A shallow layer of ash was poured into the deep pits from which the corpses had been exhumed, then on top of that a shallow layer of sand, and so forth until they had reached the level of about 2 metres below the surface. The last 2 metres were filled only with sand. In this way they reckoned that they would erase forever the traces of their horrible crimes.
The Jewish workers who were employed in the emptying of the pits nevertheless used every opportunity to leave behind in the earth some remains of human bones. Since the pits became narrower as they grew deeper, and the earth along the sides would crumble, every time the Germans and their informers were absent the workers would bury as many bones as they could beneath a layer of sand.
The ash was poured in shallow layers — a layer of ash and a layer of sand. That was the usual procedure. The carriers who delivered the ash and sand from morning till night firmly tamped down the surface with their feet.
I remember that every morning when we went out to work, we would notice that the surfaces of the pits had burst in dozens of places. By day the ground was firmly trodden down, but at night the blood pressed up to the surface. This raised the level to such an extent that in the morning the carriers sweated with exertion while descending into the pits with their loads of ash and sand.
The blood of tens of thousands of victims, unable to rest, thrust itself upwards to the surface.
11
It is a beautiful day. The murderers are in a good mood. Our section chief, Mathias, sits down on an embankment along with his distinguished guest, deputy Kommandant Obersturmführer Franz, whom we call “Lyalke” (Doll). This Lyalke is a terrible murderer.
His appearance at the open space in the camp triggers extraordinary fear. His specialty is slapping. From time to time he calls a worker over, tells him to stand at attention and gives him a powerful slap on his cheek. The victim then has to fall down and immediately get up, in order to receive a slap on the other cheek. Then he calls over his dog, Barry, who is almost as big as a man, and shouts: — Man, bite that dog! The dog is very obedient to his friend the deputy Kommandant and attacks the Jew.
Our section chief, Mathias, invites the criminal to sit down for a while and observe how well the work is proceeding. Lyalke sits down, and they converse, smiling.
They are in a good mood and pleased that the work is moving along at a brisk pace.
Their hearts swell with pride as they watch the living corpses running without interruption, like demons. Everyone is at his post, and in fact when they are not present the work goes even better than usual. Their collaborators flog with their whips ceaselessly, ceaselessly…
The murderers are content. Our section chief orders a Ukrainian to bring him a good bottle of cognac from the canteen. It doesn’t take long before his wish is fulfilled. They fill the first goblet, and the guest, Lyalke, says: — We drink to the imminent arrival of the Jews of England!
The section chief is very pleased with the joke and laughs: — Ja, das ist gut, das kommt sicher! (Yes, that’s good, that’s sure to happen!)
In winter the criminals leave the women destined for the gas chambers outside at a temperature of -25 degrees Celsius. The snow is half a metre high and the murderers laugh: — How beautiful it is!
In December 1942 the criminals began to set up ovens to burn the corpses, but they did not work well, as the corpses refused to burn. For that reason a crematorium was built with special fittings. A special motor was attached that increased the flow of air, and in addition a lot of petrol was poured in. But the corpses still do not want to burn well. The maximum number of incinerated corpses reaches a thousand per day. The murderers are not satisfied with this small quantity.
We wondered, unable to understand, why the murderers had begun to look for ways to burn the corpses of the people they had gassed. After all, we had kept on digging deeper and deeper pits, but now the tactics had changed. By pure chance we found out the reason: one of the murderers gave us a present of a piece of bread wrapped in newspaper. That was an extraordinary event for us.
From the articles in the newspaper we learned that the German authorities had discovered, in Katyń, near Smolensk, the graves of ten thousand Polish officers who supposedly had been murdered by the Soviets. We understood that the murderers wanted to blacken the name of Soviet Russia and were therefore starting to burn the corpses so no trace of what they had been doing would remain.
In January [1943] a new “specialist” came to our camp. We nicknamed him “Artist”, since he plays his role so well. He is an extraordinary disposer of corpses. From the first moments of his arrival he is to be found at the pits. He laughs at the sight of them and is happy and satisfied with his role.
After a few days he gets to work intensively. He orders the ovens to be dismantled and laughs at how things are done here.
He assures our section chief that from now on the work will go much better. He lays down ordinary long, thick iron rails to a length of 30 metres. Several low walls of poured cement are built to a height of 50 centimetres. The width of the oven is a metre and a half. Six rails are laid down, no more. He orders that the first layer of corpses should consist of women, especially fat women, placed with their bellies on the rails. After that anything that arrives can be laid on top: men, women, children. A second layer is placed on top of the first, the pile growing narrower as it rises, up to a height of 2 metres.
The corpses are thrown up by a special commando called the fire commando. Two fire-workers catch every corpse that is brought to them by the corpse carriers. One catches a hand and foot on one side, the second catches the other side, and then they throw the dead person into the oven. In this way some twenty-five hundred corpses are piled on. Then the specialist orders dry twigs placed underneath and lights them with a match. After a few minutes the fire flares up so strongly that it is difficult to get any closer to the oven than 50 metres. The first fire is lit, and the test is successful. The camp administration show up, and all of them shake the hand of the inventor. But he is not pleased with the fact that for the time being only one oven is working. Therefore he orders that the excavator that was used to dig the graves should now start digging out the corpses that have been lying in the ground for months…
The excavator starts to dig out the dead — hands, feet, heads.
The Artist, being a specialist, orders the machine operators to dump the remains in circles, so that the carriers with their litters (these are now different litters, box-like in shape, so that nothing will fall out of them while running fast) can quickly run over, grab the human body parts with their hands, throw them into the litters and carry them quickly to the ovens.
The work is now even harder than before. The stench is terrible. The workers are sprayed with the fluid that trickles from the cadavers. Often the excavator driver deliberately heaves the body parts onto the workers and bloodies them. It sometimes happens that our section chief, seeing that a worker is lying bloodied on the ground, asks him why. When he answers that he was injured by the excavator while dumping the cadavers, he receives several lashes as well.