The Holocaust (40 page)

I stayed awake all night. I embraced my two neighbours Meir Pietrowski and Jehuda Jakubowitcz and cried softly.

Sunday, 11 January 1942

Sunday the 11th of January at 7 a.m. they brought us breakfast. We were told we wouldn’t have to work because it was Sunday.

After the morning prayer and the prayer for the dead we remained in our paradisical cellar. We didn’t recite the prayer of penitence. We again talked about ourselves, politics and God. Everybody wanted to hold out until liberation. Our overwhelming worry was the fate of the Jewish people. All
would gladly have forfeited their own lives if only the Jewish nation could survive.

At 11 a.m. ten men were called out to push a van which had stuck fast because of the cold. A huge gas-van stood in the courtyard. When I was in the courtyard I had a mind to run away but my courage failed me in the last minute.

When we had done the work we were chased back into the cellar. At one o’clock we got lunch: kohlrabi soup and bread. After lunch we sat down on top of our belongings. Some pulled their boots off. Finally we fell asleep for an hour. After the change of the watch at six o’clock the guard again ordered us to sing. This time we didn’t sing, but shouted ‘Hear! O Israel’ and the ‘Hatikvah’ at the top of our voices like madmen. After we had finished a high-ranking SS man came in and rebuked the guard because Jews weren’t allowed to sing.

At seven in the evening we ate. Then we carried the slop pail away; afterwards we recited the evening prayer and the prayer for the dead. Then we laid down, covered ourselves with our coats and dozed.

Monday, 12 January 1942

Monday, the 12th of January, at 5 a.m. six people got up and recited the Psalms amid crying and wailing. Some of the others made fun of us because of our piety. They said there was no God. This consolation struck them as youthful foolishness. We replied that our life was in the hands of God. If all this was his will then we accepted it with love, all the more so as the days of the Messiah were approaching. After the morning prayer and Kaddish, in which even Eisenstab took part, we recited the prayer of penitence.

At 7 a.m. they brought us coffee and bread. Some of the men from Izbica (who had lately lived in Kutno) drank up all the coffee. The others got very annoyed and said we were already facing death and had to behave with dignity. It was decided to share out a little coffee to everyone in future. At 8.30 we were all already at work. At 9.30 the first gas van appeared.

Among the ‘eight’ were Aharon Rosenthal, Schlomo Babiacki and Schmuel Bibedgal, all of them aged between fifty and sixty.

On this day we were absolutely slave-driven. They wouldn’t
even wait till the gas smell had evaporated. You can imagine the screams of the tortured people. Immediately after the first van the second one arrived. By twelve o’clock noon the third had already come.

When we went to lunch the ‘eight’ remained behind to dispatch the last transport. Meanwhile a black limousine arrived and four officers got out. They heard a report from ‘Big Whip’ after which they shook his hand most appreciatively. ‘Big Whip’ then once again beat the ‘eight’ violently to his joy and satisfaction.

When the SS men left the ‘eight’ received their meagre lunch: bitter coffee and smoky bread. Around one o’clock the next van arrived already. That afternoon the work lasted till six. Nine transports, each of sixty Jews from Klodawa, were buried; five hundred people from Klodawa in all.

My friend Getzel Chrzastowski screamed terribly for a moment when he recognised his fourteen-year-old son, who had just been thrown into the ditch. We had to stop him, too, from begging the Germans to shoot him. We argued it was necessary to survive this suffering, so we might revenge ourselves later and pay the Germans back.

After work the five oldest men in the detail that handled the corpses were shot and we had to cover the grave as quickly as possible.

Because of the late hour—it was already very dark—the Germans feared there may be an uprising. We were hurriedly split into groups and chased into the lorries. Seven gendarmes travelled with us. In the evening at seven we returned to our place of refuge.

The sons of Rosenthal and Bibedgal, whose fathers had been killed that day, cried bitterly. We tried to console them and said it didn’t matter whom fate struck down first; we would all die anyway. On this occasion those two also took part in the prayer of the mourners.

After supper which, as always, consisted of kohlrabi soup, black coffee and dry bread—all shared out justly, as agreed—Mosche Lesek said the prayer of penitence. He wanted to take his life, so he would not have to watch the sufferings of his nearest. He gave away all his belongings: bread, syrup and clothes.

In the meantime we heard a noise in the corridor. The other group in the adjacent room told us through the wall the Germans had captured an escaped Jew from Klodawa. Next morning they told us the following details: the captured escaper, Mahmens Goldmann, had told them in detail how the Jews were driven into the gas vans. When they arrived at the Schloss they were at first treated most politely. An elderly German, around sixty, with a long pipe in his mouth, helped the mothers to lift the children down from the lorry. He carried babies so that the mothers could alight more easily and helped dotards to reach the Schloss.

The unfortunate ones were deeply moved by his gentle and mild manner. They were led into a warm room which was heated by two stoves. The floor was covered with wooden gratings as in a bath-house. The elderly German and the SS officer spoke to them in this room. They assured them they would be taken to the Lodz Ghetto. There they were expected to work and be productive. The women would look after the household, the children would to go school, and so on. In order to get there, however, they had to undergo delousing. For that purpose they needed to undress down to their underwear. Their clothes would be passed through hot steam. Valuables and documents should be tied up in a bundle, and handed over for safe keeping.

Whoever had kept banknotes, or had sewn them into their clothes, should take them out without fail, otherwise they would get damaged in the steam oven. Moreover they would all have to take a bath. The elderly German politely requested those present to take a bath and opened a door from which 15–20 steps led down. It was terribly cold there. Asked about the cold, the German said gently they should walk a bit further: it would get warmer. They walked along a lengthy corridor to some steps leading to a ramp. The gas van had driven up to the ramp.

The polite behaviour ended abruptly and they were all driven into the van with malicious screams. The Jews realised immediately they were facing death. They screamed, crying the prayer ‘Hear! O Israel’. At the exit of the warm room was a small chamber in which Goldmann hid. After he had spent 24 hours there in the icy cold and was already quite
stiff, he decided to look for his clothes and to save himself.

He was caught and pushed in among the grave-diggers. There his comrades tried to cheer him up, gave him food and trousers and a jacket.

We then discussed his story excitedly. Everybody said if they had been in Goldmann’s place they would have done better for themselves. At about three in the morning Mosche Lesek woke us all. He kissed and took leave of everybody. He had prepared a rope to hang himself. He already had the noose round his neck when his strength left him. He simply couldn’t take his own life.

Tuesday, 13 January 1942

Tuesday morning, the 13th of January, we barely had time after breakfast to recite the prayer of penitence before we all, including Goldmann, were loaded on to the lorry. On arrival we got ready for work. Goldmann was meanwhile ordered to lie in the ditch and was shot.

The first van arrived already at eight. On this day the transports were brimful—roughly ninety corpses in each van. When we opened the van doors the corpses fell out of their own accord. Although we worked at murderous pace, each batch took longer than usual. On this day the Jewish community at Bugemin was liquidated. One van after another arrived.

At the fourth transport a small baby wrapped in a pillow was thrown out of the lorry. It began to cry. The SS men laughed. They machine-gunned the baby and tossed it into the ditch.

In the course of this Tuesday we buried approximately eight hundred Jews from Bugaj. In the icy cold we worked till six in the evening. We buried nine transports; after work, five of the men who had unloaded the corpses were shot. When in our cellar Michael Worbleznik burst into tears; he had lost his wife, two children and his parents.

After supper we emptied the slop pail and some of us said the evening prayer. Then we had a conversation about topical issues.

We kept returning to the question of how one could escape in order to warn the whole Jewish population. Nothing seemed more important than that. Some wanted to dig a 50-metre-long
tunnel. The argument against that was the problem of how to dispose of the dug-up earth. Others suggested we should open the bricked-in window. But because of the frost we young, healthy men could not shift even one brick. Resigned we lay down to sleep.

Wednesday, 14 January 1942

Wednesday the 14th of January they brought us bitter coffee and bread. Immediately after breakfast Krzewacki from Klodawa, who had long contemplated suicide, put a noose round his neck. He begged Chrzatowski to remove the small packet from under his feet and shove it into his mouth, so that his breathing should stop sooner. Chrzatowski fulfilled his request and Krzewacki died an easy death. He committed suicide because he couldn’t bear to watch the murderous deeds any longer. We cut him down and placed him against the wall.

Immediately after this Gershon Swietoplawski from Izbica also wanted to commit suicide. He had been Krzewacki’s colleague in digging. He said he had dug together with Krzewacki and wanted to lie in the ditch with him. Because of the late hour nobody wanted to help him. The guard could turn up at any moment. He quickly took a rope and tied a noose round his neck. He stood with his feet on the ground and bent forward to throttle himself more quickly. While he tortured himself in this way there was a knock at the door.

Young Monik Halter quickly cut the rope. Swietoplawski fell to the ground choking. He began to gasp horribly as he got his breath back. When the guard had gone, on the one hand we didn’t want to save him (whatever for?), but on the other hand we couldn’t bear to watch his torments. We begged Getzel Chrzatowski to put an end to them. Chrzatowski tied a noose tightly round Swietoplawski’s neck, pinned his body down with his feet, and tugged hard at the rope till he had throttled Swietoplawski.

We left both corpses lying uncovered in the cellar. They remained there for a few days.

At eight in the morning we were already at the ditches. Around ten o’clock there appeared the first van with Jewish victims from Izbica. By noon we had already dispatched five overloaded transports. Out of one of these transports the
corpse of a German civilian had been pulled out. The person concerned was one of the cooks.

He had presumably strayed into the van in the following manner: he had probably noticed one of the Jews purloining some object and had run after him to reclaim it. At that very moment the doors had clanged shut. His shouting and knocking had been ignored; in this way he was gassed together with the others. Immediately after he had been lifted out of the van a special car with an ambulance man aboard arrived from the Schloss. The corpse was taken back there. Some of us thought he had been deliberately poisoned so that no witness of this killing should remain alive.

During the lunch break two carloads of SS men arrived who viewed our slaughterhouse with pleasure. In the afternoon a further five transports were buried.

From one of the vans a woman with a suckling at her breast was thrown out. The baby had perished while sucking its mother’s milk.

In the light of headlamps we carried on working till seven in the evening. On this day one of the vans drove in error right up to the ditch. We heard the muted cries for help and knocking at the door of the tortured victims. At the end of the day six men of the ‘eight’ were shot.

Back in the cellar we all burst into tears. After supper we said the evening prayer and the prayer of mourning.

Thursday, 15 January 1942

Thursday the 15th of January we again drove to work very early. On this occasion we rode in a bus. At a certain moment Monik Halter called across to me the windows of the vehicle could easily be opened with a hook. The thought of escape had lodged in my brain all the time. With all my being I wanted to reach the Jews who were still alive, to tell them about the atrocities taking place in Chelmno.

At 8 a.m. we were already at the place of work.

At ten o’clock the first victims arrived—again from Izbica.

Till noon we dispatched four overloaded transports. One van waited in line after the next. I must describe again how barbarously the corpses were examined.

Imagine the following picture: one German drags one corpse
from the pile to one side, while another drags a corpse elsewhere.

They searched the women’s necks for golden chains. If they found any, they immediately tore them off. Rings were pulled off fingers. They pulled out gold teeth with pliers. Then the corpses were stood up, legs apart so that a hand could be inserted into the posterior. In the case of the women an examination was also carried out in front. Although these examinations took place every day while we worked, our blood and brains boiled.

At midday I received the sad news that my brother and parents had just been buried.

At one o’clock we were already back at work. I tried to get closer to the corpses to take a last look at my nearest and dearest.

Once I had a clod of frozen earth tossed at me, thrown by the benign German with the pipe. The second time ‘Big Whip’ shot at me. I don’t know if the shot missed me deliberately, or by accident. One thing is certain: I remained alive. I suppressed my anguish and concentrated on working fast so as to forget my dreadful situation for five minutes.