Original subtitles

Making this film was a long and difficult battle. I could not have waged it without the support and the faith of a number of men and women, some of whom are now gone. This film is theirs as well.

I thank the members of my crew, those men and women who took part in the campaigns of research, reporting, filming. Especially Ir�ne Steinfeldt-L�vi and Corinne Coulmas, who seconded me, even risking their personal safety in times of danger. And Ziva Postec, who worked beside me day after day for five years, on the editing of the film.

My gratitude also goes to Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Contemporary Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Ra�l Hilberg, Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont in Burlington (U.S.A.)

The story begins in the present at Chelmno, on the Narew River, in Poland. Fifty miles northwest of Lodz, in the heart of a region that once had a large Jewish population, Chelmno was the place in Poland where Jews were first exterminated by gas. Extermination began on December 7, 1941.

At Chelmno 400000 Jews were murdered in two separate periods: December 1941 - spring 1943: June 1944 - January 1945. But the way in which death was administrated remained the same throughout: The gas vans.

Of the 400000 men, women and children who went there, only two came out alive: Mordechai Podchlebnik and Simon Srebnik. Srebnik, a survivor of the last period, was a boy of thirteen when he was sent to Chelmno.

His father had been killed before his eyes in the ghetto in Lodz; his mother died in a gas van in Chelmno. The SS placed him in one of the >, assigned to maintaining the extermination camps and that were in turn slated for death...

With the ankles in chain, like all his companions, the boy shuffled through the village of Chelmno each day. That he was kept alive longer than the others, he owed to his extreme agility, which made him the winner of jumping contests and speed races that the SS organized for the chained prisoners.

And, also, to his melodious voice: Several times a week, when the rabbits kept in hutches by the SS needed fodder., young Srebnik rowed up the Narew, Chelmno's river, under guard, in a flat-bottomed boat, to the alfalfa fields at the edge of the village. He sang Polish folk tunes and in return the guard taught him Prussian military songs.

Everyone In Chelmno knew him. The Polish farm folk and German civillan as well, since this Polish province was annexed to the Reich after the fall of Warsaw, germanized and renamed Wartheland. Chelmno was changed to Kulmhof, Lodz to Litzmannstadt, Kolo to Warthbr�cken, etc... German colonlsts had settled every where in Wartheland, and there was even a German grade school in Chelmno itself.

During the night of January 18, 1945, two days before Soviet troops arrived, the Nazis killed all the remaining Jews in the > with a bullet in the head. Simon Srebnik was among those executed. But the bullet missed his vital brain centers. When he came to, he crawled into a pigsty.

A polish farmer found him there. The boy was treated and healed by a Soviet Army doctor. A few months later Simon left for Tel Aviv along with other survivors of the death camps. I found him in Israel and persuaded him to return to Chelmno with me. He was then forty-seven years old.

"A little white house..."

"Lingers in my memory..."

"Of that little white house..."

"I dream each night..."

He was 131l2 years old. He had a lovely singing voice

and we heard him.

When I heard him again, my heart beat faster,

because what happened here... was a murder.

I really re-lived what happened.

It's hard to recognize, but it was here.

They burned people here.

A lot of people were burnt here.

Yes, this is the place.

No one ever left here again.

The gas vans came in here...

There were two huge ovens,

and afterward, the bodies were thrown

into these ovens, and the flames reached to the sky.

To the sky?

Yes.

It was terrible.

No one can describe it.

No one can

recreate what happened here.

Impossible! And no one can understand it.

Even I, here, now,

I can't believe I'm here.

No, I just can't believe it.

It was always this peaceful here. Always.

When they burnt 2,000 people - Jews... every day,

it was just as peaceful.

No one shouted. Everyone went about his work.

It was silent. Peaceful.

Just as it is now.

"You, girl, don't you cry."

"Don't be so sad."

"For the dear summer is nearing..."

"and I'll return with it."

"A mug of red wine, a slice of roast,"

"that's what the girls give their soldiers."

"When the soldiers march along,"

"the girls open their doors and windows."

They bought the Germans made him sing on the river.

He was a toy to amuse them.

He had to do it.

He sang, but his heart wept.

Do "their" hearts weep thinking about that now?

Certainly, very much so.

They still talk about it around the family table.

It was public, so everyone knew of it.

He said that was true german irony,

people were being killed, and he had to sing.

That's what I thought.

What died in him in Chelmo?

Everything died.

But he's only human, and he wants to live.

So he must forget.

The other survivor: MORDECHAI PODCHLEBNIK

He thanks God for what remain and that he can forget.

And let's not talk about that.

Does he think it's good to talk about it?

For me it's not good.

Then why is he talking about it?

Because you're insisting on it.

He was sent books on the Eichmann trial, where he was

and he didn't even read them.

He survived, but is he really alive, or?

At the time, he felt as if he were dead,

because he never thought he'd survive,

but... he's alive.

Why does he smile all the time?

What do you want him to do... cry?

Sometimes you smile, sometimes you cry.

And if you're alive, it's better to smile.

Why was she so curious about this story?

HANNA SAIDL - ISRAEL -

Daughter of MOTKE SAIDL, survivor of VILNA (LITHUANIA)

It's a long story.

As a child, I had little contact with my father.

He went out to work and I didn't see much of him.

Besides, he was a silent man he didn't talk to me.

And when I grew up and was strong enough to face him,

I questioned him. I never stopped questioning him,

until I got at the scraps of truth he couldn't tell me.

It came out haltingly.

I had to tear the details out of him,

and finally, when Mr. Lanzmann came,

I heard the whole story for the second time.

The place resembles Ponari: The forest, the ditches.

It's as if the bodies has been burned here.

Except there were no stones in Ponari.

PONARI: Forest where most of the Vilna Jews were massacred.

But the Lithuanian forests

are denser than the Israeli Forest, no?

Of course.

The trees are similar, but taller and fuller in Lithuania.

Is there still hunting here in Sobibor forest?

Yes, there are lots of animals of all kinds.

Was there hunting then?

Only manhunting.

JAN PIWONSKI

Somes victims tried to escape.

But they didn't know the area.

At times people heard explosions in the minefield,

sometimes they'd find a deer

and sometimes a poor Jew who tried to escape.

That's the charm of our forests: Silence and beauty.

But it wasn't always so silent here.

There was a time when it was full of screams

and gunshots,

of dogs' barking,

and that period especially

. is engraved on the minds of the people

who lived here then.

After the revolt, the Germans decided to liquidate the camp

and early in the winter of 1943,

they planted pines that were three or four years old,

to camouflage all the traces.

That screen of trees?

Yes.

That's where the mass graves were?

When he first came here in 1944,

you couldn't guess what had happened here,

that these trees hidden the secret of a death camp.

How did he react, the first time he unloades corpses,

when the gas van doors were opened?

What could he do? He cried.

The 3rd day, he saw his wife and children.

He placed his wife in the gravs and asked to be killed.

The Germans said he was strong enough to work,

that he wouldn't be killed yet.

Was the weather very cold?

It was in the winter of 1942, in early January.

At that time, the bodies weren't burned, just buried?

No, they were buried and each row was covered with dirt.

They weren't being burned yet.

There were around four or five layers.

The ditches were funnel-shaped.

They dumped the bodies in theses ditches

and they had to lay them out like herrings, head to foot.

So it was they who dug up and burned

all the Jews of Vilna?

Yes.

In early Jan. 1944, we began digging up the bodies.

When the last mass grave opened,

I recognized my whole family.

Who in his family did he recognize?

Mom and my sisters. 3 sisters with their kids.

They were all in there.

How could he recognize them?

YITZHAK DUGIN: Survivor of VILNA

They'd been in the earth 4 months

and it was winter.

They were very well preserved.

I recognized their faces, their clothes too.

They'd been killed relativerly recently?

And it was the last grave?

The Nazi plan was for them to open the graves

starting with the oldest?

The last graves were the newest

and we started with the oldest those of the first ghetto.

In the first grave there were 24,000 bodies.

The deeper you dug, the flatter the bodies were.

Each was almost a flat slab.

When you tried to grasp a body, it crumbled,

it was impossible to pick up them.

We had to open the graves, but without tools.

They said: "Get used to working with your hands".

With just their hands?

When we first opened the graves,

we couldn't help it, we all burst out sobbing.

But the Germans almost beat us to death.

We had to work at a killing pace for two days,

beaten all the time, and with no tools.

They all burst out sobbing?

The Germans even forbade us to use

the words "corpse" or "victim".

The dead were blocks of wood, shit,

with absolutely no importance...

Anyone who said "corpse" or "victim" was beaten.

The Germans made us refer to the bodies

as "Figuren", that is

as puppets, as dolls,

or as "Schmattes", which means "rags".

Were they told at the start

how many "Figuren" there were in all the graves?

The head of the Vilna Gestapo told us:

"There are 90,000 people lying there,

"and absolutely no trace must be left of them."

It was at the end of November 1942.

They chased us away from our work,

and back to our barracks. Suddenly,

from the part of the camp called

the death camp,

flames shot up. Very high.

In a flash, the whole countryside,

the whole camp seemed ablaze.

It was already dark.

We went into our barracks,

and ate...

And from the window, we kept on watching

the fantastic backdrop of flames

of every imaginable color,

red, yellow, green, purple.

And suddenly one of us stood up.

We knew

he'd been an opera singer in Warsaw.

His name was Salve, and...

facing that curtain of fire, he began

chanting a song

I didn't know:

"My God, my God,

"why hast Thou forsaken us?

RICHARD GLAZAR - BASEL (SWITZERLAND)

"We have been thrust into the fire before,

"but we have never denied Thy Holy Law."

He sang in Yiddish,

while, behind him, blazed

the pyres

on which

they had begun then, in November 1942,

to burn the bodies in Treblinka.

That was the first time it happened.

We knew that night

that the dead would no longer be buried,

they'd be burned.

TREBLINKA

When things were ready, they poured on fuel,

and touched off the fire.

They waited for a high wind.

The pyres usually burned for 7 or 8 days.

There was a concrete platform some distance away,

and the bones that hadn't burned,

the big bones of the feet, for example,

we took...

There was a chest with two handles,

we carried the bones there,

where others

had to crush them. It was very fine,

that powdered bone.

Then it was put into sacks

and when there were enough sacks,

we went to a bridge on the Narew river,

and dumped the powder. The current carried it off.

It drifted downstream.

PAULA BIREN - CINCINNATI U.S.A. Survivor of AUSCHWITZ

The Jewish cemetery is LODZ today

AUSCHWITZ: The town

Mrs. Pietryra, you live in Auschwitz?

Yes, I was born here.

And you've never left Auschwitz?

No, never.

Were there Jews in Auschwitz before the war?

They made up 80% of the population.

They even had a synagogue here.

Just one?

Just one, I think.

Does it still exist?

No, it was wrecked.

There's something else there now.

Was there a Jewish cemetery in Auschwitz?

It still exists. It's closed now.

It still exists?

Yes.

Closed? What does that mean?

The don't bury there now.

Was there a synagogue in Wlodawa?

Yes, and it's very beautiful.

When Poland was ruled by the csars,

that synagogue already existed.

It's even older than Catholic church.

It's no longer used.

There's no one to go to it.

These buildings haven't changed?

Not at all. There were barrels of herrings here,

and the Jews sold fish.

There were stalls, small shops,

Jewish business, as the gentleman says.

That's Barenholz's house.

He sold wood.

Lipschitz's store was there. He sold cloth.

This was Lichtenstein's.

What was there, opposite?

A food store.

A Jewish store?

There was a notions shop here,

it sold thread, needles, odds and ends,

and there were also three barbers.

PAN FILIPWICZ

- Was that fine house Jewish? - It's Jewish.

And this small one?

Also.

And the one behind it?

These were all Jewish.

This one on the left, too?

That one too.

Who lived in it? Borenstein?

He was in the cement business.

He was very handsome, and cultivated.

Here there was a blacksmith named Tepper.

It was a Jewish house.

A shoemaker lived here.

What was his name?

Yankel?

Yes.

You get the feeling Wlodawa was a Jewish city.

Yes, because it's true.

The Poles lived farther out the center was wholly Jewish

What happened to the Jews of Auschwitz?

They were expelled and resettled,

but I don't know where.

What year was that?

It began in 1940, which was when I moved here.

This apartment also belonged to Jews.

According to our information,

the Auschwitz Jews were "resettled", as they say,

nearby, in Benzin and Sosnowiecze, in Upper Silesi.

Yes, because those were Jewish towns.

Does she know what happened to the Jews of Auschwitz?

I think they all ended up in the camp.

That is, they returned to Auschwitz?

AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU

All kinds of people from everywhere

were sent here.

All the Jews came here... to die.

What's they think when Wlodawa's Jews

were all deported to Sobibor?

WLODAWA - Sobibor: 10 miles

What could we think?

That it was the end of them, but they had foreseen that.

How so?

Even before the war, when you talked to the Jews,

they foresaw their doom, he doesn't know how.

Even before the war they had a premonition.

How were they taken to Sobibor? On foot?

It was frightful. He watched it himself.

They were herded on foot to a station called Orkrobek.

There they put the old people first

into waiting cattle cars,

then the younger Jews,

and finally the kids.

That was the worst: They threw them on top of the others.

Were there a lot of Jews in Kolo?

A great many.

More Jews than Poles.

And what happened with the Kolo Jews?

Was he an eye-witness?

PAN FALBORSKI

Yes. It was frightful.

Frightful to see. Even the Germans hid, they couldn't see that.

When the Jews were herded to the station, they were beated,

some were even killed.

A cart followed the convoy to pick up the corpses.

Those who couldn't walk, the slain?

Yes, those who'd fallen.

Where did this happen?

The Jews were collected in the Kolo synagogue.

Then they were herded to the station,

where the narrow-gauge railroad wen to Chelmno.

It happened to all the Jews in the area, not just in Kolo.

Absolutely. Everywhere.

Jews were also murdered in the forests

near Kalisz, not far from here.

ABRAHAM BOMBA, survivor of TREBLINKA - TEL-AVIV

TREBLINKA by road

He was born here

in 1923,

and has been here even since.

He lived at this very spot?

Right here.

Then he had a front-row seat for what happened.

Naturally.

You could go up close or watch from a distance.

CZESLAW BOROWI

They had land on the far side of the station.

To work it, he had to cross the track,

so he could see everything.

Does he remember the first convoy of Jews

from Warsaw on July 22, 1942?

Yes.

He recalls the first convoy very well,

and when all those Jews were brought here,

people wondered, "what's to be done with them?"

Clearly, they'd be killed, but no one yet knew how.

When people began to understand what was happening

they were appalled, and they commented privately

that since the world began,

no one had ever murdered so many people that way.

While all this was happening before their eyes,

normal life went on? They worked their fields?

Certainly they worked, but not

as willingly as usual.

They had to work,

but when they saw all this, they bought,

what if our house is surrounded and we're arrested.

Were they afraid for the Jews, too?

Well, he says, it's this way:

If I cut my finger, it doesn't hurt him.

They saw that happened to the Jews: The convoy came in

and then went to the camp, and

the people vanished.

He had a field under 100 yards from the camp.

He also worked during the German occupation.

He worked his field?

Yes.

He saw how they were asphyxiated,

he heard them scream, he saw that.

There's a small hill: He could see quite a bit.

What did he say?

They couln't stop and watch.

It was forbidden. The Ukrainians shot at them.

But they could work a field 100 yards from the camp?

They could.

So occasionally he could steal a glance,

if the Ukrainians weren't looking.

He worked with his eyes lowered?

Yes.

He worked by the barbed wire and heard awful screams.

His field was there?

Yes, right up close.

It wasn't forbidden to work there.

So he worked, he farmed there?

Yes. Where the camp is now,

was partly his field.

It was off limits, but they heard everything.

It didn't bother him to work so near those screams?

At first is was unbearable. Then you got used to it.

You get used to anything?

Yes.

Now he thinks... impossible.

Yet it was true.

So he was the convoys arriving.

There were 60 to 80 cars in each convoy

and there were two locomotives

. that took the convoys into the camp,

taking 20 cars at a time.

And the cars came back empty?

Yes.

Does he remember?

Here's how it happened:

The locomotive picked up 20 cars and took them to the camp

That took maybe an hour,

and the empty cars came back here.

Then the next 20 cars were taken, and meanwhile,

the people in the first 20 were already dead.

They waited, they wept,

they asked for water, they died.

Sometimes they were naked in the cars, up to 170 people.

This is where they gave the Jews water, he says.

Where was that?

Here. When the convoys arrived, they gave water to

Who gave the Jews water?

We did, the Poles.

There was a tiny well, we took a bottle and...

Wasn't it dangerous to give them water?

Very dangerous.

You could be killed for giving a glass of water.

But we gave them water anyway.

Is it very cold here in winter?

It depends.

It can get to minus 15, minus 20.

Which was harder on the Jews, summer or winter?

Waiting here, I mean.

He thinks winter, because they were very cold.

They were so packed in the cars, maybe they weren't cold.

In summer they stifled: It was very hot.

The Jews were very thirsty. They tried to get out.

Were there corpses in the cars on arrival?

Obviously.

They were so packed in that even those still alive

sat on corpses for lack of space.

Didn't people here who went by the trains

look through the cracks in the cars?

Yes, they could look in sometimes as they went by.

When they were allowed, they gave them water, too.

How did the Jews try to get out?

The doors weren't opened. How'd they get out?

Through the windows.

They removed the barbed wire

and came out of the windows.

They jumped, of course.

Sometimes they just deliberately

sat down on the ground,

and the guards came and shot them in the head.

They jumped from the cars... What a sight!

Jumping from the windows.

There was a mother and child.

- Jewish? - Yes.

She tried to run away

and they shot her in the heart.

Shot who... the mother?

Yes, the mother.

This gentleman has lived here a long time, he can't forget.

He says that now he can't understand how a man

can do that to another human being.

It's inconceivable, beyond understanding.

Once when the Jews asked for water, a Ukrainian went by,

and forbade giving any.

The Jewish woman had asked for water...

threw her pot at his head.

The Ukrainian moved back,

maybe ten yards, and opened fire on the car.

Blood and brains were all over the place.

Lots of people opened the doors,

or escaped through the windows.

Sometimes the Ukrainians fired through the car walls.

It happened chiefly at night.

When the Jews talked to each other, as he showed us,

the Ukrainians wanted things quiet,

and they asked... yes, asked them to shut up.

So the Jews shut up and the guard moved off.

Then the Jews started talking again, in their language,

as he says, ra-ra-ra, and so on.

What's he mean, la-la-la, what's he trying to imitate?

Their language.

No, ask him:

Was the Jews' noise something special?

They spoke Jew.

Does Mr. Borowi understand "Jew"?

No.

Did he hear screams behind his locomotive?

Obviously, since the locomotive was next to the camp.

They screamed, asked for water.

The screams from the cars closest to the locomotive

could be heard very well.

Can one get used to that?

- No. -

It was extremely distressing to him.

He knew that the people behind him where human, like him.

The Germans gave him and the other workers

vodka to drink.

Without drinking, they couldn't have done it.

There was a bonus

that they were paid not in money, but in liquor.

Those who worked on other trains didn't get this bonus.

HENRIK GAWKOWSKY

He drank every drop he got because without liquor

he couldn't stand the stench when he got here.

They even bought more liquor on their own,

to get drunk on.

From the station to the unloading ramp in the camp,

how many miles?

Four.

ABRAHAM BOMBA

We traveled for two days.

On the morning of the second day we saw

that we had left Czechoslovakia

and were heading east.

It wasn't the SS guarding us,

but the Schutzpolizei,

the police, in green uniforms.

We were in ordinary passenger cars.

All the seats were filled.

You couldn't choose.

There were all numbered and assigned.

In my compartment there was an elderly couple.

I still remember: The good man

was always hungry and his wife scolded him,

saying they'd have no food left

for the future.

RICHARD GLAZAR

Then, on the second day,

I saw a sign for Malkinia.

We went on a little farther.

Then, very slowly, the train

turned off of the main track,

and rolled at a walking pace through a wood.

While he looked out,

we'd been able to open a window.

The old man in our compartment saw a boy...

Cows were grazing...

And he asked the boy in signs,

"Where are we?"

And the kid made a funny gesture. This!

Across the throat.

A Pole?

A Pole.

Where was this? At the station?

It was where the train had stopped.

On one side was the wood,

and on the other were fields.

And there was a farmer in a field?

We saw cows

watched over by a young man,

a farmhand.

And one of you questioned him?

Not in words, but in signs, we asked,

"What's going on here?"

And he made that gesture. Like this.

We didn't really

pay much attention to him.

We couldn't figure out what he meant.

Once there were foreign Jews... they were this fat...

This fat?

Riding in passenger cars.

There was a dining car, they could drink,

and walk around, too.

They said they were going to a factory.

On arrival they saw kind of a factory it was.

We'd gesture...

Gesture how?

That they'd be killed.

These people made that sign?

He says the Jews didn't believe it.

But what does that gesture mean?

That death awaited them.

The people who had a chance

to get near the Jews did that to warn them...

He did it too?

That they'd be hanged, killed, slain.

Yes.

Even foreign Jews from Belgium, Czechoslovakia,

from France too, surely.

And from Holland...

These didn't know,

but the Polish Jews knew.

In the small cities in the area,

it was talked about.

So the Polish Jews were forewarned, but not the others.

Who'd they warn, Polish Jews or the others?

All the Jews.

He says the foreign Jews arrived here in passenger

they were well dressed, in white shirts,

there were flowers in the cars, and they played cards.

From what I know, that was very rare,

Jews shipped in passanger cars.

Most arrived in cattle cars.

It's not true.

It's not true?

What did Mrs. Gawkowska say?

She said he may not have seen everything.

He says he did.

Once, at the Malkinia station, for example,

a foreign Jew left the train

to buy something at the bar.

The train pulled out and he ran after it...

To catch up to it.

So he went past these "pullmans", as he calls them

those Jews who were calm, unsuspecting,

and he made that gesture to them.

To all the Jews, in principle.

He just went along the platform! Ask him!

Yes. The road was as it is now.

When the guard wasn't looking,

he made that gesture.

Ask Mr. Gawkowski why he looks so sad.

Because I saw men marching to their death.

Precisely where are we now?

It's not far... a mile and a half from here.

What, the camp?

What's that dirt road he's indicating?

That's where the rail line into the camp was.

Did Mr. Gawkowski, aside from the trains of deportees

he drove from Warsaw or Bialystok

to the Treblinka station...

Did he ever drive the deportee cars

into the camp from the Treblinka station?

Did he do it often?

Two or three times a week.

Over how long a period?

Around a year and a half.

That is, throughout the camp's existence?

This is the ramp.

Here he is, he goes to the end with his locomotive,

and he has the 20 cars behind him.

No, they're in front of him.

He pushed them?

That's right, he pushed them.

In February 1942, I began

working here as an assistant switchman.

The station building, the rails, the platforms

are just as they were in 1942? Nothing's changed?

Nothing.

Exactly where did the camp begin?

JAN PIWONSKY

I'll show you exactly.

Here,

there was a fence that ran to those trees you see there.

And another fence, that ran to those trees over there.

So I'm standing inside the camp perimeter, right?

That's right.

Where I am now is 50 feet from the station,

and I'm already outside the camp.

Yes.

So this is the Polish part, and over there was death.

Yes.

On German orders, Polish railmen split up the trains.

So the locomotive took 20 cars,

and headed toward Chelm.

When it reached a switch,

it pushed the cars into the camp on the other track we can see.

The ramp began there.

So here we're outside the camp,

and back here we enter it.

Unlike Treblinka, the statio here is part of the camp.

And at this point we are inside the camp.

This track was inside the camp.

And it's exactly as it was?

Yes, the same track.

It hasn't changed since then.

Where we are now is what was called the ramp, right?

Yes, those to be exterminated were unloaded.

So where we're standing is

where 250,000 Jews were unloaded before being gassed.

Yes.

Did foreign Jews arrive here in passenger cars, too?

Not always.

Often the richest Jews,

from Belgium, Holland, France,

arrived in passenger cars,

sometimes even in 1st class.

They were usually better treated by the guards.

Especially the convoys of Western European Jews

waiting their turn here,

Polish railmen saw the women making up, combing their hair

wholly unaware of what awaited them minutes later.

They dolled up.

And the Poles couldn't tell them anything: The guards

forbad contact with the future victims.

I suppose were there fine days like today.

Unfortunately, some were even finer.

RUDOLF VRBA, survivor of AUSCHWITZ - NEW YORK

AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU

And suddenly it started: The yelling and screaming.

"All out, everybody out!"

All those shouts, the uproar, the tumult!

"Out! Get out!

"Leave the baggage!"

We got out stepping on each other.

We saw men

wearing blue armbands.

Some carried whips.

We saw some SS men.

Green uniforms,

black uniforms...

We were a mass,

and the mass swept us along.

It was irresistible.

It had to move to another place.

I saw the others undressing.

And I hear: "get undressed! You're to be disinfected!"

As I waited, already naked,

I noticed the

SS men separating out some people.

These were told to get dressed.

A passing SS man suddenly stopped in front of me,

looked me over, and said:

"Yes, you too, quick, join the others, get dressed.

"You're going to work here, and if you're good,

"You can be a kapo... a squad leader."

BIRKENAU: The ramp

We were taken to a barracks.

The whole place stank.

Piled about five feet high

in a jumbled mass,

where all the things people could conceivably have brought.

Clothes, suitcases,

everything

stacked in a solid mass.

On top of it, jumping around like demons.

People were

making bundles,

and carrying them outside.

I was turned over to one of these men.

His armband said, "Squad Leader".

He shouted, and I understood

that I was also to pick up clothing, bundle it,

and take it somewhere.

As I worked, I asked him:

"What's going on? The undressed ones... Where are they?

And he replied: "Dead! All dead!"

But it still hadn't sunk in, I didn't believe it.

He'd used the Yiddish word.

It was the first time I'd heard Yiddish spoken.

He didn't say it very loud,

and I saw he had tears in his eyes.

Suddenly he started shouting,

and raised his whip.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw an SS man coming.

And I understood that I was to ask no more questions,

but just to rush outside with the package.

All I could think of then was my friend Carel Unger.

He'd been at the rear of the train,

in a section that had been uncoupled and left outside.

I needed someone. Near me. With me.

Then I saw him. He was in the 2nd group.

He'd been spared too.

On the way, somehow, he had learned, he already knew.

He looked at me,

all he said was: "Richard, my father, mother, brother...

He had learned on the way there.

Your meeting with Carel:

How long after your arrival did it happen?

It was... around 20 minutes after we reached Treblinka.

Then I left the barracks,

and had my first look at the vast space

that I soon learned was called

"the sorting place".

It was buried under mountain of objects of all kinds.

Mountains of shoes, of clothes, 30 feet high.

I thought about it and said to Carel:

"It's a hurricane, a raging sea.

"We're shipwrecked. And we're still alive.

"We must do nothing

"but watch for every new wave,

"float on it,

"get ready for the next wave,

"and ride the wave at all costs. And nothing else."

Greenery, sand everywhere else.

At night, we were put into a barracks.

It just had a sand floor.

Nothing else.

Each of us simply dropped where he stood.

Half-asleep, I heard

some men hang themselves.

We didn't react then. It was almost normal.

Just as it wast normal that for everyone

behind whom the gate of Treblinka closed,

there was death, had to be death,

for no one was supposed

to be left to bear witness.

I already knew that,

three hours after

arriving at Treblinka.

BERLIN

INGE DEUTSCHKRON. Born in BERLIN

Lived there throught the war.

(in hiding beginning in February 1943)

Now lives in ISRAEL

FRANZ SUCHOMEL: SS unterscharfuhrer

Are you ready?

- Yes. - Then we can...

We can begin.

How's your heart? Is everything in order?

Oh, my heart... For the moment, it's all right.

If I have any pain, I'll tell you.

We'll have to break off.

Of course.

But your health, in general, is...

The weather today suits me fine.

The barometric pressure is high: That's good for me.

You look to be in good shape, anyway.

Let's begin with Treblinka.

Certainly.

I think that's best.

If you could give us

a description of Treblinka.

How did it look when you arrived?

I believe you got there in August?

Was it August 20 or 24?

The 18th?

I don't know exactly. Around August 20.

I arrived there with seven other men.

From Berlin?

From Berlin.

From Lublin?

From Berlin to Warsaw, from Warsaw to Lublin,

from Lublin back to Warsaw and from Warsaw to Treblinka.

What was Treblinka like then?

Treblinka then was operating at full capacity.

Full capacity?

Full capacity!

Trains arrived...

The Warsaw ghetto was being emptied then.

Three trains arrived in two days,

each with three, four, five thousand people aboard,

all from Warsaw.

But at the same time, other trains came in

from Kielce and other places.

So three trains arrived,

and since the offensive against Stalingrad was in fear,

the trainloads of Jews were left on a station siding.

What's more, the cars were French,

made of steel.

So that while 5,000 Jews arrived in Treblinka,

3,000 were dead.

In the...

In the cars. They had slashed

their wrists, or just died.

The ones we unloaded were half-dead

and half-mad.

In the other trains from Kielce

and elsewhere,

at least half were dead.

We stacked them here, here,

here and here.

Thousands of people

piled one on top of another.

On the ramp?

On the ramp.

Stacked like wood.

In addition,

other Jews, still alive, waited there for two days:

The small gas-chambers could no longer handle the number.

They functioned day and night in that period.

Can you please describe, very precisely,

your first impression of Treblinka?

Very precisely. It's very important.

My first impression of Treblinka,

and that of some of the other men, was catastrophic.

For we had not been told

how and what... that people were being killed there.

That they hadn't told us.

You didn't know?

No!

Incredible!

But true. I didn't want to go.

That was proved at my trial.

I was told:

"Mr. Suchomel, there are big workshops there

"for tailors and shoemakers,

"and you'll be guarding them."

But you knew it was a camp?

Yes. We were told:

"The Fuhrer ordered a ressettlement program.

"It's an order from the Fuhrer."

Understand?

Ressetlement program...

No one ever spoke of killing.

I understand.

Mr. Suchomel, we're not discussing you,

only Treblinka.

You are a very important eye-witness,

and you can explain what Treblinka was.

But don't use my name.

No, I promised.

All right, you've arrived at Treblinka.

So Stadie, the sarge,

showed us the camp

from end to end.

Just as we went by, they were

opening the gas-chamber doors,

and people fell out like potatoes.

Naturally, that horrified and appalled us.

We went back and sat down on our suitcases

and cried like old women.

Each day, 100 Jews were chosen

to drag the corpses to the mass graves.

In the evening, the Ukrainians drove those Jews

into the gas-chambers or shot them.

Every day!

It was in the hottest days of August.

The ground undulated

likes waves because of the gas.

From the bodies?

Bear in mind, the graves were maybe 18,

20 feet deep,

all crammed with bodies!

A thin layer of sand and the heat. You see?

It was a hell up there.

You saw that?

Yes, just once, the first day.

We pucked and wept.

You wept?

We wept too, yes.

The smell was infernal.

Yes, because gas was constantly escaping.

It stank horribly, for miles around.

Miles?

Miles!

You could smell it all around, not just in the camp?

Everywhere. It depended on the wind. The stink

was carried on the wind.

Understand?

More people kept coming, always more,

whom we hadn't the facilities to kill.

Those gents were in a rush to clean out the Warsaw ghetto.

The gas-chambers couldn't handle the load.

The small gas-chambers.

The Jews had to wait their turn for a day,

2 days, 3 days.

They foresaw what was coming.

They foresaw it.

They may not have been certain, but many knew.

There were Jewish women who

slashed their daughters' wrists at night,

then cut their own.

Others poisoned themselves.

They heard the engine feeding the gas-chamber.

A tank engine was used in that gas-chamber.

At Treblinka the only gas used was engine exhaust.

Zyklon gas, that was Auschwitz.

Because of the delay,

Eberl, the camp commandant,

phoned Lublin and said:

"We can't go on this way. I can't do it any longer.

"We have to break off."

Overnight, Wirth arrived.

He inspected everything and then left.

He returned with people from Belzec,

experts.

Wirth arranged to suspend the trains.

The corpses lying there were cleared away.

That was the period of the old gas-chambers.

Because there were so many dead

that couldn't be gotten rid off,

the bodies piled up around the gas-chambers

and stayed there for days.

Under this pile of bodies was a cesspool:

3 inches deep, full of blood, worms...

and shit.

No one wanted to clean it out.

The Jews preferred to be shot

rather than work there.

Preferred to be shot?

It was awful. Burying their own people, seeing it all...

The dead flesh came off in their hands.

So Wirth went there himself

with a few Germans

and had long belts rigged up

that were wrapped around the dead torsos to pull them...

Who did that?

SS men.

Wirth?

SS men and Jews.

SS men and Jews!

Jews too?

Jews too!

What did the Germans do?

They forced the Jews to...

They beat them?

Or they themselves helped with the clean-up.

Which Germans did that?

Some of our guards who were assigned up there.

The Germans themselves?

They had to.

They were in command!

They were in command, but they were also commanded.

I think the Jews did it.

In that case, the Germans had to lend a hand.

The black execution wall in the courtyard of block II

at AUSCHWITZ I, the original camp

Filip, on that Sunday in May 1942,

when you first entered

the Auschwitz creatorium, how old were you?

Twenty.

It was a Sunday in May.

It was a Sunday in May.

We were locked in an underground cell in Block 11

We were held in secret.

Then some SS men appeared

and marched us along a street in the camp.

We went through a gate,

and around 300 feet away,

300 feet from the gate,

I suddenly saw a building.

It had a flat roof, and a smokestack.

I saw a door in the rear.

I thought they were taking us to be shot.

FILIP MULLER: Survivor of the 5 liquidations

of the AUSCHWITZ "special detail".

Suddenly, before a door

under a lamp in the middle of this building.

A young SS man told us:

"Inside, filthy swine!"

We entered a corridor.

They drove us along it.

Right away, the stench, the smoke choked me.

They kept on chasing us

and then I made out the shapes

of the first two ovens.

Between the ovens, some Jewish prisoners were working.

We were in the crematorium's incineration chamber

in Camp I at Auschwitz.

From there, they herded us

to another big room,

and told us to undress the corpses.

I looked around me.

There were hundreds of bodies,

all dressed.

Piled with the corpses

were suitcases, bundles

and, scattered everywhere,

strange, blueish-purple crystals.

I couldn't understand any of it.

It was like a blow on the head... as if you'd been stunned.

I didn't even know where I was.

Above all, I couldn't understand how they

managed to kill so many people at once.

When we undressed some of them,

the order was given to feed the ovens.

Suddenly, an SS man rushed up and told me:

"Get out of here! Go stir the bodies!"

What did he mean,

"Stir the bodies"?

I entered the cremation chamber.

There was a Jewish prisoner,

Fischel, who later became a squad leader.

He looked at me and I watched him

poke the fire with a long rod.

He told me, "Do as I'm doing

"or the SS will kill you."

I picked up a poker

and did as he was doing.

A poker?

A steel poker.

I obeyed Fischel's order.

At that point I was in shock as if I'd been hypnotized,

ready to do

whatever I was told.

I was so mindless, so horrified

that I did everything Fischel told me.

So the ovens were fed,

but we were so inexperienced

that we left the fans on

too long.

The fans?

Yes. There were fans to make the fire hotter.

They worked too long...

The firebrick suddenly exploded,

blocking the pipes linking

the Auschwitz crematorium

with the smokestack.

Cremation was interrupted.

The ovens were out of action.

That evening, some trucks came,

and we had to load the rest,

some 300 bodies,

into the trucks.

Then we were taken...

I still don't know where...

but probably to a field at Birkenau.

We were ordered to unload the bodies

and put them in a pit.

There was a ditch, an artificial pit.

Suddenly, water gushed up from underground

and swept the bodies down.

When night came,

we had to stop that horrible work.

We were loaded into the trucks

and returned to Auschwitz.

The next day, we were taken to the same place

but the water had risen.

Some SS men came with a firetruck

and pumped out the water.

We had to go down into that muddy pit

to stack up the bodies.

But they were slimy.

For example, I grasped a woman, but her hands...

Her hand was slippery, slimy I tried to pull her,

but I fell over backward, into the water, the mud.

It was the same for all of us.

Up to, at the edge of the pit, Aumeyer and Grabner yelled,

"Get cracking, you filth, you bastards!

"We'll show you, you bunch of shits!"

And in these...

how shall I say? - Circumstances- 2 of my "friends"

couldn't take any more. One was a French student.

All Jews! They were exhausted.

They just lay there in the mud.

Aumeyer called

one of his SS men:

"Go on, finish off those swine!"

They were exhausted. And they were shot in the pit.

There were no crematorium at Birkenau then?

No, there weren't any there yet.

Birkenau still wasn't completely set up.

Only Camp BI, which was late the women's camp, existed.

It wasn't until the spring of 1943 that skilled workmen

and unskilled laborers, all Jews,

must have gone to work here

and built the 4 crematorium.

Each crematorium had 15 ovens,

a big undressing room, around 3,000 square feet,

and a big gas-chamber

where up to 3,000 people at once could be gassed.

TREBLINKA

The new gas-chambers were built in September 1942.

Who built them?

Hackenhold and Lambert supervised

the Jews who did the work

the bricklaying, at least.

Ukrainian carpenters made the doors.

The gas-chamber doors themselves

were armored bunker doors.

I think they were brought from Bialystok,

from some Russian bunkers.