Shoah Page #26

And, therefore, for once,

there was a default.

The railroad had shipped all of these Jews

to Auschwitz without compensation.

[Whistle Blows]

[Whistle Blows]

[ MUIIer, In German]

The special detaifs life depended

on the trainloads due for extermination.

[Whistle Blows]

When a lot of them came in,

the special detail was enlarged.

They couldn't do without the detail,

so there was no weeding-out.

OSWIECIM (AUSCHWITZ)

THE STATION TODAY

But when there were fewer trainloads...

[Train Whistle Blows]

It meant immediate extermination for us.

We, in the special detail, knew

that a lack of trains

would lead to our liquidation.

[ Train Clacking Continues]

- FILIP MULLER -

The special detail lived in a crisis situation.

Every day,

we saw thousands

and thousands of innocent people

disappear up the chimney.

With our own eyes,

we could truly fathom

what it means to be a human being.

There they came,

men, women, children, all innocent.

They suddenly vanished,

and the world said nothing!

We felt abandoned.

By the world, by humanity.

But the situation taught us fully

what the possibility of survival meant.

For we could gauge

the infinite value of human life.

And we were convinced

that hope lingers in man

as long as he lives.

Where there's life,

hope must never be relinquished.

That's why we struggled

through our lives of hardship,

day after day, week after week,

month after month,

year after year,

hoping against hope to survive,

to escape that hell.

[ Suchomel, In German]

At that time,

in January, February,

March,

hardly any trains arrived.

Was Treblinka glum without the trains?

I wouldn't say the Jews were glum.

They became so when they realized...

I'll come to that later,

it's a story in itself.

- Yes, it's a story in itself.

- it's a story in itself.

Yes, I know.

The Jews,

those in the work squads,

thought at first...

- Those in the work squads, yes.

- that they'd survive.

But in January,

when they stopped receiving food,

for Wirth had decreed

that there were too many of them,

there were a good 500 to 600

of them in Camp I...

- Up there?

- Yes.

To keep them from rebelling,

they weren't shot or gassed,

but starved.

Then an epidemic broke out,

a kind of typhus.

The Jews stopped believing they'd make it.

They were left to die.

They dropped like flies.

- Ja.

- It was all over.

FRANZ SUCHOMEL:

They'd stopped believing.

- Ja.

It was all very well to say...

We kept on insisting,

You're going to live!

We almost believed it ourselves.

If you lie enough,

you believe your own lies.

Yes.

But they replied to me,

No, chief, we're just reprieved corpses.

[ Glazar, In German]

The dead season, as it was called,

began in February 1943,

after the big trainloads came in

from Grodno and Bialystok.

Absolute quiet.

It quieted in late January,

February and into March.

Nothing.

Not one trainload.

The whole camp was empty,

and suddenly, everywhere,

there was hunger.

It kept increasing.

And one day when the famine

was at its peak,

OberscharfUhrer Kurt Franz

appeared before us

and told us,

The trains will be coming in again,

starting tomorrow.

We didn't say anything.

We just looked at each other,

and each of us thought,

Tomorrow

the hunger will end.

At that period,

we were actively planning the rebellion.

We all wanted to survive

until the rebellion.

The trainloads came from

an assembly camp in Saloniki.

They'd brought in Jews

from Bulgaria, Macedonia.

These were rich people:

The passenger cars bulged

with possessions.

Then an awful feeling gripped us,

all of us, my companions

as well as myself.

A feeling of helplessness,

a feeling of shame.

For we threw ourselves on their food.

A detail brought a crate

full of crackers,

another full of jam.

They deliberately dropped the crates,

falling over each other,

filling their mouths

with crackers and jam.

The trainloads

from the Balkans brought us

to a terrible realization:

RICHARD GLAZAR:

We were the workers

in the Treblinka factory,

and our lives depended

on the whole manufacturing process,

that is, the slaughtering process

at Treblinka.

[ Lanzmann, In German]

This realization came suddenly

with the fresh trainloads?

Maybe it wasn't so sudden,

but it was only

with the Balkans trainloads

that it became...

so stark to us, unadorned.

Why?

24,000 people,

probably with not a sick person

among them,

not an invalid, all healthy and robust!

I recall our watching them

from our barracks.

They were already naked,

milling among their baggage.

And David...

David Bratt said to me,

Maccabees!

The Maccabees have arrived in Treblinka!

Sturdy, physically strong people,

unlike the others...

- Fighters!

- Yes, they could have been fighters.

It was staggering for us,

for these men and women, all splendid,

were wholly unaware

of what was in store for them.

Wholly unaware.

Never before had things gone

so smoothly and quickly.

Never.

We felt ashamed,

and also that this couldn't go on,

that something had to happen.

Not just a few people acting

but all of us.

The idea was almost ripe

back in November 1942.

Beginning in November '42

we'd noticed

that we were being spared,

in quotes.

We noticed it

and we also learned

that Stangl, the commandant,

wanted, for efficiency's sake,

to hang on to men

who were already trained,

specialists in the various tasks:

sorters, corpse-haulers,

barbers who cut the women's hair,

and so on.

This in fact is what later

gave us the chance

to prepare,

to organize the uprising.

We had a plan

worked out in January 1943,

code-named The Time.

At a set time,

we were to attack the SS everywhere,

seize their weapons

and attack the Kommandantur.

But we couldn't do it

because things were

at a standstill in the camp,

and because typhus had already broken out.

[ MUIIer, In German]

In the fall of 1943,

when it was clear to all of us

that no one would help us

unless we helped ourselves,

a key question faced us all:

For us in the special detail,

was there any chance

to halt this wave of extermination

and still save our lives?

We could see only one:

armed rebellion.

We thought

that if we could get hold

of a few weapons

and secure the participation

of all the inmates

throughout the camp,

there was a chance of success.

That was the essential thing.

That's why our liaison men

contacted the leaders

of the Resistance movement,

first in Birkenau,

then in Auschwitz I,

so the revolt could be

coordinated everywhere.

FILIP MULLER:

The answer came

that the Resistance command

in Auschwitz I

agreed with our plan

and would join with us.

Unfortunately,

among the Resistance leaders,

there were very few Jews.

Most were political prisoners

whose lives weren't at stake,

and for whom each day of life

lived through

increased their chances of survival.

For us in the special detail,

it was the opposite.

RUDOLF VRBA:

[ In English]

Auschwitz and Birkenau,

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