340 GOLGOTANuremberg Trials, Auschwitz-Birkenau had consumed over one million human
beings.^24
The human emotions which festered in Auschwitz defy description. Solid citi-
zens were driven to perform the most unnatural acts:
Here comes a woman walking briskly, hurrying almost imperceptibly yet feverishly. A
small child with the plump, rosy face of a cherub runs after her, fails to catch up, stretches
out its hands crying 'Mama, Mama'.
- Woman, take this child in your arms!
- Sir, it isn't mine, it isn't my child! The woman shouts hysterically, and runs away cov-
ering her face with her hands. She wants to hide. She wants to reach those who will
leave on foot, who won't leave by truck, who will live. She is young, healthy, pretty;
she wants to live.
But the child runs after her, pleading at the top of its voice, 'Mama,
Mama, don't run away'. - It's not mine, not mine, not...
At that point, Andre, the sailor from Sevastopol overtook her. His eyes were troubled by
vodka and the heat. He reached her, knocked her off her feet with a single powerful blow
and, as she fell, caught her by the hair and dragged her up again. His face was distorted
with fury. - Why you lousy, fucking Jew-bitch. Yebit 'tvoyu mat'. So you'd run away from your
own child! Ill show you, you whore! He grabbed her in the middle, one paw throttling
her throat which wanted to shout, and flung her into the truck like a heavy sack of
grain. - Here, take this with you, you slut! And he threw her child at her feet.
- Gut gemacht. That's how one treats unnatural mothers! said an SS-man standing near
the van...
A pair of people fall to the ground entangled in a desperate embrace. He digs his fingers
into her flesh convulsively, tears at her clothes with his teeth. She curses hysterically,
curses, blasphemes, until stifled by a boot, she chokes and falls silent. They split them
apart, like a tree; and herd them into the car like animals...
Others are carrying a girl with a missing leg. They hold her by her arms, and by her one
remaining leg. Tears are streaming down herface as she whispers sadly, 'Please, please, it
hurts, it hurts.. .' They heave her into a truck, among the corpses. She will be burned
alive, together with them.^25
- Sir, it isn't mine, it isn't my child! The woman shouts hysterically, and runs away cov-
Conditions in the other concentration camps were no better. Treblinka, on
the banks of the Bug 51 miles to the north-east of Warsaw, was a smaller camp
than Auschwitz, custom-built for the purposes of the Final Solution:
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I beg you to describe this camp to the Tribunal.
RAJZMAN: Transports arrived there every day; their number depended on the number
of trains arriving; sometimes three, four, or five trains filled exclusively with Jews - from
Czechoslovakia, Germany, Greece, and Poland. Immediately after their arrival, the
people had to leave the trains in 5 minutes and line up on the platform. All those who
were driven from the cars were divided into groups - men, women, and children, all sep-
arate. They were all forced to strip immediately, and this procedure continued under the
lashes of the German guards' whips. Workers who were employed in this operation