Shoah Page #4

he began chanting a song

I didn't know:

My God, my God,

why hast Thou forsaken us?

RICHARD GLAZAR -

BASEL (SWITZERLAND)

We have been thrust

into the fire before,

but we have never denied

Thy Holy Law.

He sang in Yiddish,

while, behind him,

blazed the pyres

on which they had begun

then, in November 1942,

to burn the bodies in Treblinka.

That was the first time it happened.

We knew that night

that the dead would no longer be buried,

they'd be burned.

TREBLINKA:

When things were ready,

they poured on fuel

and touched off the fire.

They waited for a high wind.

The pyres usually burned

for 7 or 8 days.

[ Srebnik, In German]

There was a concrete platform some distance away,

and the bones that hadn't burned,

the big bones of the feet, for example,

we took...

There was a chest with two handles.

We carried the bones there,

where others had to crush them.

It was very fine,

that powdered bone.

Then it was put into sacks,

and when there were enough sacks,

we went to a bridge on the Narew river

and dumped the powder.

The current carried it off.

It drifted downstream.

[ Srebnik Singing In Polish: Little White House]

[ Lanzmann, In English]

You never returned to Poland since?

[ Woman, In English]

No.

I wanted many times.

But, what will I see?

How can I face it?

My grandparents are buried in Lodz.

And, at one point, I heard

from somebody that visited Poland

that they want to level off the cemetery,

do away with the cemetery.

Now how can I return to that, to visit?

[ Lanzmann ]

When did they die, your grandparents?

- My grandparents?

- Mm-hmm.

My grandparents died in the ghetto, quickly.

They were elderly,

and within a couple years...

Within a year, my grandfather died.

- And my grandmother the next year.

- In the ghetto?

In the ghetto, yes.

PAULA BIREN - CINCINNATI U.S.A.

survivor of Auschwitz

THE JEWISH CEMETERY

IN LODZ TODAY:

[Crows Cawing ]

[Church Bells Ringing ]

AUSCHWITZ:
THE TOWN

[ Lanzmann, In French]

Mrs. Pietryra, you live in Auschwitz?

- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]

- [ Pietryra Replies In Polish]

[ Interpreter #1, In French]

Yes, I was born here.

[ Lanzmann ]

And you've never left Auschwitz?

- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]

- [ Pietryra Replies ]

No, never.

[ Lanzmann ]

Were there Jews in Auschwitz before the war?

[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]

[ Pietryra Replies ]

They made up 80% of the population.

[Speaking Polish]

They even had a synagogue here.

- [ Lanzmann ] Just one?

- [ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]

- Just one, I think.

- [ Lanzmann ] Does it still exist?

[ Interpreter #1 Speaking Polish]

No, it was wrecked.

There's something else there now.

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