SZMUL GOLDSTEINOral testimony of Szmul Goldstein. More
“In Treblinka camp I & Shimon Rosenthal was one of 50 people who were chosen for labor. My job was sorting clothes. I did this work for about 5 months. I would labor from dawn to dark. Any little mistake carried with it the threat of death.”
“We both crawled into the pits. First there were pits, then an embankment and a fence. The fence was made of barbed wire intertwined with hemlock branches. The whole fence trembled. I leaned against the pole, climbed on the pole and jumped. Szoken was already in the grass on the other side. We kissed and cried.”
“We were loaded into a wagon in the direction of Treblinka. Young men from our car broke down the door and jumped out one by one. While much is said about jumping out of train cars, very little is known about the deadly dangers and thousands of complications involved in jumping.”
“When the train was running at top speed I barely squeezed through the window and jumped out. I do not remember the details. I only remember that when I woke up a peasant woman was standing next to me and told me to run away from there, because the Germans were still looking for me.”
“Behind these wires were anti-tank wires. It was hard to cut through them, so we broke through them. More than one left a shoe there and ran away in one. Bullets whizzed around. Many fell. Treblinka was burning. The group running around me was getting smaller. After fifteen kilometers, I found myself in the forest with three other people. I told them we had to find some thick undergrowth and hide in it because it wasn’t safe to run any further. There were shots in front of us and behind us.”
“They were constantly shooting for fear. It didn’t bother us. We continued to work quietly and in the evening we had a hole cut under the window, because it was placed too high and the hole was close to the door so that you could grab the steps. Many people jumped, many were killed.”