Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (33 page)

“
Could you not have changed that?
” I asked. “
In your position, could you not have stopped the nakedness, the whips, the horror of the cattle pens?”

“No, no, no. This was the system. Wirth had invented it. It worked. And because it worked, it was irreversible.”

Suchomel remembered Stangl telling the
SS
personnel that an order had come from Hitler that nobody was to be beaten or tortured. “But then he said, ‘It’s impossible. But when the bigwigs come from Berlin you must hide the whips.’ ”

At the Treblinka trial Richard Glazar testified that the beatings often had distinctly sexual overtones and Suchomel’s account seems to confirm this, if confirmation were needed. “When Kurt Franz beat them,” Suchomel recounted, “it was on their bare buttocks [the crasser German word he used was
Hintern
], They had to drop their trousers and count the blows of the whip. The others didn’t insist on that, though.”

Joe Siedlecki too talked about Kurt Franz’s beatings. “He’d give them fifty strokes,” he said. “They’d be dead at the end. He’d be half dead himself, but he’d beat and beat. Oh, some of the others, they were just weaklings – two strokes and
they’d
collapse; but Franz and Miete and some of them – they could go on and on.”

“Stangl did improve things,” Suchomel said later. “He alleviated it a bit for people, but he could have done more, especially from Christmas 1942; he could have stopped the whipping post, the ‘races’, ‘sport’, and what Franz did with that dog, Bari – he was Stangl’s dog originally. He could have stopped all that without any trouble for himself. [The dog, originally harmless, had been trained to attack people, and specifically their genital regions, on command.] He had the power to do that – and he didn’t. I don’t think he cared – all he did was look after the death camp, the burning and all that; there everything had to run just so because the whole camp organization depended on it. I think what he really cared about was to have the place run like clockwork.”

Gustav Münzberger, who was more incriminated than Suchomel, put it differently. “Do I think that Stangl could have done something to change things at Treblinka?” he said. “No. Well, perhaps a little, the whipping post and all that; but, on the other hand, if he had, then Franz would have told Wirth, and he would just have countermanded it. So what was the use?”

“
What was the worst place in the camp for you?
” I asked Stangl.

“The undressing barracks,” he said at once. “I avoided it from my innermost being; I couldn’t confront them; I couldn’t lie to them; I avoided at any price talking to those who were about to die: I couldn’t stand it.”

It became clear that as soon as the people were in the undressing barracks – that is, as soon as they were naked – they were no longer human beings for him. What he was “avoiding at any price” was witnessing the transition. And when he cited instances of human relations with prisoners, it was never with any of those who were about to die.

“
But were there never moments when this wall you built around yourself was breached? When the sight of a beautiful child perhaps, or a girl, brought you up against the knowledge that these were human beings?
”

“There was a beautiful red-blonde girl,” he said. “She usually worked in the clinic but when one of the maids in our living quarters was ill, she replaced her for a time … It was just around the time when I had put up new barracks with single rooms for quite a few of the work-Jews,” he said (a claim confirmed by Suchomel but put in doubt by Richard Glazar who says that only just before the revolt were two couples, both stooges for the
SS
, given single rooms).

“This girl – I knew one of the Kapos was her boy friend … one always knew about things like that.…”

“
What nationality was she?
”

“Polish, I think. But she spoke German well. She was a – you know – a well-educated girl. Well, she came to my office that day to dust or something. I suppose I thought to myself, ‘What a pretty girl she is and now she can have some privacy with her boy friend.’ So I asked her – just to say something nice, you know – ‘Have you chosen a room for yourself yet?’ I remember she stopped dusting and stood very still looking at me. And then she said, very quietly you know, ‘Why do you ask?’ ”

His tone of voice even now reflected the astonishment he felt twenty-nine years ago when this young girl responded to him not as a slave to her master, but as a free human being to a man she rejected. Not only that; she responded as to a social inferior, and the wording and tone of his reply confirm that he was immediately aware of this. “I said, ‘Why shouldn’t I ask? I can ask, can’t I?’ And again she just stood there, very straight, not moving, just looking right at me. And then she said, ‘Can I go?’ And I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ She went. I felt so ashamed. I realized she thought I’d asked because – well, you know, because I wanted her myself. I so admired her for facing up to me, for saying ‘Can I go?’ I felt ashamed for days because of the way she had misunderstood.”

“
Do you know what happened to her?
” I asked this question each time he spoke of any of the prisoners in individual terms. But each time the answer was precisely the same, in the same tone of detachment, with the same politely aloof expression in his face.

“I don’t know.”

In this case I persisted. “
But here was a girl who had enormously impressed you. Didn’t you ever want to find out what happened to her?
”

He looked uncomfortable. “I heard something about her having been transferred to the
Totenlager.
” (The life expectancy of prisoners working in that part of the camp rarely exceeded two months.)

“
How did that happen?
”

“I am not really sure. You see, when our usual maid returned – I was on leave at that time – this girl went back to her work at the clinic. The doctor – I can’t remember his name – had a run-in with Kurt Franz. It was never very clear what had happened. But the doctor killed himself – he took poison. And the girl was there when this happened and Franz sent her up to the
Totenlager.
”

Later, when I tried to identify the girl Stangl had talked about, no one could say for certain who she was.

“Why don’t you ask Otto Horn?” said Gustav Münzberger. “He was always larking about with the girls in the laundry in Camp II.”

“Yes, I sometimes went into the laundry and talked to the girls,” said Horn. “But I don’t know of any red-blonde girl who was sent up to the upper camp by Franz. There was one amongst the six in the laundry who had red hair. But I don’t know what her name was. All the girls spoke German. What did they do when they weren’t working? I don’t know. They had their own barracks and were locked in there at night. Later on, I sometimes let them out on a Sunday to go for a walk in the wood behind the camp; it was fenced in, you know.…”

But the last word, as often, was Suchome’s, for whom recalling the details of Treblinka has become something of a passion.

“The only red-blonde was Tchechia who had been Kapo Rakowski’s girl friend,” he said, “a very proud and courageous girl. It would certainly have been her who would have said no to Stangl. But she was never sent up to the
Totenlager.
Otherwise, there was Sabina – but she was sent ‘up’ much earlier on, by Küttner, not by Franz – after her affair with Kapo Kuba; it can’t have been her. And it can’t have been Irka, the doctor’s assistant; she was dark. No, it was Tchechia Mandel from Lemberg. But she never worked at the clinic; she always worked in the kitchen.…”

It has been generally agreed that although Stangl drank heavily at Treblinka, women, other than his wife, played no part in his life. Therefore, although we will never know for sure who this exceptionally brave and proud young girl was, it is probable, and corresponds with the overall impression he gave me, that his description of his impulsive attempt to communicate with her was accurate.

“
Couldn’t you have ordered her to be brought back?
” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No.”

I spent a good deal of time investigating this sequence of events, interesting for several reasons but particularly as this was the first instance of Stangl reacting personally or emotionally to any of the Treblinka inmates. As often happened, each of the people I questioned gave a different version of what happened.

The circumstances surrounding the death of the doctor, Dr Choronzycki, sadly misrepresented in at least one much-discussed book on Treblinka, are in general agreed on by all those who were in Treblinka at the time – prisoners or guards – though there is a curious difference of opinion concerning Dr Choronzycki’s medical speciality (not to speak of the spelling of his name). Stangl told me that this physician had been a “famous Warsaw internist”. In Steiner’s book
Treblinka
Dr Choronzycki is described as “the doctor of the Germans”. Suchomel says: “Of course, I remember him well; he was a nose and throat specialist. I talked with him many times; my son was physically handicapped you know, and Dr Choronzycki often advised me about him. He was a converted Jew, you know. He wore a golden necklace with a cross. He said his Polish colleagues in the hospital in Warsaw had given him away.…” Richard Glazar says: “Choronzycki was a dentist, or at least that is what he claimed to be in Treblinka. That is why the
SS
picked him out of the transport for their own so-called
SS
Revierstube.
This
SS
dental clinic was almost exactly opposite the room of the gold-Jews. The money for the revolt was to go from one of the gold-Jews via Choronzycki.…”

All the survivors I spoke to agreed on the essential part the doctor was playing in the preparations for the revolt. But Suchomel said, “Dr Choronzycki had nothing to do with the revolt. That was just invention, like the book by Jean-Frančois Steiner.”

On the other hand, Suchomel agrees that Kurt Franz surprised the doctor in possession of gold, and that after the doctor attacked Franz with a surgical knife (surely an extraordinary act of courage) and the latter fled out of the window, he had time to take poison before being apprehended.

“Stangl was away,” Suchomel says. “Franz sent for me and said, ‘Get that woman doctor on the double.’ ” The woman doctor, Dr Choronzycki’s assistant, was Dr Irena (Irka) Lewkowski.

“I ran,” said Suchomel. “The old bitch pretended she couldn’t walk quickly. Anyway, when we got there, the doctor’s eyes were still open – he was still alive – she pumped his stomach out. Then Franz told me to assemble all the gold-Jews. The doctor could no longer speak. Franz was wild.…”

“Kurt Franz kept beating him with his whip even when Choronzycki was quite obviously dead,” said Glazar. “He had him dragged to the
Lazarett
– all the gold-Jews had been brought there; he told them they’d be shot, one after the other, unless they told where the doctor got the gold. I remember, Willie Fürst was there – he was a hotel owner from Slovakia; and little Edek, the accordion player – they’d picked him up too. After a while Edek–I was told – cried and begged the others to tell what they knew. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he is supposed to have cried. Well, none of them told anything – the doctor was dead – and in the end Franz let them all go; he knew perfectly that they were the most valuable specialists they had, more important to them than anyone else in the camp.”

“I didn’t actually hear the end,” said Suchomel. “I went out. Though before leaving the
Lazarett
I called out in Czech telling the gold-Jews that Franz was faking, he wasn’t going to kill them, and for them not to tell.…”

“I have never heard
anything
about Suchomel calling out something like that to the gold-Jews,” said Glazar.

“I
did
have contact with the work-Jews,” Stangl said. “You know, quite friendly relations. You asked me a while ago whether there was anything I enjoyed. Beyond my specific assignment, that’s what I enjoyed; human relations. Especially with people like Singer and Blau. They were both Viennese: I always tried to give as many jobs as possible to Vienna Jews. It made for a lot of talk at the time, I know. But after all, I
was
Austrian.… Singer I had made the chief of the
Totenjuden
; I saw a lot of him. I think he was a dentist in Vienna. Or perhaps an engineer,” he reflected. “He was killed during the revolt; it started in the upper camp you know.” (He was wrong about Singer, who was a German, not a Viennese, and a businessman, not a dentist; and also about the revolt, which started in the lower camp.)

“Blau was the one I talked to most; he and his wife. No, I don’t know what his profession had been; business I think. I’d made him the cook in the lower camp. He knew I’d help whenever I could.

“There was one day when he knocked at the door of my office about mid-morning and stood to attention and asked permission to speak to me. He looked very worried. I said, ‘Of course, Blau, come on in. What’s worrying you?’ He said it was his eighty-year-old father; he’d arrived on that morning’s transport. Was there anything I could do. I said, ‘Really, Blau, you must understand, it’s impossible. A man of eighty.…’ He said quickly that yes, he understood, of course. But could he ask me for permission to take his father to the
Lazarett
rather than the gas chambers. And could he take his father first to the kitchen and give him a meal. I said, ‘You go and do what you think best, Blau. Officially I don’t know anything, but unofficially you can tell the Kapo I said it was all right.’ In the afternoon, when I came back to my office, he was waiting for me. He had tears in his eyes. He stood to attention and said, ‘Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer, I want to thank you. I gave my father a meal. And I’ve just taken him to the
Lazarett
– it’s all over. Thank you very much.’ I said, ‘Well, Blau, there’s no
need to thank me, but of course if you
want
to thank me, you may.’ ” “
What happened to Blau and his wife?
”