Last Jew of Treblinka by Chil Rajchman

Author:Chil Rajchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Chapter Ten

The Jews of Ostrowiec are driven into the

gas chambers at night.

They resist.

The astonishment of Chief Mathias.

A new form of entertainment.

People strive to get into the gas chambers.

UNTIL 15 DECEMBER [1942] THE TRANSPORTS arrived regularly, approximately ten thousand people a day. If a transport arrived after 6:00 in the evening, its passengers were not gassed that day. The transport was kept at Treblinka station and only on the next day was it brought into the camp.

As it happened, on 10 December a transport of Jews from Ostrowiec was waiting at the station. The camp administration received the announcement that the next morning a new transport would be brought to Treblinka. The Commandant gave the order that the Jews of Ostrowiec should be brought in at night. The order was carried out. By then we were locked in our barracks and could see nothing. We only heard the usual screams. But when we went out to work the next morning, we saw the traces of the events of the previous night. The ramp men opened the rear doors and began to pull out the corpses. The carriers carried them to the pits. But this time the carriers and cleaning crew of the so-called Schlauch commando had an additional task.

The whole corridor of the structure with the three smaller gas chambers was filled with dead bodies. The floor was covered with dried blood, which reached to the ankles. We learned from the Ukrainians what had happened there. A group of about ten men who were being driven into the chambers refused to go. They resisted and, naked as they were, defended themselves with their fists and did not allow themselves to be shoved into the chambers. Thereupon the SS men opened fire on them with automatic weapons, killing them on the spot.

The ramp men carried out the corpses, the cleaning crew washed down the corridor, the painters as always whitewashed the walls that had been covered with the blood and brains of the dead, and the building once again stood ready to receive new victims.

Afterwards the Section Leader, Mathias, came over to us, the “dentists,” and called out to our group leader, Dr. Zimmermann—Did you know, Doctor, that those chaps tried to swindle us?

Mathias was truly astonished and surprised. He could not grasp why the Jews did not willingly want to let themselves be murdered. He found this an abnormal development.

That day was extraordinarily difficult. Soon after the first transport a second one arrived, and, as it happened, in that transport there were many gold and false teeth to extract.

After a certain number of corpses had been dealt with, the teeth were collected in two bowls, and two dentists would take them to the well and wash them before bringing them into our shed to be worked on. In our shed there was always a supply of teeth stored in chests, and if we had not cleaned them of blood and of the bits of flesh that stuck to them, they would begin to stink.

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