Inside the Gas Chambers

by Shlomo Venezia

  Naked women being unloaded,” David Olère, 1946. Wash and China ink on paper. Ghetto Fighters Museum, Galilee, Israel

  For us, this was by far the most difficult task to accomplish…. There couldn’t be anything harder than taking people to their deaths and holding them while they were executed. One time, I had to help an old woman get undressed. Like all elderly people, she clung to her things. And then, when faced with a man she didn’t know, the poor woman was completely distraught. Every time I tried to take her stockings off, she pulled them back up again; I’d roll them down on one side, she’d pull them up on the other. But it was starting to get dangerous, since if the German waited too long, it might cost me my life. I didn’t know what to do…. I started to get nervous. It’s one of the things that’s stayed in my mind, like … I was at the end of my tether; I grabbed hold of her forcibly to take off her stockings. I’d have torn them if necessary – anything to get them off her. The poor woman was protecting what she could. But she ended up the same as all the rest.

  Where was the SS man, in cases such as that?

  If you went up the three steps, you found yourself in the room with the ovens. You had to walk past them behind, on the side where the ashes were taken out. The German generally positioned himself at the far end, just hidden behind the corner of the last oven. We walked past him as if we were going to go up the stairs that led to the attic. The victims hardly saw him, and as soon as we’d passed him, he shot at point-blank range into the back of their necks. After a while, they changed their method and started using an air rifle, since a pistol bullet was too big and the impact was too close, and shattered the victim’s skull. This was particularly unpleasant for the German, who got spattered by the blood. The person accompanying the victim needed to know the technique: he had to hold the victims by the ear, at arm’s length, then the German shot, and, before the person fell to the ground, we had to take great care to make them lower their heads, since otherwise the blood spurted out like a fountain. If by accident a little blood fell on the SS man, he took it out on us and didn’t hesitate to punish us or even kill us there and then. This almost happened with my brother. At that time he was already with me in Crematorium III. He wasn’t able to lower the victim’s head quickly enough and the blood spurted out onto the German. As luck would have it, I wasn’t far away and I intervened, saying in German, “Das ist mein Bruder!” “That’s my brother!” That could have created problems for me, too, but instead the German calmed down and let us leave. From that time on, my brother always avoided as much as possible this particularly horrible task. For me, the hardest thing was having to let the dead person drop. Feeling the person’s weight, in that fall in which I could not help but participate. It made me ill, hearing the body slump to the ground, even if I knew the person was already dead, and I did everything I could to soften the fall.

  You see, the men in the Sonderkommando were also forced to do that kind of thing. It can’t be denied, nor can it be said that it didn’t exist or isn’t true. And yet, in this case, I acknowledge that I feel a bit complicit, even if I didn’t kill them. We had no choice, no other possibility in that hell! If I’d refused to do so, the German would have jumped on me and killed me immediately, to make an example of me. Fortunately, these groups weren’t sent to our Crematorium very often. Two or three times at most.

  The men of the Sonderkommando told me how things happened in Crematorium V. It seems that, over there, the trucks unloaded the living victims into the ditches that were burning under the open sky. I didn’t see this personally, so I can’t confirm it, but it seems perfectly possible to me that they didn’t even bother to kill people before throwing them into the fire. With us, it took longer, since the German had to kill them one by one.

  Did you go to Crematoria IV and V, and were you personally able to note the differences with Crematoria II and III?

  Yes, I went there four or five times, to see my brother who worked there for the first few months. Later on, I managed to get him brought over to my crematorium, since the work was better organized there, so a little less demanding. In particular, in our crematorium there were no open graves, as the bodies were burned in the ovens. But over there, the ovens often failed to work or were inadequate, so the bodies had to be burned in open ditches. When they needed extra hands, they asked my kapo, Lemke,5 to go over with a few people to help. I went over several times, but it was always an excuse to see my brother.

  I remember that on the road, as we came back from Crematorium IV, the German would occasionally ask my cousin Yakob Gabbai to sing. “Greco! Singen!” he told him. Yakob had a fine baritone voice and he then started singing Greek patriotic songs that the Germans couldn’t understand. Throughout the camp you heard a song, “Tin Elliniki simea …,” the words of which meant “The Greek flag, my God how I love it, my mother, I will never abandon my native land to foreigners, I would rather die.” It was as if the Greeks had suddenly and victoriously entered the camp.

  I didn’t go into Crematoria IV and V, so I can only say what I saw from the outside. I’m often amazed when I think back – I was so curious, how can it be that I never tried to get in to see what was inside? If I’d thought for a second that I was going to survive, I’d have noted everything so that I could relate it…. But anyway, I saw only the ditches. These were like big swimming pools; the bodies were brought up and then placed in them by Sonderkommando men who knew how to do their job. If I remember correctly, there were two ditches in front of the entrance, on the Crematorium side. I know that historians say there were more ditches, but when I was there, I saw only two working. They resembled the ditches that I saw near Bunker 2, with one difference: in Crematorium V, the ditches supplemented the ovens.6

  Crematoria IV and V were smaller than Crematoria II and III; the ovens did not work as well, and were less powerful. The ditches made it possible for the corpses to be eliminated more quickly, as it takes a long time to burn seven hundred bodies in such small ovens. Especially when the ovens didn’t work properly. In our crematoria, there could be as many as one thousand, eight hundred people.

  On average, the whole process in which a single convoy was eliminated was supposed to last seventy-two hours. Killing them was quick; the thing that took such a long time was burning the corpses. That was actually the Germans’ main problem: getting rid of the bodies. The ditches made it possible to go a bit faster.

  When you went to Crematoria IV and V, were you obliged to help as well?

  In principle, yes, I should have helped out. The kapos could order us, for example, to carry the corpses from one place to a ditch. But the ones giving orders over there weren’t those of my crematorium. So we weren’t running too many risks if we were a bit obstructive – for instance, we could do things slowly and not in the correct way. We weren’t the regular workers, just helpers, supernumeraries. We didn’t need to worry about not doing things on time, nor about being blamed if things went wrong.

  I remember a terrible episode that I witnessed while I was there. Moll, the dreaded Malahamoves, flew into a rage against two young Greek brothers, Alberto and Raul Jachon. He ordered them to bring a basin into which he poured some flammable liquid. Then that cursed Moll ordered them to take off their shoes and place their feet into the basin. He tossed in a match and the mixture quickly caught fire. Obviously, they jumped out of the basin to stop themselves getting burned, and this drove Moll furious with rage. He wanted to “amuse” himself a little more, so he ordered them to climb the barbed-wire fence, and duped them into thinking that if they reached the other side, they’d be free. Just then, there wasn’t any current in the barbed wire. They managed to climb quite high. But, of course, Moll had no intention of keeping his promise; he shot them down like dogs.

  So did your brother work in that crematorium?

  Yes, but actually, I saw him only once in Crematorium IV. Although I went there on several occasions, just to find out how he was, I didn’t find him. When I finally did see him, I already
knew that it was more terrible and demanding to work in his crematorium than in mine. At least we didn’t have to transport the bodies to the ditches. Even more than wanting to be with him, I wanted to make sure that he wouldn’t stay in that place. So I did everything to bring him across. In any case, I wanted us to be able to spend our last moments together. I was convinced that, after the third month, there’d be a selection and the men in the Sonderkommando would be eliminated. I wasn’t expecting to live beyond those three months, so, when I saw that the end was approaching, I went to see the kapo of my crematorium, Lemke. He was a Polish Jew, not a bad man – we respected him. The kapos in the crematoria were not like the other kapos in the camp. They were all Jews and they didn’t beat the prisoners, they didn’t use any sadistic violence on us and, in general, they were the ones who, together with a few others, organized the October revolt.

  Lemke was a somewhat reserved man; he didn’t say much and he wasn’t easy to get on with. He merely said to us, “Hevre!” “[To work,] brothers!” The only risk you ran if you didn’t obey him was that he might designate you for the next selection. But I managed to establish a relationship with him; I wouldn’t say one of friendship, but one of trust. This made it possible for me to go to him and ask him, in my own way, in my rudimentary German, whether it would be possible to transfer my brother. He asked me whether my brother was someone strong and of good character. I answered yes; he was very muscular, physically he was even stronger than I – and I also told him how we often played duets together: I played the harmonica while he danced. At that time I didn’t really understand why he’d asked me those questions. But the important thing was that he accepted. Later, I realized he was already thinking of the revolt and wanted to have with him men who were both physically strong and strong of character.

  To bring my brother over from Crematorium IV to Crematorium III, we had to exchange a Stück, in other words a “piece,” since we were considered to be nothing more than pieces. Lemke came to an agreement with the kapo of Crematorium IV. One day, when four men from our crematorium had gone off with a pot to get the soup from Lager d, one of them, quite an elderly Greek, took the place of my brother, who came over at the same time from Crematorium IV. This was how he joined me in Crematorium III. For the Germans and the kapos, it was all the same, one “piece” here or there … the important thing was for the numbers to be right. They didn’t even look at the identity numbers; we were merely Stücke.

  You say that the kapos in the Sonderkommando didn’t use violence. What about the SS men in the Crematorium?

  There weren’t many SS in the Crematorium. Generally speaking, there were two SS men assigned to each crematorium: one on daytime duty, the other at night. There were more of them when a convoy arrived, but there were only two permanent guards. Most of the time, they stayed put in their little corner and didn’t come out until the convoys arrived, and from time to time to keep an eye on us. But in principle they didn’t need to come and check very often, since that was the kapos’ job. If everything wasn’t finished in three days, it meant that we hadn’t worked hard enough. But the kapo generally stepped in first.

  The Sonderkommando was a particular case. Overall, the SS who oversaw us left us alone. They didn’t fly off the handle with us, since our work was too important in their eyes and they didn’t try to undermine us. Apart from Moll, of course, who was in charge of all the crematoria. That cursed “Angel of Death” was the worst of all. The minute he arrived in a crematorium it was the end of the world, and even the German guard was afraid that he might be blamed for everything and anything. Moll used every pretext to yell, terrorize, and punish. There were other cases: in my crematorium, I remember one of the guards who was a veritable brute. He was very tall, had a big face, but I can’t remember his name. He resembled one of the SS men drawn by David Olère. This man enjoyed personally killing his victims.7

  In actual fact, killing the victims with a revolver shot was never a problem for any of the Germans, apart from a single SS man I knew. He wasn’t even German, actually, he was Dutch, and I always found him more humane than the others. I spoke with him once, and he told me he’d volunteered for the SS, since he believed in the rigor and efficiency of the Germans. When he realized what things were really like, it was already too late for him. He had to stay put and keep his mouth shut, otherwise he risked being sent to the Russian front or being eliminated immediately. But he avoided as much as possible having to kill people himself. When he found himself in these situations, he preferred to call over another SS man so he wouldn’t have to kill anyone himself. To avoid the other Germans finding out about his hesitations, he had to pretend and to give the impression that he was as harsh as they were. So, to give that impression, he often hit the prisoners; he’d worked out an entire system to avoid hurting his victims. He used a cane of bamboo, split in the middle. When he hit someone, the pain was minimal, but the noise made by the two tips as they came together made it sound like a whip being loudly cracked. He was the only SS man I ever knew to behave like that. The others were all vicious animals, without humanity. When it was necessary to kill, they killed without compunction. They created a huge chaos to frighten people and disorientate them as soon as they arrived. The broken families, the children terrorized and beaten – nobody knew how to react other than by keeping in line, and this was how they managed to do what they wanted with us.

  “Portrait of SS man Georges, one of the cruelest torturers in the camp,” David Olère, 1947. Wash and China ink on paper. Private collection

  The Dutchman was more humane; I even had a conversation with him when he happened to come into the chimney room where I was alone. I’d picked up, among the clothes left there, a very fine harmonica, a Höhner. I knew how to play it, as a matter of fact, since I’d been lucky enough to have one when I was a child. From time to time, when I could take a breather and let the others carry on without me for a minute, I’d go into that square room and take out my harmonica for a bit of relaxation, or I simply leaned against the window ledge to get some fresh air. This room was, so to speak, my refuge. It was small, with a window and, in the middle, the huge, square brick conduit of the chimney that ran across the room. One day when I was there, quietly playing my harmonica, the door opened and suddenly revealed this Dutch SS man. I immediately stood up and took off my cap. He came into the room and with an encouraging wave of his hand he told me, “Spiel!” “Play!” I hesitated for a moment, but he insisted. So I played the first tune that came into my head. He really liked it and said he wanted to learn how to play too. I couldn’t read music, and told him that I played only by ear. So he motioned me to hand him the instrument so he could try in turn. The most surprising thing was that he took the harmonica and placed it to his lips without first wiping it, as everyone naturally does. He tried to play, but only inaudible sounds emerged. He gave it back to me with a shrug, and we started to talk.

  Did he never have to lead selections inside the Sonderkommando?

  No, he was only a guard. And it so happens that, when I joined the Sonderkommando, the work was of a kind that my group never had to undergo any selection. Quite the opposite – they never stopped adding to the number of persons who worked in the crematoria. It was the old hands who told us how the selections were carried out. It wasn’t like in the other parts of the camp. With us, the German went to see the kapo and told him how many people had to be “transferred.” We knew that “transferred” meant “eliminated.” The kapo decided whom to send, and in general he chose the latest arrivals. I also have to say that the Polish Jews tended to help each other, whereas we Sephardim were generally less secure. That’s why I tried to gain the confidence of my kapo, Lemke.

  We were always expecting a selection to take place, which would mean it was all over. For example, when they sent us to the Sauna for a shower. This wasn’t so much for disinfection purposes, since in the Sonderkommando we could change clothes quite regularly so as to avoid the risks of an epidemic being ca
used by lice. But their aim was to get us used to these “excursions” in small groups. So, if they’d wanted to eliminate us, it would have been easier for them to pretend they were taking us to the Sauna.

  And when you did go to the Sauna, you didn’t wonder whether this was the last time?

  No, we didn’t think anything. On the contrary, it was even a liberation for us. Some people asked me if it wouldn’t be better to get it over with. Perhaps – or even certainly. But I didn’t think of it; we had to keep on going, day by day, without asking ourselves any questions: keep on living, even if it was terrible. To my knowledge, nobody in the Sonderkommando committed suicide. I know that some of them said they wanted to live at any price. Personally, I think I’d rather have died. But each time, some words of my mother’s used to come to my mind: “While there’s life, there’s hope.” We were too close to death, but we carried on, day by day. I think we needed a special strength to get through it all, a psychological and physical strength.