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 Steiner’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 suicide 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).
8. The motor utilized to create diesel exhaust fumes for the gas chamber was the engine of a Russian T-34 tank. It had been captured from the Russians, taken apart, and installed at Treblinka. Globocnik preferred carbon monoxide poisoning to Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide), which was used at Auschwitz-Birkenau, possibly because of the increased suffering. With the crystal pellets of Zyklon B its victims were killed after just a few breaths; with diesel exhaust it took twenty-five to thirty-five minutes (Camp 2 survivor Eliahu Rosenberg testimony). The comparative results were staggering; in Zyklon B chambers people died standing up, nearly in the same position as when they had entered, like they were frozen. With diesel exhaust people had time and energy to attempt to fight for air. The chambers would be filled with an entangled mound of individuals where the stronger ones had climbed to the top in a struggle for oxygen, a grisly display of the survival of the fittest. The workers at Camp 2 had to witness these images every time the door opened to the chamber. The Treblinka trial lead state prosecutor, Alfred Spiess, discussed this in an interview with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk television network, and he referenced the Gerstein Report.
9. The story of the ham is credited to Joe Siedlecki (INTO 190).
CHAPTER 7
1. Rudi’s father in the shirt business (INTO 182). “His family had owned one of the most exclusive men’s shirt shops in Prague.”
2. Dr. Chorazycki (CAMP 280–281, INTO 205–206, TRAP 100). His name is also referred to as Choronzycki (Sereny) or Chorandzicki (Bryant).
3. In Glazar’s book Trap with a Green Fence, there is a worker named Rybak who managed the sick bay. It seems he was Dr. Chorazycki’s replacement, though the timing for his service is varied in key Treblinka source material.
CHAPTER 8
1. Franz Stangl daily life (INTO 168–171)
2. Christian Wirth (CAMP 272–273). Every description of this Nazi is vile. After his work with the German euthanasia program in the late ’30s, he worked at Chelmno (an early, pre-Operation Reinhard death camp), then became the first Belzec kommandant. Wirth was instrumental in the transition from death vans (Chelmno) to death chambers (Belzec), where, instead of using the back of a vehicle, carbon monoxide from diesel fumes was pumped into a building with doors that could seal, thus greatly magnifying their ability for mass extinction. This is Wirth’s historical marker. Stangl described Wirth as having awful verbal crudity. Stangl’s friend Michel (at Sobibor) stated that Wirth acted like a lunatic and would whip his own men (ARAD 233, INTO 113–114). Wirth was killed in combat in the Trieste region on May 26, 1944. Stangl saw Wirth’s dead body and told Sereny that he was killed by his own men, Ibid. 262.
3. The gold Jews. The gold Jews, or goldjuden, were a specialized group of workers skilled in currencies, jewels, and precious metals. They assisted not only with the gold arriving from the transports but also the gold extracted from the teeth of the victims at Camp 2. Occasionally they would make requested items into gold for the SS.
CHAPTER 9
1. Zelo (CAMP 279, INTO 182–183, TRAP 22–23). Yitzhak Arad spelled his name Zialo. Gitta Sereny spelled his name Zhelo. I decided to throw in my lot with Richard Glazar, the man who knew Zelo best.
2. Revolt planning, Ibid. 69–72. There were multiple survivors who credited Zelo with strong leadership for the revolt, yet in my research I found testimony of others who had a central role. It is hard to know the precise nature of everyone who helped because in some instances the planning was purposely decentralized as a mask for suspected informers. One of the other strong leaders was Moshe Y. Lubling, and for learning this fact I am indebted to his grandson’s work, Twice Dead: Moshe Y. Lubling. The Ethics of Memory, and the Treblnika Revolt. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007. Dr. Yoram Lubling used prima facie source material to place his grandfather at the center of the revolt planning (which the earliest Treblinka testimonies attested and had never been rebutted, just ignored). His book also exposed some of the flaws in early Holocaust research, perpetuating confusion even today. Although many of the stories of revolt leadership are fragmented, most mention Zelo. “The title of chief of staff must be given to Zelo,” wrote Stanislaw Kon (CAMP 226). Dr. Chorazycki was certainly the center of gravity for appropriating the currency and gold, and also purchasing items for the revolt, but Zelo was the leader of the military planning.
3. The time of “lights-out” varied at the different death camps. Lights-out usually occurred at 2100 hours at Treblinka, 2200 hours at Sobibor, and a half an hour after nightfall at Belzec (ARAD 255). “At nine o’clock all candles must be put out and everyone must be in his bed,” wrote Glazar (TRAP 27).
CHAPTER 10
1. Galewski (CAMP 281–282, TRAP 57). “All of us had great respect for Galewski” (INTO 183).
2. Jankiel Wiernik (CAMP 147–148). Also see Wiernik’s book 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.
3. Whippings of escaped men (TRAP 41)
4. Escape attempts. Successful escapes prior to the revolt were critically important to the Jewish leaders in Warsaw, because some of the men returned to the ghetto and reported on the veracity of Treblinka being a death camp. A few of the men who escaped were actually sent back. Samuel Rajzman told a remarkable story about a man who escaped from Treblinka twice but was deported to Treblinka thrice. He was helpful to the Warsaw revolt planners in exchanging information, and he was helpful to those stuck in Treblinka because he delivered messages back and forth. It was not his intent to ever return to Treblinka after his first escape, just his misfortune. Rajzman said the man died in the uprising (CAMP 235).
CHAPTER 11
1. The Doll (CAMP 276–277, TRAP 47). Kurt Franz was the most notorious of the SS guards at the camp, and it seems as though every person who passed through Treblinka possessed wicked stories about the Doll…except for Sam Goldberg. As described in Karen Treiger’s recent book, her father-in-law Sam became the Doll’s preferred prisoner and the Doll went out of his way to help Sam stay alive. This is an aberration to what others testified about Franz, but it aligns with the Czech’s protégé theory. Treiger’s book is a great read, filled with impactful, reflective commentary. Treiger, Karen I. My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story. Seattle: Stare Lipke Press, 2018.
2. The Doll’s atrocities (EYE 78–82, INTO 202). Rajchman, Chil. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir. New York: Pegasus, 2011, 83. Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 102.
3. The Doll whips a man to death (TRAP 41)
4. Bari the dog (EYE 108). Webb, Chris & Chocholaty, Michal. The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2014. 116. Bari, a mongrel dog the size of a calf, is mentioned in nearly all Camp 1 testaments. Though the phrase “Boy, sic the dog!” seems backward, Kurt Franz used the phrase as an intentional derogatory inversion to humiliate his victims. After his time at Treblinka, Bari was known to be docile.
5. “You Jews started the war” (CAMP 240).
CHAPTER 12
1. Richard Glazar, the son of a financial consultant (INTO 172)
2. Kapo Rakowski. “He is the biggest speculator in the entire camp, a glutton, a boozer, a bellyacher. And he’s not looking out for anyone but himself,” wrote Richard Glazar (TRAP 99).
3. Selections of traitors, Ibid. 35–36
4. Tchechia and Rakowski. “Then there was Tchechia. She was in love with Rakowski, the former camp elder. And he, they said, was in love with her” (INTO 195, TRAP 100).
CHAPTER 13
1. Edek, Ibid. 30. Glazar explained Edek’s appearance at Treblinka: “His parents and siblings were sent into the pipeline immediately after their arrival. They had not played any musical instrument.”
2. The nighttime resistance (CAMP 190–191). Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 115.
3. The whippings of Kurt Franz (INTO 202). Joe Siedlecki told Gitta Sereny, “He’d give them fifty strokes. They’d be dead at the end. He’d be half dead himself, but he’d beat and beat.”
4. David and Richard’s conversation about the difference in treatment of Warsaw’s Jews compared to Czech Jews (TRAP 65).
5. December fires and Edek playing “Eli, Eli” (INTO 193). Glazar told Sereny the fires started in December. In his own book there is a reference to the fires in November (TRAP 29).
CHAPTER 14
1. Stangl and construction work (INTO 200)
2. The revolt known as plan H (TRAP 69–70)
3. Samuel Willenberg. Mr. Willenberg was nineteen years old when he arrived at Treblinka in October 1942. He was the last known survivor of the revolt and died on February 19, 2016 at the age of ninety-three. His daughter Orit Willenberg-Giladi was the architect who designed the Israeli embassy in Berlin. Mr. Willenberg’s memoir a great contribution to Holocaust history. Willenberg, Samuel. Surviving Treblinka. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishers, 1989. At his funeral, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin described him as “a symbol for an entire generation of heroic Holocaust survivors.” There is an outstanding film made about Willenberg’s life called Treblinka’s Last Witness, produced by Alan Tomlinson.
4. Standa Lichtblau. A professional mechanic by trade from Moravian Ostrow, Standa was also a Czech and became a useful coconspirator of the revolt planners. Glazar declared that Standa’s work blowing up the gas tank might have been the most important part of the revolt (TRAP 72, 148, also in INTO 246).
5. Dropping like flies to typhus (TRAP 72)
CHAPTER 15
1. Suchomel working with T4 (INTO 56–57)
2. Bronka’s story about Suchomel (EYE 111). This was not the only death attributed to Suchomel. At the Dusseldorf trial another Treblinka survivor, Sigmund Strawczynski, testified that Suchomel shot a small child as it walked crying to the gas chamber with its mother, Ibid. 118.
CHAPTER 16
1. Zelo and Adasch transferring to Camp 2 (INTO 210–211, TRAP 80–82)
2. Hans Freund: “We aren’t human beings anymore!” (INTO 211, TRAP 82). The long-haired man from religion class refers to the Old Testament figure of Samson from the book of Judges.
3. Trains from Bulgaria, feasting, and workers fighting (INTO 213, TRAP 94–95)
CHAPTER 17
1. The hands of the clock on the side of the tower. Some references state six and one resource states three. I used the predominant testimony. “Up on the gable there is an oversized clock face. Its hands always show six o’clock” (TRAP 141). From Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 113,” A painted clock with numerals permanently reading six o’clock adorned its façade.” Also, Samuel Willenberg discussed the clock during an interview with his wife Ada that is in the Yad Vashem library, https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/interviews/willenberg.html.
2. Trains arriving with corpses, 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. 3.
CHAPTER 18
1. Dr. Chorazycki’s death (INTO 206, TRAP 101–102)
2. The story about the gold Jews (INTO 206). For more information on the gold Jews, see chapter 8, Note #3.
3. Rakowski’s fate (TRAP 113)
4. The Doll’s speech about Rakowski (CAMP 217)
CHAPTER 19
1. Gas chambers, Rajchman, Chil. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir. New York: Pegasus, 2011, 65.
2. “Ivan, water!” (TRAP 12). This was a reference to Ivan Marchenko (Ivan the Terrible). An interesting case, Ivan Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian guard, was thought to be Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka and was convicted on April 18, 1988 then sentenced to death by hanging. While on death row, on July 29, 1993, a five-judge panel of the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the conviction on appeal. New documents opened up after the fall of the Berlin Wall based on the testimony of twenty-three guards who were convicted of war crimes in the Soviet Union showed that it was Ivan Marchenko, not Ivan Demjanjuk, who was Ivan the Terrible. However, on May 12, 2011, at the age of ninety-one, Demjanjuk was convicted of accessory to murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor, where he worked as a guard. He was sentenced to five years in prison but died within a year of his conviction.
3. Camp 2 work, Rajchman, Chil. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir. New York: Pegasus, 2011, 47–51. Also, it is discussed in detail in Wiernik’s book 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.
CHAPTER 20
1. The Doll’s concert plans (TRAP 122–125)
2. Arthur Gold (ARAD 252, 281; CAMP 306; TRAP 122). Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010. 269.
3. There was also an orchestra in Camp 2, written about by survivor Jerzy Rajgrodzki (ARAD 283), Webb, Chris & Chocholaty, Michal. The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2014. 112.
CHAPTER 21
1. Exchanging money for weapons with the peasants (CAMP 215). The camouflage patrol who went into the woods to bring back branches were given license to wander away a little bit, and this was when the transaction would take place. It was Tanhum Grinberg who chronicled this story about peasants holding up fingers for how much money they wanted in exchange for a pistol. In a bewildering twist of fate, Grinberg survived the revolt and testified at Dusseldorf, but then was killed in an automobile accident in 1976. Glazar confirmed the speculating with the peasants while with the camouflage unit (TRAP 127–132).
2. Edek, the lock, and the grenades, Ibid. 109–110. Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 122.
CHAPTER 22
1. The need to burn the bodies, 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. 9.
2. The Katyn forest massacre, Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 120.
3. The Artist. He was described by all those who escaped from Camp 2 and wrote about their experience. His actual name was most likely Herbert Floss, brought in to help with the disposal of the bodies after Himmler’s visit (EYE 79).
CHAPTER 23
1. Confrontation of Stangl and Tchechia (INTO 203–204)
2. One thought-provoking part of this story is that Stangl did not remember Tchechia’s name. In fact, he could not remember any of the Jewish names except for a Viennese man named Blau, whom he spoiled. And Blau, in quid pro quo, became a Nazi loyalist and informer, Ibid. 207–209. It was Suchomel who identified Tchechia as the girl Stangl spoke about.
CHAPTER 24
1. Cleaning the pits, Rajchman, Chil. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir. New York: Pegasus, 2011, 91.
2. Over sixty thousand bodies burning, Ibid. 91–92. Mr. Rajchman put the number much higher, at nearly a quarter of a million bodies. A trial transcript stated that at least one of the pits contained no less than eighty thousand corpses (CAMP 301). This figure in no way contradicts Mr. Rajchman’s account; it verifies the magnitude of the exhumation work. At the second Treblinka trial Stangl told prosecutor Alfred Spiess that there were mass graves with one hundred thousand bodies in them.
3. The work of exhumation and the story of the women from Warsaw, 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. 10. “Time and time again children were snatched from their mother’s arms and tossed into the flames alive, while their tormentors laughed, urging the mothers to be brave and jump into the fire after their children and mocking the women for being cowards.”
4. Carpenter Jankiel Wiernik and Chil Rajchman are the two chief sources on information about Camp 2. Sonia Lewkowicz is another source. Unfortunately Zelo was not able to write about it.
CHAPTER 25
1. Camouflage unit (INTO 220–221)
2. Paulinka (ARAD 152, INTO 247)
CHAPTER 26
1. Revolt day, August 2, 1943. Interestingly Reitlinger had the date wrong in his book and mistakenly named September 2, 1943 as the day of the uprising. This is the only source I have found with that error. Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945. London: Sphere Books Limited, 1961, 152.
2. “Ha-yom, ha-yom!” (“The day, the day!”) Rajchman, Chil. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir. New York: Pegasus, 2011, 126.
3. Richard Glazar, “Not a cloud in the sky…” (TRAP 140).
4. David Brat tells Richard the verse about the shadow of death, Ibid. 139. The full verse is, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4, KJV).
5. Kurt “Kiewe” Kuttner was wounded but did not actually die that day.
CHAPTER 27
1. The uprising (ARAD 334–343, CAMP 220–223, INTO 236–240, TRAP 138–146). Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 130–144.
2. One of the main objectives of the revolt was to kill as many of the SS as possible. Unfortunately this goal was not accomplished. As mentioned above, even though Kiewe and Mentz were fired upon, they somehow survived with minor wounds. Kiewe lived for another twenty-one years and Mentz lived until 1978.
3. The fate of Paulinka (INTO 247)
CHAPTER 28
1. Eight hundred meters of a flower-lined street, Ibid. 239
2. Stangl’s pride in his creation. Alfred Spiess reported that there were no official maps of Treblinka, not even a sketch. The court had to create a map based on witness testimony and the statements of the accused. Then later, in 1970, when Stangl was extradited to West Germany, Spiess showed the map to Stangl to see what he thought of it, since Stangl was the man who designed the camp to his perfection. Spiess reported that Stangl studied it for almost fifteen minutes, then looked up with surprise and admiration and said, “Mr. Prosecutor, the sketch is absolutely correct!”
3. Galewski’s fate. Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 134.
4. Bronka Sukno’s escape is truly miraculous. Out of the twenty-five women at the camp, there were only four or five women who escaped from Treblinka that day, and only three who survived the war (the other two women were Sonia Grabinski and Sonia Lewkowicz). The fact that they survived the initial screening and selection process, the months of terror while living at the camp, the revolt, the rest of the war, then living long enough to testify against the Nazi guards in the ’60s is nearly unfathomable.
5. Another note about the women who escaped from Treblinka. In the book Into That Darkness, Gitta Sereny described a woman with the fictitious name of “Sabina,” who was the girlfriend of Kapo Kuba and was sent up to Camp 2 by Kuttner because of their forbidden relationship (INTO 205). It could be that this “Sabina” was Sonia Lewkowicz, who was forced to leave Camp 1 and work at Camp 2 on March 5, 1943. Perhaps because there was another Sonia (Grabinski), Sonia Lewkowicz took the nickname of Sabina while at the camp. Or another possibility is that Sereny purposefully protected her reputation with a pseudonym since Lewkowicz was still alive when Sereny published her book in 1974. Richard Glazar wrote a letter to Sereny describing how Kapo Kuba was a barracks elder and a known informer (INTO 240). A snippet of the Fedorenko trial transcripts with the Sonia Lewkowicz portion of testimony is available online at: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/sonialewkowicz.html. Sonia Lewkowicz was the sole revolt escapee of the women who worked at Camp 2. Ms. Lewkowicz died in 2006.
6. The end of the revolt (INTO 247)
CHAPTER 29
1. Karel and Richard’s escape (TRAP 146–150). “Look, this is a good sign. How do believers put it: the hand of the Lord is opened?” Ibid. 149.
2. These two young men were both twenty-one when they arrived at Treblinka in 1942 (INTO 180).
CHAPTER 30
1. Stangl and Globocnik, Ibid. 249. For more information on Globocnik, see chapter 2, note #3.
2. Shipping Treblinka survivors to Sobibor. Franciszek Zabecki, the rail-traffic controller, reported that it was October 20, 1943 when five railway cars left Treblinka for Sobibor with most of the residual Jewish workers. Immediately after the revolt Stangl gave the order that the remaining workers were not to be executed. Yet as soon as Stangl was reassigned, the Jews were killed either at Treblinka or Sobibor. At Sobibor, the Treblinka Jews arrived one week after the Sobibor uprising (which is another fascinating story), and they were tasked with dismantling the buildings. Himmler had ordered Globocnik to dissolve this Operation Reinhard death camp immediately after the Sobibor revolt (October 14, 1943) in an effort to mask it from the public. Sobibor trial transcripts report that in late November all of the remaining Jews (some from both Treblinka and Sobibor) were taken to Camp 3, forced to lie down side by side on the grilling racks, then shot.
3. Killing the remaining Jews at Treblinka (ARAD 429, CAMP 315–316). Arad and other sources stated that just two females remained at the end (based on the Treblinka trial), but Suchomel (whose memory seemed flawless) told Sereny that there were three women left (INTO 250). Arad draws his account from the trial testimonies of Willi Mentz and Albert Rum but I gave precedence to Suchomel.
4. Tchechia’s fate, Ibid. 195
POSTSCRIPT
1. The Dusseldorf trial. The Nuremberg trials and the Dusseldorf trial are helpful in a discussion of universal law and absolute truth. There had to be a type of law that represented civilized thought and superseded national law, whereby these defendants could be charged with crimes against humanity. At Nuremberg, a unique international war crimes court was created to deal with these crimes and render justice to the perpetrators of evil. The Nazis conducted business according to the laws of their country, and that was their defense. For the first time in history an international court formed to decree that there is a higher law—universal adherences to which all mankind are subject. Equality, decency, respect for other persons…all attributes of a fair and just society that constitute an authority that is absolute. National laws do not necessarily represent justice, but they do represent power. And Hitler wielded laws to execute and powerfully spread his evil will. For those who would propose that there is no absolute truth, then what should we have done with the Nazi war crimes defendants? Where do we even get this idea of what is just and what is unjust? Indeed, even the desire for retribution comes from something innate in us that betokens an absolute truth, and universal laws are the instruments by which we expect our courts to rule.
2. Abraham Kolski story (EYE 116). I thank the author of Eyewitness to Genocide, Michael S. Bryant, for his very detailed research explaining the death-camp workers’ testimonies at the Operation Reinhard trials.
3. Here are the September 3rd verdicts:
Kurt Franz (the Doll) |
Life imprisonment |
Otto Horn |
Acquitted |
Kurt Kuttner (Kiewe) |
Died before trial |
Erwin Lambert |
Four years |
Heinrich Matthes |
Life imprisonment |
Willi Mentz |
Life imprisonment |
August Miete |
Life imprisonment |
Gustav Munzberger |
Twelve years |
Albert Rum |
Three years |
Otto Stadie |
Six years |
Franz Stangl |
Life imprisonment (at a later trial) |
Franz Suchomel |
Seven years |
Although the verdicts at the Treblinka trial far outshined the Belzec trial (with its one conviction of four and a half years), the majority of SS men and Ukrainian guards who served at Treblinka were never brought to trial.
4. Kurt Franz, the best years of my life (CAMP 277). Interestingly, during the trial it seemed that Kurt Franz (the Doll) was more concerned about some of the particular crimes attributed to him rather than his all-embracing complicity with the magnitude of incriminating evidence from Treblinka. It would be a fascinating study for psychiatrists to see why one death of an infant, or of the camp doctor, was an assault on Franz’s conscience more than the murder in concert of hundreds of thousands. It could be that these individual events somehow made the crime real to him; that he would be guilty of an offense that demanded punishment. In effect, one or two deaths—attested to by survivors—would put blood on his innocent hands (his perspective). For the first time in his life the light of truth attempted to pierce the impenetrable black abyss of his heart, whereby Franz could have addressed his moral corruption. But it did not happen. He supposed it would have commenced an unmasking too unbearable for him to endure. Before the trial, Franz spoke of the atrocities as if he was describing fiction—something impossible for him to have had any responsibility. At the trial, when questioned on matters whereby the eyewitness evidence unquestionably connected him to murder, it was at this point if he had admitted something then he would have had to truly feel for the victims. However, all through the trial the victims remained numbers, not names, and simply a consequence of Nazi war crimes, not his own. His alarming separation of actions with corresponding feelings remained intact. His perversion was complete.
5. When trying to decide on the number of deaths at Treblinka, survivor Samuel Rajzman told Alexander Donat that he was present when the Nazis celebrated their one-millionth victim, and it was long before operations were over (CAMP 14). Richard Glazar believed that Treblinka had executed one million people by the end of March 1943, four full months before the revolt (INTO 213–214). This is why I think Franciszek Zabecki might be the closest to the truth, with 1.2 million, Ibid. 250.
6. Another note on the numbers, in Richard Glazar’s letter to Steiner (Yad Vashem Archives) he wrote that one day alone they processed eighteen thousand prisoners through the tube. If the Nazis murdered an average of one-third of that number for only half of the days of just one year (the camp was “active” for sixteen months), it would put the number around 1.1 million, the same number of people who perished at Auschwitz. In Yitzhak Arad’s book The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, he reported that in just one five-week period of July 23, 1942 to August 28, 1942, 312,500 were killed at Treblinka (ARAD 124). Cesarani repeated this number in his tome and stated that two hundred thousand were specifically from Warsaw. Cesarani, David. The Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–1949. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016, 507.
7. Sixty-seven survivors. According to Donat there were actually eighty-six survivors (and the Muzeum Treblinka in Poland reiterated Donat’s number). Some online sources even report ninety-seven survivors. The reason my number is lower is because I only include those who survived the war due to the revolt. Donat and others include those who had escaped previously (in the months leading up to the revolt, such as Abraham Bomba), thus the higher number.
8. Absences of witnesses at Belzec (EYE 123)
9. Albert Speer was one of Hitler’s closest confidantes. His official title was Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production.
10. David Brat saying that Richard must survive (INTO 181)
11. Stangl’s guilt and death, Ibid. 364–5
12. Kurt Franz. The attorney for Franz at Dusseldorf did not allow him to testify, but in the mid-nineties Franz gave a rare post-prison interview. He maintained that when he arrived at Belzec (his first death-camp assignment), he did not know what was going to happen, and did not know why they were digging pits. He claimed that he was outraged at the gassings and pleaded for a new assignment. He stated that he was still really mad at Suchomel for incriminating him at the trial. At the end of the interview he was asked repeatedly why the Jews were murdered and if they had committed any crime deserving punishment. He said that he did not believe that they had, then declared that he personally did not have any trouble with Jews, and that two of his friends were Jews. The gist of the interview is that Franz continued to deflect his role and responsibility, and never owned up to the fact that he had materially participated in the Holocaust. It was as if the whole mess was an inconvenience to his life alone. From Franz’s own words: “If I knew then, what was in store for me, when I transferred from the armed forces to the SS, I would have never joined the SS. Just because I can’t bear what I have experienced, this Treblinka and this Belzec.”
13. Karl Ludwig (ARAD 245, INTO 188). Joe Siedlecki: “There was an SS man, Karl Ludwig. He was a good man. If I would meet him today I would give him everything he might need.” Ada Lichtman (on Ludwig): “More than once he took people from the lines. In this way he saved two doctors.” Also, Jankiel Wiernik reported that an SS man at Treblinka, Erwin Herman Lambert, frequently brought him food from the German kitchen.
14. Rapaport and his pregnant wife (EYE 104–105)
15. Abraham Bomba. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has videos of Bomba describing his experiences at Treblinka. He was transported to Treblinka on September 25, 1942. An amazingly heroic feat, Bomba escaped with two other men months before the revolt (ARAD 308).
16. Hershl Sperling’s death, Smith, Mark S. Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010, 11–19. Sperling departed his home to take his life on Tuesday, September 26, 1989, exactly forty-seven years after he arrived at Treblinka. He had survived seven Nazi concentration camps.
17. Richard Glazar’s death. Glazar’s testimony provided incontrovertible proof of Holocaust death camps, yet Richard somehow couldn’t reconcile his own existence. He committed suicide on December 20, 1997. At the conclusion of his book, the date is May 8, 1945, which is Victory Europe Day and Glazar wrote about the war being over: “As soon as the sun sets everyone rips the blackout shades out of the windows. Their own light will stream out into this new sky. From beyond the Rhine one of the searchlights is sweeping back and forth across the sky from one end to the other, and I am fascinated. I know what the boy beyond the horizon is signaling to the whole world: ‘I will not be killed—I will not be slaughtered—I will live—love—live.’” Glazar took his own life five years after his book Trap with a Green Fence was published.
18. The full verse of what David Brat shared with Glazar: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4, KJV).