?
ITZHAK DUGIN: Survivor of Vilna
They'd been in the earth 4 months,
and it was winter.
They were very well preserved.
I recognized their faces, their clothes too.
They'd been killed relatively recently?
And it was the last grave?
The Nazi plan was for them to open the graves
starting with the oldest?
The last graves were the newest,
and we started with the oldest, those of the first ghetto.
In the first grave, there were 24,000 bodies.
The deeper you dug, the ﬂatter the bodies were.
Each was almost a ﬂat slab.
When you tried to grasp a body, it crumbled,
it was impossible to pick them up.
We had to open the graves, but without tools.
They said, “Get used to working with your hands.”
With just their hands?
When we first opened the graves,
we couldn't help it, we all burst out sobbing.
But the Germans almost beat us to death.
We had to work at a killing pace for two days,
beaten all the time, and with no tools.
They all burst out sobbing?
The Germans even forbade us
to use the words “corpse ” or “victim. ”
The dead were blocks of wood, shit,
with absolutely no importance...
Anyone who said “corpse” or “victim” was beaten.
The Germans made us refer to the bodies as “F (guren, ”
that is, as puppets, as dolls,
or as “Schmattes,” which means “rags.”
Were they told at the start
how many “Figuren” there were in all the graves?
The head of the Vilna Gestapo told us,
“There are 90,000 people lying there,
and absolutely no trace must be left of them.”
It was at the end of November 1942.
They chased us away from our work
and back to our barracks.
Suddenly,
from the part of the camp called
the death camp,
ﬂames shot up very high.
In a ﬂash, the whole countryside,
the whole camp seemed ablaze.
It was already dark.
We went into our barracks
and ate...
And from the window,
we kept on watching the fantastic backdrop of ﬂames
of every imaginable color,
red, yellow, green, purple.
And suddenly one of us stood up.
We knew he'd been an opera singer in Warsaw.
His name was Salve, and...
facing that curtain of fire,
he began chanting a song
I didn't know:
“My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken us?”
RICHARD GLAZAR - BASEL (SWITZERLAND)
“We have been thrust into the fire before,
but we he ve ne ver denied Thy Holy L a w. ”
He sang in Yiddish,
while, behind him,
blazed the pyres
on which they had begun then, in November 1942,
to burn the bodies in Treblinka.
That was the first time it happened.
We knew that night
that the dead would no longer be buried,
they'd be burned.
TREBLINKA
When things were ready, they poured on fuel
and touched off the fire.
They waited for a high wind.
The pyres usually burned for 7 or 8 days.
There was a concrete platform some distance away,
and the bones that hadn't burned,
the big bones of the feet, for example,
we took...
There was a chest with two handles.
We carried the bones there,
where others had to crush them.
It was very fine,
that powdered bone.
Then it was put into sacks,
and when there were enough sacks,
we went to a bridge on the Narew river
and dumped the powder.
The current carried it off.
It drifted downstream.
PAULA BIREN - CINCINNATI U.S.A. survivor of Auschwitz
THE JEWISH CEMETERY IN LODZ TODAY
AUSCHWITZ: THE TOWN
Mrs. Pietryra, you live in Auschwitz?
Yes, I was born here.
And you've never left Auschwitz?
No, never.
Were there Jews in Auschwitz before the war?
They made up 80% of the population.
They even had a synagogue here.
Just one?
Just one, I think.
Does it still exist?
No, it was wrecked.
There's something else there now.
Was there a Jewish cemetery in Auschwitz?
It still exists. it's closed now.
- It still exists? - Yes.
Closed? What does that mean?
They don't bury there now.
Was there a synagogue in Wlodawa?
Yes, and it's very beautiful.
When Poland was ruled by the czars,
that synagogue already existed.
It's even older than the Catholic church.
It's no longer used.
There's no one to go to it.
These buildings haven't changed?
Not at all. There were barrels of herrings here,
and the Jews sold fish.
There were stalls, small shops,
Jewish business, as the gentleman says.
That's Barenholz's house.
He sold wood.
Lipschitz's store was there. He sold cloth.
This was Lichtenstein's.
What was there, opposite?
A food store.
A Jewish store?
There was a notions shop here,
it sold thread, needles, odds and ends,
and there were also three barbers.
PAN FILIPOWICZ
- Was that fine house Jewish? - It's Jewish.
- And this small one? - Also.
And the one behind it?
These were all Jewish.
This one on the left, too?
That one too.
Who lived in it? Borenstein?
He was in the cement business.
He was very handsome, and cultivated.
Here there was a blacksmith named Tepper.
It was a Jewish house.
A shoemaker lived here.
What was his name?
- Yankel? - Yes.
You get the feeling Wlodawa was a Jewish city.
Yes, because it's true.
The Poles lived farther out, the center was wholly Jewish.
What happened to the Jews of Auschwitz?
They were expelled and resettled,
but I don't know where.
What year was that?
It began in 1940, which was when I moved here.
This apartment also belonged to Jews.
According to our information,
the Auschwitz Jews were “resettled,” as they say,
nearby, in Benzin and Sosnowiec, in Upper Silesia.
Yes, because those were Jewish towns.
Does she know what happened to the Jews of Auschwitz?
I think they all ended up in the camp.
That is, they returned to Auschwitz?
AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU
All kinds of people from everywhere were sent here.
All the Jews came here... to die.
What did they think when Wlodawa's Jews were all deported to Sobibor?
Wlodawa - Sobibor: 10 miles
What could we think?
That it was the end of them, but they had foreseen that.
How so?
Even before the war, when you talked to the Jews,
they foresaw their doom.
He doesn't know how.
Even before the war, they had a premonition.
How were they taken to Sobibor? On foot?
It was frightful. He watched it himself.
They were herded on foot to a station called Orkrobek.
There, they put the old people first into waiting cattle cars,
then the younger Jews,
and finally the kids.
That was the worst: They threw them on top of the others.
Were there a lot of Jews in Kolo?
A great many.
More Jews than Poles.
And what happened to the Kolo Jews?
Was he an eyewitness?
PAN FALBORSKI
Yes. It was frightful.
Frightful to see.
Even the Germans hid, they couldn't see that.
When the Jews were herded to the station, they were beaten,
some were even killed.
A cart followed the convoy to pick up the corpses.
- Those who couldn't walk, the slain? - Yes, those who'd fallen.
Where did this happen?
The Jews were collected in the Kolo synagogue.
Then they were herded to the station,
where the narrow-gauge rail road went to Chelmno.
It happened to all the Jews in the area, not just in Kolo?
Absolutely.
Everywhere.
Jews were also murdered in the forests
near Kalisz, not far from here.
ABRAHAM BOMBA - TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, survivor of Treblinka
TREBLINKA BY ROAD
He was born here
in 1923
and has been here even since.
He lived at this very spot?
Right here.
Then he had a front-row seat for what happened.
Naturally.
You could go up close or watch from a distance.
CZESLAW BOROWI
They had land on the far side of the station.
To work it, he had to cross the track,
so he could see everything.
Does he remember the first convoy of Jews from Warsaw
on July 22, 1942?
Yes.
He recalls the first convoy very well,
and when all those Jews were brought here,
people wondered, “What's to be done with them?”
Clearly, they'd be killed, but no one yet knew how.
When people began to understand what was happening,
they were appalled,
and they commented privately that since the world began,
no one had ever murdered so many people that way.
While all this was happening before their eyes,
normal life went on?
They worked their fields?
Certainly they worked,
but not as willingly as usual.
They had to work,
but when they saw all this, they thought,
“What if our house is surrounded and we're arrested?”
Were they afraid for the Jews, too?
Well, he says it's this way:
If I cut my finger, it doesn't hurt him.
They saw what happened to the Jews:
The convoy came in and then went to the camp,
and the people vanished.
He had a field less than 100 yards from the camp.
He also worked during the German occupation.
- He worked his field? - Yes.
He saw how they were asphyxiated,
he heard them scream, he saw that.
There's a small hill: He could see quite a bit.
What did he say?
They couldn't stop and watch.
It was forbidden. The Ukrainians shot at them.
But they could work a field 100 yards from the camp?
They could.
So occasionally he could steal a glance,
if the Ukrainians weren't looking.
He worked with his eyes lowered?
Yes.
He worked by the barbed wire and heard awful screams.
His field was there?
Yes, right up close.
It wasn't forbidden to work there.
So he worked, he farmed there?
Yes.
Where the camp is now was partly his field.
It was off limits, but they heard everything.
It didn't bother him to work so near those screams?
At first it was unbearable. Then you got used to it.
You get used to anything?
Yes.
Now he thinks... it's impossible.
Yet it was true.
So he saw the convoys arriving.
There were 60 to 80 cars in each convoy,
and there were two locomotives
that took the convoys into the camp,
taking 20 cars at a time.
And the cars came back empty?
- Yes. - Does he remember...?
Here's how it happened:
The locomotive picked up 20 cars
and took them to the camp.
That took maybe an hour,
and the empty cars came back here.
Then the next 20 cars were taken,
and meanwhile, the people in the first 20 were already dead.
They waited, they wept,
they asked for water, they died.
Sometimes they were naked in the cars, up to 170 people.
This is where they gave the Jews water, he says.
Where was that?
Here. When the convoys arrived, they gave water to the Jews.
Who gave the Jews water?
We did, the Poles.
There was a tiny well, we took a bottle and...
Wasn't it dangerous to give them water?
Very dangerous.
You could be killed for giving a glass of water.
But we gave them water anyway.
Is it very cold here in winter?
It depends.
It can get to minus 15, minus 20.
Which was harder on the Jews, summer or winter?
Waiting here, I mean.
He thinks winter, because they were very cold.
They were so packed in the cars, maybe they weren't cold.
In summer they stiﬂed: It was very hot.
The Jews were very thirsty. They tried to get out.
Were there corpses in the cars on arrival?
Obviously.
They were so packed in
that even those still alive sat on corpses for lack of space.
Didn't people here who went by the trains
look through the cracks in the cars?
Yes, they could look in sometimes as they went by.
When they were allowed, they gave them water, too.
How did the Jews try to get out?
The doors weren't opened. How'd they get out?
Through the windows.
They removed the barbed wire
and came out of the windows.
They jumped, of course.
Sometimes they just deliberately sat down on the ground,
and the guards came and shot them in the head.
Theyjumped from the cars... What a sight!
Jumping from the windows.
There was a mother and child.
- Jewish? - Yes.
She tried to run away,
and they shot her in the heart.
- Shot who... the mother? - Yes, the mother.
This gentleman has lived here a long time, he can't forget.
He says that now he can't understand
how a man can do that to another human being.
It's inconceivable, beyond understanding.
Once when the Jews asked for water, a Ukrainian went by
and forbade giving any.
The Jewish woman that had asked for water...
threw her pot at his head.
The Ukrainian moved back,
maybe ten yards, and opened fire on the car.
Blood and brains were all over the place.
Lots of people opened the doors
or escaped through the windows.
Sometimes the Ukrainians fired through the car walls.
It happened chieﬂy at night.
When the Jews talked to each other, as he showed us,
the Ukrainians wanted things quiet,
and they asked... yes, asked them to shut up.
So the Jews shut up and the guard moved off.
Then the Jews started talking again, in their language,
as he says, ra-ra-ra, and so on.
What's he mean, la-la-la? What's he trying to imitate?
- Their language. - No, ask him.
Was the Jews' noise something special?
They spoke Jew.
Does Mr. Borowi understand “Jew”?
No.
Did he hear screams behind his locomotive?
Obviously, since the locomotive was next to the camp.
They screamed, asked for water.
The screams from the cars closest to the locomotive
could be heard very well.
Can one get used to that?
No.
It was extremely distressing to him.
He knew that the people behind him were human, like him.
The Germans gave him and the other workers vodka to drink.
Without drinking, they couldn't have done it.
There was a bonus
that they were paid not in money, but in liquor.
Those who worked on other trains didn't get this bonus.
HENRIK GAWKOWSKI
He drank every drop he got
because without liquor he couldn't stand the stench
when he got here.
They even bought more liquor on their own
to get drunk on.
From the station to the unloading ramp in the camp,
how many miles?
Foun
AB RAHAM BC) M BA
We traveled for two days.
On the morning of the second day
we saw that we had left Czechoslovakia
and were heading east.
It wasn't the SS guarding us,
but the Schutzpolizei,
the police, in green uniforms.
We were in ordinary passenger cars.
All the seats were filled.
You couldn't choose.
They were all numbered and assigned.
In my compartment there was an elderly couple.
I still remember:
The good man was always hungry and his wife scolded him,
saying they'd have no food left for the future.
RICHARD GLAZAR
Then, on the second day,
I saw a sign for Malkinia.
We went on a little farther.
Then, very slowly,
the train turned off the main track
and rolled at a walking pace through a wood.
While he looked out,
we'd been able to open a window.
The old man in our compartment saw a boy...
Cows were grazing...
And he asked the boy in signs,
“Where are we?”
And the kid made a funny gesture. This!
Across the throat.
- A Pole? - A Pole.
Where was this? At the station?
It was where the train had stopped.
On one side was the wood,
and on the other were fields.
And there was a farmer in a field?
We saw cows
watched over by a young man,
a farmhand.
And one of you questioned him?
Not in words, but in signs, we asked, “What's going on here?”
And he made that gesture. Like this.
We didn't really
pay much attention to him.
We couldn't figure out what he meant.
Once there were foreign Jews...
They were this fat...
This fat?
Riding in passenger cars.
There was a dining car, they could drink
and walk around, too.
They said they were going to a factory.
On arrival, they saw what kind of a factory it was.
We'd gesture...
Gesture how?
That they'd be killed.
These people made that sign?
He says the Jews didn't believe it.
But what does that gesture mean?
That death awaited them.
The people who had a chance to get near the Jews
did that to warn them...
- He did it too? - That they'd be hanged, killed, slain.
Yes.
Even foreign Jews from Belgium, Czechoslovakia,
from France too, surely.
And from Holland...
These didn't know,
but the Polish Jews knew.
In the small cities in the area,
it was talked about.
So the Polish Jews were forewarned, but not the others.
Who'd they warn, Polish Jews or the others?
All the Jews.
He says the foreign Jews arrived here in passenger cars,
they were well dressed, in white shirts,
there were ﬂowers in the cars, and they played cards.
From what I know, that was very rare,
Jews shipped in passenger cars.
Most arrived in cattle cars.
It's not true.
It's not true?
What did Mrs. Gawkowska say?
She said he may not have seen everything.
He says he did.
Once, at the Malkinia station, for example,
a foreign Jew left the train
to buy something at the bar.
The train pulled out and he ran after it...
To catch up to it.
So he went past these “Pullmans,” as he calls them,
those Jews who were calm, unsuspecting,
and he made that gesture to them.
To all the Jews, in principle.
He just went along the platform. Ask him.
Yes. The road was as it is now.
When the guard wasn't looking,
he made that gesture.
Ask Mr. Gawkowski why he looks so sad.
Because I saw men marching to their death.
Precisely where are we now?
It's not far... a mile and a half from here.
What, the camp?
What's that dirt road he's indicating?
That's where the rail line into the camp was.
Did Mr. Gawkowski, aside from the trains of deportees
he drove from Warsaw or Bialystok to the Treblinka station...
Did he ever drive the deportee cars
into the camp from the Treblinka station?
Did he do it often?
Two or three times a week.
Over how long a period?
Around a year and a half.
That is, throughout the camp's existence?
This is the ramp.
Here he is, he goes to the end with his locomotive,
and he has the 20 cars behind him.
No, they're in front of him.
He pushed them?
That's right, he pushed them.
In February 1942,
I began working here as an assistant switchman.
The station building, the rails, the platforms
are just as they were in 1942?
Nothing's changed?
Nothing.
Exactly where did the camp begin?
JAN PIWONSKI
I'll show you exactly.
Here,
there was a fence that ran to those trees you see there.
And another fence that ran to those trees over there.
So I'm standing inside the camp perimeter, right?
That's right.
Where I am now is 50 feet from the station,
and I'm already outside the camp.
Yes.
So this is the Polish part, and over there was death.
Yes.
On German orders, Polish railmen split up the trains.
So the locomotive took 20 cars
and headed toward Chelm.
When it reached a switch,
it pushed the cars into the camp on the other track we can see.
The ramp began there.
So here we're outside the camp,
and back here we enter it.
Unlike Treblinka, the station here is part of the camp.
And at this point, we are inside the camp.
This track was inside the camp.
And it's exactly as it was?
Yes, the same track.
It hasn't changed since then.
Where we are now is what was called the ramp, right?
Yes, those to be exterminated were unloaded here.
So where we're standing
is where 250,000 Jews were unloaded before being gassed.
Yes.
Did foreign Jews arrive here in passenger cars, too?
Not always.
Often the richest Jews,
from Belgium, Holland, France,
arrived in passenger cars,
sometimes even in 1st class.
They were usually better treated by the guards.
Especially the convoys of Western European Jews
waiting their turn here,
Polish railmen saw the women putting on make-up, combing their hair,
wholly unaware of what awaited them minutes later.
They dolled up.
And the Poles couldn't tell them anything:
The guards forbad contact with the future victims.
I suppose there were fine days like today.
Unfortunately, some were even finer.
RUDOLF VRBA - NEW YORK, USA, survivor of Auschwitz
AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU
And suddenly it started: the yelling and screaming.
“AII out, everybody out!”
All those shouts, the uproar, the tumult!
“Out! Get out!
Leave the baggage!”
We got out, stepping on each other.
We saw men wearing blue armbands.
Some carried whips.
We saw some SS men.
Green uniforms,
black uniforms...
We were a mass,
and the mass swept us along.
It was irresistible.
It had to move to another place.
I saw the others undressing.
And I heard, “Get undressed! You're to be disinfected!”
As I waited, already naked,
I noticed the SS men separating out some people.
These were told to get dressed.
A passing SS man suddenly stopped in front of me,
looked me over, and said,
“Yes, you too, quick, join the others, get dressed.
You're going to work here, and if you're good,
you can be a kapo... a squad leader. ”
BIRKENAUI THE RAMP
We were taken to the barracks.
The whole place stank.
Piled about five feet high
in a jumbled mass,
were all the things people could conceivably have brought.
Clothes, suitcases,
everything stacked in a solid mass.
On top of it, jumping around like demons,
people were making bundles
and carrying them outside.
I was turned over to one of these men.
His armband said, “Squad Leader.”
He shouted,
and I understood that I was also to pick up clothing, bundle it,
and take it somewhere.
As I worked, I asked him,
“What's going on? The undressed ones... Where are they?”
And he replied, “Dead! All dead!”
But it still hadn't sunk in, I didn't believe it.
He'd used the Yiddish word.
It was the first time I'd heard Yiddish spoken.
He didn't say it very loud,
and I saw he had tears in his eyes.
Suddenly he started shouting
and raised his whip.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw an SS man coming.
And I understood that I was to ask no more questions,
but just to rush outside with the package.
All I could think of then was my friend Care! Unger.
He'd been at the rear of the train,
in a section that had been uncoupled and left outside.
I needed someone. Near me. With me.
Then I saw him. He was in the 2nd group.
He'd been spared too.
On the way, somehow, he had learned, he already knew.
He looked at me,
all he said was, “Richard, my father, mother, brother...”
He had learned on the way there.
Your meeting with Carel:
how long after your arrival did it happen?
It was... around 20 minutes after we reached Treblinka.
Then I left the barracks
and had my first look at the vast space
that I soon learned was called “the sorting place.”
It was buried under mountains of objects of all kinds.
Mountains of shoes, of clothes, 30 feet high.
I thought about it and said to Carel,
“I! is a hurricane, a raging sea.
We're shipwrecked. And we're still alive.
We must do nothing
but watch for every new wave,
ﬂoat on it,
get ready for the next wave,
and ride the wave at all costs.
And nothing else.”
Greenery, sand everywhere else.
At night, we were put into barracks.
It just had a sand ﬂoor.
Nothing else.
Each of us simply dropped where he stood.
Half asleep, I heard some men hang themselves.
We didn't react then. It was almost normal.
Just as it was normal
that for everyone behind whom the gate of Treblinka closed,
there was death, had to be death,
for no one was supposed to be left to bear witness.
I already knew that,
three hours after arriving at Treblinka.
BERLIN
INGE DEUTSCHKRON Born in Berlin
Lived there through the war
(In hiding beginning in February 1943)
Now lives in Israel
FRANZ SUCHOMEL: SS Unterscharfuhrer
- Are you ready? - Yes.
- Then we can... - We can begin.
How's your heart? Is everything in order?
Oh, my heart... For the moment, ifs all right.
If I have any pain, I'll tell you.
We'll have to break off.
Of course.
But your health, in general, is...
The weather today suits me fine.
The barometric pressure is high: That's good for me.
You look to be in good shape, anyway.
Let's begin with Treblinka.
Certainly.
I think that's best.
If you could give us
a description of Treblinka.
How did it look when you arrived?
I believe you got there in August?
Was it August 20 or 24?
The 18th? - I don't know exactly.
Around August 20.
I arrived there with seven other men.
From Berlin?
From Berlin.
From Lublin?
From Berlin to Warsaw, from Warsaw to Lublin,
from Lublin back to Warsaw and from Warsaw to Treblinka.
What was Treblinka like then?
Treblinka then was operating at full capacity.
- Full capacity? - Full capacity!
Trains arrived...
The Warsaw ghetto was being emptied then.
Three trains arrived in two days,
each with three, four, five thousand people aboard,
all from Warsaw.
But at the same time, other trains came in
from Kielce and other places.
So three trains arrived,
and since the offensive against Stalingrad was in fear,
the trainloads of Jews were left on a station siding.
What's more, the cars were French,
made of steel.
So that while 5,000 Jews arrived in Treblinka,
3,000 were dead.
- In the... - In the cars.
They had slashed their wrists,
or just died.
The ones we unloaded were half-dead
and half-mad.
In the other trains from Kielce
and elsewhere,
at least half were dead.
We stacked them here, here,
here and here.
Thousands of people
piled one on top of another.
- On the ramp? - On the ramp.
Stacked like wood.
In addition,
other Jews, still alive, waited there for two days:
The small gas chambers could no longer handle the number.
They functioned day and night in that period.
Can you please describe, very precisely,
your first impression of Treblinka?
Very precisely. it's very important.
My first impression of Treblinka,
and that of some of the other men, was catastrophic.
For we had not been told
how and what... that people were being killed there.
They hadn't told us.
- You didn't know? - No!
Incredible!
But true. I didn't want to go.
That was proved at my trial.
I was told,
“Mr. Suchomel,
there are big workshops there for tailors and shoemakers,
and you'll be guarding them.”
Nothing more. - But you knew it was a camp?
Yes. We were told,
“The Fuhrer ordered a resettlement program.
It's an order from the Fuhrer.”
Understand? - Resettlement program...
No one ever spoke of killing.
I understand.
Mr. Suchomel, we're not discussing you,
only Treblinka.
You are a very important eyewitness,
and you can explain what Treblinka was.
But don't use my name.
No, I promise.
All right, you've arrived at Treblinka.
So Stadie, the sarge,
showed us the camp
from end to end.
Just as we went by,
they were opening the gas chamber doors,
and people fell out like potatoes.
Naturally, that horrified and appalled us.
We went back and sat down on our suitcases
and cried like old women.
Each day, 100 Jews were chosen
to drag the corpses to the mass graves.
In the evening, the Ukrainians drove those Jews into the gas chambers
or shot them.
Every day!
It was in the hottest days of August.
The ground undulated like waves
because of the gas.
From the bodies?
Bear in mind, the graves were maybe 18, 20 feet deep,
all crammed with bodies!
A thin layer of sand and the heat. You see?
It was hell up there.
You saw that?
Yes, just once, the first day.
We puked and wept.
- You wept? - We wept too, yes.
The smell was infernal.
Yes, because gas was constantly escaping.
It stank horribly, for miles around.
- Miles? - Miles!
You could smell it all around,
not just in the camp?
Everywhere. It depended on the wind.
The stink was carried on the wind.
Understand?
More people kept coming, always more,
whom we hadn't the facilities to kill.
Those gents were in a rush to clean out the Warsaw ghetto.
The gas chambers couldn't handle the load.
The small gas chambers.
The Jews had to wait their turn
for a day, 2 days, 3 days.
They foresaw what was coming.
They foresaw it.
They may not have been certain, but many knew.
There were Jewish women
who slashed their daughters' wrists at night,
then cut their own.
Others poisoned themselves.
They heard the engine feeding the gas chamber.
A tank engine was used in that gas chamber.
At Treblinka, the only gas used was engine exhaust.
Zyklon gas, that was Auschwitz.
Because of the delay,
Eberl, the camp commandant,
phoned Lublin and said,
“We can't go on this way. I can't do it any longer.
We have to break off.”
Overnight, Wirth arrived.
He inspected everything and then left.
He returned with people from Belzec,
experts.
Wirth arranged to suspend the trains.
The corpses lying there were cleared away.
That was the period of the old gas chambers.
Because there were so many dead
that couldn't be gotten rid of,
for days and days,
the bodies piled up around the gas chambers.
Under this pile of bodies was a cesspool:
3 inches deep, full of blood, worms...
and shit.
- Where? - In front of the gas chamber.
No one wanted to clean it out.
The Jews preferred to be shot
rather than work there.
Preferred to be shot?
It was awful. Burying their own people, seeing it all...
The dead ﬂesh came off in their hands.
So Wirth went there himself
with a few Germans
and had long belts rigged up
that were wrapped around the dead torsos to pull them...
- Who did that? - SS men.
- Wirth? - SS men and Jews.
SS men and Jews!
Jews too?
Jews too!
What did the Germans do?
They forced the Jews to...
They beat them?
Or they themselves helped with the cleanup.
Which Germans did that?
Some of our guards who were assigned up there.
The Germans themselves?
They had to.
They were in command!
They were in command, but they were also commanded.
I think the Jews did it.
In that case, the Germans had to lend a hand.
THE BLACK EXECUTION WALL IN THE COURTYARD OF BLOCK II
AT AUSCHWITZ I, THE ORIGINAL CAMP
Filip, on that Sunday in May 1942,
when you first entered the Auschwitz crematorium,
how old were you?
Twenty.
It was a Sunday in May.
We were locked in an underground cell in Block 11.
We were held in secret.
Then some SS men appeared
and marched us along a street in the camp.
We went through a gate,
and around 300 feet away,
300 feet from the gate,
I suddenly saw a building.
It had a ﬂat roof, and a smokestack.
I saw a door in the rear.
I thought they were taking us to be shot.
FILIP MULLER - CZECH JEW
Survivor of the 5 liquidations of the Auschwitz “special detail”
Suddenly, before a door
under a lamp in the middle of this building,
a young SS man told us,
“Inside, filthy swine!”
We entered a corridor.
They drove us along it.
Right away, the stench, the smoke choked me.
They kept on chasing us,
and then I made out the shapes
of the first two ovens.
Between the ovens, some Jewish prisoners were working.
We were in the crematorium's incineration chamber
in Camp I at Auschwitz.
From there,
they herded us to another big room,
and told us to undress the corpses.
I looked around me.
There were hundreds of bodies,
all dressed.
Piled with the corpses
were suitcases, bundles
and, scattered everywhere,
strange, bluish-purple crystals.
I couldn't understand any of it.
It was like a blow to the head... as if you'd been stunned.
I didn't even know where I was.
Above all, I couldn't understand
how they managed to kill so many people at once.
When we undressed some of them,
the order was given to feed the ovens.
Suddenly, an SS man rushed up and told me,
“Get out of here! Go stir the bodies!”
What did he mean,
“Stir the bodies”?
I entered the cremation chamber.
There was a Jewish prisoner,
Fischel, who later became a squad leader.
He looked at me,
and I watched him poke the fire with a long rod.
He told me, “Do as I'm doing
or the SS Will kill you.”
I picked up a poker
and did as he was doing.
A poker?
A steel poker.
I obeyed Fischel's order.
At that point I was in shock as if I'd been hypnotized,
ready to do
whatever I was told.
I was so mindless, so horrified
that I did everything Fischel told me.
So the ovens were fed,
but we were so inexperienced
that we left the fans on too long.
- The fans? - Yes.
There were fans to make the fire hotter.
They worked too long...
The firebrick suddenly exploded,
blocking the pipes
linking the Auschwitz crematorium
with the smokestack.
Cremation was interrupted.
The ovens were out of action.
That evening, some trucks came,
and we had to load the rest,
some 300 bodies,
into the trucks.
Then we were taken...
I still don't know where...
but probably to a field at Birkenau.
We were ordered to unload the bodies
and put them in a pit.
There was a ditch, an artificial pit.
Suddenly, water gushed up from underground
and swept the bodies down.
When night came, we had to stop that horrible work.
We were loaded into the trucks
and returned to Auschwitz.
The next day,
we were taken to the same place.
But the water had risen.
Some SS men came with a fire truck
and pumped out the water.
We had to go down into that muddy pit
to stack up the bodies.
But they were slimy.
For example, I grasped a woman,
but her hands...
Her hand was slippery, slimy.
I tried to pull her,
but I fell over backward, into the water, the mud.
It was the same for all of us.
Up above, at the edge of the pit, Aumeyer and Grabner yelled,
“Get cracking, you filth, you bastards!
We'll show you, you bunch of shits!”
These were the names they were calling us.
And in these...
how shall I say? ...circumstances,
2 of my “friends” couldn't take any more.
One was a French student.
All Jews! They were exhausted.
They just lay there...
in the mud.
Aumeyer called one of his SS men.
“Go on, finish off those swine!”
They were exhausted. And they were shot in the pit.
There was no crematorium at Birkenau then?
No, there weren't any there yet.
Birkenau still wasn't completely set up.
Only Camp BI, which was the late women's camp, existed.
It wasn't until the spring of 1943
that skilled workmen and unskilled laborers, all Jews,
must have gone to work here
and built the 4 crematorium.
Each crematorium had 15 ovens,
a big undressing room, around 3,000 square feet,
and a big gas chamber
where up to 3,000 people at once could be gassed.
TREBLINKA
The new gas chambers were built in September 1942.
Who built them?
Hackenhold and Lambert supervised the Jews who did the work,
the bricklaying, at least.
Ukrainian carpenters made the doors.
The gas chamber doors themselves
were armored bunker doors.
I think they were brought from Bialystok,
from some Russian bunkers.
FRANZ SUCHOMEL
What was the capacity of the new gas chambers?
There were 2 of them, right? - Yes.
But the old ones hadn't been demolished.
When there were a lot of trains, a lot of people,
the old ovens were put back into service.
And here... the Jews say there were 5 on each side.
I say there were 4,
but I'm not sure.
In any case, only the upper row,
on this side,
was in action.
Why not the other side?
Disposing of the bodies would have been too complicated.
- Too far? - Yes.
Up there, Wirth had built the death camp,
assigning a detail of Jewish workers to it.
The detail had a fixed number in it,
around 200 people,
who worked only in the death camp.
But what was the capacity of the new gas chambers?
The new gas chambers... Let's see...
They could finish off 3,000 people in two hours.
How many people at once in a single gas chamber?
I can't say exactly.
The Jews say 200.
- 200? - That's right, 200.
Imagine a room this size.
They put more in at Auschwitz.
Auschwitz was a factory!
And Treblinka?
I'll give you my definition.
Keep this in mind:
Treblinka was a primitive,
but efficient production line of death.
- A production line? - Of death.
Understand? - Yes.
But primitive...? - Primitive, yes.
But it worked well, that production line of death.
Was Belzec even more rudimentary?
Belzec was the laboratory.
Wirth was camp commandant.
He tried everything imaginable there.
He got off on the wrong foot.
The pits were overﬂowing,
and the cesspool seeped out in front of the SS mess hall.
It stank...
in front of the mess-hall, in front of their barracks.
- Were you at Belzec? - No.
Wirth with his own men.
With Franz, with Oberhauser
and Hackenhold...
he tried everything there.
Those 3 had to put the bodies in the pits themselves
so that Wirth could see how much space he needed.
And when they rebelled...
Franz refused...
Wirth beat Franz with a whip.
He whipped Hackenhold, too. You see?
- Kurt Franz? - Kurt Franz.
That's how Wirth was.
Then, with that experience behind him,
he came to Treblinka.
Excuse me. How many quarts of beer a day do you sell?
You can't tell me?
I'd rather not. I have my reasons.
But why not?
Two Pilsners.
How many quarts of beer a day do you sell?
- Go on, tell him. - Tell him what?
Just tell him approximately.
How many quarts of beer a day do you sell?
400, 500 quarts.
- What? - 400, 500 quarts.
That's a lot!
Have you worked here long?
Around 20 years.
- Why are you hiding... - I have my reasons.
- Your face? - I have my reasons.
What reasons?
- Never mind. - Why not?
Do you recognize this man?
No?
Christian Wirth?
Mr. Oberhauser!
Do you remember Belzec?
No memories of Belzec?
Of the overﬂowing graves?
You don't remember?
MUNICH
WUPPERTALI ANTON SPIESS,
German state prosecutor at the Treblinka trial (Frankfurt, 1960)
When the Action itself first got under way,
it was almost totally improvised.
At Treblinka, for example,
the commandant, Dr. Eberl, let more trains come in
than the camp could handle.
It was a disaster!
Mountains of corpses!
Word of this foul-up
reached the head of the Reinhard Action,
00770 G/oboczn/k, in Lub//n.
He went to Treblinka
to see what was happening.
There's a very concrete account of the trip
by his former driver, Oberhauser.
Globocznik arrived on a hot day in August.
The camp was permeated
with the stench of rotting ﬂesh.
Globocznik didn't even bother to enter the camp.
He stopped here, before the commandant's office,
sent for Dr. Eberl
and greeted him with these words,
“How dare you accept so many every day
when you can only process 3,000?”
Operations were suspended,
Eberl was transferred and Wirth came,
followed immediately by Stangl,
and the camp was completely reorganized.
The Reinhard Action covered 3 extermination camps."
Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec.
There's also talk of 3 death camps on the Bug River,
for they were all located on or near the Bug.
The gas chambers were the heart of the camp.
They were built first,
in the woods, or in a field, as at Treblinka.
The gas chambers were the only stone buildings.
All the others were wooden sheds.
These camps weren't built to last.
Himmler was in a huny to begin the 'final solution. ”
The Germans had to capitalize on their eastward advance
and use this remote back-country
to carry out their mass murder as secretly as possible.
So at first they couldn't manage the perfection
they achieved 3 months later.
Near the end of March 1942,
sizeable groups of Jews were herded here,
groups of 50 to 100 people.
Several trains arrived
with sections of barracks, with posts, barbed wire, bricks...
and construction of the camp as such began.
The Jews unloaded these cars
and carted the sections of barracks to the camp.
The Germans made them work extremely fast.
When we saw the pace they worked at...
It was extremely brutal.
When we saw the complex being built, and the fence,
which, after all, enclosed a vast space,
we realized that what the Germans were building
wasn't meant to aid mankind.
Early in June,
the first convoy arrived.
I'd say there were over 40 cars.
With the convoy were SS men in black uniforms.
It happened one afternoon. He had just finished work.
JAN PIWONSKI
But he got on his bicycle and went home.
Why?
I merely thought
these people had come to build the camp,
as the others had before them.
That convoy...
There was no way of knowing that it was...
the first earmarked for extermination.
Besides,
he couldn't have known that Sobibor
would be a place for the mass extermination of the Jews.
The next morning, when I came here to work,
the station was absolutely silent,
and we realized,
after talking with the Poles who worked at the station here,
that something utterly incomprehensible had happened.
First of all, when the camp was being built,
there were orders shouted in German,
there were screams,
Jews were working at the run, there were shots,
and here there was that silence,
no work crews,
a really total silence.
40 cars had arrived, and then... nothing.
It was all very strange.
It was the silence that tipped them off?
That's right.
Can he describe that silence?
It was a silence...
Nothing was going on in the camp. You heard nothing.
Nothing moved.
So then they began to wonder,
“Where have they put those Jews?”
Cell 13, Block 11 at Auschwitz 1,
is where the Special Work Detail was held.
The cell was underground, isolated.
For we were...
“bearers of secrets,”
we were reprieved dead men.
We weren't allowed to talk to anyone,
or contact any prisoner,
even the SS.
Only those in charge of the “Action.”
There was a window.
We heard what happened in the courtyard.
The executions,
the victims' cries, the screams,
but we couldn't see anything.
This went on for several days.
One night an SS man came
from the political section.
It was around 4 A.M.
The whole camp was still asleep.
There wasn't a sound in the camp.
We were again taken out of our cell
and led to the crematorium.
There, for the first time, I saw the procedure used
with those who came in alive.
We were lined up against a wall
and told, “No one may talk to those people.”
Suddenly, the wooden door to the crematorium courtyard opened,
and 250 to 300 people filed in:
old people, and women.
They carried bundles, wore the Star of David.
Even from a distance, I could tell
they were Polish Jews,
probably from Upper Silesia,
from the Sosnowiec ghetto, some 20 miles from Auschwitz.
FILIP MULLER
I caught some of the things they said.
I heard “fachowitz,”
meaning “skilled worker.”
And “Malach-ha-Mavis,”
which means “the angel of death” in Yiddish.
Also, “harginnen”: “They're going to kill us.”
From what I could hear,
I clearly understood the struggle going on inside them.
Sometimes they spoke of work
probably hoping that they'd be put to work.
Or they spoke of “Malach-ha-Mavis,” the angel of death.
The conﬂicting words echoed the conﬂict in their feelings.
Then a sudden silence
fell over those gathered in the crematorium courtyard.
All eyes converged
on the ﬂat roof of the crematorium.
Who was standing there?
Aumeyer, of the SS,
Grabner, the head of the political section,
and Hossler, the SS officer.
Aumeyer addressed the crowd,
“You're here to work,
for our soldiers fighting at the front.
Those who can work will be all right.”
it was obvious that hope ﬂared in those people.
You could feel it clearly.
The executioners had gotten past the first obstacle.
They saw it was succeeding.
Then Grabner spoke up,
“We need masons, electricians,
all the trades.”
Next, Hossler took over.
He pointed to a short man in the crowd.
I can still see him.
“What's your trade?”
The man said,
“Mr. Officer, I'm a tailor.”
“A tailor? What kind of tailor?”
“A man's... No, for both men and women.”
“Wonderful! We need people like you in our workshops.”
Then he questioned a woman,
“What's your trade?”
“Nurse,” she replied.
“Splendid! We need nurses in our hospitals for our soldiers.
We need all of you! But first, undress.
You must be disinfected.
We want you healthy.”
I could see the people were calmer,
reassured by what they'd heard,
and they began to undress.
Even if they still had their doubts,
if you want to live, you must hope.
Their clothing remained in the courtyard,
scattered everywhere.
Aumeyer was beaming,
very proud of how he'd handled things.
He turned to some of the SS men and told them,
“You see? That's the way to do it!”
By this device,
a great leap fon/vard had been made:
Now the clothing could be used.
RAUL H I LBERG, historian
FRANZ SCHALLING
First, explain to me...
how you came to Kulmhof, to Chelmno.
You were at Lodz, right?
In Lodz, yes.
In Litzmannstadt.
We were on permanent guard duty.
Protecting military objectives: mills,
the roads, when Hitler went to East Prussia.
It was dreary, and we were told,
“We're looking for men who want to break out of this routine.”
So we volunteered.
We were issued winter uniforms,
overcoats, fur hats, fur-lined boots,
and 2 or 3 days later we were told, “We're off!”
We were put aboard 2 or 3 trucks... I don't know...
They had benches,
and we rode and rode.
Finally we arrived.
The place was crawling with SS men and police.
Our first question was, “What goes on here?”
They said, “You'll find out!”
- You'll find out? - You'll find out.
- You weren't in the SS, you were... - Police.
- Which police ? - Security guards.
We were ordered to report to the Deutsche Haus,
the only big stone building in the village.
We were taken into it.
An SS man immediately told us,
“This is a top secret mission!”
- Secret? - “A top secret mission.”
“Sign this!”
We each had to sign.
There was a form ready for each of us.
What did it say?
It was a pledge of secrecy.
We never even got to read it through.
You had to take an oath?
No, just sign,
promising to shut up about whatever we'd see.
- Shut up? - Not say a word.
After we'd signed, we were told,
“Final solution of the Jewish question.”
We didn't understand what that meant.
So someone said...
He told us what was going to happen there.
Someone said, “the final solution of the Jewish question.”
You'd be assigned to the “final solution”?
Yes, but what did that mean?
We'd never heard that before.
So it was explained to us.
Just when was this?
Let's see... when was it...?
In the winter of 1941-42.
Then we were assigned to our stations.
Our guard post was at the side of the road.
A sentry box in front of the castle.
So you were in the “castle detail”?
That's right.
Can you describe what you saw?
We could see. We were at the gatehouse.
When the Jews arrived, the way they looked:
half-frozen, starved, dirty, already half-dead.
Old people, children.
Think of it! The long trip here standing in a truck, packed in!
Who knows if they knew what was in store!
They didn't trust anyone, that's for sure.
After months in the ghetto, you can imagine!
I heard an SS man shout at them,
“You're going to be deloused
and have a bath.
You're going to work here.”
The Jews consented.
They said, “Yes, that's what we want to do.”
Was the castle big?
Pretty big, with huge front steps.
The SS man stood at the top of the steps.
Then what happened?
They were hustled into 2 or 3 big rooms on the first ﬂoor.
They had to undress, give up everything:
rings, gold, everything.
How long did the Jews stay there?
Long enough to undress.
Then, stark naked,
they had to run down more steps
to an underground corridor
that led back up to the ramp, where the gas van awaited them.
Did the Jews enter the van willingly?
No, they were beaten.
Blows fell everywhere, and the Jews understood.
They screamed.
It was frightful!
F rightful!
I know, because we went down to the cellar
when they were all in the van.
We opened the cells of the work detail,
the Jewish workers
who collected the things thrown out of the 1st-ﬂoor window into there.
Describe the gas vans.
Like moving vans.
Very big?
They stretched, say,
from here to the window.
Just big trucks,
like moving vans, with 2 rear doors.
What system was used?
How did they kill them?
- With exhaust fumes. - Exhaust fumes?
It went like this: A Pole yelled, “Gas!”
Then the driver got under the van to hook up the pipe
that fed the gas into the van.
- Yes, but how? - From the motor.
Yes, but through what?
A pipe... a tube.
He fiddled around under the truck.
I'm not sure how.
It was just exhaust gas?
That's all.
Who were the drivers?
SS men.
All those men were SS.
Were there many of these drivers?
I don't know.
Were there 2, 3, 5, 10?
Not that many. 2 or 3, that's all.
I think there were 2 vans,
one big, one smaller.
Did the driver sit in the cabin of the van?
- Mrs. Uwe? - No.
He climbed into the cabin after the doors were closed
and started the motor.
Did he race the motor?
I don't know.
Could you hear the sound of the motor?
Yes, from the gate we could hear it turn over.
Was it a loud noise?
The noise of a truck engine.
The van was stationary while the motor ran?
That's right.
Then it started moving.
We opened the gate, and it headed for the woods.
Were the people already dead?
I don't know.
It was quiet. No more screams.
No screams.
You couldn't hear anything as they drove by.
He recalls: It was 1941, 2 days before the new year.
They were routed out at night,
and in the morning they reached Chelmno.
There was a castle there.
When he entered the castle courtyard,
he knew something awful was going on.
He already understood.
THE SITE OF THE CASTLE
They saw clothes and shoes
scattered in the courtyard.
Yet they were alone there.
He knew his parents had been through there,
and there wasn't a Jew left.
They were taken down into a cellar.
On a wall was written, “No one leaves here alive.”
Graffiti in Yiddish.
There were lots of names.
He thinks it was the Jews from villages around Chelmno
who had come before him, who had written their names.
A few days after New Year's,
the y heard people arrive in a truck one morning.
The people were taken out of the truck
and up to the first ﬂoor of the castle.
The Germans lied, saying they were to be deloused.
They were chased down the other side,
where a van was waiting.
The Germans pushed and beat them with their weapons
to hustle them into the trucks faster.
He heard people praying, “Shma Israel, ”
and he heard the van's rear doors being shut.
Their screams were heard,
becoming fainter and fainter,
and when there was total silence,
the van left.
He and the 4 others were brought out of the cellar.
They went upstairs
and gathered up the clothes remaining
outside the supposed baths.
Did he understand then how they'd died?
MICHAEL PODCHLEBNIK,
the survivor of the 1st period of extermination at Chelmno
(the castle period)
Yes, first because there had been rumors of it.
And when he went out, he saw the sealed vans,
so he knew.
He understood that people were gassed in the vans?
Yes, because he'd heard the screams
and heard how they weakened,
and later the vans were taken into the woods.
What were the vans like?
Like the ones that deliver cigarettes here.
They were enclosed, with double-leaf rear doors.
What color?
The color the Germans used, green, ordinary.
MARTHA MICHELSOHN
How many German families were there in Kulmhof (Chelmno)?
10 or 11, I'd say.
Germans from Volhynia and 2 families from the Reich,
the Bauers and us.
- And you? - Us, the Michelsohns.
How did you wind up in Kulmhof?
I was born in Laage,
and I was sent to Kulmhof.
They were looking for volunteer settlers,
and I signed up.
That's how I got there.
First 'm Wafihbrucken (Ken),
then Chelmno... Kulmhof.
Directly from Laage?
No, I left from Munster.
Did you opt to go to Kulmhof?
No, I asked for Wartheland.
Why?
A pioneering spirit.
- You were young! - Oh, yes, I was young.
- You wanted to be useful? - Yes.
What was your first impression of Wartheland?
It was primitive. Super-primitive.
Meaning...?
Even worse,
worse than primitive.
Difficult to understand, right?
But why. . .?
The sanitary facilities were disastrous.
The only toilet was in WarthbrUcken, in the town.
You had to go there.
The rest was a disaster.
- Why a disaster? - There were no toilets at all!
There were privies.
I can't tell you
how primitive it was.
Astonishing!
Why did you choose such a primitive place?
I was young, you know.
You can't imagine such places exist.
You don't believe it. But that's how it was.
This was the whole village.
A very small village,
straggling along the road.
Just a few houses.
There was the church, the castle,
a store, too,
the administrative building and the school.
The castle was next to the church,
with a high board fence around both.
How far was your house from the church?
It was just opposite... 150 feet.
Mrs. Michelsohn was the Nazi teacher's wife
Did you see the gas vans?
No...
Yes, from the outside. They shuttled back and forth.
I never looked inside... I didn't see Jews in them.
I only saw things from outside,
the Jews' arrival, their disposition,
how they were loaded aboard.
Since World War I,
the castle had been in ruins.
Only part of it could still be used.
That's where the Jews were taken.
This ruined castle was used...
For housing and delousing the Poles, and so on.
- The Jews! - Yes, the Jews.
Why do you call them “Poles” and not “Jews”?
Sometimes, I get them mixed up.
There's a difference between Poles and Jews?
Oh, yes!
What difference?
The Poles weren't exterminated,
and the Jews were.
That's the difference. An external difference, right?
And the inner difference?
I can't assess that.
I don't know enough about psychology and anthropology.
The difference between the Poles and the Jews?
Anyway, they couldn't stand each other.
On January 19, 1942,
the rabbi of Grabow, Jacob Schulmann,
wrote the following letter to his friends in Lodz:
“My very dear friends,
I didn't write sooner: I wasn't sure of what I'd heard.
Alas, to our great grief, we now know all.
I've spoken to an eyewitness who managed to escape.
He told me everything.
They're exterminated in Chelmno, near Dombie,
and they're all buried in the nearby Rzeszow forest.
The Jews are killed in 2 ways: by shooting or gas.
It's just happened to thousands of Lodz Jews.
Do not think that this is being written by a madman.
Alas, it is the tragic, horrible truth.
Horror, horror. Man, shed thy clothes,
cover thy head with ashes, run in the streets
and dance in thy madness.
I am so weary that my pen can no longer write.
Creator of the universe, help us!”
The creator did not help the Jews of Grabow.
With their rabbi, they all died in the gas van at Chelmno
a few weeks later.
Chelmno is only 12 miles from Grabow.
Were there a lot of Jews here in Grabow?
A lot, quite a few.
They were sent to Chelmno.
Has she always lived near the synagogue?
- Yes. - The Polish word is “Buzinica,” not synagogue.
She says it's now a furniture warehouse
but they didn't harm it from a religious point of view.
It hasn't been... desecrated.
Does she remember the rabbi at the synagogue?
THE SYNAGOGUE IN GRABOW
She says she's 80 now, and her memory isn't too good,
and the Jews have been gone for 40 years.
Barbara, tell this couple they live in a lovely house.
Do they agree? Do they think it's a lovely house?
Tell me about the decoration of this house, the doors,
what's it mean?
People used to do carvings like that.
Did they decorate it that way?
- No, it was the Jews again. - The Jews did it!
The door's a good century old.
Did Jews own this house?
Yes, all these houses.
All these houses on the square were Jewish?
Jews lived in all the ones in front, on the street.
Where did the Poles live?
In the courtyards, where the privies were.
There used to be a store here.
What kind?
A food store.
Owned by Jews?
Yes.
So the Jews lived in the front,
and the Poles in the courtyard with the privies.
How long have these two lived here?
15 years.
Where'd they live before?
In a courtyard across the square.
They've gotten rich.
- Them? - Yes.
Yes.
How did they get rich?
They worked.
How old is the gentleman?
He's 70.
He looks young and healthy.
Do they remember the Jews of Grabow?
Yes.
And when they were deported, too.
They recall the deportation of the Grabow Jews?
He says he speaks “Jew” well.
He speaks “Jew”?
As a kid he played with Jews so he speaks “Jew.”
First, they grouped them there, where that restaurant is,
or in this square,
and took their gold.
An elder among the Jews collected the gold
and turned it over to the police.
That done, the Jews were put in the Catholic church.
A lot of gold?
Yes, the Jews had gold
and some handsome candelabras.
Did the Poles know the Jews would be killed at Chelmno?
Yes, they knew.
The Jews knew it, too.
Did the Jews try to do something about it,
to rebel, to escape?
The young tried to run away.
But the Germans caught them
and maybe killed them even more savagely.
In e very to wn and village, 2 or 3 streets were closed,
and the Jews were kept under guard.
They couldn't leave there.
Then they were locked in the Polish church here in Grebe w
and later taken to Chelmno.
BACKGROUND, THE SYNAGOGUE
The Germans threw children as small as these
into the trucks by the legs.
She saw that?
- Old folks too. - Threw kids into the trucks.
The Poles knew the Jews would be gassed in Chelmno?
Did this gentleman know?
Does he recall the Jews' deportation from Grabow?
At that time, he worked in the mill.
- There, opposite? - Yes, and they saw it all.
What did he think of it? Was it a sad sight?
Yes, it was...
Yes. How could you see that without sadness?
What trades were the Jews in?
They were tanners, tradesmen,
tailors.
They sold things... eggs, chickens, butter.
There were a lot of tailors,
tradesmen, too.
But most were tanners.
- They had beards and side locks. - Yes.
He says they weren't pretty.
They weren't pretty?
- They stank, too. - They stank?
Why did they stink?
Because they were tanners, and the hides stink.
The Jewish women were beautiful.
The Poles liked to make love with them.
Are Polish women glad there are no Jewesses left?
What'd she say?
That the women who are her age now
also liked to make love.
So the Jewish women were competitors?
It's crazy how the Poles liked the little Jewesses!
Do the Poles miss the little Jewesses?
Naturally, such beautiful women!
Why? What made them so beautiful?
Because they did nothing. Polish women worked.
Jewish women only thought of their beauty and clothes.
So Jewesses did no work!
- None at all. - Why not?
They were rich.
The Poles had to serve them and work.
I heard her use the word “capital.”
The capital was in the hands of the Jews.
Yes... You didn't translate that.
Ask her again. So the capital was in the Jews' hands?
All Poland was in the Jews' hands.
Are they glad there are no more Jews here, or sad?
It doesn't bother them.
As you know, Jews and Germans ran all Polish industry before the war.
Did they like them on the whole?
Not much. Above all, they were dishonest.
Was life in Grabow more fun when the Jews were here?
He'd rather not say.
Why does he call them dishonest?
They exploited the Poles. That's what they lived off.
How did they exploit them?
By imposing their prices.
Ask her if she likes her house.
Yes,
but her children live in much better houses.
In modern houses!
They've all gone to college.
Great! That's progress!
Her children are the best educated in the village.
Very good, Madam! Long live education!
Isn't this a very old house?
Yes, Jews lived here before.
So Jews used to live here. Did she know them?
Yes.
What was their name?
She doesn't know.
What was their trade?
Benkel, their name was.
And what was their trade?
They had a butcher shop.
A butcher shop. Why is she laughing?
Because the gentleman said it was...
a butcher shop where you could buy cheap meat. Beef!
What does he think about them being gassed in trucks?
He says he doesn't like that at all.
If they'd gone to Israel of their own free will,
he might have been glad.
But killing them was unpleasant.
Does he miss the Jews?
Yes, because there were some beautiful Jewesses.
For the young, it was... fine.
Are they sorry the Jews are no longer here or pleased?
How can I tell? I never went to school.
I can only think of how I am now. Now I'm fine.
Is she better off?
Before the war, she picked potatoes.
Now she sells eggs, and she's much better off.
Because the Jews are gone or because of socialism?
She doesn't care, she's happy because she's doing well now.
How did he feel about losing his classmates?
It still upsets him.
Does he miss the Jews?
Certainly.
They were good Jews, Madam says.
GRABOW IN WINTER
The Jews came in trucks,
and later there was a narrow-gauge railway
that they arrived on.
They were packed tightly in the trucks,
or in the cars of the narrow-gauge railway.
Lots of women and children.
Men too, but most of them were old.
The strongest were put in work details.
They walked with chains on their legs.
In the morning, they fetched water,
looked for food, and so on.
These weren't killed right away.
That was done later.
I don't know what became of them.
They didn't survive, anyway.
Two of them did.
Only two.
They were in chains?
- On the legs. - All of them?
The workers, yes. The others were killed at once.
The Jewish work squad went through the village in chains.
Yes.
Could people speak to them?
No, that was impossible.
Why?
No one dared.
- What? - No one dared.
Understand?
Yes... No one dared.
Why, was it dangerous?
Yes, there were guards.
Anyway, people wanted nothing to do with all that.
Do you see?
Gets on your nerves, seeing that every day.
You can't force a whole village to watch such distress.
When the Jews arrived,
when they were pushed into the church or the castle...
And the screams!
It was frightful! Depressing.
Day after day, the same spectacle!
It was terrible! A sad spectacle!
They screamed. They knew what was happening.
At first, the Jews thought they were going to be deloused.
But they soon understood.
Their screams grew wilder and wilder.
Horrifying screams. Screams of terror.
Because they knew what was happening to them.
Do you know how many Jews were exterminated there?
Four something, 400,000... 40,000...
400, 000.
400,000, yes. I knew it had a 4 in it.
Sad, sad, sad!
When the soldiers march,
the girls open their windows and doors...
Do you remember a Jewish child, a boy of 13?
He was in the work squad.
He sang on the river.
- On the Narew River? - Yes.
- Is he still alive ? - Yes, he is alive.
He sang a German song
that the SS in Chelmno taught him.
“When the soldiers march,
the girls open their windows and doors...”
SIMON SREBNIK,
the survivor of the 2nd period of extermination at Chelmno
(the church period)
So it's a holiday in Chelmno!
What holiday? What's being celebrated?
The birth of the Virgin Mary. It's her birthday.
It's a huge crowd, isn't it?
But the weather's bad... it's raining.
Ask them if they're glad to see Srebnik again.
Very. it's a great pleasure.
Why?
They're glad to see him again,
because they know all he's lived through.
Seeing him as he is now, they're very pleased.
They're pleased?
Why does the whole village remember him?
They remember him well
because he walked with chains on his ankles,
and he sang on the river.
He was young,
he was skinny,
he looked ready for his coffin.
Ripe for a coffin!
Did he seem happy or sad?
Even the lady,
when she saw that child,
she told the German, “Let that child go!”
He asked her, “Where to?”
“To his father and mother.”
Looking at the sky, he said, “He'll soon go to them.”
The German said that?
They remember when the Jews were locked in this church?
Yes, they do.
They brought them to the church in trucks.
At what time of day?
All day long and into the night.
What happened? Can they describe it in detail?
At first, the Jews were taken to the castle.
Only later were they put into the church.
The second phase, right!
In the morning, they were taken into the woods.
How were they taken into the woods?
In very big armored vans.
The gas came through the bottom.
Then they were carried in gas vans, right?
Yes, in gas vans.
Where did the vans pick them up?
- The Jews? - Yes.
Here, at the church door.
The trucks pulled up where they are now?
No, they went right to the door.
The vans came to the church door?
And they all knew these were death vans?
Yes, they couldn't help knowing.
They heard screams at night?
The Jews moaned, they were hungry.
They were shut in and starved.
Did they have any food?
You couldn't look there. You couldn't talk to a Jew.
Even going by on the road, you couldn't look there.
Did they look anyway?
Yes, vans came,
and the Jews were moved farther off.
You could see them, but on the sly.
- In sidelong glances. - That's right.
That's right, in sidelong glances.
What kind of cries and moans were heard at night?
They called on Jesus and Mary and God,
sometimes in German, as she puts it.
The Jews called on Jesus, Mary and God!
The presbytery was full of suitcases.
The Jews' suitcases?
Yes, and there was gold.
How does she know there was gold?
The procession! We'll stop now.
Were there as many Jews in the church
as there were Christians today?
Almost.
How many gas vans were needed to empty it out?
An average of 50.
It took 50 vans to empty it!
In a steady stream?
Yes.
The lady said before
that the Jews' suitcases were dumped in the house opposite.
What was in this baggage?
Pots with false bottoms.
What was in the false bottoms?
Valuables... objects of value.
They also had gold in their clothes.
When given food, the Jews sometimes threw them valuables
or sometimes money.
They said before it was forbidden to talk to Jews.
Absolutely forbidden.
Ask them if they miss the Jews.
Of course.
We wept too, Madam says.
And Mr. Kantarowski gave them bread and cucumbers.
Why do they think all this happened to the Jews?
Because they were the richest!
Many Poles were also exterminated.
Even priests.
Mr. Kantarowski...
will tell us what a friend told him.
It happened in Myndjewyce, near Warsaw.
Go on.
The Jews were gathered in a square.
The rabbi asked an SS man, “Can I talk to them?”
The guard said yes.
So the rabbi said that around 2,000 years ago,
the Jews condemned the innocent Christ to death.
And when they did that, they cried out,
“Let his blood fall on our heads and on our sons' heads.”
Then the rabbi told them,
“Perhaps the time has come for that, so let us do nothing.
Let us go, let us do as we're asked.”
He thinks the Jews expiated the death of Christ?
He doesn't think so, or even that Christ sought revenge.
He didn't say that. The rabbi said it.
It was God's will, that's all!
- What'd she say? - So Pilate washed his hands
and said, “Christ is innocent,” he sent Barabbas.
But the Jews cried out,
“Let his blood fall on our heads.”
That's all. Now you know!
Was the road between Chelmno, the village
and the woods where the pits were,
was it asphalted as it is now?
The road was narrower then, but it was asphalted.
How many feet were the pits from the road?
They were around 1,600 feet,
maybe 1,900 or 2,200 feet away.
So even from the road, you couldn't see them.
How fast did the vans go?
PAN FALBORSKI
At moderate speed, kind of slow.
It was a calculated speed
because they had to kill the people inside on the way.
When they went too fast,
the people weren't quite dead on arrival in the woods.
By going slower, they had time to kill the people inside.
Once a van skidded on a curve.
Half an hour later, I arrived
at the hut of a forest warden named Senajak.
He told me, “Too bad you were late.
You could have seen a van that skidded.
The rear of the van opened,
and the Jews fell out on the road.
They were still alive.
Seeing those Jews crawling, a Gestapo man
took out his revolver and shot them.
He finished them all off.
Then they brought Jews who were working in the woods.
They righted the van
and put the bodies back inside.”
This was the road
the gas vans used.
There were 80 people in each van.
When they arrived, the SS said,
“Open the doors!”
We opened them. The bodies tumbled right out.
An SS man said, “2 men inside!”
These 2 men worked at the ovens. They were experienced.
Another SS man screamed,
“Hurry up! The other van's coming!”
We worked until the whole shipment was burned.
That's how it went, all daylong. So it went.
I remember that once they were still alive.
The ovens were full,
and the people lay on the ground.
They were all moving,
they were coming back to life,
and when they were thrown into the ovens,
they were all conscious. Alive.
They could feel the fire burn them.
When we built the ovens, I wondered what they were for.
An SS man told me,
“To make charcoal. For laundry irons.”
That's what he told me. I didn't know.
When the ovens were completed,
the logs put in
and the gasoline poured on and lighted,
and when the first gas van arrived,
then we knew why the ovens were built.
When I saw all that, it didn't affect me.
Neither did the 2nd or 3rd shipment.
I was only 13,
and all I'd ever seen until then
were dead bodies.
Maybe I didn't understand.
Maybe if I'd been older I'd have understood,
but the fact is, I didn't.
I'd never seen anything else.
In the ghetto, I saw... in the ghetto in Lodz,
that as soon as anyone took a step, he fell dead.
I thought that was the way things had to be.
It was normal.
I'd walk the streets of Lodz,
maybe 100 yards, and there'd be 200 bodies.
People were hungry.
They went into the street and they fell, they fell...
Sons took their fathers' bread,
fathers took their sons'.
Everyone wanted to stay alive.
So when I came here, to Chelmno,
I was already...
I didn't care about anything.
I thought, if I survive,
I just want one thing:
5 loaves of bread to eat.
That's all.
That's what I thought.
But I dreamed, too,
that if I survived, I'd be the only one left in the world,
not another soul. Just me. One.
Only me left in the world, if I get out of here.
THE RUHR
“Geheime Reichssache, ” secret Reich business.
“Berlin, June 5, 1942.
Changes to be made to special vehicles now in service
at Kulmhof (Chelmno)
and to those now being built.
Since December 1941,
97,000 have been processed (verarbeitet in German)
by the 3 vehicles in service, with no major incident.
In light of observations made so far, however,
the following technical changes are needed:
First,
the van's normal load is usually 9 to 10 per square yard.
In Saurer vehicles, which are very spacious,
maximum use of space is impossible,
not because of any possible overload,
but because loading to full capacity
would affect the vehicle's stability.
So reduction of the load space seems necessary.
It must absolutely be reduced by a yard,
instead of trying to solve the problem, as hitherto,
by reducing the number of pieces loaded.
Besides, this extends the operating time,
as the empty void must also be filled with carbon monoxide.
On the other hand, if the load space is reduced
and the vehicle is packed solid,
the operating time can be considerably shortened.
The manufacturers told us during a discussion,
that reducing the size of the van's rear
would throw it badly off balance.
The front axle, they claim, would be overloaded.
In fact, the balance is automatically restored
because the merchandise aboard
displays, during the operation,
a natural tendency to rush to the rear doors,
and are mainly found lying there at the end of the operation.
So the front axle is not overloaded.
Secondly:
The lighting must be better protected than now.
The lamps must be enclosed in a steel grid
to prevent their being damaged.
Lights could be eliminated,
since they apparently are never used.
However, it has been observed
that when the doors are shut,
the load always presses hard against them
(against the doors)
as soon as darkness sets in.
This is because the load
naturally rushes toward the light
when darkness sets in,
which makes closing the doors difficult.
Also, because of the alarming nature of darkness,
screaming always occurs when the doors are closed.
It would therefore be useful to light the lamp
before and during the first moments of the operation.
Third:
For easy cleaning of the vehicle,
there must be a sealed drain in the middle of the ﬂoor.
The drainage hole's cover, 8 to 12 inches in diameter,
would be equipped with a slanting trap,
so that ﬂuid liquids
can drain off during the operation.
During cleaning,
the drain can be used to evacuate large pieces of din'.
The aforementioned technical changes
are to be made to vehicles in service
only when they come in for repairs.
As for the 10 vehicles ordered from Saurer,
they must be equipped with all innovations and changes
shown by use and experience to be necessary.
Submitted for decision to Gruppenleiter II D,
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Walter Rauff.
Signed Just.”
END OF THE FIRST ERA