Death Camp Treblinka: Survivor Stories Page #2

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Soviet Ukrainian SS auxiliaries.

A few prisoners were made to tidy up

the aftermath of a gassing,

then they, too, were killed

at the end of each day.

Kalman's transport drew up to

the ramp at Treblinka on

September the fourth.

Immense suffering had begun

on the slow train journey itself.

Like beasts.

First of all they put in a wagon

approximately 100 person.

The journey was terrible. There was

no place to sit. You must stand.

You couldn't breathe.

There is only a small window.

Now water. No food. No nothing.

So therefore I am telling you

a part of the people were dead.

In the melee with 2,000

other victims,

19-year-old Kalman held tight

to his mother, Tima.

Once a train arrived in the camp

Treblinka, then the SS men and

the Ukrainian guards

went at them with a fury,

herded them out of the trucks,

beat them, shot people, created

a mood of absolute panic and terror.

You could hear shouting.

"Raus." "Out."

And we all went out from the wagons,

and they sent us to a place

where was a door.

An iron door.

I came to the door with my mother,

together.

But they say us,

"Woman, left. Man, right."

I didn't want to let her go.

So I don't know what, I get something

in my head.

From a German. And I fall down.

And when I stand up, I saw her.

She's going in the barrack.

With other women and children.

In under two hours, victims had

crossed unseen into the camp

of the dead.

Driven naked up this corridor

to a building containing

three gas chambers,

fed by a Russian tank engine.

Kalman soon learned the German name

for this path.

Himmelstrasse. The way to heaven.

Samuel is making his own pilgrimage

back to Treblinka.

The odds of survival beyond

this point were virtually nil.

But a new commandant, Franz Stangl,

saw the daily killing of prisoner

helpers as inefficient.

Operation Reinhard camps began

to form pools of Arbeitsjuden,

or Work Jews.

Forced on pain of death to be

slave labourers.

Selection still required

a miracle of good fortune.

Samuel retraces these fateful last

steps with his daughter, Orit.

Camp 1 was where the living

were processed on arrival.

Kalman and Samuel were forced

to sort victims' belongings

in the lower camp.

Here they would witness

daily horrors.

We went to the barracks to take out

the clothes from the women.

And we found small children.

Newborn children.

We must take two, four children

to put in a blanket

and four persons took the blanket,

and we are going to the laundrette.

Anyone who risked slowing progress

toward the Himmelstrasse

was taken out of line

and led to the so-called

"field hospital", or Lazaret.

Handicaps.

Children.

Sick persons.

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