342 GOLGOTA
stage of pregnancy. She was... put on a grass plot, and several Germans came to watch
the delivery. This spectacle lasted z hours. When the child was born, Menz asked the
grandmother... whom she preferred to see killed first. The grandmother begged to be
killed. But, of course, they did the opposite. The newborn baby was killed first, then the
child's mother, and finally the grandmother....
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Tell us, Witness, how many persons were
brought daily to the Treblinka Camp?
RAJZMAN: Between July and December 1942 an average of 3 transports of 60 cars
each arrived every day. In 1943 the transports arrived more rarely.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Tell us, Witness, how many persons were extermi-
nated in the camp, on an average, daily?
RAJZMAN: On an average, I believe they killed in Treblinka from ten to twelve thou-
sand persons daily.. .Z6
The guards, especially those who wished to lend an air of order and decency
to the proceedings, were brutalized beyond all human recognition. Rudolf
Hoess, the Camp Commandant at Auschwitz from 1940 to 1944, penned in his
autobiography, perhaps the most damning self-condemnation of human nature
ever invented:
I had to appear cold and indifferent to events which must have wrung the heart of any-
one possessed of human feelings ... I had to watch coldly while the mothers with laugh-
ing or crying children went to the gas-chambers. On one occasion two small children
were so absorbed in some game that they quite refused to let their mother tear them away
from it. Even the Jews of the Special Department were reluctant to pick them up. The
imploring look in the eyes of the mother, who certainly knew what was happening, is
something I shall never forget... Everyone was looking at me. I nodded to the junior
non-commissioned officer on duty, and he picked up the struggling, screaming children
in his arms and carried them into the gas-chamber ... I had to see everything. I had to
watch hour by hour, by night and by day, the burning and the removal of the bodies, the
extraction of the teeth, the cutting off of the hair, the whole grisly business. I had to stand
for hours on end in the ghastly stench, while the mass graves were being opened and the
bodies dragged out and burned. I had to look through the peepholes of the gas-chambers
and watch the process of death itself ... I had to do all this, because I was the one to
whom everyone looked, because I had to show them all that I did not merely issue the
orders and make the regulations but was also prepared to be present at whatever task I
had assigned to my subordinates ... In the face of such grim considerations I was forced
to bury all human considerations as deeply as possible ... I had to observe everything
with a cold indifference ... In Auschwitz, I truly had no reason to complain that I was
bored ... I had only one end in view, to drive everyone and everything forward, so that
I could accomplish the measures laid down... Every German had to commit himself
heart and soul, so that we might win the war ... By the will of the Reicbsfuehrer SS,
Auschwitz became the greatest human extermination centre of all time...
When I saw my children playing happily, or observed my wife's delight over our
youngest, the thought would often come over me, how long will our happiness last? My
wife could never understand these gloomy moods of mine, and ascribed them to some
annoyance connected with my work ... I had become dissatisfied with myself. To this
must be added that I was worried because of anxiety about the never-ending work, and