Whippers and Whipped Finally were were ordered to halt and the women were marched off to a square covered by a thatched roof. Later we saw them marched past, nude, toward a fenced-off area. They vanished behind a gate. We were ordered to undress and run back and forth between the clothing pile and the spot where we had undressed— all the time through the "corridor" of madly yelling guards. From the direction of the high fence there came a horrible moaning which lasted for a minute or two. I observed that the men with whips and sticks forming the outer wall of the "corridor," were Jews themselves-derelict, half-mad individuals, prodded by Ukrainians who pressed guns into their backs. When we again reached the clothes-pile, I jumped onto it, grabbed a pair of pants and a jacket, picked up a cane and forced my way among the guards forming the "corridor." With all the others, I shouted hysterically and waved my cane. S.S. men, standing to the side, watching the sadistic orgy with satisfaction, pulled out all well-built Jews. "Hospital"-Nazi Style At the sound of a sharp whistle, we were rushed to the train, where we formed two rows at the doors of each car. Ten more cars had arrived from one of which an old Jew tumbled. An S.S. man ordered one of the guards to take him to "the hospital." Then I, too, was ordered to take an old man to "the hospital." I did not know what was meant by "the hospital," but I followed the first guard. We walked toward an area from which thick smoke rose, and stopped at a pit ten meters in width and ten meters in depth. I could see smoldering human bodies at the bottom. I followed the motions of the "veterans." We undressed the old Jews and seated them at the edge of the pit, their feet dangling. Some more were brought here. When ten of them were thus seated with their feet dangling, Ukrainian guards whipped them once and immediately they dropped into the smoldering pit. I learned that the veterans had been here for some three weeks, others for no more than three or four days. Every morning, one or two of the beaters' group were led away, never to be seen again. The fenced-off enclosure from which came the frequent horrifying moans, followed by a dreadful silence, was known as "the court of death." Two Jewish youths, employed as gravediggers, escaped from there and sought to lose themselves among us. They told us that there were eight barracks with room for 7,000. All who arrived on the trains, excepting those who were assigned as "beaters," were lead into the barracks and told they would receive baths and showers. The barracks were sealed and gas let in. Those outside waiting their turn soon grasped what was happening and sought to stampede. But then S.S. men and Ukrainians with ferocious dogs appeared and kept them back. The doors were sealed for 15 minutes at a time, and when they were opened, all who had been locked in were dead. Five hundred men were assigned to the one task of removing the corpses and throwing them into the burning pit. Five hundred Jews-mental derelicts, servants of death, half-dead themselves. There were at least ten suicides daily among them. All bore the stench of carrion, because of their work. In the far corner of our yard there was a hut in which lived the essential laborers-carpenters, locksmiths, electricians, tailors—and 12 musicians. Brought here from Warsaw some months before the official deportations began they had constructed the camp and were still employed at such labors. They wore yellow patches on their clothing and were kept separate from us. The musicians were assigned to play for the Nazis at their orgies. I was at Treblinka for four days, during which Jews arrived from Holland, France, Vienna and all parts of Poland, only to disappear behind the fence of "the court death." Blueprint for Escape Escape during the day was impossible, for we were under constant guard from the moment we were marched out at 6 A.M. until 7 P.M., when we were locked in again. We decided that we must find some way to remain outside the barracks at night. One evening, at 6 P.M., I tied my comrades into a bundles of clothing and placed them on the pile. One who had refused to escape himself tied me into a bundle, as I had done with my comrades, and placed me on the hill. After 6 P.M., silence settledon the camp. We disentangled ourselves and with the pressure of our bodies, we dug a big pit in the clothes-pile in order to be able to see without being seen. Every half hour the guard passed the clothing hill, and frequently the spotlight was turned on it. We were able to tell the time by the change of the watch. Evading the spotlight, we crept slowly toward the pit, using its vapors, rising thicker at night than during the day, as a smoke-screen. We faced the first barbed-wire fence. The soil was soft under it and we dug with our hands and knives and finally passed through. We found ourselves in a forest, walked straight ahead and soon faced another barbed-wire fence. As the soil here was hard, we could not dig, and were compelled to climb the barbed wire. Bruised and cut, we got across. Soon we faced a third barbed-wire barrier. We climbed this one, too. We reached Warsaw on the morning after Succoth. I obtained the necessary "aryan" documents and struck out for the border of a neighboring country. I made two attempts to cross the border. The first attempt failed. After obtaining from me 20,000 zlotas, approximately $400, the first group of smugglers left me stranded in a forest. But I tried again. In February, 1943, I was finally taken across to (name of a neighboring country). -Independent Jewish Press Service Discovery of the Treblinka Killing Center Treblinka killing center was on the Bug River northeast of Warsaw in the General Government (occupied Poland). Opened in July 1942, it was the largest of the three killing centers of Operation Reinhard. Between 700,000 and 860,000 Jews were killed there. A revolt of inmates on 2 August 1943 destroyed most of the camp, and it was closed in November 1943. Ralph Parker, staff correspondent for the liberal daily newspaper PM, relates the experiences of Samuel Rajzman, one of the few escapees from this site of mass murder. Parker's article appeared in the 12 November 1944 issue of PM. Nazis Killed 2,764,000 Jews the Tremblinka camp as far worse. It is difficult across the Atlantic to realize how highly organized But Jewish life will never be stored to Europe. and many mothers, desperately an xious to leave Warsaw, chlorore-formed their babies, wrapped them I have before me a document bundles and turned right. Rajzman was among those who 80 and 90 in the cattle truck in left Warsaw. There were between which he travelled. The train, drawn by an old fashioned locomotive, was shunted to a siding for 12 reached Tremblinka. Five women hours. Twenty hours later it and two men died on the journey. Nazi Buildup The Germans went to great describing the place where more sealed doors of the gas chambers Glad to Leave Forever Lost Of the preliminaries to incarcera- The station served nothing, ex- Europe's bomb-blasted cities will Rochery fatrisin Cheith "I found this note by the body of a 10-year-old boy buried in a mass grave. The language is Polish; it is scrawled in pencil on a piece of brownish paper 4% inches long and 24 inches wide. It reads as follows: Dear Father-We are in barracks. We are very bad here. Save us if you can and if you want us to live. inquiry bureaus. The station walls Rajzman-who owes his escape Buried Hair The sanie macabre "sense of I kiss you. Henry. The message was folded inside another piece dentists to extract gold teeth from of paper addressed to Zelman Zey devsky. This is likely a Polish- the corpses. The Resian writer Vasili Gross man, who visited Tremblinka, de- 700 Flee, 12 Survive A conspiracy was formed among those prisoners whose lives were spared for work. As at Majanek, a large staff was needed to sort the possessions of the victims of the gas chambers, and Rajzman came in contact with a resistance group in his work of classifying men's under The conspirators were chosen by Dr. Julan Chorazycki, formerly an officer in the Polish Army. His method was to approach the few prisoners who survived a Blogging Such men, he used to say to Rajzman, have shown their will to live and that is all that is needed to escape from the camp. The conspirators concentrated on obtaining arms. One of them, a locksmith by trade, was employed to repair the armory door He obtained an impression of the key and in four months succeeded in mak. ing a duplicate. The coup was timed for April 21, 1943, but had to be postponed, because of Chorazycki's death. Provoked by blow from a Gestapo officer, he drew a knife, then, before he could be seized, he swallowed poison A fortnight later Dr. Leichert of Wegrowa, Poland, also a former army ofbcer, was chosen as the new leader The time chosen for the rising was when Tremblinka was empty, except for its permanent staff of some 700 workers and their Cerman master. A small quantity of grenades and revolvers smuggled from the armory, was hidden under the rubble. A Czechoslovak mechanic repairng trucks supplied gasoline to a conspirator, whose daily task it was to spray various parts of the camp with a disinfectant. The gasoline was mixed with the disinfectant and at the signal of a shot, grea ades were thrown at the infam mable buildings. The whole camp was soon in Bames. Of the 700 workers some 150 escaped, and of these, Rajzman estimates, 12 sur vived pursuit. The Tremblinka camp is being investigated and the preliminary accounts bear out Rajzman's story and add much to it. There was, for instance, an experimental de partment with a staff of German doctors and psychologists, working on "problems arising from a mixture of Aryan and Jewish blood." Here were sent Jewish women made pregnant by Germans. Baltic Camps I Was There Frances Penney was a young Polish woman living in Warsaw with her husband when the war began. They moved to the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland in late 1939. In the spring of 1941, she and her mother went to Vilna, following her sister and her husband, who had been deported from Poland by the Soviets just before the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany. When the Germans arrived, Penney was able to work for them, obtaining a protective pass, and thus initially avoided transfer to the Vilna ghetto. Later she was forced to move into the ghetto, where she developed a friendship with Jacob Gens, the head of the Jewish council (Judenrat) there. He was able to get her a job in a ghetto workshop. When the Vilna ghetto was liquidated in October 1943, Penney was captured with her mother and deported, first to Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga, and then to Strassdenhof Jugla concentration camp. In the fall of 1944, she was sent back to Kaiserwald and then placed on a sea transport of prisoners destined for Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. This excerpt describes that journey and Penney's subsequent transfer to Magdelrerg for forced labor in an ammunition factory. Reprinted from Frances Penney, I Was There, trans. Zofia Griffen (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1988), 87–119. It is hard to recall how long it took before we reached Kaiserwald, the notorious concentration camp on the outskirts of the city of Riga, the capital of Latvia. Our train stopped in the camp proper. We were ordered to get out and line up in rows. We were surrounded by German-speaking women who told us to surrender all of our possessions, especially gold, money, and jewelry. They warned us that if we did not follow their orders, we would be severely punished. None of us budged. While this threatening tirade went on, I vowed to myself that I would use every possible means to hold on to my mother's eyeglass case. In it, I hid a snapshot of Mother and a picture of me with my brother, taken when we had vacationed before the war in Karwia. . . In Kaiserwald the whole atmosphere was more relaxed. Our people were less frightened. Those who were led to work outside the camp had some opportunity to get in touch with the Latvian people. For the first time, we were informed about the state of affairs at the war front. The Russian Army was closing in on the city of Riga and was expected to occupy it any day. Nevertheless, we were being sent to work on a regular basis. My brigade was assigned to a sawmill on the outskirts of Riga. There was a freight train standing on the tracks with no engine attached to it. Our job was to carry heavy construction boards from one of the cars of this train to another. The next day, we would carry back those boards to the first car, and so on. It was a hard job and the hot weather, plus the heavy striped clothing we wore, made it much harder. We were closely watched, so there was no way of taking a break, even for a few minutes. At one point, the heat became so unbearable that we were allowed to strip our prison dresses off and work in our underwear. The Germans' proverbial perfection in pursuing their goals, which normally was considered to be an asset, turned into a curse when it was applied to the persecution of vanquished nations. Their "idee fixe" of the "Final Solution" of the "Jewish Problem" had been carried out as close to perfection as was possible, until the very end of the war. The smell of German defeat in the air encouraged us to take advantage of the situation. The continuous hunger pangs in our stomachs prompted us to look for ways to get some nourishment. Some of the women who had valuables stashed away implored us to get food for them. The foreman at the sawmill suggested that I smuggle a small package of herring to the camp. If I managed to sell it for him, I would get one or two of these herrings to eat. The small herrings were an exquisite delicacy for all of us suffering from starvation. The trivial smuggling in which we who worked on the outside were engaged was a salvation for those who worked inside the camp. The Latvian laborers who worked at the sawmill would confide in us that they expected the Germans to retreat any day now. They even had some ideas about how to save us. They promised to let us know when not to go back to the camp from work; they would tell us when to stay on and hide at the sawmill. They promised to arrange hideaways inside the structures formed by the stacked building boards. They offered to supply us with bread and water, and, the moment the Germans started to retreat, to give us a sign, so that we could come out from hiding. The idea was tempting, and we tried to tell them how we appreciated and were grateful for their taking the trouble to think about saving us. However, we were skeptical about anybody's sincere intention to help us, especially after my experience with the foreman and his Christmas gift. So we disregarded their offer. Every day, marching to work with our brigade through the town, we witnessed the enormous change taking place in the German morale. Columns of military trucks, retreating from the Eastern front, were moving slowly towards the West. In between the trucks, small cadres of tired, dirty, disheveled, and wounded soldiers dragged their bodies, barely able to move. The whole scene bore witness to the state of the German Army. They were conquerors no more. And yet the supervisors at the sawmill continued their rigid system of wringing every drop of sweat from our bodies at their senseless hard labor of carrying those boards from one car to another. One day in Kaiserwald, I found myself in a state of shock when I came upon a young man, whom I recognized as the brother of Fania Jochelson, with whom I had worked at Rossa, two years earlier. Fania's mother had replaced me when I was released from my job there. How bitter I was at the time when I thought I was being pushed out of that seemingly good and safe job! Now I found out that everybody at Rossa had perished, while I was still alive!... One night, an alarm sounded at the Kaiserwald camp. When we jumped off our pallets, we were given minutes to get ready to move on. We were being transported to an unknown destination. In the darkness of the night, we ran to the courtyards. The whole camp was being evacuated. There were many, many hundreds of us. We were aligned in rows and began to march. After short walk, we were stopped at a harbor and were made to board a large ship standing at anchor. At first people were herded into the steerage of the ship; when the steerage was filled to capacity, the rest, and I was among them, were led to the deck above. The minute we all boarded the ship, she began to move. It was an awful night to live through! As the shock of the sudden move, accompanied by the rough treatment with which the Germans were carrying out the rapid evacuation, was slowly wearing off we came to face the fact that the flicker of hope of being liberated by the Russians had to be abandoned. This was a heavy blow to us. On top of it, there was intense bombing of the harbor. We were jittery. Later in the night, when the boat was out of the immediate bombing zone and everybody around me was asleep, I took the chance of stealing my way out to the deck. It was a moonlit night, and daring to move a few steps forward to the railing, I heard voices coming from the upper deck. I could not resist the urge to look up. There, men and women in military uniforms engaged in lively, carefree conversation. They were laughing, singing, and drinking. Though it was only one instant in time, I can never erase this scene from my memory. The laughter and the voices are still ringing in my ears. Their heaven and our hell were just one deck apart. One unanswered question on everybody's mind (and one that still lingers on in my mind) was: “Why did the Germans have to drag us with them? Why hadn't they left us behind?" The next morning, I and some of the women were given the job of distributing bread to our people. Only then had I the chance to appreciate my good luck at having spent the night on the deck above the steerage. When our people were crammed into the bottom of the ship, it had already been weighted down by tons of sand. They had had to sit on the sand, which was wet and stinking. The lack of air and the stench was unbearable. Only the sight of the bread brought them some relief from the misery and gloom. Towards the late afternoon, the ship came to a stop, but we still didn't know where we were. The way in which we were hustled out of the ship and into some tarpaulin-covered barges caused us to speculate that the whole operation was being conducted in great secrecy. There were many barges standing in the water. Men were separated from the women and led to different barges. The one I was shoved onto was packed with probably more than fifty women. We were literally squeezed like sardines in a can, only we were in an upright position. There was no way one could even squat. The only thing that we were supplied with was one pail for our physical needs. As I remember, we were standing upright rocking in the water for two or three days. We had no bread or water. We were hungry, thirsty, and were being eaten by lice and vermin. At one point, when we were in a stage of only halfconsciousness the barge began to move. After a short ride, it stopped. It was with great relief that we were able to come up on land and stretch our numbed bodies. We were at a new concentration camp, gathered together at a large courtyard. There we were greeted by Kapos, as we had been in Kaiserwald. We were to surrender everything we had. Possession of even a piece of bread would lead to severe punishment. As weary as I was physically and mentally after the prolonged rocking in the water, and as starved and thirsty as I was, I had to laugh to myself at the way the capos wasted their energy on us. There we were, mere shadows of human beings, and they were trying to squeeze out of us some more possessions. Were they kidding themselves? Could they possibly think that at this late stage of our imprisonment we could still have something to surrender? And if we had had anything of value, with our vast experience would we have surrendered it to them? I, for one, was determined to hold onto my mother's eyeglasses no matter what the punishment. I had also hidden a piece of bread under my arm. While we were waiting, a woman, obviously already an inmate, sneaked in among us. She turned to me, asking where I was from. When I told her that I was from Warsaw, she whispered that she was from Lodz, and that she had taken the risk of approaching us because she was anxious to know for whom the Germans had emptied this barrack in such a hurry. "Two days ago," she said, "there were great numbers of young women here," among them her sister and several cousins. They were hurriedly removed to the section behind the barbed wire, to the extermination area, the area of no return. The chimneys there were belching smoke around the clock, which meant that the ovens were active day and night. She then gave us the most chilling news. We We had been in Stutthof for some time when a new event briefly broke through our state of utter resignation to our fate. A large contingent of young Jewish women was brought into the camp. Because it was the fall of 1944, we were stunned at seeing these women looking so healthy and strong. We were puzzled. Soon I took the risk and smuggled myself into their barrack, eager to find out their secret. They were from Hungary. Until recently they had lived in their homes in their respective towns and in cities, and they had not been in any danger. Then, a blitz action of arrests and deportations of the Jewish population began to take place. Stutthof was their first concentration camp. Some of the women had come from farms. Some of them did not even know that they were Jewish. Some were very religious, coming from Orthodox backgrounds. There was one among them who actually showed me her candles to be lit on the Sabbath. I could not believe my own eyes. While I was receiving all this news, German officers entered the barrack. There was concern for my safety, and I was hastily hidden under a blanket. The concern was for a peculiar reason. My starved, emaciated appearance was strikingly different from that of the newly arrived. This could cause trouble. After the officers left, several women surrounded me. Because it was their first exposure to a camp inmate, they were eager to hear my story. Briefly and in a great hurry, I recounted my exodus from Vilna and my wanderings. through the concentration camps. There was a burst of real sympathy for me. These women were yet very sensitive to human suffering: they were not numb as were we veterans of concentration camps. . . . I had been in this extermination camp for four weeks, waiting and waiting for the inescapable. One day when I could not get to the toilet because the door was locked from the inside, I ran to the door that led outside, opened it, and looked out to make sure that I would have safe passage. I was going to run to the next barrack, when the freak, whom we called "the mad dog of Stutthof," jumped out of nowhere and trapped me by my neck with the hook of his cane. He pulled me all the way behind our barrack and pushed me towards a large formation of women who were standing there. The minute I joined the line, as though they were waiting only for me, we began to march. Bewildered, shuddering, with my neck hurting, and unable to grasp the instantaneous change in my situation, I marched, clutching in my hand my only possessionMother's eyeglass case. We were led to a building located a short distance away. When inside, I looked around and realized that the group, of which I had become part of so acci dentally, consisted of several hundred women. We were immediately ordered to strip bare and toss our striped prison clothing onto a pile in the corner. Doors were open to a huge hall which we entered. Instantly, our eyes became transfixed on the ceiling, which was outfitted with pipes and metal fixtures. Terrified, I looked at the ceiling, thinking "gas." I was convulsively clenching my little eyeglass case, while my mind went into a state of frenzy. My whole body tightened and froze in the all-absorbing confrontation with death. Suddenly, drops of water fell on my head. Water came down in the shower. Water, life, like lightning ran through my mind. Death not yet, not yet. Orders in a loud voice were coming from the outside: "Wash up well. Come out. Dry yourself. Walk to the next room. Grab some clothing. Get out and line up in rows." Only halfway out of the state of facing the ultimate death, we followed the orders in a rapid succession of actions. Out of the "chambers of horror" and into the cold air, still shaking all over, my muscles still tight, I slowly began to feel and react to the world around me. We were led toward the railroad tracks, through a terrain where the sight of mountains of men's, women's and children's shoes could tear one's heart out. I have an especially painful memory of a large heap of eyeglasses; it seemed to evoke the eyes of those who used them. The horrid statistics of the numbers of those who perished in Stutthof lay right there for us to see. We walked until we came to a railroad track, where freight cars were waiting for us. We struggled to climb into them, which, at this point, called for a gigantic effort. We finally made it and boarded the train. We were exhausted and edgy. Looking back at the events of that day, I ask myself what my feelings were after that fateful moment when I started to run to the next barrack's toilet, and ended on a train taking me away from the death factory of Stutthof. Was there any degree of joy in me? No, is the answer. There wasn't any joy. This luxurious feeling had long been forgotten. I felt rather a sensation of relief in the satisfaction of receiving one more chance to stay alive. When I climbed on the train, I noticed in front of me, next to the opposite doors, a board about three feet long. It was lying on the floor. I went for this board and picked it up. It is hard to understand now what I needed this board for, except that it was something to possess. Simultaneously, another woman, coming from the opposite side, tried to grab the board. This led to an instant struggle. She gave me a strong push. The frame of the door was studded with nails and hooks. Her push was so violent that I landed on the frame with one of the hooks penetrating my left temple. The hissing gut-sound caused by an excruciating pain alerted the women around me. A hushed call for help passed through the car. A woman, a doctor by profession, jumped forward. |