In one instance, a man named Moses Rapaport, who arrived at Treblinka in a sealed railcar, testified about his pregnant wife and eleven-year-old son. After exiting the railcar, Moses escorted his slow-moving, very-pregnant wife to her line. All of a sudden two shots rang out, dropping Rapaport’s wife and his son onto the unloading platform. Apparently they were not moving fast enough.
While Rapaport shared his personal account to the hushed assembly, Kurt Franz stared at him with a broad grin. At one point, Rapaport looked up into the crowded courtroom and laid eyes on Franz. He leapt to his feet and then fell backward, down into his chair, unconscious. He was rushed out of the courtroom in a wheelchair and taken to a hospital, the victim of a circulatory collapse.
Before Rapaport had finished his testimony, another survivor named Abraham Bomba bolted from the courtroom, sobbing with hands over his eyes. He, too, had arrived at Treblinka with his wife and four-week-old baby. His family encountered a similar fate. Those who testified must have certainly been traumatized, having to relive their experiences in front of their tormentors, now sitting as defendants. I am in awe of their bravery.
The emotional trauma inflicted by their Treblinka experiences affected the survivors long after the war ended. Two of the men who outlived the revolt tragically took their own lives years after the war. One Jewish worker who revolted was Hershl Sperling. After the uprising, Sperling survived multiple other concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and was eventually liberated by U.S. soldiers at Dachau in 1945. However, while living in Scotland in 1989, he jumped off a Glasgow railroad bridge and into the Clyde River.
The other suicide victim was Richard Glazar. Unable to cope with the loss of his wife, Glazar jumped out of a high apartment window in Prague on December 20, 1997. Six months later the man who Glazar’s testimony helped put behind bars, Kurt Franz, died of natural causes.
The destruction people can do to others is a great evil. Amidst the worst of these circumstances, however, there is something deeper happening, concealed inside the individuals themselves. The Nazis, driven by evil, and exhaustive in their efforts to abolish a distinct people group, consequently lost themselves, and in fact lost their own identity and became a people morally obsolete.
The Jews, even while heavily persecuted, resisted within Warsaw, at Treblinka, and in other cities and camps throughout Europe. This fight for survival and justice gained for them a remarkable authoritative presence, a presence that allowed them to bravely stand against the Nazi defendants’ outright lies and blame-erasing tactics at the Nuremberg and Dusseldorf trials. It also empowered them to make a new life, often without relatives, starting completely over, and usually in a new land, where they knew no one. But they did it.
I wrote Trains to Treblinka to unveil an incredible resilience innate to the human spirit. This fountain, elucidated and empowered by divine presence, forever stands against impossible adversities, fights against the greatest of odds, and contains hope for even the slightest of victories, of light over darkness, and of good over evil. As David Brat encouraged Richard Glazar moments before the Treblinka revolt, “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me…’”
THE END
Bibliography and Chapter Notes
Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Bryant, Michael S. Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955–1966. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2014.
Causey, Charles. The Lion and the Lamb: The Holocaust Story of a Powerful Nazi Leader and a Dutch Resistance Worker. Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, a Division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, 2016.
Cesarani, David. The Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016.
Donat, Alexander. The Death Camp Treblinka. New York: Walden, 1979.
Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians, and the License to Kill in the Third Reich. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993.
Gerwarth, Robert. Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
Gilbert, G. M. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Da Capo Press, 1947.
Glazar, Richard. Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995.
Grossman, Vasily. The Hell of Treblinka. Moscow, 1946.
Kopówka, Edward & Rytel-Andrianik, Pawel. I Will Give Them an Everlasting Name. Loreto Sisters Publishing House, 2011.
Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Lubling, Yoram. Twice Dead: Moshe Y. Lubling. The Ethics of Memory, and the Treblnika Revolt. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007.
Poprzeczny, Joseph. Odilo Globocnik, Hitler’s Man in the East. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2004.
Rajchman, Chil. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir. New York: Pegasus, 2011.
Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945. London: Sphere Books Limited, 1961.
Roseman, Mark. The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002.
Segev, Tom. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. New York: Owl Books, 1991.
Sereny, Gitta. Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience. New York: Vintage, 1974.
Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Crest Books, 1959.
Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010.
Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
Treblinka Trial. Benjamin Sagalowitz Archive: Documentation regarding the Treblinka Trial in Duesseldorf, 1960–1965. YVA Item ID # 3689563.
Treiger, Karen I. My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story. Seattle: Stare Lipke Press, 2018.
Webb, Chris & Chocholaty, Michal. The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2014.
Wiernik, Jankiel. A Year in Treblinka: An Inmate Who Escaped Tells the Day to Day Facts of One Year of His Torturous Experiences. New York: Normanby Press, 2015.
Willenberg, Samuel. Surviving Treblinka. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishers, 1989.
Wójcik, Michal. Treblinka 43. Kraków: Znak, 2018.
As the following sources are used frequently, they will be abbreviated as shown:
ARAD The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Arad
EYE Eyewitness to Genocide, Bryant
CAMP The Death Camp Treblinka, Donat
TRAP Trap with a Green Fence, Glazar
INTO Into that Darkness, Sereny
PREFACE
1. The protagonists. There were certainly many intriguing Jewish workers to write about, such as Treblinka survivor Samuel Rajzman, who spent a year living in the woods after the revolt (CAMP 245), or Zev Kurland, who assisted Mentz at the Lazarette (INTO 246, TRAP 56), or Moshe Lubling, a revolt planner who sacrificed his own life to help others escape (TRAP 148). But in an effort not to overwhelm the reader, I consolidated most of the Jewish worker narrative to two young women from Poland (Bronka and Tchechia) and six Czech men who were central to the revolt (Hans, Karel, Richard, Robert, Rudi, and Zelo). The carpenter Jankiel Wiernik is also important to Trains to Treblinka, but he is not a dominant character. I also did not write about all the notorious guards who served there. One in particular, Ivan Marchenko (Ivan the Terrible), a Ukrainian guard, was known to torture people in the tube before they entered the gas chamber.
2. A spurious resource. I purposely decided not to consider the 1966 Jean-Francois Steiner book Treblinka: The Revolt of an Extermination Camp as source material for Trains to Treblinka because the book was republished as a novel. I also declined its use out of respect to Richard Glazar, who wrote a letter to Steiner in 1968 to protest Ste
iner’s “completely phony” descriptions of Treblinka camp life. At one point Glazar told Steiner, “One could argue with you over almost every page of your book.” At another point he stated, “And as for you, today, Jean, I know of another type of terrible human cowardice and weakness, namely when a person is unable to admit that his ideas fail to stand up to reality.” Karel Unger and Samuel Rajzman agreed with Glazar. Once, Unger told Glazar, “That man (Steiner) must be repudiated.” Samuel Rajzman wrote to Glazar, “This terrible book prevented me from sleeping for many a long night.” Even Franz Suchomel, a Nazi guard, declared to Gitta Sereny that Steiner’s book was just invention (INTO 206). In my opinion, the actual events at Treblinka were worse than anyone could fathom, so to contrive imaginative stories only serves to belittle those who truly lived them.
3. Description of Tchechia (ARAD 152, 323; INTO 195, 203–205; TRAP 100). “Tchechia Mandel was the only real red-blond in the camp,” said Suchomel. In at least one source Tchechia Mandel is referred to as “Chesia Mendel” (Arad) or “Cescha” (Glazar), but the predominant spelling of her name is Tchechia Mandel. I do not know definitively if Bronka and Tchechia arrived on the same train. One source suggested that Bronka may not have arrived at Treblinka until January of ’43, but her exact arrival date is unverifiable. It is assumed that all but a fraction of the steady workers were selected by the end of October, so it would be exceptional if Bronka arrived so late yet was chosen to be a worker. Glazar wrote about Tchechia, “She works in the German mess, and the few girls who are here look up to her the same way we looked up to Zelo.”
4. Bronka Sukno (ARAD 151, EYE 111, INTO 192). She was deported to Treblinka from the Warsaw ghetto. “After about two hours there, Suchomel took me to the laundry where the Germans’ clothing was washed and ironed. On the way Suchomel told me not to ask any questions, and to remember that I had neither heard nor seen a thing. The next day they took me to the tailor’s shop.” –Bronka Sukno’s testimony to the Israeli police, June 14, 1961. In some Shoah literature, Bronka Sukno’s first name is spelled Broncha.
CHAPTER 1
1. Gisela Masarek. I am indebted to the Holocaust Historical Society for this name. I could find no Treblinka literature that named Rudi Masarek’s young wife, but I felt Trains to Treblinka would not be complete without it. Consulting with the Holocaust Historical Society, they were not only able to retrieve Gisela’s name, but provided her date of birth as well, April 18, 1923 (the same day of the year my father was born). Gisela was nineteen years old when she stepped off the train at Treblinka station. Rudi was twenty-nine.
2. Rudi and Hans (CAMP 283, INTO 182–183, TRAP 23)
3. Theresienstadt Ghetto (EYE 105)
4. One of the most deplorable aspects of the Holocaust were the cruel, ghastly train rides to the death camps. Many people died on their journey to Treblinka. Cattle cars, which could hold sixty to seventy people without luggage, would be crammed with between 100–150 people and all of their belongings. There was often panic and a fight to find fresh air to breathe. The floors were sometimes dusted with lime and chlorine by the Nazis, which burned the Jews’ eyes and feet, and caused many to gag. Some trains arrived at Treblinka station filled with corpses of people who died of asphyxiation. The following is from Jakub Krzepicki regarding his journey from Warsaw to Treblinka: “…It is impossible to describe the tragic situation in our airless, closed freight car. It was one big toilet…the stink in the car was unbearable. People were defecating in all four corners.” Abraham Goldfarb reported that in his train to Treblinka packed with 150 passengers, 135 died before the doors were opened (ARAD 100–101). To make matters worse, sometimes the guards would shoot into the cars for sport. From Warsaw to Treblinka the train ride should have taken approximately four hours, but many times it would take two full days. This gratuitous suffering was an evil almost as inconceivable as the gas chambers. The trains became for many a rolling chamber of death.
CHAPTER 2
1. Franz Stangl (CAMP 274, INTO 167–171, TRAP 46). The scene depicts Stangl witnessing Rudi’s train arrive, which is a continuation from chapter 2. Chapter 3 departs this sequence and depicts Tchechia and Bronka’s train, which came from Poland. Chapter 4 continues with the arrival of the Czech train. I hope this interchanging sequence adds dimension and is not confusing for the reader.
2. Stangl’s contempt for his father’s uniform (INTO 25). “His Dragoon uniform, always carefully brushed and pressed, hung in the wardrobe. I was so sick of it, I got to hate uniforms. I knew since I was very small, I don’t remember exactly when, that my father hadn’t really wanted me. I heard them talk. He thought I wasn’t really his.” For more detailed information on Stangl’s personal life, see chapter 5, note #3.
3. Odilo Globocnik, chief of the extermination program (ARAD 34, EYE 3): Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945. London: Sphere Books Limited, 1961, 71. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010, 209. Globocnik was one of the earliest Nazis and had an enduring friendship with Himmler, which earned him the opportunity to prove himself in Poland. Himmler’s nickname for Globocnik was “Globus,” and they worked in concert to establish the Operation Reinhard death camps. Globocnik employed fear and intimidation on men like Stangl and Kurt Franz. He was captured on May 31, 1945 in the Austrian Alps, but unfortunately he was never brought to trial. Just like his mentor Himmler, Globus committed suicide by biting on a cyanide capsule moments before he was to be interrogated by the Allied army.
CHAPTER 3
1. The smell of death in this instance is partially from Camp 2, but at that time they were still burying corpses. It is also from the Lazarette, where they routinely burned bodies not too far from the unloading platform.
2. Bronka’s selection (EYE 111, INTO 192). One account states that Bronka’s older brother, who was already at the camp, asked Suchomel to select her. The account that aligns closer to the historical record, however, is taken from Bryant’s Eyewitness to Genocide, which states that it was a friend of one of her sisters who pleaded with Suchomel. Perhaps the prisoner lied about their relationship (calling himself Bronka’s brother) to ensure Suchomel chose Bronka, so both stories may be accurate.
3. The city of Lemberg is the name in German; in Polish it is Lwow. After WWII it became Lviv, Ukraine.
CHAPTER 4
1. Rudi’s arrival (CAMP 283). Donat’s account says that Rudi arrived with not only his wife Gisela but also her mother, and Gisela’s thirteen-year-old sister. All the women were sent immediately into the tube.
2. Hans Freund worried of his son having a cold (INTO 211–212)
3. The Lazarette (TRAP 13). This area was disguised to look like a medical clinic. It was actually a killing and burning center. When not disposing of bodies, Mentz was tasked to burn all the documents the Jews brought with them to Treblinka. Cesarani, David. The Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–1949. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016, 504.
4. Richard and Karel arrived at Treblinka on Saturday, October 10, 1942, (TRAP 5, 137).
5. Kapos and foremen. These terms were used interchangeably at the camp, but kapo was a name a little more formal. Toward the beginning the kapos were harsher with their coworkers; this was partially coerced by the Nazis, though some did it for sport. Over time many of the kapos at Treblinka became revolt conspirators, and they were able to weed out the informers.
CHAPTER 5
1. Stangl’s recollection of arriving at Treblinka and his encounter with Globocnik (INTO 157–160). “It was Dante’s Inferno!”
2. The first kommandant of Treblinka was Dr. Irmfried Eberl. He notified the commissar of the Warsaw ghetto that Treblinka would be ready for operation on July 11, 1942. The first transport of Jews from Warsaw arrived on July 23, 1942. The truth was that Treblinka was not prepared under his leadership. Eberl was relieved one month later. He survived the war and was arrested in January 1948. He committed sui
cide a few weeks later to avoid trial (CAMP 274).
3. Stangl’s family. Franz Stangl and Theresa Eidenbock were married October 7, 1935 and they had three daughters before the end of WWII; Brigitte (born July 7, 1936 and called “Gitta”), Renate (February 17, 1937), and Isolde (January 5, 1944). In what might be considered an ironic exchange of fate, until the day of his death Stangl felt that his capture on February 28, 1967 was the result of an informant, his estranged son-in-law Herbert Havel (married to Renate). Though the story about Havel’s role does not have a lot of supporting evidence (Sereny), it did take Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal three years to find Stangl, and he must have had a break from someone who knew Stangl’s current residence.
CHAPTER 6
1. The nightly suicides. Wiernik reported, “Such suicides occurred at the rate of 15 to 20 a day.” Wiernik, Jankiel. A Year in Treblinka: An Inmate Who Escaped Tells the Day to Day Facts of One Year of His Torturous Experiences. New York: Normanby Press, 2015, Ch. 7.
2. Karel and Richard (INTO 182)
3. The Doll, Kiewe, and Miete (CAMP 276–278, TRAP 46–47), and virtually every resource describing Treblinka
4. The guards as sadists (INTO 188)
5. David Brat (TRAP 21, 49)
6. For more information on the escape attempts, see chapter 10, note #4.
7. Camp elder Galewski (CAMP 215). There is much written on Galewski regarding his help overseeing the workers and his support for the revolt. Sometimes his name is misspelled by the survivors, such as by Stanislaw Kon in his writing Revolt in Treblinka and the Liquidation of the Camp. Kon spelled the camp elder’s name as Gralewski. There is also no historic consensus on his first name. Some say it must be Alfred, others Marceli. Possibly his full name was Alfred Marceli Galewski and he predominantly went by his middle name (which contributed to the source of confusion among sources).
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