Edi Weinstein on Death on the Way to Treblinka

The locomotive came back and towed away twenty more cars. Our car stayed where it was. I sat down in a corner and fell asleep; night had begun to fall. I awoke to the sound of my brother’s sobbing. Everyone around us was sobbing. A few people prayed; mainly I heard Shema Israel. Others embraced their loved ones and told them goodbye. A few, in their despair, pounded their heads against the walls of the car. I pushed my way toward the small peephole and looked out. All along the platform, corpses were heaped up. We couldn’t see any farther, because a long building blocked our view. Nothing was moving. Although at the time I didn’t know anything about the gas chambers and the crematoria, I was sure we had been brought here to play our part in the Nazi genocide scheme. We all believed that the soldiers were going to shoot us the minute they opened the doors of the cattle cars. Several minutes later, when the doors were opened, we were struck by the sickening stench of burning flesh. The German and Ukrainian guards bellowed at us to hurry up. Those who did not move quickly enough were beaten with rifle butts.Some of us got out of the cars but could hardly stand on our feet. Others sank to the ground. An order was given: men and older boys to the right, women, children, and the elderly to the left. My brother and I joined the right-hand column. We gazed at the left-hand column as it disappeared through a large gate. I was puzzled about why so few people were coming out of the cars.Soon I found out why.We were ordered to remove from the train those who had suffocated or who lay motionless. In every car there were corpses, lying in every conceivable posture. In some cases, entire families had died together—mothers still clutched their children, husbands still embraced their wives, mouths still agape, as if gasping for air. Sometimes three generations lay together in a befouled corner. I knew some of the dead; they all came from my town.I found my cousin Esther Yocheved, with her three red-headed daughters and her husband, all dead. Before the war, they had lived in Wloclawek. Lying nearby were my uncle Matis, his wife, and his daughter, married only a year earlier. In pairs we carried each corpse out to the platform, where the pile rose to a height exceeding that of the tallest man. Some of the dead still frothed at the mouth, a sign that they had perished within the past few hours. Others still showed signs of life: although unconscious, they wiggled an arm or leg. Some groaned, perhaps for the last time. The corpses, as well as those still wavering between life and death, were taken to pits that other Jews had already dug. I heard Germans shouting “Arbeiten, arbeiten,” and Ukrainians shouting, “Raboti, roboti, bo bodu strelt”—“Work, work, or I’ll shoot.” Although we had never heard Ukrainian before, we understood perfectly, because it closely resembles Polish.Heaped up next to the pile of corpses was a vast pyramid of parcels, bundles, suitcases, and clothing—the belongings of victims who had arrived on earlier transports. My brother and I occasionally hid under the pile of rags to rest, but not for long, because the guards ordered us to get out and go back to work.Despite everything, we still wanted to live. We were still afraid of death.Source: Edi Weinstein, Quenched Steel. The Story of an Escape From Treblinka, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2002, pp. 39- 41.