We continue to talk for a while, and my friend Yankl falls asleep on the hard boards. I lie there and feel every part of me aching. I don’t know how I will be able to get up in the morning. I lie there and think: Where am I actually? In Hell, a Hell with demons. We wait for death, which can come at any moment, in a few days at best. And for the price of a few days of life we have to dirty our hands and help the bandits do their work. No, we must not do it!
I fall asleep and dream of my honest, faithful mother, who died fifteen years ago. I was fifteen years old at the time. My mother weeps with me over our fate. She died young. She was thirty-eight when she was torn from us and left us behind. To await such a death? Would it not have been better if the rest of us had not survived? How good it is that my mother did not live to be tortured, to experience a ghetto, poverty, hunger and, at the end, Treblinka: to have her hair torn away, to be gassed, then tossed into a pit like tens of thousands of other dead people. I am happy that she did not live to see that.
My headache wakes me up. Everything hurts and I cannot lie still. I try to turn over and unintentionally bump into my friend Leybl. He wakes up and cries: — Murderer, what do you want from me? I try to apologize, but he answers with a groan: — Oy, oy… I try not to touch him again. I want to fall asleep, but I cannot. The night passes slowly like a year, until finally we hear the shout: — Aufstehen! (Get up!) People tear themselves out of their sleep, and everyone tries to stand near the door, which is still closed.
I notice that opposite me is dangling a man who has hanged himself. I point this out to my neighbour, but he waves dismis-sively and shows me that further along there are two more people hanging: — That is nothing new here. Actually today there are fewer hanging that usual. He tells me that every day several bodies of hanged men are thrown out and nobody pays attention to such details.
I look at the hanging bodies and envy them for being at rest.
After a short while the door is thrown open and we are driven out to the kitchen. We get coffee and I still have the piece of bread from yesterday. Most of the Jews just drink the black coffee. The clock strikes 5.30 and we hear a shout: — Antreten! (Fall in!) We all run out. I see how each of us tries to stand next to someone to make a pair and I try to stand next to my comrade. Fortunately we are standing together.
As usual we are counted quickly. The gate is opened and we are let out: first, a group that works in the machine shop. Those are the mechanics who work on the automobile engine from which the gas is piped to the gas chambers. They rush off to work because a transport has arrived and the preparations to receive it must get under way.
Then the dentists’ group is let out. They run immediately into their cell. They have to get their dental pliers quickly and run to the open space in order to inspect the bodies and extract the false teeth of the dead.
After the dentists the carpenters are let out. Their work consists of building barracks and interior structures.
After them comes the Schlauch (feeder tube) group. Their job consists of removing the blood of the victims spilled on the way to the gas chambers. Everything is covered with sand so no trace will remain. After cleaning the road they enter the gas chambers and wash the walls and floors. There must be no trace of blood. The entrances to the gas chambers are opened and a painter gives the walls a fresh coat of paint. Everything must be spotless before receiving new contingents in the cells.
After the Schlauch workers comes the Rampe (ramp) group.
Those are the Jews who work at the gas chambers when a transport has already been gassed. At a signal, the exterior doors are opened and it is time for the Rampe workers to remove the corpses.
This work is extraordinarily difficult, as the dead are tightly pressed against one another.
After the Rampe workers, the group of kitchen workers comes out. The remaining inmates are then counted. Some of them are assigned to carry corpses and the rest are sent to the sand piles. I notice that the workers who have been here for several days try to avoid the work of carrying sand, because the Scharführer (section chief ) of the sand workers, nicknamed “The White Man”, is a specialist in shooting. At roll-call he often shows up by himself because he has shot his workers down to the last man.
My friend and I work as carriers. The day, as usual, is extraordinarily difficult. We receive so many lashes that our feet can no longer carry us. A sip of water is not to be had. Our lips burn with thirst. It is no use begging or crying. All you get are blows, blows without end.
My comrade with whom I’m carrying a litter notices, while standing for a moment near one of the dentists, that the bowl into which the dentist throws the bloody teeth contains a little water. He throws himself to the ground and drinks the water together with the blood. He gets whipped, but he drinks.
The day is especially difficult. There is a transport today of eighteen thousand people, and all the gas chambers are active.
We work. From time to time it happens that carriers throw down their litters and jump into the deep well that stands near the death chambers and in that way end their accursed lives.
Finally the clock strikes 6.00. There is a shout — Antreten! — and we fall in. Our Scharführer, Mathias, orders us to sing a pretty song.
We have to sing. It is almost an hour before we return to the barracks.
9
After four weeks of working as a carrier, I succeeded in getting into the dentists’ commando. There were nineteen dentists and I was the twentieth.
When Scharführer Mathias returned from leave, he ascertained at roll-call that there were nineteen men in the group of dentists.
He ordered the Kapo of the dentists, Dr Zimmermann, an acquaintance of mine, to raise the number to twenty. That was around 3 November [1942]. At that time the transports were increasing once again and more dentists were needed. When Dr Zimmermann announced that he was looking for a dentist, I stepped out and declared that I was a dentist. Other people also declared themselves as dentists, but Dr Zimmermann chose me and got me into his group.
We marched off to our work.
In the building containing the three smaller gas chambers there was an additional wooden shed, which was entered via the corridor that led to the gas chambers. In the shed stood a long table at which the dentists worked. In a corner of the shed stood a locked trunk in which were kept the gold and platinum crowns from the teeth of the corpses, as well as the diamonds that were sometimes found in the crowns, along with the money and jewels that were found under bandages on the naked bodies or in the women’s vaginas. Once a week the trunk was emptied by Mathias or Karl Spetzinger, his adjutant. Next to the table stood long benches on which we used to sit tightly crowded together and do our work. On the table were placed dishes with extracted teeth as well as various dental tools.
Our work consisted of scraping out and cleaning the metal from the fillings and from the natural teeth. An additional task was to separate the crowns from the bridges and then clean and sort them. For that purpose there was a special blowtorch which melted rubber. The dentists were divided into specialized groups. Five men worked with white false teeth, others with metal teeth, and two specialists were occupied with sorting the metals, especially white gold, yellow gold, platinum and ordinary metal.