Killing the SS Read online

All these people who were killed on the platform, or those who fainted or who still showed signs of life but were unable to walk, we had to carry them to the Lazarette. They cynically gave it this name, as if they were going to the doctor. There was this pit, and we had to throw all these bodies into the pit. Those who were still alive were shot at the edge of the pit and were thrown inside.

  ATTORNEY GENERAL GIDEON HAUSNER: On the following day, you went out to work?

  WITNESS TEIGMAN: Yes.

  Q: What kind of work?

  A: At first, we had to take logs of wood and to carry them from place to place. Afterwards, they sent us to sort out personal effects.

  Q: What personal effects?

  A: The personal effects of the people they had brought there, the victims who had gone to the gas chambers. They left all these articles in our camp, Camp 1, before they entered the …

  Q: What was the quantity of personal effects that you saw, when you first came there?

  A: An enormous quantity. There were actually heaps outside on the ground, several storeys high.

  Q: Clothes, personal possessions?

  A: Clothes, personal possessions, children’s toys, shoes. I think there was nothing that … everything that one could see was there—medicines and instruments, everything.

  Q: Meanwhile, did further transports arrive on the day following your arrival?

  A: Yes, all the time.

  Q: Transports were arriving all the time?

  A: At first, there were many transports, almost every day. There were also instances of two transports a day. Later on, after a number of months, the number of transports decreased, there were less.

  Q: And so, you say, your work was to carry logs of wood?

  A: It was only at the beginning that they gave us that work.

  Q: Afterwards, what was your work?

  A: We worked in sorting personal effects. There were also people whose work was in preserving fur coats; we also worked on renovating aluminum ware.

  Q: Where did all these articles go to?

  A: As far as we knew, as the talk went in the camp, all of it went to Germany.

  Q: Who shot the people at the Lazarette?

  A: There were SS men: Scharfuehrer Mentz or Minz—I do not remember his exact name; they called him Frankenstein, since he had a face which really was frightening to look at—I think his name was Scharfuehrer Minz. The second was Scharfuehrer Miete, he was from Berlin. The third was Scharfuehrer Blitz. And they were helped by one of the Ukrainians, but I don’t remember his name.

  Q: Once a transport of children arrived, do you remember?

  A: Yes. A transport of children arrived. There were two freight cars. The children were almost suffocated, actually. We had to remove their clothes and take them—that is to say, we transported them—into the Lazarette, and there the SS men whom I have mentioned shot them. It was said that these were orphans who came from an orphanage. I don’t know.

  Q: Generally speaking, what was the size of the transports?

  A: Generally, sixty freight cars would arrive, and into each freight car they put about one hundred persons. I imagine that there were up to six thousand persons, or even more.

  Q: Was it always Jews only?

  A: No. There was also a transport of Gypsies.

  Q: One?

  A: In fact, there were two, but I remember one well.

  Q: Apart from the Gypsies, were all the others Jews?

  A: They were Jews.

  Q: Do you remember a transport of Jews from Grodno?

  A: Yes.

  Q: What happened?

  A: The transport of Jews from Grodno arrived, that is to say, it was already the second transport. It arrived towards evening.

  Q: Before that, was it preceded by another transport?

  A: The transport that preceded it was much larger, apparently from the environs of Warsaw—I don’t know.

  Q: Did they go to the gas chambers?

  A: They went to the gas chambers. After that, came the transport from Grodno. This was already towards the evening, and the people who entered the courtyard between those two huts refused to undress. They were told to remove their clothes, to tie their shoes well together; they were given rope, wire, and they were strict about that.

  Q: That they should tie their shoes together?

  A: That they should tie their shoes together.

  Q: Were the people there told why they were being asked to do this?

  A: Yes.

  Q: What did they tell them?

  A: There was also a large notice in the yard which said that all the people were going to take a bath, that they would be disinfected, and all their papers, valuables and money should be handed in to the camp safe which was there on this path that led to the gas chambers. They called it Himmelstrasse (Road to Heaven), or Schlauch (hosepipe), or Himmelallee (Avenue to Heaven). This building was a small hut. These people who had to receive all the papers, all the money, and all the documents stood there.

  Q: Can you point out where this Schlauch or this Himmelallee was situated?

  A: Yes. I can see it [points to the sketch]. Here we see a certain line, these two buildings. And here is the Schlauch, this Himmelallee.

  Q: And here [pointing] the people walked after they had already undressed?

  A: Yes. Here the people entered this path, it was called Schlauch or Himmelstrasse.

  Q: Can you identify it in the second picture also?

  A: In the second picture, one sees it differently from here [points to it]. The people inside the small building who received all the documents and money used to be called Goldjuden (gold Jews). The person in charge was someone named Scharfuehrer Suchomit. I believe he was from Sudetenland, for he spoke with a Viennese or Austrian accent.

  Q: Was it there that they told the people that they would be taken to work, and that they had to take a bath?

  A: First of all, they were going to take a bath, and afterwards they should come to retrieve their belongings, and then they would go out to work.

  Q: Did the people who reached that point still believe that this was the truth?

  A: There were some who, I think, still believed, for at first there was no reaction.

  Q: Even after the blows at the railway station, after the whipping?

  A: People were confused, for it was done at tremendous speed. I think the people did not even have time to think. Each one fled and ran fast, so as not to receive blows. But perhaps we can pass on to the transport from Grodno.

  Q: Let us go back now to the transport from Grodno.

  A: Amongst them there were men who called out to the others not to get undressed. Apparently, they realized what was going on and they knew. And so they refused. Then the Germans and the Ukrainians began beating them. They also shot them. I also remember SS men and Ukrainians who were sitting on the roofs on the two huts I mentioned, with automatic weapons, and they also fired into the crowd. Despite all this, the people were not ready to undress. We stood some distance away and saw it all. We were near the yard. Later we heard an explosion. Apparently, someone had thrown a grenade or I don’t know what. At any rate, they removed a seriously wounded Ukrainian from this yard. Afterwards, the Germans somehow overpowered them and put them onto this path by force. But most of them walked in their clothes.

  Q: When was this?

  A: This was several months after I reached Treblinka. I don’t remember exactly when.

  Q: In 1942?

  A: Still in 1942.

  Q: What did they do to the women, to the women’s hair?

  A: The women who came to the camp, as I have said, had to go to the left and to enter one of the buildings in the yard. There they had to undress and to continue walking. There was also a room there. In a section of the room, there were men who were called “barbers.” They had to cut off the hair of these women before they entered this path.

  Q: Please tell me, did the people who were brought in the transports undergo some kind of selecti
on in the camp, either for work or dispatch?

  A: There was no selection, apart from those who were taken out for work. Each time they took a number of people for work.

  Q: Work in connection with the extermination?

  A: Exactly.

  Q: Was there no other work in this camp?

  A: There was no other work. It was all connected with the extermination.

  * * *

  Despite the horrors recounted by close to a hundred witnesses, Adolf Eichmann sits implacable behind his bulletproof glass shield. He shows no emotion, occasionally shifting in his seat and cleaning his glasses. Until Eichmann’s trial, it was considered wrong for Holocaust survivors to rehash their terrible memories. The war has been over for sixteen years and the past cannot be changed. But as the testimonies move into the third month, the survivors’ remembrances are allowing a catharsis. Eichmann was not personally present for many of the atrocities these men and women describe, but the sheer scope of the Jewish extermination has become startlingly clear.

  The former SS officer certainly knows that. But, still, his face displays no emotion. But his constant blowing of his nose and the irregular twitch of his mouth are minor tics giving away his nervousness.

  Finally, on June 6, 1961, a man named Avraham Lindwasser is sworn in to give testimony. He survived Treblinka only because he was strong enough to dispose of the bodies. He was fourteen when separated from his mother at the gates after their train arrived at the death camp in Poland—whereupon he watched as she was sent directly down what the Nazis jokingly called the Himmelstrasse—the barbed-wire “path to heaven,” which led directly to the gas chambers.

  Lindwasser delivers his testimony in a crisp voice. He speaks in slow, measured tones, determined to remain calm and direct. But the emotion in each syllable cannot be missed, and his words cause many in the gallery to openly weep.

  PRESIDING JUDGE MOSHE LANDAU: What is your full name?

  WITNESS AVRAHAM LINDWASSER: Avraham Lindwasser.

  Q: On 28 August 1942, you arrived at Treblinka from Warsaw?

  A: Correct.

  Q: Was there some notice at the station, in German and Polish?

  A: Correct.

  Q: What did it say?

  A: “Jews, after you have bathed and changed your clothes, the journey will continue to the east, to work.”

  Q: Did they allow you to alight quietly?

  A: No.

  Q: What happened?

  A: They opened the freight cars, we heard the order: “Get out.” There were shouts. We began getting off. They struck us with clubs all the time we were getting off, so that they did not give us an opportunity to understand where we were or what was happening; we were chased straight away to the square, and there we were ordered to hand over our money and jewelry; we were then told to remove our shoes.

  Q: Who gave the orders?

  A: Germans, SS men.

  Q: How many people were there in that transport?

  A: It is hard for me to say, but more than one thousand.

  Q: When you came there, did you know what was the place you had arrived at?

  A: No. I knew it was Treblinka, but we did not know the purpose.

  Q: Had you heard about Treblinka in Warsaw?

  A: We had heard about Treblinka.

  Q: Did you know that Jews were being exterminated at Treblinka?

  A: We did not believe it.

  Q: You did not believe it. Why?

  A: Why? This would, perhaps, be difficult to answer. Possibly, it is an individual matter for each person. One simply could not grasp that such a thing was possible—actual extermination. Rumors reached Warsaw that the Germans were sending people out to work. And simply, it was better to cling to this idea.

  ATTORNEY GENERAL GIDEON HAUSNER: Did you, already on that day, notice corpses?

  WITNESS LINDWASSER: At the beginning, when I entered the place—I was brought in by a German, also one of the SS—whose name I subsequently learned was Matthias. He took me inside, and we were immediately ordered to take hold of bodies and drag them towards the graves. At first, I thought that the corpses came from the freight cars, people who had died, who were suffocated in the cars, and I was certain that they were undergoing some kind of disinfection here and then buried.

  Q: This was adjoining the gas chambers?

  A: Next to the small gas chambers.

  Q: Before the men transferred the bodies to the pit?

  A: Before they were taken to the pits.

  Q: And you did this?

  A: Yes. I was occupied in this work for approximately one month, a month and a half, perhaps less, perhaps more, until once I recognized my sister’s body.

  Q: She was lying there, dead?

  A: Yes.… I could not stand it. I tried to commit suicide. I was already hanging by my belt, when a bearded Jew—I don’t know his name—took me down. He began preaching to me, that while the work in which we were going to be engaged was contemptible and not the kind of thing one ought to do, nevertheless, we should tolerate it and ought to make efforts, so that at least someone should survive who would be able to relate what was happening here, and this would be my duty, since I had light work and would be able to go on living and be of help to others.

  Q: Were you working near the gas chambers?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Did you notice anything at the entrance?

  A: The entrance to which chambers? For while we worked at the gas chambers, inside the corridor of the small gas chambers, we also could see the gas chambers at the end. On one occasion, I was even taken—again by that Matthias—to the first camp, in order to fetch pairs of forceps for extracting teeth, since extra men had been added to our group.

  We passed by the large chambers and, on the way back, I saw a big curtain at the entrance to the large chambers, a curtain used to cover the Ark containing the Torah Scrolls with the Shield of David on it, and on the curtain there was the inscription: “This is the gate of the Lord, through which the righteous shall enter.”

  * * *

  It is June 20, 1961, when Adolf Eichmann finally takes the stand. He seems shrunken by the months of the damning testimony against him. In that time, he has rarely turned his head to gaze directly at the spectator gallery. Eichmann is deferential to the court, presenting himself as a small cog, and as someone interested in Jewish emigration. But when it finally comes time to speak, Eichmann is once again the proud unrepentant Nazi. “I had no special positions or privileges,” he tells the court, establishing his line of defense that he was merely an inconsequential bureaucrat. “They gave me instructions.”

  But as the courtroom drama turns from examination to cross-examination, the real Eichmann emerges—efficient, arrogant, defiant, and true to his Nazi roots.

  * * *

  The trial continues until August 14, 1961—114 sessions in all. It is 2:30 in the afternoon when Judge Landau declares the session closed and directly addresses Eichmann. “The trial will now be adjourned for judgment. At any rate, as it looks now, judgment will not be given before the month of November of this year. You will receive approximately two weeks’ notice before the date when judgment will be given.”

  In fact, it is not until December 11, 1961, that the three judges read their decision. There is no jury.

  The courtroom is packed as Judge Landau announces his final verdict. As the presiding jurist, he has exacted strict courtroom discipline from all in attendance, despite the emotional severity of the testimony. Applause and catcalls have been forbidden.

  Four days later, speaking solemnly, from a lengthy prepared text, he begins the proceedings of December 15 by immediately addressing Eichmann’s sentence.

  “Now that we have reached the end of the long proceedings in this trial, we must pass sentence on the Accused.

  “We started from the assumption that it is within our discretion to determine the penalty in this case.

  “The dispatch of each train by the accused to Auschwitz, or to an
y other extermination site, carrying one thousand human beings, meant that the accused was a direct accomplice in a thousand premeditated acts of murder, and the degree of his legal and moral responsibility for these acts of murder is not one iota less than the responsibility of the person who with his own hands pushed these human beings into the gas chambers. Even if we had found that the Accused acted out of blind obedience, as he argued, we would still have said that a man who took part in crimes of such magnitude as these over years must pay the maximum penalty known to the law.

  “This court sentences Adolf Eichmann to death.”6

  16

  MAY 31, 1962

  BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

  LATE EVENING

  Zvi Aharoni may soon confront the Angel of Death.

  The Israeli spy nervously fingers his passport, just moments away from entering Argentina for the first time in two years. He will do so illegally, under a false name—and not by choice.

  Since returning to Israel he has transferred from Shin Bet to work full-time for the Mossad. Isser Harel has placed him in charge of a new division within the agency focused on hunting for Nazi criminals. Now Aharoni is returning to South America to find and capture the brutal Nazi killer Dr. Josef Mengele. Acting on a tip from a former SS officer, Aharoni has reason to believe the heinous murderer is hiding in the pro-Nazi country of Paraguay—Aharoni’s intended destination tonight.

  But bad weather has forced a change of plans. Because of wind shear, Aharoni’s plane could not land at his scheduled stopover in Montevideo, Uruguay, and has set down in Argentina. The Mossad forbids any agent involved in the Eichmann kidnapping from returning to that country. Some Argentineans are still bitter about Israel’s aggressiveness and are eager for revenge. The arrest and subsequent trial of a Mossad agent would be a scene of humiliation for both Aharoni and Israel itself.

  Yet Zvi Aharoni has no choice. Buenos Aires’s Ezeiza Airport is closing. There are no other flights until morning. So Aharoni must spend the night in Argentina.

  On the ground, Aharoni waits to present his fake passport to the Argentinean authorities.

  Mossad forgers have been meticulous in preparing his papers, so Aharoni’s chances of getting caught are small. Yet as he steps forward in the customs line, the spy cannot help but feel a twinge of nervousness: there is always the chance something might go wrong.