![]() Pujava and Franciszek Ząbecki vividly demonstrated that the deportations did not go smoothly. For the train crews, usually Poles, it was also no secret whom they were transporting and for what purpose.Ī train driver, Henryk Gawkowski, recalled in an interview with Claude Lanzmann that one could hear the screams of people, which made a depressing impression hence, the Germans gave the train drivers vodka as a bonus. Goldfarb, who arrived on a train from Menjice to Treblinka on 18 August 1942, testified that one boy managed to get water, but was shot during the second ride. Sometimes they tried to send children for water: they could squeeze through a small window in the wagons. Because of the lack of water, Czesia was in such a state of frenzy that she bit through her blood vessel and drank her own blood". One dead child had to be thrown out of the wagon after special permission from the Germans. ![]() "They never got any water for three days. For example, Genia Marciniakuvna recounted the story of a Jewess, Czesia, from Warsaw: Not many survived the way to Treblinka, and the will of those arriving was often crushed. The soldiers escorting the trains could shoot at the wagons for no reason, let alone shoot anyone who tried to stick their necks out or squeeze through a tiny window with barbed wire. Heat, cramming, impossibility to even sit down, stale air, thirst - these were typical descriptions of what happened. Being transported in overcrowded goods wagons was a real ordeal. For example, historian Martin Dean says that because of such rumours, as early as September 1942, when the ghetto was liquidated in Stoczek Węgrów, many of the ghetto's inhabitants hid and escaped death. Similarly, rumours about this place of extermination were spreading in other ghettos, especially in those that were close by. ![]() It began with a statement that in Treblinka, 300,000 Jews had been murdered in six months. Thus, in January 1943, the underground Jewish Fighting Organisation issued a proclamation that called for an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. In its preparations, reference was also made to what was going on at that extermination centre. Regular deportations to Treblinka activated the underground of the Warsaw Ghetto and led to the emergence of those structures which later, in April 1943, initiated an uprising. Rumours later circulated in Warsaw that Jews were made into soap and fertiliser. Soon he bumped into two Jews in the market square who had escaped from Treblinka they confirmed his worst fears. Watching the trains carrying the deportees, Zalman noticed that they came back empty, with no food deliveries made. ![]() To check these rumours, a teenage boy, Zalman Friedrich, on the orders of the Bund, followed one of the trains in August: he got to Sokołów Podlaski, where he learned from the railway workers that the track there bifurcated and one branch line led to Treblinka. Rumours of what was going on in Treblinka soon enough reached Warsaw. He was well aware of what "evacuation to the east" meant, and therefore chose to end his life rather than assist the Nazis in the extermination of his people. For example, as early as 23 July 1942, the day the first train from the Warsaw Ghetto arrived, Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council (Judenrat), committed suicide. Whether people were aware of their fate is a complex question. While Polish and Soviet Jews were transported in goods wagons, deportees from Western Europe were transported in comfortable trains with tickets in their hands. The deportations usually began with round-ups and violence, but at the same time, people were told that they were going to live in labour settlements in Ukraine. By skillfully combining terror and false hope, the Nazis organised methodical deportations, while accusing the Jews of being the victims of their own slaughter. Realising that information would leak out anyway, they put up signs of one sort or another that would allow the doomed to maintain their illusions. The SS did everything to ensure that the whole process of extermination was carried out in secrecy. ![]() From Ghetto to Gas Chamber: Terror and False Hope ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |