Trains to Treblinka

by Charles Causey

  But this was not the end to all of the Doll’s plans. “From now on we will have a cabaret,” he said to the Jewish workers at Camp 1. “Do not laugh, I am quite serious about this. We will have boxing matches, skits, singing…and I want to have a wedding. Yes, I will pick two people to get married, and then after the ceremony we will give them some alone time in the barracks. It will be called the wedding barracks!”

  The Doll was quite pleased with himself with this announcement. It did not occur to him that in another time and place this might have been considered humorous. But in Treblinka, nothing could amuse the men and women who were in constant fear for their lives. Weddings, honeymoons, and sex were not on the minds of the workers. The austere conditions constantly reminded them that they were prisoners and not free to be entertained by shows and ceremonies. They each hoped to simply live one more day, thinking that perhaps something could alter their fate.

  There continued to be no trains arriving at Treblinka. The cooks, tailors, carpenters, medical assistants, sorters, plumbers, maids, and goldsmiths did not have nearly enough to do. So work, in the form of amusement, was being laid before them.

  On the Sunday of the first concert, Camp Kommandant Stangl sat in the center of the front row, surrounded by the Doll, Kuttner Kiewe, Miete, Mentz, Suchomel, and the others. With orchestra conductor Arthur Gold at the front and little Edek at the back, the entire orchestra sat on camp chairs clutching their used instruments, each dressed in white jackets with blue lapels.

  As Arthur Gold, a master violinist and composer, lifted his baton to begin the concert, a memory flashed in his mind of the magnificent Polish National Symphonic Orchestra that had assembled a few years before the war. With an international presence, Arthur Gold’s compositions routinely played on radios across Europe. Now he was a prisoner inside Treblinka conducting an assemblage of prisoners, none of them playing their own instruments, and all of them afraid for their lives. In the air was the nauseating smell of roasting bodies, and concertina wire lined the perimeter of the square. With all the dignity Gold could muster, he flung out his arms and began the show.

  The highlight of the concert were solos by the tenors—trained opera performers from Warsaw who were somehow recognized by fans when pulled off the trains and diverted away from the tube. The orchestra music itself was average, but considering it came forth from those with little time to practice together, it was remarkable. The Nazis knew that Gold had done well with the resources given him.

  Following the concert was a boxing match between a large worker and small one for comedic effect. Then there was a reading of a newspaper with humorous stories given as asides. The final act was the wedding. As promised, the Doll picked out two of the younger Jewish workers and had them tie the knot. Thankfully Bronka and Tchechia were not chosen out of the few women available. Richard, Karel, Rudi, Hans, and Robert were similarly relieved. They did not want to participate in the Nazi ceremony, even if it was a sham.

  The expression on the faces of the two workers chosen was of such disgust it drew the ire of some the SS in attendance. It was not much like a traditional wedding; no ceremonial expressions and no singing. Just a pronouncement and it was over. The two were sent off to the barracks to be alone. The Doll had accomplished his show for the day, and now the conclusion of the spectacle produced something else as well—pure terror in the hearts of all the workers. What would they do next?

  Chapter 21

  “We have to act now!” exclaimed Rudi Masarek. “Something is up. Something terrible. The time is now, either today or tomorrow. We have to take action.”

  It was a warm, late spring day, 1943. The Czechs were at their daily planning meeting for the revolt, led by Rudi. Several men were standing guard at the doors. The meeting was uncharacteristically taking place in the morning. The workers were instructed to remain in the barracks, which in itself was unsettling. The excuse the Nazis used was that there were no trains.

  “Why the sudden rush, Rudi?” asked Richard.

  “It is Galewski. One of the female workers told our camp elder that she overheard the Doll talking to Stangl. He said with the lack of trains, they did not need as many workers.”

  “This could be a setup,” chimed in Robert. “They could be prodding us to see if we begin to act crazy.”

  “Regardless, they may choose to take two hundred of us to the Lazarette just for good measure. I think we are beginning to borrow time we do not have. I know we have the two pistols, but is there any news on the lock and the arms room?”

  The revolt organizers had received two pistols and some ammunition from peasants who lived near the camp. The exchange took place in a clandestine manner; the peasant would discreetly hide packages for the Czechs at a distance, then held up two or three fingers if they wanted twenty or thirty dollars for them. In return, the money was hidden nearby at a later time.

  Regarding the arsenal, it was surrounded by Ukrainians, but the lock had been “mysteriously” jammed. One day, little Edek, on orders from the revolt committee, dashed past the arms room and frantically shoved metal shavings into the lock when no one was looking. When it was discovered the lock did not work it immediately drew the suspicion of their Nazi overlords.

  They commissioned the Jewish locksmith to remove the door to his shop where he was to repair the lock, but they did not trust him. Ukrainian guards supervised the locksmith so no additional keys could be made. However, the locksmith’s entire family had disappeared down the tube at Treblinka, so he was sympathetic to the Czech men’s plans.

  Despite the watchful eye of the Ukrainians, the locksmith took an incredible risk by secretly making a wax impression of the key when the guards were distracted. From the impression, he was able to create an additional key. The Ukrainians were none the wiser. The locksmith gave one key to the SS, and one to the organizers for the revolt.

  “Yes, we have the key,” replied Karel. “We can have some of the young men, perhaps Edek and several others, break into the arsenal and steal the grenades.”

  “Do it,” Rudi said stoically. “It is now or never. I will alert the upper camp; as soon as we have the grenades in our hands the revolt begins.”

  That very day, little Edek and three of his friends nervously walked over to the guard’s living quarters where the arms room was located. Their attempt at a nonchalant stroll was comical, but no one was around to notice as the guards were all on their rounds. They hoped that if a guard caught them out of the corner of his eye he would presume they were on a routine mission to assist the cooks or the nurses.

  Edek’s team inserted the prized key—it worked! Quickly they loaded two cases of grenades into the bottom of a wheelbarrow and covered it with some trash. Again, as casually as possible, they strolled back to where the organizers anxiously awaited their arrival. The uprising would begin in a few moments.

  Once inside, a few members of the revolt committee inspected the grenades. Though everything appeared in order at first glance, it was soon detected that the grenades—so perilously stolen—had no detonators! They needed to be returned, and before the guards retired to their quarters. Edek and his friends walked back toward the arms room, a little quicker this time. All would be well once they returned the grenades and hid the key again.

  As they turned the corner toward the arsenal, something was immediately out of order. A Jewish worker known as a sympathetic informer to the Nazis stood nonchalantly in the hallway. Without missing a beat Edek walked over to the Jew and made up a cockamamie story that Kiewe was looking for him. With Edek leading the informer away from the door and out of sight, the grenades were replaced and the door was relocked.

  This event was a terrible blow to the uprising plan, but also an amazing feat that instilled much-needed confidence into the organizers. Their time would come soon.

  Chapter 22

  Stangl hated to make the announcement but there was no way around it. Before the camp began their cremating operations, the bodies were gassed then b
uried in large pits at Treblinka. Now they all needed to be exhumed and burned.

  “By order of the reichsfuhrer, Heinrich Himmler, not only are we to burn the newly gassed bodies, we must now dig up the remains we have buried in the past and burn those bodies as well,” Stangl declared to his fellow SS workers.

  He looked around and saw the incredible disdain on everyone’s faces. It would mean a lot of work. And the smell of burning bodies that had putrefied, or had only half-decomposed, would be ghastly, like inhaling death itself.

  It was Otto Horn, a former nurse from the euthanasia program, who spoke up first. “Kommandant Stangl, we don’t have the equipment necessary. The pits we excavated were fairly deep and—”

  Stangl cut him off, saying, “I have thought of that and I have already ordered some heavy machinery to assist us. We have the one older piece, but two more large excavators should be arriving by rail in the next week or two.”

  “Why this turn of plans?” asked Kuttner.

  “Well, for one, the shipments have died down and this will give the workers at Camp 2 something useful to do,” replied Stangl. “Essentially this new work will justify keeping them alive. But Herr Himmler’s main reason is to prevent anyone from ever finding out what has been happening here.”

  “Are you talking about—?” Suchomel began.

  “Yes. The stories in the press are being used as propaganda to our full advantage to display the evil of communism. Himmler knows that the Soviets will do the same to us should they ever retake Poland.”

  This statement sobered everyone. Not only was it a shock to realize that, despite all of Hitler’s promises, the war had incurably stalled out in Stalingrad and gone against the Germans but also the thought that the Allies would one day overtake Treblinka and discover what the SS guards had been doing. Both ideas were startling and could not be thought of too long.

  The distress on the Doll’s face said it all.

  “Yes, I know it will be a massive undertaking,” said Stangl, as if to anticipate Kurt Franz’s hesitation. “We are going to have to burn at least ten thousand bodies a day for a month in order to make a dent in it.”

  “Ten thousand a day?” asked Suchomel.

  “Yes. The workers at Camp 2 will have to step up. We will augment them with workers from the lower camp. Also, Globocnik is sending over a specialist to help with the process. He should be here tomorrow.”

  “The reasoning again?” Franz asked as politely as he could, though he was fuming inside. His anger clouded his mind so he could not remember why they were asked to change operations.

  “Katyn.”

  The one-word answer from Stangl was all that was needed to convince the guards.

  Earlier that year the German Army had uncovered a ditch, nearly one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, in the Katyn forest of Russia. In 1940, the Soviets had murdered thousands of Polish officers, stacked the bodies twelve high, and secretly buried them.

  Reich minister Joseph Goebbels used the information as propaganda against the Allies. Heinrich Himmler, as Hitler’s overseer of the Polish death camps, determined never to let this kind of propaganda happen against Nazi Germany. Thus no mass graves and no evidence to be left behind. The bodies buried in Treblinka during the summer and fall of 1942 would have to be excavated and burned, their ashes disbursed, never to be found again.

  In Camp 2, Zelo Bloch and Jankiel Wiernik received the news of exhumation soberly. They had no option but to lead the men to do precisely what was ordered. The laborious cremation project began immediately. The lone excavator scraped the soil of one of the mass graves and dug for hours, creating a mountain of dirt between Camp 1 and Camp 2. All of the work finished months earlier to fill the pit and smooth it out was now being undone.

  When the cavernous grave was finally penetrated, there arose such a stench of gaseous fumes from the half-decomposed bodies that the workers had to cease operations. Eventually the air cleared a little. After the initial shock, the corpses of men, women, and children were exhumed from the foul ground.

  A visitor joined the camp to lead the operation. He was an oberscharfuhrer with SS insignia on his sleeve. The workers had several different names for him: the Artist, the Specialist, and frequently he was known as Tadellos, which meant “perfect.” As he instructed the workers and provided guidance, he had an annoying habit of saying tadellos over and over again, even though things were far from perfect in the workers’ minds.

  The Artist made changes right away. He laughed at the rudimentary ovens they had been using and ordered them dismantled and hauled away immediately. He then had the workers create at regular intervals dozens of cement posts close to two feet high, to be used as pillars. Six sturdy iron rails from the nearby abandoned tracks were laid parallel on top of the cement pillars for a length of 150 feet, forming an enormous grill. The Artist explained that underneath the rails the prisoners should place dry logs and sticks to be used as tinder for the grill.

  Once the Artist was satisfied with the measurements and durability of his new roaster, he had the Jewish workers douse the wood profusely with gasoline. Then, as the carcasses were dug up by the excavator, the women’s bodies were pulled out, hundreds at a time, and put on as the first layer of the grate. Female bodies, especially the fat ones, were found to burn easier than the males, so they were utilized as kindling.

  “Tadellos, tadellos!” exclaimed the Artist. In his mind the work so far was flawless.

  The excavator pulled out roughly twelve corpses each time it dug. Zelo, Jankiel, and scores of other men were on hand to yank out the female bodies and carry them over to the grate. After the Artist was satisfied that a good base was laid, he ordered the excavator to put all bodies—men, women, and children from the pit—and lay them directly on top of the women. When there were approximately three thousand bodies, the Jewish workers were instructed to douse it with gasoline over and over again.

  Once lit, the entire mound of bodies eventually took flame—a colossal roast of death that the Nazis toasted. As Zelo and Jankiel stood by watching, they witnessed unimaginable scenes of burning horror, which included expectant mothers. With his countenance at a new low, Jankiel thought, Lucifer himself could not have created a hell worse than this!

  “Tadellos, tadellos!” praised the Artist.

  The Jewish men had to keep working; never content, the Artist kept suggesting improvements. The Nazis, however, stood by with brandy and cognac. Feeling the warmth from the fire, their bodies and minds were comforted simultaneously, knowing their crimes were being covered up.

  The additional excavators arrived and were put to use immediately. Workers were transferred from Camp 1 to help with the project. New grills were made nearby. Soon mounds with ten thousand bodies at a time were engulfed in flames.

  The burnings continued. More excavations of bodies, more mounds created. The fire was so hot that it scorched many of the workers trying to manage it. The large flames could be seen from miles away, and anyone within one hundred feet of them would be burned. The noxious odor often incapacitated those who were in the vicinity, including the workers in Camp 1 and the nearby villages. It was awful, even for the guards, who simply stood and watched over the operation. They were permitted to rotate out every two weeks for special leave, to depart from the haunting inferno of Treblinka. But the prisoners were forced to endure.

  Eventually hundreds of thousands of bodies had been burned, their ashes scraped into wheelbarrows with a continuous crew of workers depositing their loads in the adjacent fields or the river. Within the ashes were not only bits and pieces of bone, but also jewels and gold that had apparently been swallowed in a desperate attempt before entering the gas chamber. The work was repugnant, hideous, and the workers at Camp 2 sent a message to Camp 1: “If you do not take action soon, we will take action ourselves.”

  Chapter 23

  Blonde-haired Tchechia Mandel was told she would not be doing kitchen work that day. One of the maids was sick with ty
phus, so Tchechia was instructed to perform cleaning duties in the SS living quarters and offices. After breakfast she grabbed her cleaning supplies and departed for that part of the camp, dreaming of the revolt and of one day departing from Treblinka with its memories of Benjamin Rakowski and death everywhere.

  When she arrived at the living quarters it was quiet. She cleaned several rooms, removed the trash, and took a quick break before she entered the office area. There was never much time to rest during the day, and the workers were instructed to always run from place to place.

  Once inside the kommandant’s office, Tchechia wiped down the desk and straightened up the other furniture. All of a sudden the door opened and in walked the kommandant himself.

  “Why hello,” greeted Stangl. “How are you today?”

  “I’m fine,” answered the startled Tchechia in near-perfect German. She had never encountered Stangl one on one before.

  Stangl looked uncomfortable, like he was going to continue the conversation, which Tchechia did not want. She attempted to keep dusting.

  “Have you chosen a room for yourself yet?” asked Stangl.

  Tchechia stopped dusting. Stangl stood still, looking at her.

  “Why do you ask?” answered Tchechia, somewhat condescendingly. She had dealt with these brutes before. She was not too scared to stare at him. Did he want her for himself? Was he trying to flatter her?

  “Nothing,” Stangl stammered. Her response and tone had taken him by surprise. “I meant nothing by it. I simply wondered if you had been able to move into one of the new rooms we had built for the workers. I can ask this of you, can’t I? Why shouldn’t I ask?” Stangl became indignant, offended that this Jewish worker would speak to him in the manner that she did.