“All right, it appears there is a need for more workers at Camp 2. I am going to allow you to pick out the volunteers. I want each of you to pick out two or three men, and remember what you’ve heard about Camp 2. Perhaps you should think about choosing the slackers in your group, or those who shirk their duties. I want twenty men standing before me in one minute, and if I don’t, you kapos will make up the difference.”
All of the Jewish supervisors quickly moved into the ranks of men and grabbed fellow prisoners as volunteers. There was a stifled protest, seen clearly in the eyes of the men chosen. Hans moved into the formation, stood just in front of Richard and Karel, and then picked the man standing immediately behind them. It was not hard to pick twenty men within a minute. The kapos knew which men they wanted to get rid of, men who were not as tightly bound to the escape plan as other men. However, they knew they had to pick young, strong men or else they would be sending them to their deaths.
The kapos heard from the carpenter Jankiel Wiernik that the men in Camp 2 were forced to run all day with heavy litters. Two to three corpses were expected to be carried at one time. If the men were not fast enough, or happened to drop the litter, they would be shot on the spot by one of the SS.
The twenty fresh recruits for Camp 2 were given one more minute to run back into the barracks to grab their belongings. Then they were marched off toward the upper camp by Miete. The Czech men were thankful they were not part of the volunteers this time, all because Zelo and Hans were looking out for them. The younger ones, Richard and Karel, breathed a sigh of relief, but knew it could happen any day. As Miete disappeared with his recruits, in the distance a train could be heard coming toward Treblinka station. Galewski told the group to hustle to their assigned places and get to work; it would be a long day with plenty of clothing and valuables to sort through before it was over.
Kurt Franz escorted his dog Bari to the unloading platform and stood before a Jewish passenger who had just undressed and was holding his shoes, alongside hundreds of other naked men.
“Boy, sic the dog!” Franz yelled.
As the growling Bari lunged toward the newcomer, the man turned sideways so the dog would not attack his privates. Instead Bari took a bite of flesh out of the man’s bottom, which sent the man tumbling forward, clinging to the back of another man. Bari lunged again and bit into the man’s thigh. The pitiful victim tried to hide behind the other men standing around him.
All were terrified at what was happening, but Franz simply stood by and watched with an amused look on his face. When Bari finally resorted to a menacing growl without attacking, Franz stepped over the bleeding man, pulled out his pistol, and shot him in the neck. Two blue bands walked over and placed the man on a stretcher. Then they sprinted toward the Lazarette.
Franz decided to walk over to Camp 2 with Bari. He was wondering if the giant pyres were nearing completion to help enhance operations. He wanted to observe the work and to make sure they were ready for the morning’s processing, much to the relief of all at Camp 1.
Out of all the prisoners besides Bronka, Tchechia enjoyed talking to Kapo Benjamin Rakowski the best. They did not work together but would sometimes stand next to each other in the supper line. After a few days of talking to each other in line, they began to wait for each other, and whoever got there first would linger and not join the line until the other arrived. Tchechia enjoyed Benjamin’s sense of humor. Even though they did not have the same kind of upbringing, Rakowski told stories in such a way as to make Tchechia laugh.
Tchechia was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist from southern Poland. She had a good education and considered becoming a nurse before a future career became impossible for Jews. Her parents were respected well by the business community and Tchechia was commended as being highly intelligent by many of her teachers. A rising star, they said.
However, her sharp wit would occasionally land her in trouble. Sometimes Tchechia spoke before she thought of the impact of her words. Her friends would sometimes call her “wild child” and Tchechia thought it was because of her flowing reddish-blond hair; later she considered that it might be because she could not keep her mouth shut.
It was hard for her to put her finger on what drew her to Kapo Rakowski. He was not very attractive, though he did have an athletic build. He looked strong and healthy, which was partially what set him apart from some of their camp-mates, who were emaciated. He made her laugh. That was the bottom line. It was probably the main reason she enjoyed being around him. And finding humor in a place like Treblinka was very rare.
Tchechia had men pay attention to her before; even the SS guards at Treblinka seemed to hold their gaze on her longer than she thought they should. But many of the men in her hometown who wanted to court her seemed too stuffy and boring. Occasionally her father would introduce her to one of his plant employees, perhaps hoping that Tchechia would take an interest. But each time, Tchechia would end up saying something that would hurt the boy’s feelings.
It was not that she would set out to intentionally hurt someone—it just happened. All would start out well… Tchechia, let me get the door for you, Let me help you with your coat, Let me tell you something about myself… Then Tchechia would get annoyed. So many of the boys she had gotten to know would get nervous around her and just talk about themselves, as if she was inclined to be interested in their lives.
It wasn’t in her to be a nice little girl, sitting by her courter to admire him for who he was. She would rather go climb a tree together, or swing from the rafters and jump into a haystack from the second floor of a barn, or simply swim in a river. So Tchechia would say what was on her mind, like: I really don’t care, or Please don’t tell me anything else, or You’re boring me. The boy would take immediate offense, get flustered, and excuse himself from her presence.
With Kapo Rakowski it was different. It was almost as if he assumed she would not be interested, and he had a sort of self-deprecating humor that she found humble and attractive. He would say things like, You must be waiting here for somebody else. I can get him for you if you would like, and it would make her smile. He seemed clever and at ease with himself, which made her feel at ease as well, even at a dreadful place like Treblinka. So they stood in line together and whispered things about their day, such as which SS guard they encountered, which SS guards were going away for two weeks of leave, or discuss which of their friends had either been killed or sent to Camp 2.
It was cold outside this winter day. Tchechia and Rakowski stood in line together and stomped their feet. The transports of Jews had slowed down and that was disconcerting to everyone. They all understood that when they were no longer considered needed, the Nazis would dispose of the workers…just as they did to all the other Jews who were unfortunate enough to travel there. The pair also discussed the growing typhus issue.
“Men have been succumbing to it more frequently and we can usually detect it because they grow very weak and irritable,” Rakowski told Tchechia, who already knew about typhus from working with Dr. Chorazycki. “But Galewski said we should never to call it typhus. If the guards hear that, they will simply shoot whoever has it. We have been calling it Treblinka, as a nickname. You can’t catch it from someone else; it is spread by lice.”
“I despise the lice,” Tchechia said. “We can never get rid of them and it makes sleeping so uncomfortable.”
“You don’t like swatting lice all night?” Rakowski asked with a smile. “It is an adventure for me! I have names for them.”
Besides survival, Benjamin Rakowski’s daily goal in life was to try to get Tchechia to smile. But soon he turned the conversation more serious. “I hear the clinic is beginning to fill up with people who have Treblinka.”
“Yes, it is filling up. All twenty beds are taken. Once it got cold outside, more and more people came down with Treblinka. Miete and Mentz make their rounds every day, looking for those the doctor says are too sick to recover. Then they take the poor soul to the Lazarette.”
“It won’t be much longer now,” Rakowski said very quietly and stoically. “Zelo and Galewski have been planning, every night, more and more preparing and plotting.”
“Hopefully it will be soon. Bronka is not looking well. I am afraid for her if she comes down with Treblinka. There are no beds. And the Angel of Death does not care if it is a man or woman who he takes out—it is all the same to him.”
The two ate their soup and bread, drank their coffee, and were now ready to say goodbye. Tchechia would return to her quarters and Rakowski back to the male barracks.
“Don’t get sick,” Rakowski said.
“You, too. Otherwise I will not have someone to speak to in the mess line.”
“How about Galewski?” Rakowski said with a grin. “He’s older and more experienced with women. You might like his company.”
“He is nice…just don’t get sick,” Tchechia said, smiling.
Rakowski pulled out a large chunk of ham from his coat pocket and handed it to Tchechia.
“Where did you get this?” she inquired, her eyes wide with astonishment.
“Don’t ask,” he replied, smirking. “Just enjoy it.”
Tchechia knew that Rakowski was too daring when it came to trading valuables with other workers or the Ukrainians. She did not want him to get caught, or their budding friendship would be instantly severed. She slipped the ham into her pocket and departed from his company.
The sun was deep behind the trees when the young people said their goodbyes. They could not discern that on the berm between the two camps there was a man in a white jacket, watching them speak. While standing there he tapped the top portion of his boots with the edge of his riding crop.
Chapter 13
One morning, several members of the Czech contingent stood amused. A boy holding an accordion was parked on the platform, off to the side. All they could see of him was his head and his feet—the accordion hiding the rest of his body. They soon learned he was fourteen years old and his name was Edek. He was selected by a Nazi guard out of his railcar to be used for entertainment, and he was bereft of his parents.
Late in the evening, past lights-out, a shipment of two thousand Jews arrived on a train from Grodno, Belarus. The male barracks remained padlocked, but the Czech contingent could hear most of what transpired because of the proximity of their barracks with the rail platform. The SS guards—along with the help of the Ukrainians—decided to do all the work themselves and the unloading proceeded as normal until the passengers were told to undress.
Soon there were shouts heard through the group. “Do not undress! Resist! Do not listen to the Germans!”
Immediately there were gunshots and explosives heard. A few of the passengers were equipped with knives and pistols and tried to kill their German captors, all to no avail. Hand-to-hand combat using mostly sticks and fists was not very effective after the Germans set up a machine gun. Some of the Jews tried to escape the camp by fleeing to the high barbed-wire walls, only to be mowed down with rounds from the machine-gun fire, thus ending the crudely organized coup.
The next morning at roll call, Kiewe exploded in anger at everyone in his sight. After roll call, the Czech men were ordered to clean up the camp. What they saw was the devastating remains of a failed mutiny. Body parts littered the camp from the grenades and other explosives. A few men had to be peeled off the barbed wire. None of the valuables were organized, simply strewn about from one end of the camp to the other. It had been a late night for the Nazis, so they were in a worse mood than usual. A few had been injured, but sadly, the SS men who were living nightmares to the inmates—the Doll, Kiewe, Miete, and Mentz—were still alive and well.
Kurt Franz retained some of the rebels from the previous night to torture in front of the Jewish workers as a lesson if they should ever think about trying to revolt. He tied four men to wooden poles in the courtyard, left them—their bodies wounded—until midday, when he organized a camp formation. The Doll was in rare form: boots ultra-polished, uniform starched, a long bull whip held by his well-oiled deerskin gloved hand, and a mocking look on his ironically cherubic face.
The Doll relished every stroke with dramatic flair by running at his opponents, whip in hand, allowing them to feel the maximum bite out of every blow. He did not spare their faces or their genitalia. After thirty-five minutes, their mutilated corpses had stopped breathing. The Doll was depleted himself, sweaty and fatigued, exerting all his strength into the “lesson” for those in attendance. As a finale to his spectacle he dropped the bull whip, turned to the camp workers, and said, “You will encounter a similar fate if your mind becomes poisoned with betrayal and you try to escape. You will not succeed, but will die just as these men have died. This is very clear for you.”
He then walked off, back toward the SS section of the camp and his quarters.
In the quiet darkness of a cold and wintry night, seven men from Camp 2 tried to escape through a tunnel. Five had made it through to the other side of the camp wall when a Ukrainian guard shined a spotlight on them and opened fire. The two who were still in the tunnel crawled safely back into their barracks. Unfortunately for the ones who made it out of the tunnel, there was fresh snow on the ground and their footprints led the Nazi patrol right to the men. Of the five, one was shot on the spot. Three were brought back to the camp, where the Doll tortured them like a wild wolf at a feeding frenzy. They were hanged and left dangling for hours as additional discouragement. Only one made it out of the camp alive.
Richard Glazar and David Brat stood on the rail platform, watching the new transports. They were to assist the blue bands by cleaning out the cars after the people had departed. As soon as the doors opened there were shouts and whips, exhorting people out of the trains. The two men watched as a man tried to navigate, exiting the train with two large packages in his arms. The woman behind him tripped on the head of a dead body and knocked into the man, causing one of his packages to fall and break open onto the platform.
When the man turned to bend over and help her up, he was beaten in the head by Kiewe’s whip. Then his other package was knocked out of his arms. As a result, an older woman fell and more people tripped over her, tearing her skirt and exposing legs smeared with filth.
David whispered, “Richard, my boy, you Czech men don’t know…none of you know. You arrived on passenger trains. For us Poles, Treblinka started in the ghettos. And almost everyone aids in some way to get rid of the Jews. Or at least they have in some way assented…”
Richard thought about what David told him. Perhaps he had lived a much easier life in Prague, where Jews were treated well and allowed to enter most career fields. He would ponder David’s words some more when he had time to think about them.
The blue bands continued to do their work on the platform with the help of Kiewe, Miete, and the Doll. Afterward, the red bands shuttled the women through the large barracks building, where they were stripped, sheared, and sent into the tube. The men followed. By midmorning all of their trousers, dresses, blouses, shirts, coats, ties, hats, underwear, shoes, and socks were placed in neat piles. By midafternoon all of the valuables, including suitcases of hair, were bundled and packed onto the train.
This trainload did not have many of the highly sought-after items, such as gold, money, watches, and foodstuffs. It was composed mostly of Gypsies and other poor people from White Russia, a disappointment to Treblinka’s workers.
It was in those final hours of December when the Czech men first saw the large, bright fires coming from Camp 2. As they looked out through a barred barracks window, the flames were visible over the top of the sandy berm that separated the two camps. In the stillness, Edek began to play a sad song on his accordion, “Eli Eli.” With the music, and the memory of who was the fuel for the flames, everyone went to bed with deeper melancholy than usual.
Chapter 14
It was 1943.
More trains.
More shouting, more shooting.
M
ore stench permeating the air from Camp 2.
The older passengers were carried on stretchers by blue bands to the Lazarette, where Mentz shot them in the neck, then pushed them into the flames inside the trench.
The Czech men worked at separating the clothing that was stuck together with sweat and dirt. They took two hundred shirts and put them on a large sheet and bundled them up. Shirts, shoes, pants, dresses, blouses, and underwear were all stacked into enormous piles in the courtyard.
Then one day, the trains stopped coming in. They had slowed down before but never stopped. This terrorized everyone.
Franz Stangl had an announcement for all of the SS guards assigned to Treblinka.
“You have noticed…the trains to Treblinka slowing down…almost to a halt?” Stangl gently questioned. “For some reason Auschwitz was enhanced to accommodate an increase of transports, so we should expect a lull for a few weeks.”
A brief silence filled the room as some of the Nazis considered the ramifications.
“What do you suggest we do with the workers until then?” inquired SS guard Otto Horn.
“I was hoping you would ask,” answered Stangl with a grin. “We are going to do some construction work around here. I am authorizing, as of today, the construction of a remodeled railway station. I would like a tower with a large clock on it, a ticket office, and signs indicating which direction is Warsaw and Berlin—all just like a real station.”
“But why?” asked Stangl’s deputy Kurt Franz. “What’s the point?”
“The point is the same strategy as to why we tell the passengers to keep their valuables, and that they are simply going to the showers after processing. That is the point,” Stangl said in a deflated tone. He was forced to expound on his idea. “It will make things easier for us once they get off the trains. But that is not all. I want to change the area where we are living as well. We will have a main street, an entertainment area, and a park with some benches over by the woods. I want to make this place enjoyable for the staff, not just a malodorous drudgery.”
Trains to Treblinka Page 7