Daša Drndić - Trieste

Yes? And who are you?

Franciszek Zabecki, head of the civilian train station at Treblinka. A member of the Polish resistance movement. I followed the arrivals and departures of trains. I noted them down. On 22 July, 1942, I received an official telegram stating a short, regular and very frequent line would run on the Warsaw-Treblinka route. This line was supposed to transport new “settlers”, the telegram said. The trains would be made up of sixty covered cattle wagons, or rather closed goods wagons, it said. After unloading, the trains were to be sent back to Warsaw, it said. Why “settlers” in goods wagons, I ask you? Behind bolted doors and narrow slits covered in barbed wire instead of windows; crammed in like livestock, so packed together they couldn’t even crouch. That telegram was signed by you .

I don’t remember .

You are the person who drew up the train timetable, Mr Ganzenmüller. This was your timetable, Mr Ganzenmüller. There were between eight and ten thousand men, women, the elderly and a lot of children in the first train which arrived on 23 July, 1942. A lot of small children, infants. When it spewed out its freight, the train returned to Warsaw. Empty. To pick up new “settlers”. When the horrors became unbearable, and I could tell you about them, the horrors, day and night, you halted all regular passenger traffic to Treblinka, Mr Ganzenmüller. Surely you remember that, Mr Ganzenmüller, you drew up that schedule. After September 1942 the only trains that reached Treblinka were military and deportation trains, there were no picnickers, no excursions; civilians did not come out on nature tours, Mr Ganzenmüller. The trains were met at the station by S.S. men with sleeves rolled up and pistols drawn . Tempo! Schnell! they shouted. The number of passengers was marked on each wagon with chalk. I wrote it down. For two years I wrote this down, from one day to the next, and I added it up. I know, while others guess. I am the only living witness who was at Treblinka from the day when the extermination of the Jews began to the day the camp was closed on 16 August, 1944. All the German documents were burned, but I copied them. One million two hundred thousand people were killed at Treblinka. There is no doubt about it .

Even after the rebellion, the transports did not cease. You don’t remember Mr Ganzenmüller. You don’t remember how you again changed the timetable of trains. How after the rebellion you redirected the trains to other camps, and you turned Treblinka into a transit station. I remember .

Transport PJ 201: 32 wagons, Bialystok-Lublin via Treblinka, 18 August, 1943 .

Transport PJ 203: 40 wagons, Bialystok-Lublin via Treblinka, 19 August, 1943 .

Lublin via Treblinka, 19 August, 1943. That same day, transport PJ 204: 39 wagons from Bialystok to Lublin, stopping at Treblinka .

Transport PJ 209: 9 wagons, for Lublin via Treblinka, 24 August, 1943 .

Transport PJ 211: 31 wagons left for Lublin on 8 September .

Transport PJ 1025: 50 wagons of Jews from Minsk Litewski were sent to Chelm, in fact to Sobibor, 17 September, 1943 .

I don’t remember .

On 22 August, and on 2, 9, 13 and 21 September wagons departed from Treblinka loaded with the clothing of the murdered Jews. The liquidation of the camp begins. They cart away the boards, construction material and quicklime. They take away the dredger. Five bolted wagons take away the remaining “workers”, meaning prisoners, to Sobibor on 20 October and 4 September, 1943. On 31 October, the metal structures and liquidation equipment were taken away. Everything is recorded here, Mr Ganzenmüller. More than one hundred wagons of goods and material left Treblinka .

Mr Wolff, they call you Karel?

Yes, Your Honour. Karel is somehow softer than Karl .

Like Ganzenmüller, you too claim that you knew nothing, yet recently in a B.B.C. documentary, The World at War, you talked about how you were present in 1941 at the execution of Jewish prisoners in Minsk and described the splatter of brains on Himmler’s coat .

I remembered that later. They reminded me .

When did you first hear of Operation Reinhard?

From Himmler?

I had no idea there was an Operation Reinhard. This is the first time I hear of it. Here in Nuremberg .

And the camps in Lublin and Auschwitz, did you know of them?

I heard for the first time of those appalling places on 19 March, 1945, when I came to Switzerland. With horror my Swiss friends gave me newspapers that reported on the atrocities perpetrated in those camps .

When were you transferred to Trieste?

On 9 September, 1943 .

Did you belong to the circle of Himmler’s close friends?

Yes .

Did you hear Himmler’s speech in Poznan in October 1943?

No, Your Honour. At that time I was already in Trieste .

And in Trieste that speech was never talked about?

No, it was distributed to officers who were at the front .

Did you ever hear about Russians and Poles, who were not Jews, being killed and exterminated, did you ever hear about that?

No, I have never heard anything about extermination. Your Honour is probably referring to systematic, planned extermination .

Exactly .

I know nothing about that .

So this is the first you have ever heard of it?

Please? I don’t hear well .

Is this is the first time you’ve heard about the mass extermination of people?

They asked me about it after capitulation. That was the first time .

Have you any idea of the extent of the exterminations?

Not precisely .

All the evidence points to several million victims .

I am very grateful, Your Honour, for the information you have just given me .

Did you ever visit the Warsaw Ghetto?

No .

Czerniakow in his diary provides the day and hour of your arrival in Reichsführer S. S. Heinrich Himmler’s company .

Ich bin ein alter Mann, Your Honour. I cannot remember everything .

Herr Wolff, I consider you responsible for the deportation of 300,000 Jews to the Treblinka concentration camp during the summer of 1942 and I sentence you to fifteen years in prison and ten years’ loss of civil liberties .

Too late, Your Honour. I was released for good behaviour .

The Tedeschi family go on living in the illusion of ignorance. Those who know what is happening do not speak. Those who don’t know ask no questions. Whoever asks gets no answers. Then, as now. Hence, since they don’t know, the Tedeschi family don’t ask, so there is nothing for them to find out, so there is no reason for their getting unduly upset.

In the 1970s Haya, for the second time in her life, enters the belly of Budapest by train, at that same station, at Keleti. The space is now completely changed yet it is the same; it pulses to the rhythm of the walkers lugging a burden different from that wartime cargo. The light in the station sways, trembles, grabs for the little bits of glass embedded on the ceiling, which gleam like a honeycomb, and then glides speedily off, as if saying, I’ll be back . The faces of the travellers are serene, nearly motionless, but their bodies sway mischievously, almost cheerfully. Not like back then, when a terrible paralysis reigned, with fear swaying in its lap. For, in the 1970s, Haya finally learns of (some) events she knew nothing about in the 1940s, although like cataclysmic floods and earthquakes, with a horrible noise, they were rumbling here, right beneath her window.