In this chapter, a number of people from all sides of the story will give their accounts. From one of the Polish locomotive drivers, to German railroad personnel, from Jews who escaped from the death trains, Wehrmacht officers and members of the Schutzpolizei, who guarded the transports and Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, and others who witnessed the transports to the Belzec death camp.
Stefan Kirsz, a Polish locomotive driver for the Ostbahn, who lived in Belzec testified after the war:
As a co-driver of a locomotive, I led the Jewish transports from the station of Rawa Ruska to Belzec many times. These transports were divided in Belzec into three parts. Each part, which consisted of twenty freight cars pushed by the locomotive, and stopped near the former border wall of 1939 / 40.
Immediately after the freight cars stopped inside the camp, they were emptied of the Jews. Within 3–5 minutes the twenty cars were empty of Jews and their luggage. I saw that in addition to the living, corpses were taken out. The Germans did not allow us to watch the camp, but I was able to see it when I approached the camp and deceptively pretended that I must put the coal closer to the entrance gate.[105]
Mieczyslaw Kudyba testified on October 14, 1945, in Belzec:
The Germans also took about 30 people to the death camp in a big black vehicle. Some of the Jews of Tomaszow Lubelski were taken to the death camp in this vehicle. According to my reckoning, about 450 people could be put into the gas chambers which we had built near the railway siding.
The transports were lined up on the siding and then shunted into the area of the death camp. In March 1942, when I was going along the road from Lubycza to Belzec, I saw that the Jews brought in were already undressed and that each one was carrying the clothing to the wagons. At that time about 5 cm of snow lay on the ground.
The undressed children, women and men were screaming. I had a good view of this through the camouflaged trellis of branches, at the moment the wagons were rolled back from the siding. The 2nd and 3rd barracks, of which I spoke at the beginning of my statement, were about 50 metres from the siding. During the time the camp was in operation the Germans built a whole row of barracks on the part of the camp near the siding. There could have been about 30 barracks.[106]
Georg Hölzel, deputy station master at Zwierzyniec station in the Lublin district, was frequently at the Belzec station, and had this to say about the Belzec and transports to the death camp in his interrogation in 1962:
In Belzec the SS-men lived in small farm houses directly opposite the station. I in no way had any point of contact with the SS-men. During my duty in Belzec I came across one SS-man in particular who always went around with a riding-whip. I noticed that he definitely wore four stars on his collar. I am not familiar with SS ranks.
I once saw how a transport of Jews was shunted into the Belzec camp. It happened like this: that in the station area the engine was changed from the front to the rear of the train, and then shunted it into the camp. The engine was then uncoupled and eventually the camp was locked. At this point the train personnel had to leave the station. Whether the trains were then handled exclusively by German personnel, I cannot say. To my knowledge Polish personnel were used.
I know only from heresay that in the critical times three transports a day rolled into Belzec. These trains also ran on Sundays. I remember such transports. I cannot give numbers. One experience made an impression on me. It was one Sunday afternoon about 1:30 p.m. A transport of Jews was reported from Zawada.
At our station in Zwierzyniec, engines took on water. This happened also with the above mentioned train. A little Jewish girl was squeezed out of the stationary train who I estimate was ten-twelve years old. She came to me clutching a 5 mark note in her hand—for water. I gave my Polish station master instructions that he could take my water tumbler and hand the girl some water.
I told the girl that she should put her money away. While the girl was drinking, the SS transport leader, who wore four stars as badges of rank appeared suddenly behind me. He then knocked the glass out of the girl’s hand with his riding-whip and then dealt the child several more blows. The girl’s father squeezed out of the wagon and on his knees begged the SS-Officer to leave her alone.
The SS-Officer drew his pistol and shot the father in the back of the neck. The girl was thrown back into the wagon. The same happened with the dead man. The SS-Officer told me it was a disgrace and not worthy of a German official to be a Jew’s slave. When in this connection I am asked the name of this SS-Officer, I can only say that he presumably came from Lublin.
In my opinion, the management of Belzec station came under Zwierzyniec, SS-Rottenführer Schuette belonged to this management. To my knowledge he came from the area of Gelsenkirchen or Hamm.[107]
Oskar Diegelmann, a Reichsbahn Oberinspektor (Senior Inspector) based in Lublin recalled:
As a controller I was responsible for ensuring the track was in good condition and in particular that the trains ran smoothly. During a visit to the station at Belzec the supervisor, a Secretary or Senior Secretary from Thüringen, informed me that he was having a lot of problems with the SS, who were stationed near the wood.
Some time later I myself saw and had a word with a number of SS people in the waiting-room at Belzec. When I inquired, they told me that they were not members of the SS but they had merely been given these uniforms. As they described it, most of them came from lunatic asylums or nursing homes in the Reich, where they had been involved in the killing of the mentally ill.
I would like to say that one day the full significance of Belzec camp became clear to me when I saw mountains of clothes of all types behind our locomotive shed. There was also a large number of shoes there, as well as jewellery and other valuables. The SS had piled these things up there. Petrol was poured over items of clothing that were no longer wearable and they were then burnt.
There were a lot of rumours that valuable items were trafficked by the camp staff in the surrounding area. So it was not surprising that women of easy virtue, in particular, were attracted to the area surrounding Belzec, where they set themselves up in business. There were apparently a lot of orgies at that time.[108]
Fajga Kanner made a statement regarding early transports of Jews to Belzec:
On March 25, 1942, the transports from Rawa Ruska to Belzec began. At first we were still not aware what Belzec was but, afraid of deportation, we never undressed from March 1942 to January 1943, to be prepared to flee at any moment. We built bunkers.
Transports of Jews, 70 or 80 railroad cars, passed all summer, twice a day. We could hear the moans and crying of smothered children from the cars. The majority did not know where they were headed; they were sure that they were being sent to work. Later transports already knew that they were on their way to the gas. Some jumped from the trains and others were so dispirited that they did not take advantage of possible opportunities to save themselves. Heaps of the corpses of those who had jumped unsuccessfully lay near the tracks and embankments.[109]
Maria Daniel, who lived next to the railway line near Belzec station, testified on October 16, 1945, in Belzec:
What happened inside the death camp I do not know. I can only state that after the arrival of the wagons inside the camp terrible human cries could be heard, like; “People if you believe in God, rescue us!” This lasted about 5–10 minutes, then silence prevailed.
The empty wagons came out of the camp again and the next lot was shunted in. Then the screams were repeated afresh from inside the camp. Several times I saw naked Jews inside the wagons being conveyed into the camp.
In the summer of 1942 I was a witness when a naked woman lept out of a wagon; she was immediately caught by the ‘Blacks’ and, naked, taken into the camp.... in 1942, as I travelled on the road from Rawa Ruska to Belzec, I saw Germans bringing 2 lorries full of gypsies; the gypsies were on their knees, pleading to be released.[110]
On August 30, 1942, a Wehrmacht Non Commissioned Officer (NCO) Wilhelm Cornides was in Rzeszow on his way to Cholm (Chelm) in the Generalgouvernement by train. In his diary, he recorded that a railway policeman in Rzeszow had told him that a marble plaque with golden letters was to be erected on September 1, because by then the city would be free of Jews.
The railway policemen also told him: “That trains filled with Jews pass almost daily through the shunting yards, are dispatched immediately on their way and return swept clean most often the same evening. Some 6,000 Jews from Jaroslaw were recently killed in one day.”
Wilhelm Cornides then took the regular passenger train from Rzeszow to Cholm, reaching Rawa Ruska, an important rail junction, on August 31. Cornides stayed in the Deutsches Haus (German House), which was located in the Sokol prewar building in the centre of Rawa Ruska. He recorded what he saw in his diary:
At ten minutes past noon I saw a transport train run into the station. On the roof and running boards sat guards with rifles. One could see from a distance that the cars were jammed full of people. I turned and walked along the whole train. It consisted of thirty –five cattle cars and one passenger car.
In each of the cars there were at least sixty Jews—in the case of the enlisted men’s or prisoner transports these wagons would hold forty men, however, the benches had been removed and one could see that those who were locked in here had to stand pressed together. Some of the doors were opened a crack, the windows criss-crossed with barbed-wire. Among the people locked in there were a few men and most of them were old, everyone else was women, girls and children. Many children crowded at the windows and the narrow door openings. The youngest were surely not more than two years old.
As soon as the train halted, the Jews attempted to pass out bottles in order to get water. The train, ain however, was surrounded by SS guards, so that no-one could come near. At that moment a train arrived from the direction of Jaroslaw, the travellers streamed toward the exit without bothering about the transport. A few Jews who were busy loading a car for the armed forces waved their caps to the people locked in.
I talked to a policeman on duty at the railway station. Upon my question as to where the Jews came from he answered; “Those are probably the last ones from Lvov. That has been going on now for three weeks without interruption. In Jaroslaw they only let eight remain, no-one knows why”.
I asked; “How far are they going?” Then he said; “To Belzec”. And then? “Poison. I asked, “Gas”. He shrugged his shoulders, then he said; “At the beginning they always shot them I believe.
Here in the Deutsches Haus I just talked with two soldiers from the front-line Prisoner of War Camp 325. They said these transports had lately passed through every day, mostly at night. Yesterday a 70-car one is supposed to have gone through.
From Rawa Ruska Cornides took the afternoon train to Cholm. The things he learned on this journey were so extraordinary that he made three separate entries in his diary within an hour. The first entry was at five-thirty p.m.
When we boarded at Four-Forty p.m. an empty transport had just arrived. I walked along the train twice and counted fifty-six cars. On the doors had been written in chalk sixty, seventy, once ninety, occasionally forty—obviously the number of Jews inside the cattle cars.
In my compartment I spoke with a railway policenan’s wife who was visiting her husband here. She says these transports are now passing through daily; sometimes also with German Jews. Yesterday six children’s bodies were found along the tracks. The woman thinks that the Jews themselves had killed these children—but they must have succumbed during the trip. The railway policeman who was escorting the train joined us in our compartment. He confirmed the woman’s statement about the children’s bodies which were found along the track yesterday. I asked, “Do the Jews know what is happening to them?”
The woman answered; “Those who come from far wont know anything, but here in the vicinity they know already. They attempt to run away, if they notice that someone is coming for them. So for example, most recently in Cholm, three were shot on their way through the city. In the railway documents these trains run under the name of resettlement transports, remarked the railway policeman. He then said; “That after the murder of Reinhard Heydrich, several transports containing Czechs had passed through.”
Cornides continued his account:
Camp Belzec is supposed to be located right on the railway line and the woman promised to show it to me , when we pass it. Five –forty p.m.—a short halt. Opposite us a transport again stops. I speak with the policeman in front of the compartment we ride in. I ask; “Are you going back home to the Reich?” Grinning he says, “You probably know where we are coming from. Well for us the work is never finished.” Then the transport opposite us moves away, thiry-five empty and cleaned wagons. In all probability this was the train that I had seen at One p.m. in Rawa Ruska station.
Six-twenty p.m.—we passed Camp Belzec. Before then, we travelled for some time through a tall pine forest. When the woman called, “Now it comes.” One could see a high hedge of fir trees. A strong sweetish odour could be made out distinctly. “But they are stinking already,” says the woman. “Oh nonsense, its only the gas,” the railway policeman said laughing. Meanwhile we had gone about 200 meters—the sweetish odour was transformed into a strong smell of something burning. “That is from the crematory,” said the policeman.
A short distance further on the fence stopped. In front of it one could see a guard house with an SS post. A double track led into the camp. One track branched off from the main line over a turntable from the camp to a row of sheds some 250 meters away. A freight car happened to stand on the turntable. Several Jews were busy turning the turntable—SS guards, rifles under their arms stood by. One of the sheds was open, one could distinctly see that it was filled to the ceiling with bundles of clothes.
As we went on, I looked back one more time—the fence was too high to see anything at all. The woman says, “That sometimes, while going by one could see smoke rising from the camp,” but I did not notice anything of the sort. My estimate is that the camp measures about 800 meters by 400 meters.
In his diary, Cornides recorded conversations he had with other witnesses. A policeman in the town hall restaurant in Cholm on September 1, 1942, said:
The policemen who escort the Jewish trains are not allowed into the camp. The only ones who get in are the SS and the Ukrainian Special Services. But these people are doing a good business over there. Recently a Ukrainian visited us, and he had a whole stack of money in notes and watches and gold and all kinds of things. They find all of that when they put together the clohing and load it.
Upon the question, as to how these Jews were actually being killed, the policeman answered, “They are told that they must get rid of their lice, and then they must take off their clothes and then they come into a room, where first off they get a hot blast of air, which is already mixed with a small dose of gas. That is enough to make them unconscious. The rest comes after, and then they are burned immediately.[111]
A member of the Schutzpolizei in Lvov, Josef Jacklein—a Zugwachtmeister—wrote a report concerning a transport from Kolomea to Belzec dated September 14, 1942:
On 9 September 1942 I received orders to take over command of the Jewish resettlement train which was leaving Kolomea for Belzec on 10 September 1942. On 10 September 1942 at 19.30 hours in accordance with my orders, I took over command of the train together with an escort unit consisting of one officer and nine men at the railway yard in Kolomea. The resettlement train was handed over to me by the Schutzpolizei Hauptwachtmeister Zitzmann. When it was handed over to me the train was already in a highly unsatisfactory state. Hptw. Zitzmann had informed me of this fact when he handed it over to me.
As the train had to depart to schedule and there was no other person who could take responsibility for loading on the Jews, there was nothing left for me to do but to take charge of the transport train in its unsatisfactory state. The condition of the train notwithstanding, the insufficient number of guards—i.e. one officer to nine men in the escort unit—would have been reason enough for me to refuse to take over command of the train. However, in accordance with my orders, I had to take over the train with the escort manpower I had. Hptw. Zitzmann stayed at the station with his guard unit until the train departed. Both units had their hands full preventing Jews escaping from the cars, since it had meanwhile become so dark that it was not possible to see the next car properly. It was not possible to establish how many Jews escaped from the train before its departure alone, however, it is probable that almost all were eliminated during their escape attempts.
At 20.50 the train departed from Kolomea on schedule. Shortly before its departure I divided up my escort squad, as had been planned beforehand, putting five men at the front and five men at the rear of the train. As the train was, however, very long—fifty-one cars with a total load of 8, 200 Jews—this distribution of manpower turned out to be wrong and the next time we stopped I ordered the guards to post themselves right along the length of the train. The guards had to stay on the brake housing for the entire journey. We had only been travelling a short time when the Jews attempted to break out of the wagons on both sides and even through the roof. Some of them succeeded in doing so, with the result that five sations before Stanislau I phoned the stationmaster in Stanislau and asked him to have nails and boards ready, so that we could board up the damaged cars temporarily and to put some of his Bahnschutz (Track guards) at my disposal to guard the train.
When the train reached Stanislau the workers from Stanislau station as well as the Bahnschutz were at the station waiting for our train. As soon as the train stopped, work began. An hour and a half later I considered it adequately repaired and ordered its departure. However, all of this was of very little help, for only a few stations later when the train was stationary I established that a number of very large holes had been made and all the barbed wire on the ventilation windows had been ripped out. As the train was departing I even established that in one of the cars someone was using a hammer and pliers. When these Jews were questioned as to why they had these tools in their possession they informed me that they had been told that they might well be of use at their next place of work. I immediately took away the tools. I then had to have the train boarded up at each station at which it stopped, otherwise it would not have been possible to continue the journey at all.
At 11.15 hours the train arrived in Lemberg. As there was no replacement escort squad, my squad had to continue guarding the train until Belzec. After a short stop at Lemberg station the train went to the suburban station of Kleparow, where I handed over nine wagons to SS-Obersturmführer Schulze which had been marked with an ‘L’ and had been designated for Lemberg compulsory labor camp. SS-Obersturmführer Schulze then loaded on about 1,000 more Jews and at about 13.30 hours the transport departed again.
At Lemberg the engine was replaced and an old engine was attached which was not powerful enough for the weight of the train. The train driver never managed to reach top speed with his engine so that the train, particularly when travelling uphill, moved so slowly that the Jews could jump off without any risk of injury. I ordered the train driver on numerous occasions to drive faster but this was impossible. It was particularly unfortunate that the train frequently stopped in open country.
The escort squad had meanwhile used up all the ammunition that had been brought with us as well as an extra 200 bullets that I had obtained from some soldiers, with the result that we had to rely on stones when the train was moving and fixed bayonets when the train was stationary. The ever-increasing panic among the Jews, caused by the intense heat, the overcrowding in the wagons, the stink of the dead bodies—when the wagons were unloaded there were about 2,000 dead in the train—made the transport almost impossible.
At 18.45 the transport arrived in Belzec and I handed it over to the SS-Obersturmführer and head of the camp at 19.30 hours. Towards 22.00 hours the transport was unloaded. I had to be present during unloading. I was not able to establish the number of Jews that had escaped.[112]
Thomas Toivi Blatt, a Jew who lived in Izbiza, a typical shtetl in southeastern Poland, tried to escape Nazi persecution to Hungary. In his book, From the Ashes of Sobibor, he recounts his journey, which took him past Belzec on his way to Lvov:
It was one in the morning, time to get ready for the train. Slowly one after another, we departed. The date is etched on my memory: 26 October 1942..... Suddenly a kind of subdued anxiety spread among the passengers. They closed the windows; some lit cigarettes. What had happened? Why did the talk turn to whispers? I caught scraps of sentences. “They gas..... fat for soap.” Despite the closed windows, the odor of rotting flesh seeped through.
Belzec! Of course. I grew numb with shock. We were passing near one of the rumoured death factories. My heart pounding I looked out of the window. There were scarce woods, then in the distance I saw flames—now fading, now shooting higher into the sky. This was the destiny I was trying to escape. The smell receded as the train raced on, but I could still see the reflection of fire in the sky.[113]
Janett Margolies, a Jewish woman, was deported from the Tarnopol ghetto, in eastern Galicia, on November 8, 1942, and escaped from one of the death convoys en route to Belzec. She recalled:
On the way, a policeman came close to me, whispering quietly into my ear to join the younger ladies in the wagon. When we arrived at the railroad station, the men were separated, and we were pushed toward the railroad cars. I did observe where the young were concentrated, joining them in the wagon, which was closed and sealed.
We were eighty women. The small windows were high up, with bars and thorny wire. Once inside, we found out that somebody had smuggled in a file to cut bars. I started to organize a crew. Standing on top of the others, we started to work. The train continued to run. When the job was finished, and the bars cut, each candidate, legs through the window, then hold on with their hands, later with only one hand, and with a strong swing, jump into the direction of the running train.
I stood watching the jumping. Most of them were killed on the spot. Some were killed by trains coming from the opposite direction. Others were shot by Gestapo watchmen. Those who succeeded were later caught by special railroad watchmen. Of all the Tarnopol train jumpers, I think that I was the only left alive.
I took quite a while to decide to jump, or not to jump. I realized fully, how hopeless the situation looked.... I decided to jump. Already hanging outside the wagon, I got tangled up in the thorny wire. Being scared, I cried out loudly, feeling that I was falling down. A shot was heard over my head, it was a watchman. Luckily he missed. At the same moment I noticed a locomotive running straight toward me. With my last strength, I rolled over downwards into a depression. All this lasted just a few seconds. I was saved, but badly injured, bleeding from my head and hands. I tore out a little frozen grass, putting it on my wounds. I succeeded in stopping the bleeding. Later I wiped it off my face, bringing myself to order.[114]