Memories of Treblinka - Richard Glazar

Richard Glazar


We travelled for two days. On the morning of the second day we saw that we had left Czechoslovakia and were heading East. It wasn’t the SS guarding us, but Schutzpolizei, the police in green uniforms. We were in ordinary passenger cars, all the seats were filled. You couldn’t choose – they were all numbered and assigned.

In my compartment there was an elderly couple. I still remember the good man was always hungry and his wife scolded him, saying they’d have no food left for the future. Then on the second day I saw a sign for Malkinia, we went on a little farther.

Then very slowly, the train turned off the main track and rolled at walking pace through a wood.

While we looked out – we’d been able to open a window – the old man in our compartment saw a boy…. cows were grazing and he asked the boy in signs, “Where are we?” And this kid made a funny gesture – draws a finger across his throat.

A Pole?

A Pole. It was where the train had stopped. On one side was the wood, and the other were fields. We saw cows watched over by a young man, a farmhand.

And one of you questioned him?

Not in words, but in signs, we asked, “What’s going on here?” And he made that gesture. Like this. We didn’t really pay much attention to him. We couldn’t figure out what he meant. And suddenly it started: the yelling and the screaming, “All out! -everybody out!” All those shouts, the uproar, the tumult! “Out! Get out! Leave the baggage!”

We got out stepping on each other. We saw men wearing blue armbands. Some carried whips. We saw some SS men – Green uniforms, black uniforms. We were a mass, and the mass swept us along. It was irresistible. It had to move to another place. I saw the others undressing. And I heard: “Get undressed – you’re to be disinfected.”

As I waited already naked, I noticed the SS men separating out some people. These were told to get dressed. A passing SS man suddenly stopped in front of me, looked me over, and said, “Yes, you too, quick, join the others, get dressed. You’re going to work here, and if you’re good, you can be a Kapo – a squad leader.” We were taken to a barracks. The whole place stank.

Piled about five feet high in a jumbled mess, were all the things people could conceivably have brought clothes, suitcases, everything stacked in a solid mass. On top of it, jumping around like demons, people were making bundles and carrying them outside. It was turned over to one of these men. His armband said “Squad Leader.”


<-- The Treblinka Station

He shouted and I understood that I was also to pick up clothing, bundle it and take it somewhere. As I worked I asked him, “What’s going on? Where are the ones who stripped?” And he replied, “Dead all dead!”
But it still hadn’t sunk in, I didn’t believe it. He’d used the Yiddish word. It was the first time I’d heard Yiddish spoken. He didn’t say it very loud, and I saw he had tears in his eyes. Suddenly he started shouting, and raised his whip. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an SS man coming. And I understood that I was to ask no more questions, but to rush outside with the package.

All I could think of then was my friend Carel Unger. He’d been at the rear of the train, in a section that had been uncoupled and left outside. I needed someone – near me – with me. Then I saw him. He was in the second group, he’d been spared too. On the way, somehow, he had learned, he already knew. He looked at me. All he said was, “Richard, my father, mother, brother. “He had learned on the way there.”

Your meeting with Carel – how long after your arrival did it happen? Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/glazar.html The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team www.HolocaustResearchProject.orgThe Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team www.HolocaustResearchProject.org