Trains to Treblinka Read online

  The first instructions were shouted by guards peering into their opened door, “Raus! Get out! Everyone out! Aber schnell! Keep your hand luggage. Leave trunks and large bags in place. You will fetch them later. Quickly, you must move quickly!”

  Passengers poured out of the car. Rudi and Gisela shuffled toward the doorway until it was their time to step down. Rudi glanced back and saw Hans Freund holding his son and helping his wife shuffle to the door.

  “Mommy, I’m cold,” Hans’s son cried out.

  “I hope he won’t catch a cold,” said Hans to his wife as they prepared to leave the railcar.

  The young Masarek couple stepped down out of the train. They each held a small bag of personal belongings. The platform was long and wide. There are perhaps twenty-five cars unloading right now, Rudi speculated.

  Several of the guards continued to yell the same instructions to those still departing the railcars. Then one of the guards uttered words that iced Rudi where he stood.

  “Men to the left, women to the right!” the guard shouted.

  “Rudi!” Gisela screamed as she flung herself at him.

  Rudi wrapped his strong arms around his fragile bride. “I know Gisela, I know! But I don’t know what to do.”

  “Men to the left, women to the right! Children are to stay with their mothers!”

  The scream from the guard was louder now and sounded as if he was walking toward them.

  “We have to part for now! I love you, Gisela, and I promise to come find you as soon as I am able. Think of Austria. Think of your grandfather’s farm.” Rudi quickly kissed her ear, neck, and cheek as the guard grabbed tearful Gisela away from him.

  “I love you, Rudi!” Gisela shrieked.

  “I love you, Gisela!”

  Nearby, Hans said goodbye to his wife and curly-haired boy. He stroked his soft cheeks and kissed the lad and mother all over, just before they were torn apart by a Jewish worker.

  “Goodbye for now,” Hans said. “I will be with you soon.”

  Rudi surmised the situation, wondering if there was a possibility of escape. There were watchful eyes everywhere, and there were Jewish helpers with blue bands on their arms who seemed complicit with what the Nazi guards were shouting. Why do they help our enemy? Why do they separate families like this?

  Children were crying, the elderly were being carried off to what looked like a hospital area, and men and women tried to follow the directions of their captors while pleading for something to drink. Rudi watched Gisela as she moved with a mass of women away from the platform and toward a large wooden barracks. There were thousands of men left standing on the platform. Gisela glanced back at Rudi, who could clearly see the fear she carried. Then she was lost from view.

  Hans also stood nearby, watching his family depart with the others. His son waved to him and Hans waved back. Then they were gone.

  Suddenly a guard shouted, “Undress! Undress! Take off your shoes and tie them together! Place your clothes on this pile over here. Wait in line over there. Hurry, hurry! You must disrobe and prepare for delousing! Take along your money, documents, jewelry, and watches. Hurry, don’t delay.”

  Rudi and Hans undressed along with the other men and stood in line. There were SS sergeants scanning the crowd and occasionally picking out men and sending them away from the line.

  When one of them noticed blond-haired and blue-eyed Rudi, and tall Hans, each with a well-built and healthy exterior, the guard shouted to them, “You two, you don’t belong in this line. Walk over there and get dressed again. I will deal with you in a moment.”

  Rudi and Hans did not know if this was a good thing to happen or not, but it gave them the sense that something fishy was going on. They walked over to the sizable pile where they had undressed and tried to find their own clothes. There were twenty to thirty chosen men who were told to redress themselves. The rest of the men in the large group were forced to pick up armfuls of clothing from the mountain of clothing items deposited from the passengers, then ran naked with them down to the wooden barracks where the women were sent.

  Once dressed, Rudi tapped the shoulder of one of the Jewish workers holding a whip.

  “Excuse me, sir, but where will the women and children end up after they are processed?”

  “They’re going to the showers for delousing,” replied the surprised worker. “Don’t worry about them. They will be all right. In fact, they are going to have it better than you.”

  What is that supposed to mean? Rudi wondered. The Jewish man’s face was not convincing. Perhaps it was because he did not look Rudi in the eye when he made his statements.

  “Here’s a warning: don’t ever touch a kapo again if you know what’s good for you. You’re from the west and I will give you a pass this once. We kapos have a job to do and we don’t mind doing it well, so stay clear of us from now on unless you want a beating.”

  Rudi soon found out there were a handful of Jewish men serving as kapos—also known as collaborators—who essentially worked for the Nazis and would beat their fellow Jews as viciously as one of the German guards. Rudi had heard about that sort of abuse taking place in the Warsaw ghetto but had never experienced it in Theresienstadt.

  The SS sergeant who picked Rudi and Hans out of the line came back to the men and gave them instructions.

  “All right,” he said with a sort of distasteful grin. “You here who have been chosen today…my name is Sergeant Miete, and you will do as I say without question. First off, nobody walks here at Treblinka. Whenever you move about, unless you are in your bunk or at a worktable, you will move at a run. Second, if for any reason you do not immediately obey what we say you will end up in the Lazarette; your kapos will explain what that means to you. Now, help your fellow Treblinka workers unload all the trunks and suitcases off the train. If you find dead bodies in the railcars, load them onto the lorries. Then you will bring every item on this platform down to the wooden warehouse to be sorted through. You will not stop until this entire area is clean, understand? And don’t eat the food; it is to be sorted and stored like everything else. In fact, don’t steal anything or you will be taken to the Lazarette. Move out!”

  The group of men ran as fast as they could to the train and jumped into the railcars to empty the luggage. Then they grabbed armfuls of clothing and hauled them down into a large courtyard near the wooden barracks where the women and children had been taken. Rudi and Hans hoped to see their wives in the barracks, but when the door opened and they peeked inside it looked empty, apart from some Jewish workers sweeping and sorting. Where had everyone been taken?

  In the middle of the courtyard there were such large piles of separated goods from the passengers that it was staggering. There was one pile nearly fifteen feet high with thousands of pairs of shoes in it. There was another mound, even wider and taller, where people had hurled their clothes and belongings to the top. This small mountain took up a huge swath of the courtyard. Surely the clothes must have come from several trainloads of passengers, thought Rudi, and could not have formed only from the group who unloaded today. Seeing the mound took his breath away, realizing the number of people it represented.

  Next to the mountain of clothing were bundles of different apparel, sorted and strung together in cubes, then crudely stacked into a pyramid shape. Men’s coats in one bundle, women’s dresses in another. What kind of factory is this? Rudi wondered.

  The new workers were next ordered into the large wooden structure where their families had disrobed. They had to bring the discarded clothing—which filled the room—back outside into the courtyard. There were still a few Jewish workers inside cleaning the area, and each of them had a red armband on their sleeve.

  The two men from Prague found out that the red armbands designated those Jews who worked in the wooden sorting barracks. They assisted with the new arrivals to help them undress and store their clothing properly. The Jewish workers with blue bands only helped at the loading platform.

  Hans approach
ed one of the workers and asked, “Please, sir, my wife and small boy were taken to this building a few hours ago. Can you tell me where they are now?”

  The worker looked at Hans, then glanced around the work site to ensure they were not attracting the attention of any of the guards or kapos. The man said to Hans, “Don’t you see what’s happening here? These are all the clothes of the passengers. You shouldn’t ask this question; it is the secret of Treblinka,” he whispered. The man was very hesitant and deliberate with his words.

  Rudi stood near to Hans and asked the next question, saying, “But the kapo told me they would have it better than us. What did he mean by that?”

  “In a way, yes, but he was lying, as the kapos like to do. Just be thankful you were picked out and helping us today. And never trust a kapo!”

  The men realized they had attracted the attention of one of the guards, who was headed their way, so they quickly disbanded and hurried to grab armfuls of clothing in order to run with them outside, but they were too late.

  “Hey, you there,” called a guard with an SS field cap pulled tightly down over his entire forehead. “What is that you were talking about and not working? Tell me!”

  Hans matter-of-factly confessed, “I asked him where my wife and son are. Will you tell me?”

  It was the way he said it, Hans and Rudi knew instantly, that the guard took it as a sign of boldness and disrespect. He lifted his whip and let it fling across the tender spot between Hans’s neck and shoulder. Then, as suddenly as he was angered, his entire expression changed and he smiled.

  “Now, now, don’t worry about those tender little lambs you brought with you. They are fine. Your wife is working in the laundry in Camp 2. Your son is playing with the other tots who arrived. Go back to work. Work will make you happy.”

  The guard made an abrupt about-face then walked away, mumbling to himself, “Work will make you happy, work will make everyone happy.”

  Their thoughts now scattered, Hans and Rudi attempted to work without anyone noticing how deeply disturbed they were by what had happened to them so far at Treblinka. They struggled to reason out what they had been told and what they were forced to do, but there was so much they did not understand.

  They knew that at least two or three thousand people must have departed the train with them that day, yet they could not deduce where they had disappeared. In the large wooden sorting room where the women and children had gone, there were some barbers with red armbands who were taking suitcases of hair out into the courtyard. Hans thought of his son’s curly hair and soft cheeks and almost wept, but they had to keep moving.

  They had been working tirelessly when finally one of the guards mentioned food. The two men waited in a long line with dozens of other Jewish workers. Holding a dirty bowl handed to them by another laborer, they were given some soup and bread, then were again forced to sort clothing and make more bundles.

  All around the courtyard, men in street clothes were running this way and that with large bundles of clothing on their backs. Their eternal first day seemed like a nightmare.

  At long last the foreman ceased the work and they were taken to a sleeping barracks. The new workers had to quickly find a place to sleep in because the doors were being locked and soon it would be lights-out. It was here they began to meet other men from Prague. One of the men asked Rudi, “Hey, you there, tall Bohemian, you look more Nordic than Jewish. What are you doing here?”

  Rudi fumbled with his words, something about Theresienstadt and being only a partial Jew. He and Hans soon learned that three of the other men were from Prague and they stuck together: Richard Glazar, Karel Unger, and Robert Altschul. They invited Rudi and Hans to bunk near to them and a friendship began to form.

  These three other Czechs were also transported from Theresienstadt, also young and strong and tall, also numbed by the events transpiring around them. Richard and Karel were only twenty-one years old; Robert was twenty-seven and a medical student, selected to work in the camp pharmacy with the doctor.

  After introductions, Hans explained that he had come with his wife and son and could not get a direct answer out of anyone about where they had been taken. Rudi, feeling forlorn and fatigued, stayed silent.

  Robert, with a deep and compassionate voice, solemnly explained, “Men, if you had family members who went through the processing building and had their hair cut without a guard calling them out for work like you were…I’m sorry, but they are lost.”

  “What do you mean lost?” Hans asked indignantly. “I am tired of all these expressions people use. Lost? Please tell me directly, do they shoot them all?” There was panic in Hans’s words and his eyes.

  “No, they do not shoot them. None of us have been there. We do not know exactly what happens on the other side of the sandy embankment.”

  Richard and Karel glanced at each other with knowing looks. On the day Karel arrived, his parents and his younger brother were forced into the tube. Karel was still trying to reconcile the event to make sense out of it. Richard had come alone, but he doubted the rest of his family was still alive, wherever they were.

  Robert placed his hand on Hans’s shoulder. “Others have told us that there are large gassing chambers at the end of the walkway that we call the tube. So when the people from the trains think they are receiving showers, they are actually gassed.”

  This was too much for Hans to comprehend. It had confirmed all of his suspicions about the secret of Treblinka. He brought a fist up to his face and bit his knuckles. He pictured his young son with his soft cheeks, and his precious wife whom he promised to protect.

  Rudi silently sat down on the bunk and pictured Gisela in his mind. He was awash with pain as he thought about the fact that his young wife was expecting their first child. He surmised she had died perhaps just moments after their sad goodbye. Rudi bent over, holding his stomach and swaying a little bit. His head was down so the others could not see his face. The lights turned out, and the male barracks building was locked for the night. Their first day at Treblinka had come to an end.

  Chapter 5

  Franz Stangl sat alone in his quarters. He drank from a large glass of brandy. It was his daily medicine, the only way he survived his assignment at Treblinka. He missed his wife terribly, and his children. He missed his beloved Austria. If only I could receive a transfer! Stangl often thought.

  His uniform was pressed and laid on the table, ready for tomorrow. His boots were already shined. The brandy helped him not to dwell too deeply on any of the events of the day. He was happy for his workers; not only did they receive many delicious packages of food out of the Prague train, there were thousands of suitcases to sort through over the next few days and weeks. He was glad to be able to keep them employed and fully occupied; these duties meant life to his workers.

  He also knew that idle hands were the cause of many troubles, so his goal as the kommandant was to make sure everyone kept working. As long as there were mountains of clothing to bundle in the sorting yard, then there would be Jewish workers running here and there all day, every day. He would walk around and inspect them. He would pretend that he cared about his assignment…that he was happy to be at Treblinka. He had made many changes for the better at the camp because that was who he was, a stickler for neatness and organization. But the camp had not always been so organized.

  Stangl recalled on his first visit to Treblinka, when approaching the perimeter of the camp, he was astounded at all the dead bodies along the side of the road. He was also startled by the stench. The smell of decomposing bodies made him want to vomit. For some unknown reason, the corpses were left to rot in the hot sun, all along the tracks for the last kilometer before the gate to Treblinka.

  Inside Treblinka’s main gate Stangl was shocked to discover hundreds of dead bodies littered all across the unloading platform. It was Dante’s Inferno! When Stangl walked away from his car toward the camp proper, international currency of various denominations flowed around his feet. At on
e side of the yard was a large mound with over a thousand rotting corpses. It was Dante come to life!

  Stangl did not stay long at Treblinka on his first visit; his senses could not stand it. Everything at the camp was disorganized; it went against his highly structured concept of how to do police work and how concentration camps should be run. The man in charge obviously had no discipline. Stangl traveled to headquarters to see Odilo Globocnik at once. He remembered their conversation in vivid detail.

  “I cannot do what you have assigned me to do,” Stangl declared.

  “Why not?” growled Globocnik.

  “It is an impossible task. You would need a large work crew there for a month to make an impact. It is the end of the world there!”

  “It is supposed to be an end of the world for them!” Globocnik rebuked. He was in charge of all the top-secret camps in Poland, with his mission coming straight from Heinrich Himmler. He needed followers to acquiesce, not cause problems. Mission accomplishment was all he desired, not sentimentality.

  Beneath Globocnik’s countenance was a bedrock of antagonism brittle enough to bust the drill bits of reasonable appeal, but Stangl tried again anyway. “I would like to transfer back to Austria. You don’t understand…the mess of things there…at Treblinka.” Stangl’s tone held slightly less resolve. It was beginning to sink in that he was not being given a choice. Globocnik would not permit him to leave Poland. Stangl would be forced to work for Globocnik until the war was over; he simply knew too much.

  Globocnik shook his doughy face and gave Stangl a cynical smile. “Get a room for yourself for the night and we will discuss it all in the morning. You will then travel back to Treblinka tomorrow to see what can be done. What Treblinka needs is a good organizer. You can do that for me. We will talk about it tomorrow. Dismissed.”