Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling (36 page)

In September 1942, the deportation of the Jews of Częstochowa began. We had already sensed it coming weeks before. The town was surrounded by SS units. We are all woken from sleep before daybreak by the noise of wild shooting, vehicles, and people screaming and wailing. We look out into the street and see the SS men savagely bursting into people’s houses and driving the occupants out into the street with blows from their rifle-butts. We watch them arbitrarily dividing up people after a superficial glance at their work-permits; a very small minority of them is assigned to work, and the rest are transported away en masse. Some kind of premonition tells us that this is the route to death, and we decide to hide in the bunker, which we had already prepared. Some elderly Jews join us and we lie together, hidden in the bunker, cut off from the world, and discuss our dangerous situation. We don’t dare to go out in daylight, but at night we creep out into the fields to find something to eat. There are cabbages, turnips and other vegetables. We bring them back and cook them on an electric stove. At night, when it is dark, we enter the houses of the deported Jews and search through the abandoned rooms.

Our bunker is discovered almost at the end of the period of deportations. Whether we were betrayed by someone, or whether it was purely chance, we don’t know. The commander of the deportations, Degenhardt makes a personal appearance and commands us all to leave the bunker. We all comply, because we know if we were discovered during a second search, it will be certain death. We are taken to Pszemiszlaver Street, where the last deportees are just being taken away. Of the seven thousand Jews who are rounded up here, three hundred men and ten women are assigned to a work-detail in Częstochowa. The remainder are forced into a large factory yard. They are destined for the furnace in Treblinka. On the day before the deportation one loaf is distributed to each person, for which they have to pay one zloty. This is a carefully worked out plan of the Germans. According to the number of zlotys they will know the number of people and can estimate how many wagons they need, and how many people should be loaded into each wagon.

At four o’clock in the morning the deportation began. Everyone has to assemble. Everyone has to take off their shoes, tie them together and hang them over their shoulders. Then begins, silent and barefoot, the march to annihilation. At the exit to the factory yard a box has been placed. Under threat of punishment by death, everybody has to throw all their valuables into it. Hardly anyone does it. As they marched on, however, their fear grows. They have second thoughts about it, and from all sides valuables, foreign currency, money and so on are dropped by the wayside. The route of the death-march is littered with Jewish possessions.

When we arrive at the train, the SS shove eighty to hundred people into each of the wagons. The disinfectant calcium chloride is scattered liberally into every wagon. Each wagon receives three small loaves of bread and a little water. Then the doors are pushed shut, locked and sealed. Ukrainian and Lithuanian SS stand guard at the steps of each wagon. We are shut in like cattle, tightly crammed together. Only a tiny bit of air comes in through the one small wire-covered window, so that we can hardly breathe. The calcium chloride hardly helps to combat the unbearable smell, which gets worse all the time. Some women faint and others vomit. The natural functions also have to be performed in the wagon, which makes the situation even more terrible, and on top of everything else we are tormented by a dreadful thirst. We become utterly desperate and keep begging the SS guards to bring us some water. They refuse for a long time but eventually they agree to give us some water, but only for money. We manage to collect a few thousand zlotys and give them to the guards. The SS take the money, but no water appears. Thus, in pain and torment, the journey drags on until we reach Warsaw. There our train is shunted into a siding. It’s not until the following morning that we travel on to Malkinia, seven kilometres from Treblinka.

Here we see Poles working in the fields and try to communicate with them. We just want to find out what our fate is going to be. They, however, hardly lift their eyes from their work, and when they do, they just shout one word at us: ‘Death!’ We’re seized by terror. We can’t believe it. Our minds simply won’t take it in. Is there really and truly no escape for us? One of the Polish workers mentions burnings, another, shootings, and a third – gassings. Another tells of inhuman, unbelievable tortures. An unbearable state of tension mounts among us, which in some cases even leads to outbreaks of hysteria.

However, we don’t have much time to think about all this. A special locomotive takes away twenty of the sixty wagons which made up our train. After five minutes it comes back and takes another twenty wagons. A woman beside me is wailing and moaning: ‘They’re murdered already, they’re dead, dead, dead … My God, why has this happened to us?’ An icy horror comes over me, and I clench my fists helplessly.

And now the last twenty wagons are being moved. I am in one of them. Slowly we roll on. One can clearly see that the forest here has recently been dug up. Full of trepidation, we roll towards a huge gate guarded by a large number of SS with machine-guns.

The train stops and the escort is commanded to get out and wait there. Then the gate opens and the locomotive shunts all the wagons into the camp. It remains outside. The gate closes behind us. The wagons roll slowly towards the big ramp. Round about it stands an SS unit, ready to receive us with hand-grenades, rubber truncheons and loaded guns. Now the doors of the wagons are flung open and, half-fainting, we are driven out onto the ramp. We can hardly stand, and desperately gulp deep breaths of the fresh air. There is terrible wailing, screaming and weeping. Children are searching for their parents. Weak and sick people are begging for help. Desperate women are tearing out their own hair. But straightaway the SS rush at us and force everyone to move on. The stragglers – the old, the sick, the weak and little children without parents – are either lifted onto stretchers by a squad wearing Red Cross armbands, or helped along. They are all brought into a large building, the so-called ‘Lazarett’ or infirmary. A fire burns in the middle of the room. On one side stands a long bench. The old, the sick and the children have to strip naked, supposedly for a medical examination. Then they are made to sit on the bench, one beside the other, facing the fire. When they ask what the fire is for, it is explained that it is to keep the room warm so that none of the sick people should catch cold. Then a group of men armed with machine-guns appears behind them. A short, muffled burst of machine-gun fire is heard – and, shot through the head, they all fall into the burning fire. Another worksquad comes immediately and lays new branches on the dead bodies, because new victims are already waiting to be annihilated.

While this was going on, the savage SS herded the rest of the men and women down from the ramp with their truncheons and drove them through a gate leading to a large square. This square is surrounded with barbed wire carefully camouflaged with leafy branches. On the right stands a large open barracks, the women’s barracks. On the left stands another high, open barracks for the men. A command rings out: women to the right, men to the left! There are indescribable, heart-breaking farewell scenes, but the SS drive the people apart. The terrified children cling to their mothers. At last the people have been divided into two groups. Then comes the order: undress, and tie your clothes up in a bundle, tie your shoes together in pairs. The huge crowd just stands there as if waiting for something, until the savage SS let fly with their rubber truncheons and force the people to undress. Some more slowly, some more quickly, with greater or lesser degrees of embarrassment, the men and women undress and lay their clothes aside. Some still try to exchange a word with the Jews who are working in the squads in order to find out something about what awaits us. We are told the terrible truth: from this camp no one comes out alive, and there can be no question of escaping; we have come to our death. But we simply can’t believe it. The human being is too attached to life, even if the truth of these predictions should be confirmed a thousand times.

At last all the men and women are undressed. We are dying of thirst and scream for a drink of water. But we are not given it, even though there is a well in the middle of the yard, as if to spite us. Now the naked women are driven into the barracks. They do their best to cover their breasts with their arms. At the entrance to the barracks a shearing-squad awaits them. With one cut all the women’s hair is hacked off and immediately packed into waiting sacks. Then the women are assembled in groups and, with their hands above their heads, they are led through a back door into the death-camp.

Meanwhile the naked men are forced to pack up all the male and female clothing. Everyone has to carry a heavy load and go at a running pace through another gate into a second huge square surrounded by long, single-storey barracks. The clothing is laid down by the barracks. Then everyone has to get into line, their hands above their heads and, at a marching pace, to the rhythm of the beating rubber truncheons, we go back to the main square. There the men are made to run many times round the square until they are completely exhausted. This is so that, when they are marched to their death they will be so tired that they will not be able to offer any resistance in the death-chamber.

Finally everyone is driven into the men’s barracks and towards a door, which leads to the death camp. At the very door 30 men are pulled out, of whom I am one. We are divided into five groups with six men in each. A couple of workers are assigned to each group. We have been chosen to form the work-squads in the camp. For the meantime we are safe.

* * *

Treblinka consisted of two camps: Camp I, which received the transports, dealt with the plundered goods and prepared the victims to be taken to their deaths; then there was Camp II, the so-called ‘death camp’ in which the swift and systematic annihilation of the people who had arrived on the transports took place. I was in Camp I, where the work was carried out by various squads. There is the ‘blue’ squad: its members wear blue armbands and have responsibility for the newly arrived transports at the ramp. This squad has to cleanse the newly arrived wagons of their dead bodies, filth and excrement as quickly as possible. The squad works with brooms. Each pair of workers has to clean out one wagon in ten minutes.

Then there is the red squad – men with a red-cross symbol. Their task is to carry the old, the sick and children up to the age of six, or those who have lost their parents, on stretchers or in their arms from the ramp to the ‘death-infirmary’. Apart from these there were also special transport-squads, train-squads, sorting-squads, barracks-camouflage squads and also squads of carpenters, tailors, shoemakers and so on. A kapo was assigned to be in charge of each squad. He was responsible to the
Lagerälteste
[senior camp inmate, or elder].

I belonged to the sorting squad, which had to sort the discarded clothing into better and poorer quality and put them into the appropriate sections of the barracks. Every garment was minutely examined to see whether any valuables were sewn into or hidden in it. From each garment the Star of David had to be removed as carefully as possible so that no one could see it had belonged to a Jew.

Each tin of shoe-polish, each pocket-torch or belt is prised or cut open to find anything of value which might be there. Watches and gold are put in separate piles. The following things are also put in separate piles: diamonds, rings, gold roubles, gold dollars and so on. The collection and sorting of pictures is particularly strictly controlled. For the crime of taking a picture to keep, a Jew was punished by death. Mass shootings took place simply because one of the Jews had hidden on his person a picture of his wife or near relatives. When each bundle was tied up, the Jewish sorter had to put a piece of paper with his name on it in the bundle, so that it would immediately be known which individual to punish for the smallest breach of the regulations. I can still see before me the punishment that was meted out to a nineteen-year-old boy who had forgotten to remove the Star of David from one garment. He is shot dead on the
Appellplatz
before the eyes of the assembled work-squads. He is forced to look directly into the gun-barrel. For making a movement of his head when the final command is given, he gets two brutal blows to the face. A few seconds later, he falls to the ground, his head shattered and is quickly removed.

When each order for clothes comes in, the carefully sorted and packed stolen clothes are sent away. Usually a whole transport will depart with one article. There goes, for instance, a transport consisting entirely of suits, another consisting entirely of women’s silk dresses, a third of shoes, and so forth. Gold is loaded onto lorries and taken away separately. The SS units become enormously rich. As compensation for the gruesome work in the camp, they are granted four weeks’ leave and always travel dressed in civilian clothes. Each time, they take with them about ten suitcases. They take the best and most expensive clothes and the most beautiful gold and diamond jewellery for their families.

Between Camp I and Camp II, three huge excavators work day and night, piling up huge mountains of earth between the two camps. Day and night, the bright glow of the burning bodies rises up to the sky. It is visible for miles. When the wind blows in the direction of our camp, it brings such a terrible smell that we can’t manage to do any work. Only when the wind changes direction can we start doing our normal work again. It was strictly forbidden to cross from one camp to the other. In the early period the food carriers used to come to us from Camp II and bring us all the minute details of the cruel deeds that were being perpetrated there. When we heard about them we choked and our heads whirled feverishly. It often took hours before we could start working again. The tears running down our faces did not alleviate our helpless rage and our searing pain.