From the archives...

Chapter 24 titled 'Treblinka' from the book: A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army by Vasily Grossman. Today, the trial of another German Nazi monster (probably the last such trial) gets underway in Munich...

Inside the women's barracks was a hairdressers. Naked women's hair was cut with clippers. Wigs were removed from the heads of old women. A terrible psychological phenomenon: according to the hairdressers, for the women, this death haircut was the most convincing proof of being taken to the banya. Girls felt their hair with their hands and sometimes asked: 'Could you cut it again here? It is not even.' Women usually relaxed after their hair was cut, and almost all emerged from the barracks with a piece of soap and a folded towel. Some young women cried, mourning their beautiful long plaits. What were the haircuts for? In order to deceive them? No. Germany needed this hair. The hair was a raw material. I've asked many people, what did Germans do with these heaps of hair cut from the heads of the living dead? All the witnesses told me that the huge heaps of black, blonde hair, curls and plaits were disinfected, pressed into sacks and sent to Germany. All the witnesses confirmed that the hair was sent in the sacks to Germany. How was it used? No one could answer this question. Only Kon stated in his written evidence that the hair was used by the navy for stuffing mattresses or making hawsers for submarines.

I think that this answer requires additional clarification. Men undressed in the yard. Usually, Germans selected 150-300 strong men from the first lot to arrive in the morning. They were used to bury corpses and were generally killed on the second day. Men had to undress very quickly and tidily, leaving their shoes and socks in order, folding their underwear, jackets and trousers. Clothes and shoes were sorted by the second ream of workers, who wore red armbands that distinguished them from those working on the transport. Clothing and shoes considered suitable for dispatch to Germany were immediately taken to the warehouse. All metal and fabric labels had to be removed from them carefully. The remaining things were burned or buried in the ground. The feeling of anxiety grew every minute. There was a strange, disquieting smell, which was at times overpowered by the smell of chlorine. Huge quantities of importunate flies seemed strange, too. Where were they all coining from, here, among pines and the trampled earth? People were breathing noisily, afraid, shuddering, peering at every insignificant little object that they thought could explain, help understand, lift slightly the curtain of secret about the fate that lav ahead for them. And why are gigantic excavators rattling so loudly there, further to the south?

... Inhabitants of the village of Wulka. the one closest to Treblinka, tell that sometimes the screams of women who were being killed were so terrible that the whole village would lose their heads and rush to the forest, in order to escape from these shrill screams that carried through tree trunks, the sky and the earth. Then, the screams would suddenly stop, and there was a silence before a new series of screams, as terrible as the ones before, shrill, boring through the bones, through the skulls and the souls of those who heard them. This happened three or four times every dav. I asked one of the captured butchers, Sh., about these screams. He explained that women started to scream at the moment when the dogs were unleashed and the whole group of prisoners were urged into the house of death. “They could see their death coming, and beside that it was very crowded there. They were beaten terribly, and dot»s were tearing their bodies." A sudden silence came when the doors of the gas chambers were closed, and the screams started again when a new batch of prisoners was brought to the building. This happened two, three, lour, sometimes five times a day. This was a special conveyor belt to the executioners' block.