Mr Ganzenmüller, you like trains?
Yes, Your Honour, trains are my passion, my obsession.
From 1928 you’ve worked for the German Railways, and as early as 1931, as a member of the Nazi party, you were involved in anti-Jewish activities.
I wouldn’t put it that way. Things were much more complex.
You scheduled civilian trains for deporting Jews to the camps. From 1942 to 1945 you supervised the German State Railway.
I was following orders from above.
You secured the unobstructed running of trains to the death camps. Thanks to you Operation Reinhard ran smoothly.
Operation Reinhard? I only heard of Operation Reinhard after capitulation.
You personally drew up many and varied timetables. Such as a timetable for transporting elderly German Jews to Theresienstadt.
That was my duty, to see to the unobstructed movement of trains. Besides, composing timetables was a hobby of mine. Like solving challenging crossword puzzles.
In 1942 a vast “purge” of the ghettoes begins throughout the General Government.
About that I know nothing.
In June and July there are construction works on the railway line leading to Sobibor — a mass extermination camp. There is an unplanned halt in the transports, and on 16 July S.S. General Karl Wolff seeks your help.
I don’t remember.
Instead of sending 300,000 Warsaw Jews to Sobibor you redirect them to Treblinka. After 22 July a train runs daily with 5,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka, while another train runs twice weekly from Przemysl to Belzec. Further, on 28 July, 1942, you, Albert Ganzenmüller, Secretary of the Ministry of Transport — Reichsverkehrsministerium, and Deputy General Director of the German Reichsbahn, report to S.S.-Gruppenführer Wolff on the measures you have taken.
Have you proof?
We have your correspondence with Wolff. On 13 August, 1942, Wolff writes:
Warm thanks, both in my own and the S. S. Reichsführers name, for your letter of 28 July, 1942. I was especially delighted to hear from you that already for a fortnight there has been a daily train, taking 5,000 of the Chosen People to Treblinka, thus enabling us to carry out this movement of population at an accelerated pace. I have personally contacted all the agencies involved in the process so that the job can proceed without impediment. I thank you again for your efforts regarding this question and also request that you continue to bring your personal attention to every detail, for which I will be particularly grateful. Sincerely yours and Heil Hitler! W.
I do not recall this correspondence.
So you claim you received Wolff’s letter, stamped as Top Secret, a letter from the second highest official in the Third Reich, and you did not read it? Three million Jews were taken to their deaths in that operation.
I know nothing of Treblinka. I did not realize that Treblinka was a mass extermination camp. I thought it was a Jewish reservation, so Himmler explained it to me. I knew nothing of the fate of the Jews. I saw nothing. I worked in my office. I was not out strolling around.
This is drivel, Ganzenmüller. In May 1942, before the camp was set up, we knew something was going on at Treblinka, and the information was given to us by German railway workers. Some S. S. officials arrived at Treblinka in May 1942 and arrested a hundred men, Jews from both Treblinka and its neighbourhood, and ordered them to clear the land. The Ukrainian guards arrived right after the prisoners. The S. S. claimed that the inmates would work on damming the River Bug to build a new military installation, but the German railway workers stubbornly insisted it was going to be an extermination camp for the Jews.
Yes? And who are you?
Franciszek Zabecki, head of the civilian train station at Treblinka. A member of the Polish resistance movement. I followed the arrivals and departures of trains. I noted them down. On 22 July, 1942, I received an official telegram stating a short, regular and very frequent line would run on the Warsaw-Treblinka route. This line was supposed to transport new “settlers”, the telegram said. The trains would be made up of sixty covered cattle wagons, or rather closed goods wagons, it said. After unloading, the trains were to be sent back to Warsaw, it said. Why “settlers” in goods wagons, I ask you? Behind bolted doors and narrow slits covered in barbed wire instead of windows; crammed in like livestock, so packed together they couldn’t even crouch. That telegram was signed by you.
I don’t remember.
You are the person who drew up the train timetable, Mr Ganzenmüller. This was your timetable, Mr Ganzenmüller. There were between eight and ten thousand men, women, the elderly and a lot of children in the first train which arrived on 23 July, 1942. A lot of small children, infants. When it spewed out its freight, the train returned to Warsaw. Empty. To pick up new “settlers”. When the horrors became unbearable, and I could tell you about them, the horrors, day and night, you halted all regular passenger traffic to Treblinka, Mr Ganzenmüller. Surely you remember that, Mr Ganzenmüller, you drew up that schedule. After September 1942 the only trains that reached Treblinka were military and deportation trains, there were no picnickers, no excursions; civilians did not come out on nature tours, Mr Ganzenmüller. The trains were met at the station by S.S. men with sleeves rolled up and pistols drawn. Tempo! Schnell! they shouted. The number of passengers was marked on each wagon with chalk. I wrote it down. For two years I wrote this down, from one day to the next, and I added it up. I know, while others guess. I am the only living witness who was at Treblinka from the day when the extermination of the Jews began to the day the camp was closed on 16 August, 1944. All the German documents were burned, but I copied them. One million two hundred thousand people were killed at Treblinka. There is no doubt about it.