The Holocaust Read Free

in all we were guarded by thirty gendarmes. As we approached the ditches the men from Klodawa asked us in whispers, ‘Where are you from?’ We answered, ‘From Izbica.’ They asked how many of us there were and we replied twenty-nine. This exchange took place while we worked.
    The eight men without tools carried the two corpses to the ditch and threw them in. We didn’t have to wait long before the next lorry arrived with fresh victims. It was specially constructed. It looked like a normal large lorry, in grey paint with two hermetically closed rear doors. The inner walls were of steel metal. There weren’t any seats. The floor was covered by a wooden grating, as in public baths, with straw mats on top. Between the driver’s cab and the rear part were two peepholes. With a torch one could observe through these peepholes if the victims were already dead.
    Under the wooden grating were two tubes about fifteen centimetres thick which came out of the cab. The tubes had small openings from which gas poured out. The gas generator was in the cab, where the same driver sat all the time. He wore a uniform of the SS death’s head units and was about forty years old. There were two such vans.
    When the lorries approached we had to stand at a distance of five metres from the ditch. The leader of the guard detail was a high-ranking SS man, an absolute sadist and murderer.
    He ordered that eight men were to open the doors of the lorry. The smell of gas that met us was overpowering. Thevictims were gypsies from Lodz. Strewn about the van were all their belongings: accordions, violins, bedding, watches and other valuables.
    After the doors had been open for five minutes orders were screamed at us, ‘Here! You Jews! Get in there and turn everything out!’ The Jews scurried into the van and dragged the corpses away.
    The work didn’t progress quickly enough. The SS leader fetched his whip and screamed, ‘The devil, I’ll give you a hand straight away!’ He hit out in all directions on people’s heads, ears and so on, till they collapsed. Three of the eight who couldn’t get up again were shot on the spot.
    When the others saw this they clambered back on their feet and continued the work with their last reserves of energy. The corpses were thrown one on top of another, like rubbish on a heap. We got hold of them by the feet and the hair. At the edge of the ditch stood two men who threw in the bodies. In the ditch stood an additional two men who packed them in head to feet, facing downwards.
    The orders were issued by an SS man who must have occupied a special rank. If any space was left, a child was pushed in. Everything was done very brutally. From up above the SS man indicated to us with a pine twig how to stack the bodies. He ordered where the head and the feet, where the children and the belongings were to be placed. All this was accompanied by malicious screams, blows and curses. Every batch comprised 180–200 corpses. For every three vanloads twenty men were used to cover up the corpses. At first this had to be done twice, later up to three times, because nine vans arrived (that is nine times sixty corpses).
    At exactly twelve o’clock the SS leader with the whip ordered: ‘Put your shovels down!’ We had to line up in double file to be counted again. Then we had to climb out of the ditch.
    We were surrounded by guards all the time. We even had to excrete on the spot. We went to the spot where our belongings were. We had to sit on them close together. The guards continued to surround us. We were given cold bitter coffee and a frozen piece of bread. That was our lunch. That’s how we sat for half an hour. Afterwards we had to line up, were counted and led back to work.
    What did the dead look like? They weren’t burnt or black; their faces were unchanged. Nearly all the dead were soiled with excrement. At about five o’clock we stopped work. The eight men who had worked with the corpses had to lie on top of them face