Shoah Page #10

Suddenly, before a door

under a lamp

in the middle of this building,

a young SS man told us,

Inside, filthy swine!

We entered a corridor.

They drove us along it.

Right away, the stench,

the smoke choked me.

They kept on chasing us,

and then I made out the shapes

of the first two ovens.

Between the ovens,

some Jewish prisoners were working.

We were in the crematorium's

incineration chamber

in Camp I at Auschwitz.

From there,

they herded us to another big room,

and told us to undress the corpses.

I looked around me.

There were hundreds of bodies,

all dressed.

Piled with the corpses

were suitcases, bundles

and, scattered everywhere,

strange, bluish-purple crystals.

I couldn't understand any of it.

It was like a blow to the head...

as if you'd been stunned.

I didn't even know where I was.

Above all, I couldn't understand

how they managed

to kill so many people at once.

When we undressed some of them,

the order was given to feed the ovens.

Suddenly, an SS man

rushed up and told me,

Get out of here! Go stir the bodies!

What did he mean,

Stir the bodies?

I entered the cremation chamber.

There was a Jewish prisoner,

Fischel, who later became

a squad leader.

He looked at me,

and I watched him

poke the fire with a long rod.

He told me, Do as I'm doing

or the SS will kill you.

I picked up a poker

and did as he was doing.

[ Lanzmann ]

A poker?

A steel poker.

I obeyed Fischel's order.

At that point I was in shock

as if I'd been hypnotized,

ready to do

whatever I was told.

I was so mindless, so horrified

that I did everything Fischel told me.

So the ovens were fed,

but we were so inexperienced

that we left the fans on too long.

- The fans?

- Yes.

There were fans to make the fire hotter.

- Mm-hmm.

They worked too long...

The firebrick suddenly exploded,

blocking the pipes

linking the Auschwitz crematorium

with the smokestack.

Cremation was interrupted.

The ovens were out of action.

That evening, some trucks came,

and we had to load the rest,

some 300 bodies,

into the trucks.

Then we were taken...

I still don't know where...

but probably to a field at Birkenau.

We were ordered

to unload the bodies

and put them in a pit.

There was a ditch, an artificial pit.

Suddenly, water gushed up

from underground

and swept the bodies down.

When night came,

we had to stop that horrible work.

We were loaded into the trucks

and returned to Auschwitz.

The next day,

we were taken to the same place.

But the water had risen.

Some SS men came

with a fire truck

and pumped out the water.

We had to go down

into that muddy pit

to stack up the bodies.

But they were slimy.

For example, I grasped a woman,

but her hands...

Her hand was slippery, slimy.

I tried to pull her,

but I fell over backward,

into the water, the mud.

It was the same for all of us.

Up above, at the edge of the pit,

Aumeyer and Grabner yelled,

Get cracking, you filth, you bastards!

We'll show you, you bunch of shits!

These were the names they were calling us.

And in these...

[ Repeats Phrase]

How shall I say?

...circumstances,

2 of my friends

couldn't take any more.

One was a French student.

- Ja?

-Juden?

All Jews! They were exhausted.

They just lay there...

in the mud.

Aumeyer called one of his SS men.

Go on, finish off those swine!

They were exhausted.

And they were shot in the pit.

[ Lanzmann ]

There was no crematorium at Birkenau then?

[ MUIIer]

No, there weren't any there yet.

Birkenau still wasn't completely set up.

Only Camp BI, which was

the late women's camp, existed.

It wasn't until the spring of 1943

that skilled workmen

and unskilled laborers, all Jews,

must have gone to work here

and built the 4 crematorium.

Each crematorium had 15 ovens,

a big undressing room,

around 3,000 square feet,

and a big gas chamber

where up to 3,000 people at once

could be gassed.

TREBLINKA:

[ Suchomel, In German] The new gas chambers

were built in September 1942.

[ Lanzmann, In German]

Who built them?

Hackenhold and Lambert supervised

the Jews who did the work,

the bricklaying, at least.

Ukrainian carpenters made the doors.

The gas chamber doors themselves

were armored bunker doors.

I think they were brought

from Bialystok,

from some Russian bunkers.

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.

[ Lanzmann ]

Why not the other side?

[Suchomel ] Disposing of the bodies

would have been too complicated.

- Too far?

- Yes.

Up there,

Wirth had built the death camp...

[ Lanzmann ]

Ja.

[Suchomel ]

assigning a detail of Jewish workers to it.

The detail had a fixed number in it,

around 200 people...

[ Lanzmann ]

Die im Toten/ager...

[Suchomel Repeats Phrase]

who worked only in the death camp.

[ Lanzmann ] 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.

[ Lanzmann ] 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.

[ Lanzmann ]

They put more in at Auschwitz.

Auschwitz was a factory!

[ Lanzmann ]

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.

Ja.

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.

Wirlh 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...

Wirlh beat Franz with a whip.

He whipped Hackenhold, too. You see?

- Kurt Franz?

- Kurt Franz.

Mm-hmm.

That's how Wirth was.

Then, with that experience behind him,

he came to Treblinka.

[ People Chattering In German]

[Glasses Clanking ]

[Woman Speaking German]

[ Lanzmann, In German ] Excuse me.

How many quarts of beer a day do you sell?

You can't tell me?

[ In German]

I'd rather not. I have my reasons.

- But why not?

- Ja.

[ Man ]

Two Pilsners.

Ja.

[ Lanzmann ]

How many quarts of beer a day do you sell?

- Go on, tell him.

- Tell him what?

Just tell him approximately.

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