A Writer at War (45 page)

Apparently, in order to achieve the final deception for people arriving from Europe, the railroad dead-end siding was made to look like a passenger station. On the plaform at which another twenty carriages would be unloaded stood a station building with a ticket office, baggage room and a restaurant hall. There were arrows everywhere, indicating ‘To Bialystok’, ‘To Baranovichi’, ‘To Volokovysk’, etc. By the time the train arrived, there would be a band playing in the station building, and all the musicians were dressed well. A porter in railway uniform took tickets from the passengers and let them pass on to the square.

Three or four thousand people loaded with sacks and suitcases would go out into this square supporting the old and sick. Mothers were holding babies in their arms, older children kept close to their parents looking inquisitively at the square. There was something sinister and horrible in this square whose earth had been trampled by millions of human feet. The strained eyes of the people were quick to catch alarming little things. There were some objects abandoned on the ground, which had been swept hastily, apparently a few minutes before the party emerged – a bundle of clothes, an open case, a shaving brush, enamel saucepans. How did they get here? And why, right where the platform ends, is there no more railway and only yellow grass growing behind a three-metre-high wire fence? Where is the railway leading to Bialystok, to Sedlez, Warsaw, Volokovysk? And the new guards grin in such a strange way surveying the men adjusting their ties, neat old ladies, boys wearing navy shirts, thin girls who had managed to keep their
clothes tidy throughout this journey, young mothers adjusting lovingly the blankets in which their babies are wrapped, the babies who are wrinkling their faces . . . What is there, behind this huge, six-metre-high wall, which is densely covered with yellowing pine branches and with bedding? These coverlets, too, are alarming: they are all different colours, padded, silk or satin. They are reminiscent of the eiderdowns that they, the newcomers, have brought with them. How did this bedding get here? Who brought it with them? And where are their owners? Why don’t they need them any longer? And who are these people with light blue armbands? One remembers all the thoughts that have come into one’s head recently, all the fears, all the rumours that were told in a whisper. No, no, this can’t be true. And one drives the terrible thoughts away. People have a few moments to dwell on their fears in the square, until all the newcomers are assembled in it. There are always delays. In each transport there are the crippled, the limping, and old and sick people, who can hardly move their feet. But finally everyone is in the square.

An SS
Unteroffizier
suggests in a loud and distinct voice that the newcomers leave their luggage in the square and go to the bathhouse, with just their personal documents, valuables and the smallest possible bags with what they need for washing. Dozens of questions appear immediately in the heads of people standing in the square: whether they can take fresh underwear with them, whether they can unpack their bundles, whether the luggage of different people piled in the square might get mixed up or lost? But some strange force makes them walk, hastily and silently, asking no questions, not looking back, to the gate in a six-metre-high wall of wire camouflaged with branches.

They pass anti-tank hedgehogs, the fence of barbed wire three times the height of a man, a three-metre-wide anti-tank moat, more wire, this time thin, thrown on the ground in concertina rolls, in which the feet of a runner would get stuck like a fly’s legs in a spiderweb, and another wall of barbed wire, many metres high. And a terrible feeling of doom, of being completely helpless comes over them: it’s impossible to run away, or turn back, or fight. The barrels of large-calibre machine guns are looking at them from the low wooden towers. Call for help? But there are SS men and guards all around, with sub-machine guns, hand grenades and pistols. They are the power. In their hands are tanks and aircraft, lands, cities, the sky, railways, the law, newpapers, radio. The whole world is
silent, suppressed, enslaved by a brown gang of bandits which has seized power. London is silent and New York, too. And only somewhere on a bank of the Volga, many thousands of kilometres away, the Soviet artillery is roaring.

Meanwhile, in the square, in front of the railway station, a group of workers with sky-blue armbands is silently and efficiently unpacking the bundles, opening baskets and suitcases, unfastening the straps on the bags. The belongings of the newcomers are being sorted out and evaluated. They throw on the ground someone’s carefully arranged sewing kits, balls of threads, children’s underwear, undershirts, sheets, jumpers, little knives, shaving sets, bundles of letters, photographs, thimbles, bottles of perfume, mirrors, caps,
valenki
made from quilts for the cold weather, women’s shoes, stockings, lace, pyjamas, packs of butter, coffee, jars with cocoa, prayer shawls, candleholders, books, rusks, violins, children’s blocks. One needs skill to be able to sort out all these thousands of objects within minutes and appraise them. Some are selected to be sent to Germany. Others – the second-rate, the old and the repaired – have to be burned. A worker who’d make a mistake, like putting an old cardboard suitcase into a heap of leather ones selected to be sent to Germany, or throwing a pair of stockings from Paris, with a factory label on them, into a heap of old mended socks, would get into serious trouble. A worker could make only one mistake.

Forty SS men and sixty
Wachmänner
were working ‘on the transport’.
⁵
This was how they referred to the first stage which I have just described: receiving a train, unloading people at the ‘railway station’ and getting them into the square, and watching the workers who sorted and evaluated the luggage. While doing this job, the workers often secretly shovelled into their mouths pieces of bread, sugar and sweets which they found in the bags with food. This was not allowed. It was, however, permitted to wash hands and faces with eau de Cologne and perfumes after they’d finished their work, as water was in scarce supply, and only Germans and guards could use it to wash. And while the people, who were still alive, were
preparing for the bathhouse, their luggage would have already been sorted, valuable things taken to the warehouse, and heaps of letters, photographs of new-born babies, brothers, fiancées, yellowed wedding announcements, all these thousands of precious objects, infinitely important for their owners, but only rubbish for the owners of Treblinka, were piled in heaps and carried to huge holes, where already lay hundreds of thousands of such letters, postcards, visiting cards, photographs, pieces of paper with children’s scribbles on them. The square was swept hastily and was ready to receive a new delivery of people sentenced to death.

But things did not always go as well as I have just described. Rebellions sometimes broke out in cases when people knew about their destination. A local peasant, Skrzeminski, twice saw how people broke out of trains, knocked down the guards and rushed towards the forest. They were all killed to the last man. In one of these cases, the men were carrying four children, aged from four to six. The children, too, were killed. A peasant woman, Maria Kobus, told about similar cases. Once, she saw how sixty people who had reached the forest were killed.

But the new batch of prisoners have already reached the second square, inside the camp’s fences. There is a huge barrack in this square, and another three on the right. Two of them are warehouses for clothes, the third one for shoes. Further on, in the western part of the camp, there are barracks for SS men, for guards, warehouses for food and a farmyard. Cars and an armed vehicle are standing in the yard. It all looks like an ordinary camp, just like Camp No. 1. In the south-east corner of the farmyard, there’s a space fenced off with tree branches, with a booth at its front, on which is written ‘Sanitorium’. Here, all frail and very sick people are separated from the crowd. A doctor in a white apron with a Red Cross bandage on his left sleeve comes out to meet them. I will tell you below in more detail about what happened at the sanitorium. There, Germans used their Walther automatic pistols to spare old people from the burden of all possible diseases.

The key to the second phase of handling the newcomers was the suppression of their will by constantly giving them short and rapid orders. These commands were given in that tone of voice, of which the German Army is so proud: the tone which proved that Germans belonged to the race of lords. The ‘r’, at the same time guttural and hard, sounded like a whip. ‘
Achtung!
’ carried over the crowd. In
the leaden silence, the
Scharführer
’s
⁶
voice pronounced the words, which he had learned by heart, repeating them several times a day for several months: ‘Men stay here! Women and children undress in the barracks on the left!’

This was when the terrible scenes usually started, according to witnesses. That great maternal, marital, filial love told people that they were seeing each other for the last time. Handshakes, kisses, blessings, tears, brief words uttered by husky voices – people put into them all their love, all the pain, all the tenderness, all the despair. The SS psychiatrists of death knew that they had to cut these feelings off immediately, extinguish them. The psychiatrists of death knew the simple laws that prove true at all slaughterhouses of the world. This moment of separating daughters and fathers, mothers and sons, grandchildren and their grandmothers, husbands and wives was one of the most crucial. And again, ‘
Achtung! Achtung!
’ resounds above the crowd. This is just the right moment to confuse people’s minds once more, to sprinkle them with hope, telling them the regulations of death that pass for those of life. The same voice trumpets word after word:

‘Women and children must take their shoes off when entering the barracks. Stockings must be put into shoes. Children’s stockings into their sandals, boots and shoes. Be tidy.’ And immediately the next order: ‘Going to the bathhouse, you must have your documents, money, a towel and soap. I repeat . . .’

Inside the women’s barracks was a hairdresser’s. Naked women’s hair was cut with clippers. Wigs were removed from the heads of old women. A terrible psychological phenomenon: according to the hairdressers, for the women, this death haircut was the most convincing proof of being taken to the
banya
. Girls felt their hair with their hands and sometimes asked: ‘Could you cut it again here? It is not even.’ Women usually relaxed after their hair was cut, and almost all emerged from the barracks with a piece of soap and a folded towel. Some young women cried, mourning their beautiful long plaits. What were the haircuts for? In order to deceive them? No, Germany needed this hair. The hair was a raw material. I’ve asked many people, what did Germans do with these heaps of hair cut from the heads of the living dead? All the witnesses told me that the huge heaps of black, blonde hair, curls and plaits were
disinfected, pressed into sacks and sent to Germany. All the witnesses confirmed that the hair was sent in the sacks to Germany. How was it used? No one could answer this question. Only Kon stated in his written evidence that the hair was used by the navy for stuffing mattresses or making hawsers for submarines. I think that this answer requires additional clarification.

Men undressed in the yard. Usually, Germans selected 150–300 strong men from the first lot to arrive in the morning. They were used to bury corpses and were generally killed on the second day. Men had to undress very quickly and tidily, leaving their shoes and socks in order, folding their underwear, jackets and trousers. Clothes and shoes were sorted by the second team of workers, who wore red armbands that distinguished them from those working ‘on the transport’.

Clothing and shoes considered suitable for dispatch to Germany were immediately taken to the warehouse. All metal and fabric labels had to be removed from them carefully. The remaining things were burned or buried in the ground. The feeling of anxiety grew every minute. There was a strange, disquieting smell, which was at times overpowered by the smell of chlorine. Huge quantities of importunate flies seemed strange, too. Where were they all coming from, here, among pines and the trampled earth? People were breathing noisily, afraid, shuddering, peering at every insignificant little object that they thought could explain, help understand, lift slightly the curtain of secret about the fate that lay ahead for them. And why are gigantic excavators rattling so loudly there, further to the south?

A new procedure would then begin. Naked people were led to the cash office and asked to submit their documents and valuables. And once again, a frightening, hypnotising voice would shout: ‘
Achtung! Achtung!
’ . . . Concealing valuables was punishable by death . . . ‘
Achtung! Achtung!
’ A
Scharführer
was sitting in a little booth knocked up from timber. SS men and
Wachmänner
were standing next to him. By the booth stood wooden boxes, into which the valuables had to be thrown: a box for banknotes, a box for coins, a box for watches, rings, earrings and brooches, for bracelets. And documents, which no one on earth any longer needed, were thrown on the ground – these were the documents of naked people who would be lying in the earth an hour later. But gold and valuables were subject to a careful sorting – dozens of jewellers determined
the pureness of metal, value of jewels, water of the diamonds. And an amazing thing was that the swine utilised everything, even paper and fabric – anything which could be useful to anyone, was important and useful to these swine. Only the most precious thing in the world, a human life, was trampled by their boots.

Here, at the cash office, came the turning point. The tormenting of people with lies ended; the torture of not knowing, a fever that threw them within minutes from hope to despair, from visions of life to visions of death . . . And when the time came for the last stage of robbing the living dead, the Germans changed their style of treating their victims abruptly. They tore rings off their victims’ fingers, tore earrings out of their earlobes. At this stage, the conveyor executioner’s block required a new principle for functioning efficiently. This is why the word ‘
Achtung!
’ was replaced by another one, flapping, hissing: ‘
Schneller! Schneller! Schneller!
’ Quick, hurry up! Run into the non-existence!