I have provided 3/7 parts of an interview with Franz Suchomel, a junior sergeant in the SS who served in the death camp Treblinka in 1942. He was secretly recorded during the interview for the documentary film Shoah and gives invaluable information on the murder of the Jews in that death camp. At one point in the interview, he states that the new gas chambers at Treblinka "could finish off three thousand people in two hours"!
Text:
PART ONE
TREBLINKA
Franz Suchomel, SS Unterscharfuehrer
Claude Lanzmann (interviewer): Are we ready?
Suchomel: Yes. We can begin.
Lanzmann: How's your heart? Is everything in order?
Suchomel: Oh, my heart -- for the moment, it's all right. If I have any pain, I'll tell you. We'll have to break off.
Lanzmann: Of course. But your health, in general, is...
Suchomel: The weather today suits me fine. The barometric pressure is high; that's good for me.
Lanzmann: You look to be in good shape, anyway. Let's begin with Treblinka. I believe you got there in August? Was it August 20 or 24?
Suchomel: The eighteenth.
Lanzmann: The eighteenth?
Suchomel: I don't know exactly. Around August 20, I arrived there with seven other men.
Lanzmann: From Berlin?
Suchomel: From Berlin.
Lanzmann: From Lublin?
Suchomel: From Berlin to Warsaw, from Warsaw to Lublin, from Lublin back to Warsaw and from Warsaw to Treblinka.
Lanzmann: What was Treblinka like then?
Suchomel: Treblinka then was operating at full capacity.
Lanzmann: Full capacity?
Suchomel: Full capacity! The Warsaw ghetto was being emptied then. Three trains arrived in two days, each with three, four, five thousand people aboard, all from Warsaw. But at the same time, other trains came in from Kielce and other places. So three trains arrived, and since the offensive against Stalingrad was in full swing, the trainloads of Jews were left on a station siding. What's more, the cars were French, made of steel. So that while five thousand Jews arrived in Treblinka, three
thousand were dead in the cars. They had slashed their wrists, or just died. The ones we unloaded were half dead and half mad. In the other trains from Kielce and elsewhere, at least half were dead. We stacked them here, here, here and here. Thousands of people piled one on top of another on the ramp. Stacked like wood. In addition, other Jews, still alive, waited there for two days: the small gas chambers could no longer handle the load. They functioned day and night in that period.
Lanzmann: Can you please describe, very precisely, your first
impression of Treblinka? Very precisely. It's very important.
Suchomel: My first impression of Treblinka, and that of some of the other men, was catastrophic. For we had not been told how and what...that people were being killed there. They hadn't told us.
Lanzmann: You didn't know?
Suchomel: No!
Lanzmann: Incredible!
Suchomel: But true. I didn't want to go. That was proved at my trial. I was told: "Mr. Suchomel, there are big workshops there for tailors and shoemakers, and you'll be guarding them."
Lanzmann: But you knew it was a camp?
Suchomel: Yes. We were told: "The Fuehrer ordered a resettlement program. It's an order from the Fuehrer." Understand?
Lanzmann: Resettlement program.
Suchomel: Resettlement program. No one ever spoke of killing.
PART TWO
Lanzmann: I understand. Mr. Suchomel, we're not discussing you, only Treblinka. You are a very important eyewitness, and you can explain what Treblinka was.
Suchomel: But don't use my name.
Lanzmann: No, I promised. All right, you've arrived at Treblinka.
Suchomel: So Stadie, the sarge, showed us the camp from end to end. Just as we went by, they were opening the gas-chamber doors, and people fell out like potatoes. Naturally, that horrified and appalled us. We went back and sat down on our stuicases and cried like old women.
Each day one hundred Jews were chosen to drag the corpses to the mass graves. In the evening the Ukrainians drove those Jews into the gas chambers or shot them. Every day!
It was in the hottest days of August. The ground undulated like waves because of the gas.
Lanzmann: From the bodies?
Suchomel: Bear in mind, the graves were maybe eighteen, twenty feet deep, all crammed with bodies! A thin layer of sand, and the heat. You see? It was a hell up there.
Lanzmann: You saw that?
Suchomel: Yes, just once, the first day. We puked and wept.
Lanzmann: You wept?
Suchomel: We wept too, yes. The smell was infernal because gas was constantly escaping. It stank horribly for miles around. You could smell it everywhere. It depended on the wind. The stink was carried on the wind. Understand?
More people kept coming, always more, whom we hadn't the facilities to kill. The brass was in a rush to clean out the Warsaw ghetto. The gas chambers couldn't handle the load. The small gas chambers. The Jews had to wait their turn for a day, two days, three days. They foresaw what was coming. They foresaw it. They may not have been certain, but many knew. There were Jewish women who slashed their daughters' wrists at
night, then cut their own. Others poisoned themselves.
They heard the engine feeding the gas chamber. A tank engine was used in that gas chamber. At Treblinka the only gas used was engine exhaust. Zyklon gas -- that was Auschwitz.
Because of the delay, Eberl, the camp commandant, phoned Lublin and said: "We can't go on this way. I can't do it any longer. We have to break off." Overnight, Wirth arrived. He inspected everything and then left. He returned with people from Belzec, experts. Wirth arranged to suspend the trains. The corpses lying there were cleared away. That was the period of the old gas chambers. Because there were so many dead that couldn't be gotten rid of, the bodies piled up around the gas chambers and stayed there for days. Under this pile of bodies was a
cesspool three inches deep, full of blood, worms and shit. No one wanted to clean it out. The Jews preferred to be shot rather than work there.
Lanzmann: Preferred to be shot?
Suchomel: It was awful. Burying their own people, seeing it all. The dead flesh came off in their hands. So Wirth went there himself with a few Germans and had long belts rigged up that were wrapped around the dead torsos to pull them.
Lanzmann: Who did that?
Suchomel: SS men and Jews.
Lanzmann: Jews too?
Suchomel: Jews too!
Lanzmann: What did the Germans do?
Suchomel: They forced the Jews to...
Lanzmann: They beat them?
Suchomel: ...or they themselves helped with the cleanup.
Lanzmann: Which Germans did that?
Suchomel: Some of our guards who were assigned up there.
Lanzmann: The Germans themselves?
Suchomel: They had to.
Lanzmann: They were in command!
Suchomel: They were in command, but they were also commanded.
Lanzmann: I think the Jews did it.
Suchomel: In that case, the Germans had to lend a hand.
PART THREE
Suchomel: The new gas chambers were built in September 1942.
Lanzmann: Who built them?
Suchomel: Hackenhold and Lambert supervised the Jews who did the work, the bricklaying at least. Ukrainian carpenters made the doors. The gas-chamber doors themselves were armored hunker doors. I think they were brought from Bialystok, from some Russian bunkers.
Lanzmann: What was the capacity of the new gas chambers? There were two of them, right?
Suchomel: Yes. But the old ones hadn't been demolished. When there were a lot of trains, a lot of people, the old ones were put back into service. And here...the Jews say there were five on each side. I say there were four, but I'm not sure. In any case, only the upper row on this side was in action.
Lanzmann: Why not the other side?
Suchomel: Disposing of the bodies would have been too complicated.
Lanzmann: Too far?
Suchomel: Yes. Up there Wirth had built the death camp, assigning a detail of Jewish workers to it. The detail had a fixed number in it, around two hundred people, who worked only in the death camp.
Lanzmann: But what was the capacity of the new gas chambers?
Suchomel: The new gas chambers... Let's see... They could finish off three thousand people in two hours.
Lanzmann: How many people at once in a single gas chamber?
Suchomel: I can't say exactly. The Jews say two hundred. Imagine a room this size.
Lanzmann: They put more in at Auschwitz.
Suchomel: Auschwitz was a factory!
Lanzmann: And Treblinka?
Suchomel: I'll give you my definition. Keep this in mind! Treblinka was a primitive but effective production line of death. Understand?
Lanzmann: Yes. But primitive?
Suchomel: Primitive, yes. But it worked well, that production line of death.
Lanzmann: Was Belzec even more rudimentary?
Suchomel: Belzec was the laboratory. Wirth was camp commandant. He tried everything imaginable there. He got off on the wrong foot. The pits were overflowing and the cesspool seeped out in front of the SS mess hall. It stank -- in front of the mess hall, in front of their barracks.
Lanzmann: Were you at Belzec?
Suchomel: No. Wirth with his own men -- with Franz, with Oberhauser and Hackenhold -- he tried everything there. Those three had to put the bodies in the pits themselves so that Wirth could see how much space he needed. And when they rebelled -- Franz refused -- Wirth beat Franz with a whip. He whipped Hackenhold too. You see?
Lanzmann: Kurt Franz?
Suchomel: Kurt Franz. That's how Wirth was. Then, with that
experiment behind him, he came to Treblinka.
