Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

The Allied Nations didn’t do as much as they could have to save Jewish refugees. Both Britain and the US closed their borders to Jewish refugees. In one case, Britain refused a boat of Jewish refugees, which then sank, killing all 769 onboard. The US accepted 10,000 English children without visas after Germany took France, making Britain the only Allied nation left in Europe; by contrast, the US stalled for over five months on a similar program for Jewish children, waiting until it was no longer possible to save those children. Even more so than Britain, the US did not want to be seen as “fighting a war for the Jews” (601). Switzerland refused or expelled tens of thousands of refugees because they were Jewish.

There were some successes in saving Jewish refugees. Throughout the war, Sweden, upon whom Germany relied for steel, leveraged that position to provide a safe haven for over 42,000 Jewish refugees. In 1944, the American War Refugee Board persuaded Romania that since the war was lost, they should return 48,000 Jews to their homes. However, there was almost no escape for Jews in German-occupied territory from 1942-43, especially in the east.

By April 1943, the transports to Treblinka abated again, leaving the Jewish workers starving. They continued planning their revolt. Glazar, assigned by the SS to collect branches outside the camp to camouflage the fences, smuggled food back into the camp to keep those planning the revolt strong. By this point, plentiful food no longer came on the transports.

During this time, the guards developed a new method for burning corpses. They ordered the construction of two giant iron racks—called “the roasts”—out of train rails that were capable of burning hundreds of bodies at once. The SS became increasingly anxious about hiding what they were doing as the Russians advanced.

Gustav Münzberger was the SS officer in charge of Treblinka’s gas chambers and served six years in prison for his crimes. In 1972, Sereny visits him in the German town where he lives with his wife in his son’s house. His son, Horst, is appalled by his father’s crimes (his wife’s father is a known anti-Nazi) but feels obligated to give his parents a place to live. Gustav’s wife is anxious to explain that they weren’t antisemitic growing up and never saw anyone persecuting Jews. When she learned what her husband was doing, she did nothing, giving the common refrain: “It was awful of course, but what could we do?” (615). There is tension between Horst and his wife and his parents. Horst doesn’t know how he will tell his son of his grandfather’s crimes.

Growing up in Sudetenland (now a part of the Czech Republic), Horst remembers that his father was a sensitive man who worked as a middling-yet-thorough joiner. Joining the SS gave Gustav status, and he gained power when he was assigned to work in one of the euthanasia institutes. Then, he gained enormous power in his role overseeing the gas chambers: As his son says: “in Treblinka—it is inconceivable [...] what he suddenly was: the scope, the power, the uniqueness, the difference between himself and all those others—imagine […] No, it is unimaginable” (614).

Most of the 96 SS selected to work the extermination camps in Poland weren’t from Germany proper but one of its annexed states. Sereny suspects this was intentional: these men were more susceptible to pressure because they were more anxious to prove their loyalty to the Nazis than Germans. Sereny also suspects those 96 men were chosen from the ranks of the T4 personnel according to other, now lost, criteria. While most SS and German army files survived the war, the files of those 96 men disappeared.

At Treblinka, Stangl received an official commendation as the best extermination camp commander in Poland. Stangl becomes angry (one of the few times this happens during their talks) when Sereny asks him why he didn’t do his job poorly to register his protest. He snaps, “I had to do as well as I could. That is how I am” (625). He feels that any protest he might have made would’ve been insignificant; he just would’ve been replaced. He says that while he didn’t hate the Jews, he found their passivity in the face of slaughter contemptuous.

To Sereny’s disbelief, Stangl explains that money, not antisemitism, was the reason for the Holocaust, asserting that the Nazis used the money they stole from Jewish prisoners to buy their steel from Sweden. Glazar seconds Stangl’s claim that even the poorest Jews from the east brought something of value to the camps.

Stangl claims he was driven by a desire to survive Treblinka, where death was everywhere, instead of by loyalty to the Nazis. He rationalizes that only he and God know what he was responsible for and what he wasn’t: “What I did without, or against my free will, for that I need not answer” (634). In July 1943—by which time most of the killings that would occur at Treblinka had happened—Stangl went on leave to the German mountains. While there, he went to mass every day with a friend of his wife’s family, Father Mario.

During that month of leave in July 1943, Theresa became increasingly distressed by her husband’s role at Treblinka. She was glad Stangl wasn’t on the front and rationalized that they were only killing men—enemy combatants. However, she noticed an alarming change in her husband’s face: a coarseness that would sometimes protrude through his kind visage. Sereny notes that the face she describes is the same one that emerges when he talks to Sereny about Treblinka. Stangl maintained to Theresa that he wasn’t in charge—Wirth was. She begged him to try for another transfer or to escape, but he was fatalistic about those prospects.

In confession, Theresa told Father Mario about the distress regarding Stangl’s job she’d felt for a year. Father Mario summarily absolved Stangl of guilt. Theresa was distraught that he dismissed the issue so cavalierly.

The prisoners had three goals for their revolt: damage the camp beyond repair; kill the three worst of the SS, Franz, Miete, and Mentz; and escape. They revolted on August 2, 1943, without outside help and without arms except those they seized from the guards. The majority of the SS guards, including Franz, were out swimming. Stangl had a visitor and was already drunk when the revolt started. The prisoners succeeded in burning much of the camp but failed to kill the three worst SS men. Some escaped, including Glazar and Rojzman, but most were killed.

Rojzman escaped with a few other prisoners, one of whom knew a Pole with a cottage who could hide them. The man, Staszek, agreed to hide them; they built an underground shelter and stayed with him for a year. They supported themselves with money they’d brought from Treblinka and disguised themselves as Polish partisans when they went to the village to buy goods. After a year, they went to the town of Otwock, where they parted. There, Rojzman married a gentile he knew from Warsaw.

Glazar escaped with his friend to Germany, where they passed as gentiles and worked. It was surreal returning to the world. Once, a welfare service offered them coats from the very bundles assembled at Treblinka: “‘We thought we were going mad,’ Richard said” (680). Glazar credits his and the others’ escapes to the heroism of those who—having lost their families—sacrificed themselves in the revolt so some could escape. Among them was Zhelo Bloch, who survived four months working in the upper extermination camp and led the revolt.

Of the 840 Jews working in Treblinka at the time of the revolt, 105 failed to escape. Stangl called for troops, who surrounded the camp and shot all escapees they found. Stangl allowed the 105 people who remained in the camp to stay alive, explaining that the reprisals, and not the gassings, had made the prisoners hate the guards. The rebels didn’t succeed in destroying the gas chambers, which were made of brick. Globocnik didn’t punish Stangl for the revolt, as he expected, but transferred him to combat anti-partisans in Trieste—the transfer he’d long hoped for. Suchomel remembers that Stangl was overjoyed by the transfer.

According to Zabecki, the Polish partisan who worked at Treblinka station, three more transports of Polish Jews were gassed in Treblinka before the camp was closed. Under orders from higher-ups, the guards remaining after Stangl’s departure killed the remaining Jews and obliterated the camp. They planted trees on the former camp site to disguise it and installed a Ukrainian “farmer” in a farmhouse to surveil the site.

Poland claims the Nazis killed 750,000 people in Treblinka; West Germany estimates 900,000. Zabecki, who recorded the numbers chalked on the transports that indicated the number of people inside while working at the station, estimates the Nazis killed 1,200,000 people in Treblinka, almost all of them Jews.