Zabecki continued:
"The first train to arrive on 23 July 1942 made its presence known from a long
way off, not only by the rumble of the wheels on the bridge over the River
Bug, but by the frequent shots from the rifles and automatic weapons of the
train guards."
As had been advised, "the train was made up of sixty covered wagons, crammed
with people. There were old people, young people, men, women, children and
infants in quilts. The doors of the wagons were bolted, the air gaps had a
grating of barbed wire. Several SS men, with automatic weapons ready to shoot,
stood on the foot-boards of the wagons on both sides of the trains and even
lay on the roofs. It was a hot day; people in the wagons were fainting. The SS
guards with rolled-up sleeves looked like butchers, who after murdering their
victims washed their blood-stained hands and got ready for more killing.
Without a word, we understood the tragedy, since 'settling' people coming to
work would not have required such a strict guard, whereas these people were
being transported like dangerous criminals. After the transport arrived, some
fiendish spirit got into the SS men; they drew their pistols, put them away,
and took them out again, as if they wanted to shoot and kill straight away;
they approached the wagons, silencing those who were shrieking and wailing,
and again they swore and screamed. Shouting 'Tempo! Schnell', and 'At the
double quickly!' to the German railwaymen who had come from Sokolow Podlaski,
they went off to the camp, to take over their victims there 'properly'.
On the wagons we could see chalk marks giving the number of people in the
wagon, viz: 120, 150, 180 and 200 people. We worked out later that the total
number of people in the train must have been about eight to ten thousand. The
'settlers' were strangely huddled together in the wagons. All of them had to
stand, without sufficient air and without access to toilet facilities. It was
like travelling in hot ovens. The high temperature, lack of air, and the hot
weather created conditions that not even healthy, young, strong organisms
could stand. Moans, shouts, weeping, calls for water or for a doctor issued
from the wagons. And protests: 'How can people be treated so inhumanely? When
will they let us leave the wagons altogether?' Through some air gaps terrified
people looked out, asking hopefully: 'How far is it to the agricultural
estates where weâre going to work?' Twenty wagons were uncoupled from the
train, and a shunting engine began to push them along the spur-line into the
camp. A short while later it returned empty. This procedure was repeated twice
more, until all sixty wagons had been shunted into the camp, and out
again. Empty they returned to Warsaw for more 'settlers'."
Thereafter, trains arrived every day. Within two weeks people began to try
to escape, sometimes as many as one hundred out of one transport. At least
three times whole cars arrived empty and the guards were executed.
"You must imagine what it was like living here," Zabecki noted. "Every day, as
of the early morning, these hours of horror when the trains arrived, and all
the time - after the very first days - this odour, this dark foggy cloud that
hung over us, that covered the sky in that hot and beautiful summer, even on
the most brilliant days - not a rain-cloud promising relief from the heat, but
an almost sulphuric darkness bringing with it this pestilential smell."
"I saw a policeman catch two young Jewish boys. He did not shut them in a
wagon, since he was afraid to open the door in case others escaped. I was on
the platform, letting a military transport go through. I asked him to let them
go. The assassin did not even budge. He ordered the bigger boy to sit down on
the ground and take the smaller one on his knee, then he shot them both with
one bullet. Turning to me, he said: 'Youâre lucky, that was the last
bullet'. Round the huge stomach of the murderer there was a belt with a clasp
on which I could see the inscription, 'God with us'."
"... promised a Jewess that he would let her and her child go if she put a
large bribe in his hand. The Jewess gave the Ukrainian the money and her four
year old child through the air gap, and afterwards with the Ukrainianâs help,
she also got out of the wagon through the air gap. The Jewess walked away from
the train, holding her child by the hand; as soon as she walked down the
railway embankment the Ukrainian shot her. The mother rolled down into a
field, pulling the child after her. The child clutched the motherâs neck. Jews
looking out of the wagons called out and yelled, and the child turned back up
the embankment again and under the wagons to the other side of the
train. Another Ukrainian killed the child with one blow of a rifle butt on its
head."
"One mother threw a small child wrapped up in a pillow from the wagon,
shouting: 'Take it, thatâs some money to look after it.' In no time an SS man
ran up, unwrapped the pillow, seized the child by its feet and smashed its
head against a wheel of the wagon. This took place in full view of the mother,
who was howling with pain."
A fourth incident involved Willi Klinzmann, from Wuppertal, one of the two
German railwaymen who supervised the shunting work at the station: "There was
an SS man from the camp in Klinzmannâs flat. A frightened, battered Jewess who
had managed to get out of a wagon came into the station building. She probably
thought she would be safe here. Crossing the threshold of the dark corridor
close by the door of the German railwaymenâs quarters, she uttered a loud
groan and a sigh. Willi rushed out into the corridor, and seeing the woman he
shouted: 'Bist du Jüdin?' ('Are you a Jewess?'). The SS man rushed out after
Willi. The frightened Jewess exclaimed: 'Ach mein Gott!' ('Oh My God!'),
escaped to the waiting room next to the traffic supervisorâs office, and fell
down exhausted near the wall. Both the Germans grabbed the woman lying
there. They wanted her to get up and go out with them. The Jewess lay
motionless. It was already late evening. As I went out to see to a military
transport passing through the station, I shone my lamp on the woman lying
there. I noticed she was pregnant, and in the last months of pregnancy at
that. The Jewess did not react to the Germanâs calls uttering groans as if in
labour. Then Klinzmann and the SS man from the camp began to take turns at
kicking the Jewess at random and laughing. After dispatching the train, I had
to go into the office again through the waiting room, but I could not do
it. In the waiting-room a human being, helpless, defenceless, - a sick,
pregnant woman - had been murdered. The impact from the hobnailed boots was so
relentless that one of the Germans, aiming at her head, had hit too high,
right into the wall. I had to go into the office and pass close to the
murderers, since the departure of a train to Wolka Okraglik had to be attended
to. My entrance made the criminals stop. In their frenzy they had forgotten
where they were, and somebody plucked up courage to break in and stop them in
their duty of liquidating 'an enemy of Hitlerism'. They reached for their
pistols. Willi drunk, mumbled 'Fahrdienstleiter' (Traffic Supervisor). I
closed the door behind me. The butchers renewed the kicking. The Jewess was no
longer groaning. She was no longer alive."
