Death Camp Treblinka: Survivor Stories Page #3

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Dead persons.

"Lazaret!"

I was in a big hall.

Deep. And there's fire.

Children who are living still...

..and they shoot them.

And put on the fire.

And there were children

who were still living.

The SS held the lives

of Work Jews cheaply too.

Samuel and Kalman

determined to stay alive

in the desperate and

unlikely hope of escape.

But many could not endure.

The workforce was culled regularly.

The life expectancy of

the Work Jews, the Arbeitsjuden,

was a few weeks,

a few months at the most.

A lot of them committed suicide.

It was very common for

those who had been taken

from one of the groups of Jews

doomed to the gas chambers

and put into the workforce.

Kurt Franz,

Treblinka's deputy commander,

was the most feared

of a vicious SS contingent.

Photography inside Treblinka

was strictly forbidden,

but Franz took these rare images

of the SS living area

for his private album.

He labelled it "Schoene Zeiten" -

"Good Times".

Franz made Work Jews

memorise and sing

Treblinka's camp song at roll call.

He wrote the lyrics

to Fester Schritt.

They beat us all over the day.

You can't go, you must run.

And if you didn't do something

like he wants...

..he could shoot you.

Nazi death camps

were tasked with more

than the physical

extermination of Jews.

They were designed to plunder

every economic asset

for the enrichment of the SS state

and the German war machine.

Precise instructions were given

to death camp Kommandants

on how to handle the loot.

'Guidelines for the distribution

of the belongings of the Jews...'

As many as 800

Work Jews were needed

to sort the vast

pyramids of belongings

stripped from incoming deportees.

They packed into their bundles,

into their suitcases,

their most valuable and

treasured possessions.

Orthodox Jews took with them

the candlesticks for holding

the Sabbath candles.

Wealthier Jews, of course,

took with them

any foreign currency they had,

or gold, or diamonds,

in the hope that they could use

that money to make their lives,

wherever they were going to be

resettled, a little bit better.

Women victims of Treblinka were

sent to the gas chambers

after the men so that their hair

could be harvested too.

One day, Samuel was ordered

to work as a barber.

He encountered a naked Warsaw girl

fully aware of her fate.

Samuel and Kalman felt fortunate

only to have been selected

for work in the lower camp,

and not in the Camp of the Dead.

Just metres away, the Totenlager

was sealed off

behind high, camouflaged fences.

There were no crematoria.

The dead were simply

thrown into five giant pits.

Kalman and Samuel could hear and

imagine what they could not see.

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