Auschwitz (34 page)

So I walked around the barn and then a little Polish woman started to yell at me, “Run, Toivi, run! Janek is coming!” So if Janek is coming why should I run? He will open the gate. But why is she so panicky? And when I turned around I saw Janek coming with a Nazi—the rifle pointed at me. And Janek said to the Nazi, “This is the Jew.” I said, “Janek, tell him that you are joking!” And Janek says, “He's a Jew. Take him.” Janek then said goodbye to me in a way which is difficult even now for me to repeat ... he said, “Goodbye, Toivi. I will see you on a shelf in a soap store.” Meaning I will be a piece of soap some time. And this was his goodbye—the rumors were that the Nazis were making soap from human bodies.

I imagined Sobibór as a place where they burn people, where they gas people, so it must look like a hell. And now what I see is actually nice houses, plus the commandant's villa, painted green with a little fence and flowers. On the other side was a platform pretending to be a railway station, but this was for the Jews from Holland or France—they didn't know where they are when they arrive or what's happening to them.... But we Polish Jews did know.

I was with my mother, and I said goodbye to my mother in a way that hurt me until now—probably will to the end of my days. Instead of taking
her arm like other people were doing, saying goodbye to their wives and children, I told my mother, “Ma, you told me I shouldn't drink the milk [but] to save it for another day.” Like in a way accusing her. Anyway, she said, “Is this what you have to say to me now?” ... What had happened was that the day before they took us to Sobibór I was thirsty, so I told my Ma, “Could I have a little bit of milk?” So she said, “Yes.” So when I started to drink I probably drank too much, because she said, “Toivi, leave it for tomorrow.” And that's what I reminded my mother of when she was ready to go to the gas chamber.

I didn't have a trade at all, but I wanted to live and I prayed to God—at that time I was still praying. And I prayed to this German, “Please take me” ... and I still believe that my strong will somehow reached him while he was pacing back and forward in front of the group. And I felt he looked at me and I said to myself, “God help me!” And he said, “Come out, you little one!” My luck was that at that time they did need people. So they took out forty people. In this way I started to hope in Sobibór.

We were walking behind the barracks and here I saw people with a fiddle, a harmonica and a couple dancing. So I said, “Jozek, I don't understand. You are in a death camp. How can you do that? How can you be dancing?” He said, “Toivi, we are living on borrowed time. We will die anyway. This is the end. You see the smoke? Your father, your brother, your mother went through the smoke. We will also go through the smoke. So what's the difference? Should we put on a black armband? We wouldn't last a day here!”

A Dutch transport of about three thousand Jews arrived at Sobibór. The train was divided into sections—about eight to ten wagons—and pushed into Sobibór up a special side-track. There a group of Jews called the
Banhoff Commando opened the doors of the wagons and held the heavy luggage. I was with other young men standing, yelling in the Dutch language. I asked them to leave their luggage. Women still had their handbags—now they were told to throw them on the side. At that point I noticed in their eyes some kind of special anxiety. They were afraid. Some women didn't want to leave them and a German hit them with a whip. Then they went straight to a big yard and there a German we called “the angel of death” talked to them so nicely. He apologized for the three-day journey from Holland but now he said they're in a beautiful place—because Sobibór was always beautiful. And he said, “For sanitary reasons you need to have a shower, and later you will get orders to leave here.” Then people clapped, “Bravo!” and they undressed themselves nicely, and they went straight through a whole room—maybe sixty meters long—to a barrack. And there I was again. I was waiting for them. Then the women started coming—completely nude. Young kids, young girls, old ladies. I was a shy boy and I didn't know where to look. They gave me long scissors. I didn't know what to do with these shears. So my friend, who'd been there many times, said, “Cut the hair—you need to cut it very close.” But I'm asked to leave a little—especially by the young girls—and not to cut so much. They didn't know that they will die in a few minutes. Then they were told to go on from the barracks just a few [steps] to the gas chamber. This trap was so perfect that I'm sure that when they were in the gas chambers and gas came out instead of water, probably they were thinking that this was some kind of malfunction.

Yes, I thought about this. But nobody did anything. [I was] fifteen years old and had people with grown-up experience all around and nobody was doing anything. People change under some conditions. People asked me, “What did you learn?” and I think I'm only sure of one thing—nobody knows themselves. The nice person on the street, you ask him, “Where is North Street?” and he goes with you half a block and shows you, and is nice and kind. That same person in a different situation could be the worst sadist. Nobody knows themselves. All of us could be good people or bad people in these [different] situations. Sometimes, when somebody is really nice to me, I find myself thinking, “How will he be in Sobibór?”