Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling by Mark S. Smith Page B

was there. He said a lot of crazy things we didn’t believe.’

    ‘It looks like a lot of these crazy things were true,’ I said.
    ‘Yes, it does look that way.’
    ‘You know, the more I learn about him and what he went through, it seems he really was at the centre of things. He experienced almost everything there was to experience as a Jew under Nazi rule, except death – although he certainly witnessed that. But he was there at the beginning, when the Wehrmacht first crossed into Poland. He saw the Stukas dive-bombing Polish positions during the Battle of Mokra. He lived through ghettos, round-ups, the death trains, an extermination camp, Auschwitz, the death marches to other concentration camps, and even liberation. I don’t suppose there are many who did – or could – survive what he survived.’
    Sam was silent for a moment. ‘The important thing, though, is how that affected him.’
    ‘I agree,’ I said.
    I got out of bed and looked from the window on to Pilsudskiego Street, where 65 years earlier tens of thousands of Jews were marched to the railway tracks and forced into the boxcars. Those who were old or did not move fast enough to satisfy the Germans’ need for speed were murdered right there with bullets or were clubbed to death with rifle butts. Save a handful, the only Jews here today are ghosts, who are kept company, ironically, by the thousands of holy images seen everywhere of the most famous Jew of all. Jewish factories once produced these religious artifacts and souvenirs for the pilgrims of Częstochowa.
    That night I dreamed I was on an old cobblestoned street. I assumed it was Poland. I was walking around dragging a very heavy package. Suddenly, Hershl was walking with me. I remember wondering what he felt about me and what I was doing. He was walking quickly, and I was having trouble keeping up with him because I was dragging this package. At last, we came to a pretty house with trees and a garden in front of it. It was the pink house I had seen in the Klobuck ghetto. At the side of the house, there were men digging a deep ditch, and as I drew closer I could see gravestones. One of them was mine. I woke suddenly, hardly able to catch my breath. I scribbled the dream in my notebook.
    * * *
     
    In June 1942, a Jewish fighting organisation, known as the ZOB ( Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa ), was established in the Częstochowa ghetto with the idea of mounting armed resistance against their Nazi oppressors. That same month, the Judenrat received an order to provide a precise plan of the ghetto with individual homes marked and named. Shortly afterwards, Jews were removed from a part of Kawia Street because there were pits to be dug for future victims. Homes located on Garibaldi Street were also emptied to make room for storehouses intended for plundered Jewish property.
    The last stage in the preparations for genocide was played out the following month. The German authorities issued orders for a roll call, designated for 3.00pm, at which time all ghetto residents between the ages of fifteen and sixty were to assemble, including the Judenrat and Jewish police. Hershl was now fifteen, and so stayed behind with Frumet and watched the frenzied movement of people in the street below. They gathered and waited, surrounded by armed SS. Then they were sent home, unaware this was a dress rehearsal for liquidation. No-one believed the ghetto would be liquidated because everyone knew it was important to the war effort. The idea of extermination was unthinkable anyway – in spite of persistent rumours of mass murders in Lithuania and Latvia.
    News of the killings at Chelmno, a pilot scheme extermination camp, also began to emerge. As early as January 1942, during the first weeks of its operation, two prisoners – Michael Podchlebnik and Yacov Griwanowski – escaped to the Warsaw ghetto and gave a detailed report to the Jewish underground there. News travelled frequently between Warsaw and Częstochowa.