Soon the square would be filled by three to four thousand people, laden with bags and suitcases. Some were supporting the old and the sick. Mothers were holding little children in their arms; older children clung to their parents as they looked around inquisitively. There was something sinister and terrifying about this square that had been trodden by millions of human feet.
People’s sharp eyes were quick to notice alarming little signs.
Lying here and there on the ground — which had evidently been swept only a few minutes before their arrival — were all kinds of abandoned objects: a bundle of clothing, some open suitcases, a few shaving brushes, some enamelled saucepans. How had they got there? And why did the railway line end just beyond the station?
Why was there only yellow grass and three-metre-high barbed wire? Where were the lines to Białystok, Siedlce, Warsaw and Wojkowice? And why was there such an odd smile on the faces of the new guards as they looked at the men adjusting their ties, at the respectable old ladies, at the boys in sailor suits, at the slim young girls still managing to look neat and tidy after the journey, at the young mothers lovingly adjusting the blankets wrapped around babies who were wrinkling their little faces?
All these Wachmänner in black uniforms and S.S. Unteroffiziere were similar, in their behaviour and psychology, to cattle drivers at the entrance to a slaughterhouse. The S.S. and the Wachmänner did not see the newly-arrived transport as being made up of living human beings, and they could not help smiling at the sight of manifestations of embarrassment, love, fear and concern for the safety of loved ones or possessions. It amused them to see mothers straightening their children’s jackets or scolding them for running a few yards away, to see men wiping their brows with a handkerchief and then lighting a cigarette, to see young girls tidying their hair, looking in pocket mirrors and anxiously holding down their skirts if there was a gust of wind. They thought it funny that the old men should try to squat down on their little suitcases, that some should be carrying books under their arms, that the sick should moan and groan and have scarves tied around their necks.
Up to twenty thousand people passed through Treblinka every day. Days when only six or seven thousand people passed through the station building were considered quiet. The square would fill with people four or five times each day. And all these thousands, all these tens and hundreds of thousands of people, of frightened, questioning eyes, all these young and old faces, all these dark- and fair-haired beauties, these bald and hunch-backed old men and these timid adolescents — all were caught up in a single flood, a flood that swallowed up reason, and splendid human science, and maidenly love, and childish wonder, and the coughing of the old, and the human heart.
And the new arrivals trembled as they sensed the strangeness of the look on the faces of the watching Wachmänner — a cool, sated, mocking look, the look of superiority with which a living beast surveys a dead human being.
And once again during these brief moments the people who had come out into the square found themselves noticing all kinds of alarming and incomprehensible trifles.
What lay behind that huge six-metre-high wall covered with blankets and yellowing pine branches? Even the blankets were somehow frightening. Quilted, many-coloured, silken or with calico covers, they looked all too similar to the blankets the newcomers had brought with them. How had these blankets got here? Who had brought them? And who were their owners? And why didn’t they need their blankets any longer? And who were these men wearing light-blue armbands? Troubling suspicions came back to mind, frightening rumours that had been passed on in a whisper. But no, no, this was impossible. And the terrible thought was dismissed.
This sense of alarm always lasted a little while, perhaps two or three minutes, until everyone had made their way to the square.
There was always a slight delay at this point; there were always cripples, the old, the sick and the lame, people who could barely move their legs. But soon everybody was present.
An S.S. Unteroffizier instructs the newcomers in a loud, clear voice to leave their things in the square and make their way to the bathhouse, taking with them only identity documents, valuables and toiletries. They want to ask all kinds of questions: should they take their underwear? Is it really alright to undo their bundles? Aren’t all their belongings going to get mixed up? Might they not disappear altogether? But some strange force makes them hurry on in silence, not looking back, not asking questions, towards an opening — an opening in a barbed-wire wall, six metres high, that has been threaded with branches. They walk past anti-tank hedgehogs, past thickets of barbed wire three times the height of a human being, past an anti-tank ditch three metres deep, past thin coils of steel wire strewn on the ground to trip a fugitive and catch him like a fly in a spider’s web, past another wall of barbed wire many metres high. And everyone is overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness, a sense of doom. There is no way to escape, no way to turn back, no way to fight back: staring down at them from low squat wooden towers are the muzzles of heavy machine guns. Should they call out for help?
But all around them are S.S. men and Wachmänner armed with sub-machine guns, hand grenades and pistols. These men are power; they are power itself. Tanks, aircraft, lands, cities and sky, railways, the law, newspapers, radio — everything is in their hands. The whole world is silent, crushed, enslaved by a gang of bandits who have seized all power. London is silent, and so is New York. And only somewhere thousands of kilometres distant, on the banks of the Volga, is the Soviet artillery pounding away, obstinately proclaiming the determination of the Russian people to fight to the death for liberty, calling upon every nation to join in the battle.
Back on the square by the station two hundred workers with light-blue armbands (“the blue squad”) were silently, swiftly and deftly untying bundles, opening baskets and suitcases, removing straps from bedrolls. The belongings of the new arrivals are being sorted out and appraised. On to the ground tumble neatly packed darning kits, spools of thread, children’s underwear, shirts, sheets, pullovers, little knives, shaving kits, bundles of letters, photographs, thimbles, scent bottles, mirrors, bonnets, shoes, home-made boots made from quilted blankets (to protect against extreme cold), ladies’ slippers, stockings, lace, pyjamas, packs of butter, coffee, tins of cocoa, prayer shawls, candlesticks, books, dry biscuits, violins, children’s toy building blocks. It requires real skill to sort out, in the course of only a few minutes, all these thousands of objects. Everything of value is to be sent to Germany; everything old, shabby and valueless is to be burnt.
And God help the unfortunate worker who puts an old wicker suitcase into a pile of leather cases destined for Germany, or who throws a new pair of stockings from Paris, still bearing their factory stamp, on to a heap of worn-out socks. Workers were not given the chance to make more than one mistake. Usually there were forty S.S. men and sixty Wachmänner “on transport duty”, as they called this first stage of the work: meeting the trains, escorting people out from the “railway station” and into the square, and then supervising the workers with the light-blue armbands as they sorted through the things left behind on the square. These workers often infringed the regulations by slipping into their mouths little pieces of bread, sugar or sweets that they found.