Rivka Yossellevska-On Her Destination to A Concentration Camp

On reaching the destination, Rivka Yosselevska saw that the people from the truck had already been taken off, and were undressed, “all lined up.” It was some three kilometres from the village, by “a kind of hillock”. At the foot of the hillock was a ditch. The Jews were ordered to stand on the hillock, where four SS men stood “armed to the teeth.”

“We saw naked people lined up”, Rivka Yosselevska recalled, “and we hoped this was only torture. Maybe there is hope – hope of living.”

Her account continued:

“One could not leave the line, but I wished to see – what are they doing on the hillock? I turned my head and saw that some three or four rows were already killed – on the ground.

There were some twelve people amongst the dead. I also want to mention that my child said while we were lined up in the ghetto, she said `Mother, why did you make me wear the Shabbat dress, we are being taken to be shot’-; and when we stood near the dug-out, near the grave, she said, `Mother, why are we waiting, let us run!’

Some of the young people tried to run, but they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was difficult to hold onto the children. We took all children, not ours, and we carried – we were anxious to get it all over- the suffering of the children was difficult- we all trudged along to come nearer to the place and to come nearer to the end of the torture of the children. The children were taking leave of their parents and parents of their elder people.

We were driven; we were already undressed; the clothes were removed and taken away; our father did not want to undress; he wanted to keep his underclothes on. He did not want to stand naked. Then they tore the clothing off the old man and he was shot. I saw it with my own eyes. And then they took my mother, and she said, let us go before her, but they caught my mother and shot her too; and then there was my grandmother, my father’s mother, standing there; she was eighty years old and she had two children in her arms. And then there was my father’s sister. She also had children in her arms and she was shot on the spot with the babies in her arms.

And finally my turn came. There was my younger sister, and she wanted to leave, she pleaded with the German; she asked to run, naked- she went up to the Germans with one of her friends; they were embracing each other; and she asked to be spared, standing there naked. He looked into her eyes and shot the two of them. They fell together in their embrace, the two young girls, my sister and her young friend. Then my second sister was shot and then my turn came.

We turned towards the grave and then he turned around and asked, `Whom shall I shoot first?’ We were already facing the grave. The German asked, `Whom do you want me to shoot first?’ I did not answer. I felt him take the child from my arms. The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First he held onto my hair and turned my head around; I stayed standing; I heard a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me, ordered me to watch, and then turned my head around and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies – but I felt nothing.

The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I thought may be I am not alive anymore, but I feel something after I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about.

I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself, to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose, and I felt bodies pulling at with me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down, down. And yet with my last strength I came up on top of the grave, and when I did I did not know the place, so many bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible. They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying, `Mother, Father’; I could not stand on my feet.

Chaim Engel-Working in Death Camp

No food, no shelter, no facilities you have to come out, and this is what happened. After three nights hiding and not having food, whoever was hiding came out of this place and the others went already what they collected, they went already sent them back to a camp and we were the ones that were hiding.

So they later took us to the trains, to the freight trains, and whatever people they collected, they pushed us in, in this freight train, as many people as they could squeeze in.

We were standing, no moving, nothing and the whole night we travelled in this train. Now there were people who fell down – people had to go to the bathroom and there was a mess – you cannot imagine.

But you had no choice, nothing – in the morning we ended up arriving in Sobibor. That is the way we arrived in Sobibor, I was with my brother and myself and my friend, and we all meet the rest of the people, about 700 – 800 people, and they took us out from the trains and they put us in two lines and they start collecting – picking out people.

I didn’t know what the picking out means, one German asked me, “Where are you from?”

I said, “From Lodz.” “Out”!

“What are you?” “A carpenter.” “Out”!

Things like that so they picked about 18-20 people. Well let me say that we hear in Poland what happens with the Jews. They kill Jews and they gas Jews and things like that.

But we really as young people, we really didn’t believe that something like that is possible. We thought, “Maybe the younger people will be taken to work – maybe only the older people…..”

You just didn’t want to believe, because it was so incomprehensible, so unbelievable that something like that can happen that you just – even if you had the intelligence, you didn’t believe it.

So when they picked us out in the camp, I really didn’t know what the picking out means, whether life or death. So they took us the 20 people, they took us in one side and the others went to the camp, to the gas chambers what we found out later.

So we worked in there – went in the afternoon they took us with all the other people to separate the clothes. That started to be our work and I started to separate the clothes – that was the clothes from people who had just arrived with the transport what we came with and while I did that I find the clothes of my brother, the pictures from my family, so I knew already – they already told me what’s going on.

So I knew already what happened, that he went to the gas chamber with my friend and I am here separating his clothes. So you can imagine what went through my mind when that happened.

What did you do? How did you handle that?

Well I really don’t know – everything stopped for me, like I stopped functioning. I just heard all the stories before that didn’t penetrate me. I didn’t accept it, but that made it already accepting. That is the truth.

Day in, day out and then after work, they always kept us around five o’clock, before it gets dark we go back to the barracks where we sleep. Selma told about how the work was divided, there was a section where the German’s lived and that was really fixed up nicely with gardens and things like that.

And then there were barracks where we lived, mostly where we slept, in other words. And there were a few places in the camp where they had a shoemaker, a goldsmith, a tailor, a regular smith, things like that, but that was mostly not for the camp.

That was mostly work done for the Germans in the camp. When they need some work, they did it – like the Goldsmith who did for them good different things, like rings.

You see, the camp really was – that was one of many camps, of about four or five camps, what really was a death camp. It was not a concentration camp- the distinction is the death camp, people came there, they were directed to the gas chamber. They – the small group what worked like us, was just to keep the things going – in other words separating the clothes, cleaning out.

Avraham Bomba-Arrival at Trebinkla Concentration Camp

We came to a halt, I looked out and I see a sign which didn’t mean nothing to me. The sign was Treblinka.

Today, everybody knows what that word means – at that time it was just a name, not a … a little bit, a tiny little, maybe it was 40 families altogether. Stayed looking out through the window, more trains came, from other parts of the country. They went in, after about 2 hours they came out, all the trains were empty.

And now was the time our train started rolling and we went in, gate opened up, rolled into the camp of Treblinka. 10 men over there – we got in over there. The trains didn’t go in, like you know, the first goes in.

The engineer takes a train but backwards because the engineer and the people working in the locomotive of the train, they shouldn’t know what is going on over there. They were not supposed to see what is going on, that’s why he pushed in the end of the train. And we went in.

“Out!” Out!” they started yelling. It opened up – I didn’t know how many dead ones were in the train because nobody counted how many we had in our train. We had on out … men on the right side at the open, women at the left side at the barracks.

We didn’t know what it is, and we didn’t believe something was wrong. I know that something is not usual and that this is the last time we see each other. My wife, the kid and my mother went to the left side. My little brother who was 13 years old at that time – and some of the Germans, Ukrainians and also Jews from the “Red Commando”, say, “Take off your clothes – take off your clothes – start taking off your clothes.”

All the people did, but myself I don’t know what happened – a man, a Jewish man wearing a red band, the so-called Red Commando went through- he recognised someone which was near to me, he said, “What are you doing here?” “You see what I’m doing here.” So he said to him – “We need a few people.” Go to the side. “You need more?” “Yes, need more.” They took out about 16, 17 people. I was between them. Now this man which he recognised, he was married to a cousin of mine.

They took out his brothers –in-law, three of them, myself, my little brother they couldn’t take out because he was a kid, 13 years old. And a few more stayed on the side. We didn’t see. People went in through the gate. Now we know what the gate was. It was the way to the gas chamber and we never see them again.

That was the first hour we came in. After that we, the people, 18 or 16 people…. More people came in from the working people, what worked in the gas chambers. We had an order to clean up the place, it was horrible, but in 5-10 minutes the place had to look spotless. And it looked spotless, like there was never anybody in the place. So the next transport when it comes in, they shouldn’t see what’s going on.

You were cleaning up the place?

We were cleaning up in the outside. Taking away all the clothes to those places where the clothes were. Now not only the clothes, all the papers, all the money, all the….. whatever somebody had with him. And they had a lot of things with them, pots and pans. We cleaned up. Still didn’t know what’s going on until this guy with the red band – when we asked him, “what’s happened to them?” He said, “Be happy, we are here because they’re finished.”

At night when they took us into the barrack … the barrack was near, I was just about I would say 50 meters from the gate to the gas chamber.

It was at the same place where the people undressed themselves. The men undressed themselves, there was a well.

Why I mention the well, because I tell you what the well was. People they knew already, not from the beginning like from Warsaw- they started on the 22 July 1942, so people they knew already what Treblinka is.

That is not a working camp, not a concentration camp, but an extermination camp where nobody comes out alive. The minute when they came in, we find over there – took out from the well, over 50 people. They jumped in, instead of going into the gas chamber, they just jumped into the well.

Jumped into the well, I am sorry?

The well. Yes. They drowned themselves. Took them out and that water we used to drink. Nobody got sick, nothing happened. At night, couldn’t sleep. Some of us which were … there were religious people and they found out that their parents or their wife or children were killed, they were not taken out, people who have children. Mostly they took out people, 25, 26, 28 years old.

Some of them they were religious and they start saying the traditional Kaddish. That was the first night I was over there. In the morning – 5 o’clock in the morning, the order, “Out” went out. Stayed in line to work.

What was the work?

The work in Treblinka – mostly sorting the clothes which they were taking away from the people they killed and there was piles of clothes. They had to be divided – like coat to coat, shoes to shoes, shirts and also the quality of it. Cotton, other things, wool that was the job. We called it the Sorting –Kommando – maybe you heard that name- maybe not?

So we worked over there. I myself I was a barber – then at the third day or so it came, another order. They need barbers – from my town between the 16 people they took out, there was one more barber. But I had some friends with me – you do. You’re going to be a barber, they took also from other places, mostly from Warsaw. They got themselves about 14,15 barbers.