In sealed railway freight wagons to an unknown destination.
The grim freight wagons transport me there, to that place. They are transporting from all directions: from east and west, from north and south. By day and by night. In all seasons of the year people are brought there: spring and summer, autumn and winter. The transports travel there without hindrance and without limit, and Treblinka grows richer in blood day by day. The more people who are brought there, the more Treblinka is able to receive them.
I, like all the others, do not know where and for what reason we are traveling. Nevertheless we try, insofar as possible, to find out something about our journey. The Ukrainian robbers who guard us will not do us the favor of replying. The only thing we hear from them is:—Hand over gold, hand over money and valuables! These criminals visit us constantly. Almost every hour another one of them terrorizes us. They beat us mercilessly with their rifle butts, and each of us tries as best he can to shut the murderers up with a few zlotys in order to avoid their blows. That is what our journey is like.
We travel from Lubartów station, some 20 kilometers from Lublin. I travel with my pretty young sister Rivka, nineteen years old, and a good friend of mine, Wolf Ber Rojzman, and his wife and two children. Almost all those in the freight wagon are my close acquaintances, from the same small town, Ostrów Lubelski. There are about 140 of us in the freight wagon. It is extraordinarily tight, with dense, stale air, all of us pressed against one another. Despite the fact that men and women are all together, each of us, in these crowded conditions, has to perform his natural functions on the spot where he is standing … One hears groans from all four corners, and people asking each other:—Where are we going? Everyone shrugs and replies with a deep oy. No-one knows where the road leads, and at the same time no-one wants to believe that we are going where our sisters and brothers, our nearest and dearest, have been sent over a period of many months.
Sitting near me is my friend Katz, an engineer by profession. He assures me that we are going to Ukraine and that we will be able to settle in the countryside there and work the land. He explains that he knows this for certain because that is what he was told by a German lieutenant, the manager of a state farm in Jedlanka, 7 kilometers from our little town. The German told Katz this ostensibly as a friend, since Katz had from time to time repaired an electric motor for him. I want to believe it, though I know it is in fact not so.
We travel. The train stops often because of the signals, since it is running outside the timetable and therefore has to wait and let the normal trains through. We travel through various stations, among them Luków and Siedlce. At every opportunity, when the train stops, I beg the Ukrainians, who descend to the platform, to bring us a little water. They do not reply, but if you give them a gold watch, they hand you a sip of water. Many of my friends give them their valuables but do not receive the promised water. I am an exception. I ask a Ukrainian for a little water. He demands 100 zlotys from me for a bottle of water. I agree. In a short while he brings me a half-liter bottle of water. I ask him how long we will be traveling. His reply is:—Three days, because we are going to Ukraine. I begin to think maybe it’s really true … We have been traveling for nearly fifteen hours, though the distance is about 120 kilometers.
It is 4:00 in the morning as we approach a station called Treblinka, which lies some 7 kilometers from Małkinia. We stop. The cars are sealed and we don’t know what will happen to us. We wait for the train to move again. My sister tells me she is hungry. But we have little in the way of food. Leaving our town unexpectedly, it was impossible to procure supplies. The same was true in the town of Lubartów. I explain to my sister that we still have a long way to go and we have to restrict our eating as much as possible, or our food won’t last the journey. She agrees, assuring me that she really isn’t so hungry after all.