by Yitzhak Arad
Most suicides in Treblinka occurred in the extermination area. In the testimonies of the survivors, there is no mention of suicides in the Lower Camp. It seems that instances of this sort were few. The type of work in the extermination area, the constant handling of corpses and the direct contact with the gas chambers and the mass pits with no possibility of getting away or changing the type of work, turned life in the extermination area into unbearable existence for normal people and pushed many of them over the edge of despair. Some prisoners turned to religious belief; others became convinced that the only way left to them was taking their own lives, and they followed through on this. But some clung to life at any cost. In the extermination area in Treblinka, life had a different meaning and value than in any other place on earth.
In Sobibor there are no testimonies about what went on in the extermination area, as there are no survivors. On the other hand, there were some instances of suicide among the prisoners in the central section of the camp. Dov Freiberg testifies:
It is difficult to describe how we lived in hell. I can say that during the first month of my stay in the camp, out of 150 people, only 50 were left. The others were tortured and killed by the Germans. Suicide was a daily occurrence I personally tried to commit suicide but was unsuccessful. At the last minute all kinds of hopes came into my head, and I gave up this idea, even though pure logic instructed me to kill myself. Once I volunteered to be taken to the Lazarett but I was sent back.16
Other sources on Sobibor mention that at least ten male prisoners committed suicide in Sobibor in the winter of 1942/43.17
Rudolf Reder does not mention suicide in his testimony on Belzec, but in light of what happened in Treblinka and Sobibor, there were almost certainly instances of this sort. The absence of hope, the terror and torture, not knowing what was going to happen at any given moment, and the fear of the next day in the camp pushed people into taking their own lives. In addition, the shock and the certainty that relatives and friends had been killed, the daily scene of the Jews being led to their death, and the sorting of their clothes, belongings, and bodies influenced the wave of suicides in the camps. The inclination to commit suicide was usually in the initial period of incarceration in the camp. This was a traumatic period of crisis for every prisoner. As one’s stay in the camp lengthened, the desire to commit suicide lessened. Instances of suicide were rarest during the last months of the camps’ existence.
29
Social Life
In the shadow of the gas chambers and the mass burial pits of the camps in which thousands of people were buried almost every day, orchestras of Jewish prisoners made the lives of the SS in the camps more pleasant—and their melodies accompanied those on their way to the gas chambers. In the same small section of the camp, a few meters from the place where the women undressed on their way to their death, only a few meters from the gas chambers, the orchestra rehearsed, plays were produced, arts and sports events were held, and love affairs blossomed. All this was at the initiative of camp authorities and with their encouragement. This was perhaps the most horrible paradox of the extermination camps, the ultimate combination of the Nazi character: cruelty, tragic irony, and torture.
In the last months of the camp’s existence, when camp authorities were already aware that Operation Reinhard was almost over, that in a short time all the prisoners in the camps would be killed, the Germans attempted to delude the prisoners, to prevent them from thinking about their end, which was near, about escape, or about any kind of resistance. They therefore encouraged activities such as the orchestra, “entertainment,” and love affairs between the prisoners. This was the general policy instituted in all the Operation Reinhard camps and was not merely a local initiative of the SS in a specific place.
Leon Feldhendler, who was one of the leaders of the revolt in Sobibor, wrote:
The music, the dancing, and the women all had one purpose—to kill any thought of liberation that the prisoners might have; they [the Germans] wanted to turn them into unthinking instruments. Those who looked to them as if they were thinking too much and talking among themselves were taken to Camp III or were whipped. The absence of worry [among the prisoners] was forced; they [the Germans] encouraged love affairs, they allowed meeting with the women, and they allowed card and chess games.1
In effect, however, this attempt at deception on the part of camp authorities was to a certain extent in line with the simply human nature of the prisoners and their desire to live and make use of every minute of life until the last. The prisoners in the camps had lost their families—their parents and children, their husbands and wives. Being alone with the knowledge that their days were also numbered, these people sought the closeness of the opposite sex. The relationship that sprang up between men and women was sometimes purely emotional; sometimes it assumed the more practical purpose of mutual aid in acquiring food, with work and in time of illness. Among the young people, these relationships between the sexes were sometimes the first—and perhaps the last—opportunity for any sort of sex life. The crowded conditions and the absence of minimal privacy among the prisoners did not prevent intimate relationships; accepted norms of what was allowed or prohibited in public took on a very different reality in the extermination camps.
Belzec
In Belzec there was a small orchestra, which was used primarily during the extermination of the transports and to entertain the SS men during their nights of drunkenness and debauchery. The orchestra was made up of six musicians and usually played in the area between the gas chambers and the burial pits. The transfer of the corpses from the gas chambers to the graves was done to the accompaniment of the orchestra.
Rudolf Reder describes the extermination or a transport with Jews from Zamosc and the torment of the chairman of the Judenrat from this city to the accompaniment of the orchestra:
. . . it was the middle of November. It was cold and all around was mud and snow. . . . The transport from Zamosc also included the Judenrat from there. When everyone was already naked, the men were taken to the gas chambers, and the women to the hut to have their hair cut. The chairman of the Judenrat was ordered to remain in the square. . . . The SS men ordered the orchestra to the square. . . . I worked near there, so I saw the whole thing. The SS ordered the orchestra to play “es geht alles vorüber, es geht alles vorbei” (“Everything passes, everything goes by”) and “drei Lilien, kommt ein Reiter, bringt die Lilien” (“Three lilies, a rider arrived and brought the lilies”). The orchestra was made up of a violinist, a flutist, and an accordionist. The playing lasted a long time. Afterward the SS men put the chairman of the Judenrat against the wall and hit him until he bled profusely. . . . Only at six in the evening did the SS man Schmidt take him to the pit and shoot him. . . .2
Before receiving their food in the afternoon and evening, the prisoners were forced to sing, and the orchestra played. The background to these “concerts” was the high hanging-post near the kitchen and the screams of the murdered from the direction of the gas chambers.
On Sundays, toward evening, the SS men would have the prisoner orchestra brought to the SS living area near the railroad station, and while the Germans were flaming drunk the orchestra was made to play for them.3 Reder does not mention any love affairs among the prisoners in Belzec.
Sobibor
From the beginning, in Sobibor a prisoner orchestra was organized. It was first used to create an illusion about the place, and the music accompanied the entire extermination process. Dov Freiberg described his arrival in Sobibor in May 1942, the harsh treatment, the panic that grasped the people. Looking around he heard “cries of women and children, shouts and wild laughter of the SS men, the noise of a working engine, and music played by an orchestra.”4
In Sobibor the Germans encouraged, even forced the prisoners to take part in entertainment. When the camp authorities decided to organize a choir, and there were no volunteers for it, except the conductor, they ordered a group of men and women to become the choir
and, under threat, forced them to sing. Moniek, the conductor of the choir, was “promoted” to the rank of a capo.5
In the summer of 1943—when a transport with Jews arrived every week from Holland—the same day that the people of the transports were exterminated, dances were organized in the evenings. Richard Rashke wrote about a young woman, Selma Wijnberg, who was selected from such a transport:
That evening after the roll call, the Nazis made the Jews sing and dance in the yard of Camp I. For Selma, it was almost like old times, except there were fences, and she was in Poland. Although the fiddle, bugle, and accordion made happy sounds, the Polish Jews were not smiling. One of them, a twenty-eight-year-old man, could not take his eyes off Selma as she lightly stepped to the music, hips swaying. He asked her to dance. . . . They polka-ed and waltzed in the yard. She was light on her feet and gracefully followed his lead. Somehow she felt less afraid with the music and with his hand on her waist. . . . After the Germans grew tired of watching the Jews dance, they locked the gate between Camp I and Camp II. A boy whom Selma had known from Holland came up to her. . . . “You know what that is?” He pointed to the north, where the orange sky silhouetted the tips of the pine trees on the horizon. “No. What?” He told her, and she felt as though someone had jumped on her stomach. . . . Selma walked to her bunk in a daze. She could not talk. . . . Then she began to weep, first one tear at a time, then a quiet flood, late into her first night in Sobibor. . . .6
Tovia Blatt testified about his first few days in Sobibor, in Spring 1943:
We were ordered to take away the baggage left by the people from our transport. . . . I looked after somebody whom I knew. Somebody caught my hand. I turned around . . . Jozek! We embraced. . . . He asked me to go with him to meet his girl. We entered the women’s barrack. He introduced me to a seventeen-year-old girl. After half an hour we went outside. Music was heard from the tailor’s shop. I could not believe it. A small orchestra was playing, a couple was dancing, a Jewish man with a woman from Holland. I asked my friend: “What’s going on here? How can you laugh, dance, speak freely, and think about women? Look around, there is barbed wire everywhere; we shall not get out of this place. How can you behave like this?” “Tovia,” he answered, “don’t be surprised. You will get used to it. We know what awaits us. You see the fire? There your family is turned into ash, the same as my family a few months ago. You look at that and don’t cry. You say that you don’t have any more tears—what can we, who see it for months, say? We remain indifferent, and we live like animals, for the present day.” A signal for night silence stopped our talk. . . .
In the evening [a few days later], a young, beautiful girl from Holland entered the barrack. She started to sing the well-known song “Mother.” She had a strong, pleasant voice, and the word “mother” was expressed sadly and movingly. This was the only word that I understood. . . . I wanted to cry. I had lost my parents only a few days before. Nearby, music was playing. In the corner of the barrack, a group of people were drinking smuggled vodka and eating sausages. The moon was above the camp, and large tongues of fire were rising to the sky. . . .
When we marched to work, we had to sing. Usually we sang military marches: German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian. About 300 meters from us, people were seeing the world for the last time, and we had to sing—loudly and as best we could—a real inferno.7
Love affairs among the prisoners in Sobibor are mentioned in some of the testimonies. The men were permitted by the German camp authorities to enter the barrack where the women lived during the evening hours, and this was the time and place where most of the intimate relationships developed. A known love affair grew between Ada and Yitzhak Lichtman and between some other prisoners. There were love affairs that ended tragically. A love affair between a young man from France and a girl from Holland ended when the young man was taken to Camp III; the girl joined him so that they could die together. The same happened with a woman from France who decided to share the fate of her lover, a prisoner from Poland.8
Sasha Pechersky, who led the uprising in the camp, wrote in his memoirs about close relations that developed between him and Luka, a girl from Holland. They usually met in the women’s barrack.9
Sometimes the roll calls of the prisoners were used by the SS men for their entertainment and for mocking the Jews. Oberscharführer Weiss used to dress one of the prisoners in a long robe and Jewish cape and give him a broomstick in his hand. The prisoner had to stand on a table and sing the following song in Yiddish, composed by one of the camp inmates:
Moses, Moses! Wi hos du deine bruder in di shmole rine
Wi di yuden sinen shoin derinen
Macht men die klape zu
Wein ale felker hobn ruh.
(“Moses, Moses!
How you have your brothers in the narrow gutter
When the Jews are already in,
The cover [or valve] is closed, then
And all the nations will have rest.”) (free translation)
At the end of this song the prisoners had to fall down on the floor and say “Amen.”10
As the prisoners marched to and from work, they were ordered to sing. One of the prisoners, nicknamed “der Neger” (the Negro), improvised a song, which described ironically their life in the camp:
“Wie lustig ist da unser Leben
Man tut uns zu essen geben
Wie lustig ist im grünen Wald
Wo ich mir aufhalt”
(Our life is happy here,
We receive good food,
How happy we are in the green forest,
Where I stay.)
SS Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner enjoyed the song, and he forced the prisoners to sing it frequently.11
A favorite SS game was to gather a group of Jews around a coffin in which the Nazis would lay out a prisoner dressed like a Hasid. Then the Germans would sing, “I am a Jew with a long nose.” The prisoner would pop up from the dead and repeat the phrase. Next the Nazis would chant:
“O God we pray to Thee,
Listen to our plea,
To the Jews put an end,
To the rest peace send.”12
When a group of Jewish prisoners who were former soldiers in the Soviet Army arrived in camp, they sang Russian songs in the evenings.13 In Sobibor the prisoners also played chess.
The camp authorities in Sobibor tried to mislead the prisoners about their fate and gave them even more opportunities for relaxation than in Treblinka and Belzec. The motive is explained by Philip Bialowicz, a Sobibor survivor:
The SS men were interested in keeping up our spirit, so that we should not be depressed and would work better. They organized concerts for us, music was played, and we were entertained. Their purpose was that we should not feel that we were doomed for extermination and think about an uprising.14
Treblinka
In the first days of the camp’s existence, the SS men organized a “musical trio” that would play for them during meals, in the evenings, and whenever they had free time, at parties and for guests. The musicians were three Jews from Stock who had been brought to Treblinka originally to build the camp. They were amateur musicians who had played at Jewish weddings in their town. The SS men also ordered the trio to play near the gas chambers so that the music would drum out the screams of the people within the “tube” as they were being raced through it on their way to the gas chambers.
During the same period that hundreds of Jewish prisoners were put to work at the difficult and depressing task of vacating the reception area of the thousands of corpses that had accumulated there, the third anniversary of the outbreak of World War II was marked. On the eve of September 1, the SS men in the camp decided that the event should be celebrated, and so that they could torture the prisoners as well, they decided to include them in the festivities. That same evening the Jews were made to stand at attention, and the “musical trio,” which at that time was playing near the gas chambers, was brought to the yard to play Jewish songs and melodies. A
few young people were ordered to get out of line and dance. A Ukrainian corporal was in charge of the whole event and the Germans stood on the side watching, clapping, and laughing at the scene. The Jews stood at attention and wiped away their tears. It is difficult to describe their suffering at the fact that they were made to participate in this nightmarish event while strewn all around them were the corpses of their families, their friends, and innumerable other people.15
But the standard of the trio’s playing was not good enough for the SS men. From the transports that came from Warsaw they removed professional musicians and organized a small orchestra. In the winter, conductor Artur Gold arrived in one of the transports. Before the war he had conducted one of the best orchestras in Warsaw, in the fanciest cafes and clubs. He was removed from the transport when he was already naked and on his way to the “tube.” After the SS men found out that he was a famous conductor, they gave him the task of organizing the orchestra in the Lower Camp.
The orchestra consisted of ten musicians. The rehearsals were held at specified times, and the musicians, who were detailed to various work groups, were excused from them in order to rehearse. Singers performed together with the orchestra. Oscar Strawczinski tells about the orchestra, its performances, and its conductor:
Gold assumed his work energetically. The Germans helped him. Quite a large amount of musical instruments was left in the yard by the Jews when they went to the showers Only jazz was missing. To rectify this, the Hauptsturmführer [Stangl] brought back cymbals with him from his vacation . . . the drum was made in the camp. And in good time we also had ourselves a jazz band. One of the musicians who had come with Gold was an excellent jazz musician. A mixed choir of men and women was also formed. A Jew from Czechoslovakia wrote the texts and Gold the melodies. He wrote wonderful compositions for his orchestra. To round it off, Jazik, who was a soloist and cabaret dancer, was also added to the orchestra.