EXTRACTS FROM THE HOLOCAUST

By MARTIN GILBERT

        The heat and stench inside were fearful. Before our eyes our children fell, our parents and our friends. They might possibly have been saved if only we had a few drops of water. There were some who drank their own urine and that of friends. A little water was afterwards poured into the trucks through its holes when the death train was halted at different stations. Meantime the heat in the truck became fearful, it was literally an inferno.

        The journey of the living, together with the dead lasted for four days and then the traini halted at Tromat so that the corpses could be removed. On the way to Kalaresh the train stopped at Mirteshet, near a pool of filthy water. The reckless victims or madmen, whatever we ought to call them, broke the doors of the trucks and made for the pool. They paid no heed to the warnings of the trainmaster that they would be killed and refused to move away from the turbid water. Dozens of them were shot by the guards as they stood in the pool and drank the filthy water.

        I was taken to a group of young men, about 25 or 30. We were first given food and then we were given shovels and other tools and were taken about 2-3 miles out of town beyond the hills.

        We had been taken up there and they told us to start digging ditches. We believed that this was for the tanks, that perhaps the Russians were coming back and the size of the ditches had us almost convinced of that.

        We finished one of the trenches at about late evening, I dont know what time. The size of the trench was about 20 metres long and 5 metres wide and about 2.5 metres deep. That night we were sent to our place of sleep. Before going to sleep they gave us some food.

        Next day we started to dig another trench until late afternoon when we saw two cars coming to the place. Stepping out were very high ranking SS officers, about 6-7 of them. They were talking to our commanders and to our guards. We could not hear what they were saying but they pointed to our trenches.

        Shortly after this we saw the people coming up also with shovels and different tools in their hands and they had been ordered to lay down their tools. These people were ordered to take off all their clothes, they were put in order and then they were all naked. They were sent to these ditches and SS men, some of them drunk, some of them not and some of them taking photos, it seems, these people numbering 300 to 400. I dont know the exact number, were all executed and most of them only got hurt and buried alive. Quicklime was brought there too, 4-5 trucks of it.

        People were taken out of their flats, some carrying a few of their possessions, some without any, out of all the courtyards, out of all the flats, they were driven out with cruel beatings. I dont know whether  out of wisdom or instinct or weakness, I found myself in a stairway, in a dark recess and I stood there. Out of a small window I saw what happened in that narrow street.

        Until 1am, this operation was still in progress. During those hours at about midnight, I saw across the street, a woman dragged by the hair by two soldiers, a woman holding something in her arms. One derected a beam of light in her face, the other threw her onto the pavement.

        All  around and beneath her she could hear strange sounds, groaning, choking, sobbing, many of the people were not yet dead. The whole mass of bodies kept moving slightly as they settled down and were pressed tighter by the movements of the ones who were still living.

        Some soldiers came out on to the ledge and flashed their torches down on the bodies, firing bullets from their revolvers into anything which appeared to be alive. But someone not far from Dina went on groaning as before. Then she heard people walking near her, actually on the bodies. They were Germans who had climbed down and were taking things from the dead and firing at any signs of life.

        Among them was the policemen who had examined her papers and taken her bag. One SS man caught his foot against her and was suspicious. He struck her with his fist, she stayed limp and gave no signs of life. He kicked her in the breast with his boot and trod on her right hand so that the bone crushed but he didnt use his gun and moved on.

        A few minutes later she heard a voice from above telling someone to start shovelling. There was a clatter of spades and then heavy thuds as the earth and sand landed on the bodies, coming closer and closer until it started to fall on her.

        Her whole body was buried under the sand but she did not move until it began to cover her mouth. She was laying face up and in a panic, started to struggle, she would rather be shot than buried. With her left hand, the good one, she started scrapping the sand off her. She started to feel easier. Finally she got out from under the earth.

        The Ukranian police up above were apparently tired after a hard days work, too lazy to shovel the earth in properly and once they had scattered a little in they dropped their shovels and went away. It was dark and there was a heavy smell of flesh from the mass of fresh corpses. She could just make out the nearest side of the pit and started slowly and carefully making her way across to it, then she stood up and started slowly making her way across to it, then she stood up and started slowly making little foot holds in it with her left hand. In that way, pressed close to the side of the pit, she makes steps and so raised herself inch by inch, likely to fall back into the pit at any time.

        There was a little bush at the top which she managed to get hold of. With a last effort she pulled herself up and as she scrambled over the ledge, she heard a whisper which nearly made her jump back. Dont be scared lady, Im alive too

        The next day we continued to work and more people were brought in we heard the screams from the trucks as the engine began working and the gas flowed in, then the screams  died away and we, five of us, were taken from the cellar and we had to take the clothes and shoes left behind and put them in a room which was already full

        And in the evening people came back from working in the woods. They returned from work but two or three were already missing these people had grown weak and could no longer work, they were shot and left behind. The next day I didnt want to stay where I was. I was among the first five who were taken out to work in the forest. Thats where they dug trenches, there were twenty-five people there and they were all digging

        They put chips of wood under his finger nails and put fire to them. They put him in an iron net and held him there for 48 hours. And when he screamed all he said was I will not speak, I am dead already

        They brought his mother and she prayed and begged with him. He told his mother I am doomed, I will not speak They kept him for two weeks. Usually Jews

were hanged in public and people ordered to watch. This boy was hung before dawn, during curfew hours because they were terrified. They saw something in this boy and they admired him

 EXPERIMENT NO 1

        These were performed by a Professor Samual who was forced to do them. Three or four operations a day. The abdomen was opened and an incision made in the uterus, whereupon, neoplastic cells were implanted. The origins of these neoplastic cells is unknown. Three to six operations were performed after this at three to four week intervals and pieces of tissue from the uterus were taken and frozen sections made. The discharge which occurred through the cervix was clear and gave no indications of changes. Women were unaffected.

EXPERIMENT NO 2

        Fifteen girls aged 17-18 years old. The girls who survived the following operations are in German hands and little is known about them. They were placed in an ultra-short-wave field. One electrode was placed on the abdomen and another on the vulva. The rays were focused on the ovaries. The ovaries were burnt up. Owing to faulty doses several had serious burns of the abdomen and vulva. One died as a result of these burns alone. The others were sent to another concentration camp where some were put in hospital and others made to work. After a month they returned to Auschwitz where control operations were performed. The girls altered entirely owing to hormonal changes. They looked just like old women. Often they were laid up for months to the wounds of the operations becoming septic. Several died as a result of sepsis.

        The train was made up of sixty covered wagons, crammed with people. There were old people, young people, men, women, children and infants. The doors of the wagons were bolted, the sir gaps had a grating of barbed wire. Several SS men, with automatic weapons ready to shoot, stood on the foot-boards of the wagons on both sides of the train and even lay on the roof. It was a hot day, people in the

wagon were fainting. The SS rolled up their sleeves and looked like butchers, who after murdering their victims washed their bloodstained hands and got ready for more killing. Without a word, we understand the tragedy, since settling people coming to work would not have required such a strict guard, whereas these people were being transported like criminals.

        Countless dead bodies lay there, piled upon each other. I think that perhaps 10,000 bodies were there. A terrible stench hovered in the air. Most of the bodies had horribly bloated bellies, they were covered with black and yellow spots, swollen and the surfaces of the skin already crawled with worms. The lips of most of the dead were strangely twisted and the tips of the tongues could be seen protruding between the lips The mouths resembled those of dead fish. I later learned that most of these people had died of suffocation in the boxcars. Their mouths had remained open as if they were still struggling for a little air. Many of the dead still had their eyes open.

        They drove them out of the various hideouts, broke down the gates and doors, broke sutters and threw grenades into a few cellars and flats. They were shooting from various places. They beat them, kicked them and were cruel in an inhuman way.

        For the SS this was an easy load. These people knew nothing of ghettos and pogroms. They had never had their senses toughened by real persecution. They were docile to the point of apathy, in fact and they did precisely what they were told without a murmur of protest, an utterly amenable mass of human putty in the hands of the Germans.

        Yet these were the people who nearly made the SS panic. It happened at midnight in the cold winter of 1942. Men, women and children were queing for selection when something went wrong. Every night a truck, carrying a harvest of dead from Auschwitz to Birkenau passed at right angles to the head of the ramp. Normally nobody saw what it held and it was gone before anyone could even think about it but that night it was overloaded. That night it was swaying and heavy with the weight of dead flesh and as it crawled over the railway lines, it began to bounce and buck on its tired springs.

        The neatly packed bodies began to shift. A hundred, two hundred scrawny arms and legs flopped over the side, waving wildly, limply in a terrible mocking farewell and from those 3000 people, rose a thin hopeless wail that swept from one end of the queue to the other, an almost inhuman cry of despair that neither threats or blows or bullets could silence.

        With one, last desperate lurch, the lorry cleared the tracks disappeared out of sight of the arc lights, into the darkness and then there was silence. For almost four seconds, those French people had glimpsed the true horror of Auschwitz but it was gone and they could not believe what they had seen. Already their eyes untrained to mass murder has rejected the existence of that lorry and with that they marched

        With that we marched into Canada, the commercial heart of Auschwitz, warehouse of the body snatchers where hundreds of prisoners worked frantically to sort out all the clothes and the food and the valuables of those whose bodies were still burning, whose ashes would soon be used for fertilizer.

        An enormous rectangular yard with a watchtower at each corner and surrounded by barbed wire. There were several huge storerooms and a block of what seemed like offices with a square, open balcony at one corner. Yet what first struck me was the mountain of trunks, cases and bags. Nearby was another mountain of blankets, fifty thousand of them, maybe a hundred thousand. I was so staggered by the sight of these twin peaks of personnel possessions that I never thought at that moment where their owners might be. In fact I did not have much time to think, for every step brought some new shock.

        They were escorted into lorries with pushes or blows, most of them not clad for the cold winter night. More than one document mentions screams. From the very start, the patients were thrown together, children with dangerous lunatics, imbeciles with those not fit to be moved. At first men and women were put into separate wagons but later they were all mixed together. And it was certain not the sort of night that people could travel in open lorries in only nightdresses.

        No air, no water, no food. How long could we or how long were we in the cattle cars. I remember someone saying 72 hours. We were horribly dehydrated. I saw people with faces that were literally blue, licking their own sweat, there was urine on the floor.

        When we stopped and the doors opened, blinding lights lit up the night. A long line of SS men, each holding a police dog stood on the ramp. Several of the great beast leapt into the cars. In a space of a few seconds, two or three half-conscious prisoners were torn to pieces. Other bodies laying on the floor the dogs did not touch, they were dead. On the railway platform there was panic, blows, screams and the gruff barking of dogs. I held my breath and my suitcase up to my chest for protection as I stumbled over corpses.

        As we were pulling out of the burning estate, I noticed a bulky form crawling on all fours, like an animal and making very strange noises. We decided it might be human and we took him by the arm and dragged him along after us.

        Half naked and without shoes, Jewish men, women and children were pushed along by Ukranian guards with rifles to the place of execution near the woods. As soon as one party arrived, it was moved down by the SS with guns. Thus party after party were slaughtered. First one heard a burst of shot, then later single shots killing those who had not fallen with the first one. Most of the victims walked to death calm and resigned. The children were mostly unaware of what was going to happen to them and waved their goodbyes.

        If the number of persons to be gassed was not enough they would be shot and burned in pits. It was a rule to use the gas-chambers for groups of more than 200 persons, as it was not worth while to put gas-chambers in action for a smaller number of persons. It happened that some prisoners who offered resistence when about to be shot or children would cry and SS Moll would throw them alive into the flames of the pits.

        Half ab hour later, those selected to die would be marched slowly to barrack 25. An hour before, they had all been fighting for a piece of bread or for 1001 other trivial things people want. Now it was over.

        Barrack 25 got no food. Prisoners sat there locked up for hours, sometimes days without food. Without a swallow of water, without toilet facilities, dying before their deaths. For in Auschwitz, it was governed by a strict rule, Berlin always had to confirm the gassing of those selected and sometimes it was delayed.

Thanks to the book The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert for these extracts.