Shoah Page #8

It was impossible to say something

because we were just like stones.

We couldn't mention

what had happened to the wife,

what had happened to the kid.

What do you mean, wife?

What do you mean, kid?

Nobody is anymore alive!

What do you mean, they're not alive?

How could they...

How could they kill, how could

they gas so many people at once?

But they had their way how to do it.

[ Glazar] 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.

[ Lanzmann, In German]

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 though! about' it and said to Carrel,

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.

That's how the day went through,

without anything.

No drinking.

We were 24 hours without water,

without anything.

We couldn't drink.

We couldn't have anything

taken into our mouths,

because it was impossible.

Just the meaning that before...

a minute, an hour before,

you were part of a family,

you were part of a wife or a husband,

and now, all of a sudden,

everything is dead.

We went into a special barrack,

where I was sleeping

right next to the wall.

And over there, that night,

it was the most horrible night

for all the people,

because the memory of all those things,

what people went through with each other,

all the joys and the happiness,

and the births and the weddings

and other things,

and all of a sudden, in one second,

to cut that through without anything,

and without any guilt of the people,

because the people were not guilty at all.

The only guilt from them was

because they were Jewish people.

Most of us, we were all up at night,

trying to talk to each other,

which was not allowed.

The commandant was sleeping

in the same barrack.

We were not allowed to talk to each other

or to express our view

or our minds to each other

until the morning, at 5:00,

we start going out from the barracks.

In the morning,

when they had an Appell

to go out from the barracks,

from our group,

I would say at least

four or five were dead.

I don't know how

the thing happened that, what?

They must have with them

some kind of Zyanka/I or some kind of poison

in which they poisoned themselves.

Some of them there,

I would say at least of them

were me/ne friends...

two of my close friends.

They didn't say anything.

We didn't even know

that they have with them poison.

[ Glazar, In German]

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.

[ Schlager ]

[ Man Singing In German:

Mandolinen um MitternachF]

[ Continues ]

[ Continues ]

[ Fades ]

BERLIN:

[ Woman, In English]

This is no longer home, you see?

And, uh, especially, it's no longer home

when they start telling me that

they didn't know, they didn't know.

They say they didn't see.

Yes, there were Jews living in our house.

One day, they were no longer there.

We didn't know what happened.

They couldn't help seeing it.

It was not a matter of one action.

These were actions that were

taking place over almost two years.

There was always... Every fortnight

people were torn out of the houses.

How could they escape it?

How could they not see it?

I remember that day on which

they made Berlin JudenreKn.

The people hastened in the streets.

They... They didn't want to be in the street.

You could see the streets

were absolutely empty.

They didn't want to look, you know?

They thought of hastening to buy

what they had to buy.

It was Saturday, and they had to buy

something for the Sunday, you see?

So they went shopping

and hastened back into their houses.

And I remember this day very vividly,

because we saw police cars, uh,

rushing through the streets of Berlin,

taking people out of the houses.

They had herded together

from factories, from the houses,

wherever they could find the Jews,

and had put them into something

that was called Klu.

KIu was a dance, um, restaurant,

a very big one.

From there, they were deported

in various transports.

They were going off not far from here,

on one of the tracks of the Bahnhof Grunewald.

And this was a day when I felt so...

suddenly so utterly alone,

so utterly left alone,

because now I knew we would be

one of the very few people left.

I didn't know how many more

would be underground.

And this was a day when I felt very guilty

that I didn't go myself,

that I tried to escape a fate

that the others could not escape.

There was no more warmth around,

no more soul akin to us, you understand?

And we talked about this.

What happened to Elsa,

and what happened to Hans?

Where is he, and where is she?

Do you know this?

My God, what happened to the child?

You know, these... these were

our talks on that horrible day.

And this feeling of being terribly alone

and terribly guilty that we did not go...

- [ Lanzmann ] Guilty?

That we did not go with them.

[ Man Shouting In German]

Why did we try? Why? Why?

What made us do this,

to escape a fate that was really our destiny

or the destiny of our people?

INGE DEUTSCHKRON

Born in Berlin

Lived there through the war

(In hiding beginning in February 1943)

Now lives in Israel

FRANZ SUCHOMEL:

SS UnterscharfiJhrer

- [ Lanzmann, In German ] Are you ready?

- [ Suchomel, In German] Yes.

- Then we can...

- We can begin.

[ Lanzmann Repeats Phrase ]

[ Lanzmann ]

How's your heart? Is everything in order?

[ Suchomel] Oh, my heart...

For the moment, ifs all right.

If I have any pain, I'll tell you.

We'll have to break off.

[ Lanzmann ]

Of course.

But your health, in general, is...

- [ Suchome/ j The weather tode y suits me fine.

- J a.

The barometric pressure is high:

That's good for me.

[ Lanzmann ]

You look to be in good shape, anyway.

Let's begin with Treblinka.

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