In the evening we heard the whistle of a locomotive. But it turned out that it was a freight train. Another day went by and no transports arrived. The murderers are furious. We are unable to find out what has happened. Three days pass in this way. On the third day the section chief orders the gas chambers reopened.
For the first time in Treblinka it happened that the gas chambers were sealed in readiness but no transports came.
In a few days the chambers were sealed again and a few days later a transport came. Almost all of the murderers were present to receive the arrivals. Each of them had a whip in his hand, and Ivan was holding his 3-metre bar.
I am in the dentists’ shed. I hear the pitiful screams. The murderers are wild. They have selected three women from the transport to work in the laundry. We believe that they deliberately sent the women to us so that we would know what happened to the Jews of Warsaw.
The three women were in a daze for three days and did not understand what we said to them. After a few days they calmed down a bit and told us that the Jews of Warsaw resisted heroically and did not let themselves be killed off, that the Ghetto was in flames and that the Jews were fighting with weapons in their hands.
It saddens us to hear from the women that the Ghetto was in flames. But the women are proud when they tell how the Jews fought and that there were German casualties as well.
We are heartbroken by the news, but at the same time the will and determination rise up in us to free ourselves from Treblinka.
The work proceeds at a rapid pace. It seems as if they have a deadline by which everything here should be liquidated. No sooner is one pit emptied than the next one is dug.
The Artist, seeing that there are still whole corpses in the upper layers of the mass graves, gives orders to drop the litters, pick up the corpses by hand and burn them in the ovens. Each carrier tries to utilize the moment when the machine descends into the pit to run over, grab a corpse and run away again, thereby avoiding being hit by the falling corpses that the excavator throws up.
The corpses are counted by special workers. Every evening they have to report to Section Chief Mathias how many corpses were burned. Only whole corpses are counted — those which still have the head attached. If the head is missing, the corpse does not count. Heads are counted separately. The section chief is under the impression that he is being cheated, that the counting is not being carried out correctly. He beats the workers and threatens to have them shot.
We dentists have a lot of work. There are several big chests filled with teeth. We have to clean them and every couple of days deliver a suitcase of dental gold, other gold and precious stones.
From time to time we receive visits from the Kommandant of Treblinka. He speaks calmly and requests of our foreman that if we find a big, beautiful stone, we should give it directly to him. (Normally Section Chief Mathias takes such things to the camp coffers. The gold and valuables are sent, we have heard, directly to the Reichsbank in Berlin, where the dental gold is smelted into ingots.) The Kommandant, however, wishes to have such a stone for his own house museum as a souvenir… His request is easily fulfilled, since we are used to giving such stones to his assistants, hoping thereby to avoid extra beatings.
From time to time it happens that one of the murderers brings us a loaf of bread or a few cigarettes, which are then divided into twenty parts.
In May a new S.S. man arrives, and on the following day he comes into the dentists’ shed to have his wristwatch repaired. A worker among us is a watchmaker by trade and fixes his watch.
Our foreman takes advantage of the opportunity to ask for several suitcases from Camp 1. The S.S. man promises, not knowing that no-one from Camp 1 is allowed to come here. In the afternoon the German returns in the company of a worker from Camp 1, bringing several suitcases. He wants to send the worker back, but at the gate he is detained by Section Chief Mathias, who glares at the S.S. man and berates him for not knowing that no-one from Camp 1 is allowed to come here. He tells the worker to turn around, undress and go down into the pit, where he shoots him.
In June fewer transports arrive. The new oven is ready. Corpses are speedily thrown into it. The work of clearing out the pits likewise proceeds at a rapid pace. Ten pits have already been entirely cleaned out. The last, the eleventh, pit is one of the four biggest, where a total of a quarter of a million people lie. Two excavators work at this pit. A special commando is created, called the “Knochen-Kolonne” (Bone Brigade). Their task is to walk around with a bucket and pick up the tiniest bones, so that no trace will remain. The supervisor points out that if the greatest care is not taken, it will be considered sabotage. What that means does not have to be explained to any of us.
The third excavator, which is not in use for digging up corpses, begins to move earth from one place to another. Several workers assigned to the excavator have to keep an eye out for bones or other body parts and immediately bring them to the oven. The earth is turned over twice, so that no trace should remain.
By the end of June the space of the eleven pits, where hundreds of thousands of bodies had lain, was completely cleared. The earth was smoothed out and sown with lupins.
As became clear, the murderers had a deadline: 1 July for Camp 1. We learned that on that day we were expecting a notable guest — Himmler. Great preparations were made to receive him. The work was completed two days ahead of schedule.
It is the first of July. We were supposed to work in the afternoon. At the last minute, however, work was called off.
We lie confined to our barracks and see through the little windows that a strong guard has been placed around the building.
A few minutes later Himmler arrives with his entourage. They inspect the gas chambers and head for the open space, which by then has been made neat and clean. Himmler apparently is satisfied. He smiles, and his accomplices beam with joy.
Several shots are heard — a signal of victory.
It is worth mentioning that among the S.S. men in Treblinka there were some who had come from the working class, former members of the Communist Party. One S.S. man was a former Evangelical pastor.
14
It was a hot day. Several staff members had returned to the camp who had gone on leave a fortnight earlier, though every one of these bandits receives twenty-four days of leave every six weeks because of their strenuous “work”. While on leave, they had dressed in civilian clothes and left their sacred uniforms in the camp. When they came back from their Erholung (recuperation) they were constantly in a bad mood. We once overheard a conversation in which one of them told the other that the city he comes from was being bombed day and night and that there were many casualties from air raids. We also notice that the murderers, coming back from leave, don’t look good. It appears that the care they get at home is not as good as what they get in Treblinka.
Here, in Treblinka, they can afford everything, since there is no lack of money. After all, every victim that arrives in Treblinka has managed to bring something with them.
It is a very difficult day today. S.S. Unterscharführer Chanke — we call him “The Whip” because he is a specialist in beating — is in a bad mood. His comrade Unterscharführer Loeffler is no small sadist himself. He has terrifying eyes, and all of us are afraid that his glance will fall on us because in that case we are done for.