![]() Once there, people undressed and sat down on a dirt embankment where they were shot in the neck. It was the Blue Detachment's responsibility to accompany those selected by the SS. Suchomel claims that if he ever reported violence among the prisoners his SS superior told him not to interfere if Jews were beating Jews. Suchomel says that some people got rich by fleecing the Warsaw Jews, but in later phases the people were so poor that the women didn't even have wedding rings, having given them up to Poles at Malkinia in exchange for water. Lanzmann responds that Suchomel is the reporter of these historical events. Suchomel says he does not know of women being beaten. If the male prisoners resisted entering, they were whipped by Ukrainian guards. Suchomel describes the "tube" as camouflaged by branches. Since the women had to get their hair cut and thus wait longer, Suchomel claims that he told the barbers to go slower so they could remain inside. People had to wait, naked, to enter the gas chamber, and it was very cold by Christmas. The Red Detachment processed the clothing in the undressing room. At the ramp, two Jews from the Blue Detachment ordered the passengers out, supervised by ten Ukrainians and five Germans. 30 to 50 train cars arrived, of which varying numbers went on to Treblinka, the rest remaining behind. Suchomel explains how transports came from Malkinia, ten kilometers away. ![]() Lanzmann mentions 18,000 per day, but Suchomel says that the number is too high. Suchomel describes the second phase of his time at Treblinka after Wirth came, and says the killing went much faster. Lanzmann says that Auschwitz could handle a lot more than that and Suchomel says Auschwitz was a factory, and that though Treblinka was primitive, it was "a well-functioning assembly line of death." Belzec was the laboratory in which Wirth tried everything out before coming to Treblinka. In the new gas chamber perhaps 200 could fit in at a time and 3,000 people could be "done" in two hours. Under Wirth, a new gas chamber was built in September. Lanzmann questions the use of Germans, but Suchomel insists that they were ordered to do so. When Wirth came, he forced Germans and Jewish prisoners to move the piles of corpses to the trenches. Suchomel confirms that the method was carbon monoxide from a truck motor, rather than Zyklon B. Many had to wait in the barracks up to three days without food and only a bucket of water because of gas chambers' lack of capacity. Some even jockeyed for position, not knowing they were going to their deaths. Suchomel describes "the tube" in which 100 men or women were sent to the gas chambers at a time. He says that the Poles were not fond of the Jews but they were also scared. Wirth reorganized the Germans, and assigned Suchomel to be head of the "Gold Jews." Lanzmann asks if the Poles in the surrounding villages could smell the odor and Suchomel says everyone knew what was going on in the camp. At this point, there were no "worker Jews," as all the Jews dragging corpses into the trenches were chased into the gas chambers in the evening or shot. A new commandant, Christian Wirth, was able to stop the transports so that the corpses could be buried. Suchomel hid out and drank vodka to adjust to "the inferno." He says that he learned that the corpses stacked at the railroad tracks were from three daily trains carrying 5,000 people, of whom 3,000 fell out dead on arrival, many by suicide. It was the height of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, and during a tour of the camp, he saw the doors of the gas chamber being opened and people falling out "like potatoes." Suchomel and his group were crying "like old women," and Suchomel asked Eberl, the Commandant, to be sent back to Berlin, but Eberl told him he would be sent to the front with the Waffen SS, a sure death. Lanzmann asks Suchomel to describe his arrival at Treblinka and Suchomel tells of his shock at finding himself with seven other Germans from Berlin in a concentration camp, whereas in Berlin, he had been told he would be going to a resettlement area, supervising tailors and shoemakers. In the outtakes, Suchomel provides further details about the treatment of Jews at the camp, as well as a more ambivalent memory of his experiences than is apparent in the released "SHOAH". This was the first interview Lanzmann filmed with the newly developed hidden camera known as the Paluche, and he paid Suchomel 500 DM. Lanzmann interviewed Franz Suchomel, who was with the SS at Treblinka, in secret at the Hotel Post in April 1976.
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