The Lalkes and More from Chaim Sztajer
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The laughter, oh the laughter. Kurt Franz, the Lalke, would laugh each time he sent his dog Barry to attack a Jewish man’s genitals or a Jewish woman’s breast. It’s the laughter that Chaim Sztajer recalls as he told his daughter of the “excruciating pain, torture and humiliation these unfortunate people had to endure while awaiting their deaths.” (41) It was also the Lalke who, after a failed attempt by some prisoners to escape Treblinka, strung the prisoners up by their feet. He left them there, hanging in the open reception area, until blood poured “out of every orifice: eyes, ears, mouth and nose.” (40)
I learned from L’Chaim: The Exception Life of Chaim Sztajer, that Kurt Franz was not the only Nazi Lalke. The word means doll and this nickname was given to Kurt Franz of Treblinka because he was handsome. Well, Chana Sztal, who married Chaim after the war, worked in a German munition’s factory. She got very little to eat and would save a small piece of her moldy bread for later in the morning when her stomach, yet again, grumbled with the pain of emptiness.
“She had just placed the morsel into her mouth,” the book tells, “and was about to chew it, when she found her body being propelled towards the machine and at the same instance, felt a bolt of excruciating pain go through her back and her hand. Chana watched in slow motion as her left hand went straight through the machine. The pain was beyond description as the machine quickly released her hand. Lalke had indeed seen her put the piece of stale bread into her mouth, and had belted her between her shoulder blades with the full force of his hand. The machine smashed the bones in her hand and her entire hand had caved in like a crater.” (107)
This Lalke was not Kurt Franz, but another handsome, doll-like Nazi, who found pleasure and satisfaction in the torture of Jews. I wonder how many other Lalke’s there were in the Nazi ranks?
But we should get back to Treblinka.
Chaim began devising methods of escape and/or uprising in his head soon after the shock of Treblinka subsided a bit. As he worked sorting clothing and piling them into the now empty cattle cars, he thought: one way of escape is to hide in the clothes that are put into the empty cattle cars and sent to Germany. I’ll make a well in the piles of clothes and help some of these young men to escape and I’ll jump in right before the doors are closed. He grabbed three young men and threw them into the mounds of clothes in the train, quickly covering them. He was about to jump into the final pile when a Nazi guard was walking straight towards him, screaming, “make it quick.” As the doors of the cattle car closed with the three hidden men, Chaim lost his chance for a quick escape. (41)
Many years later, in Australia, Chaim was at a Yom Haatzmaut program. Chaim was asked to give someone a ride home. He was a fellow survivor and Chaim was happy to make room in his car. They began to chat about their wartime experiences and the man told Chaim that for a short time, he was a prisoner at Treblinka. The man explained that he had been working at sorting the clothes. When someone, whom he did not know, “grabbed him from behind, lifted him up onto the cattle car and shoved him into the middle of a huge pile of clothes and covered him up.”
Chaim’s reaction was swift and dramatic.
He “swerved off the road and drove straight onto the nature strip. He stopped the car, turned around with tears rolling down his cheeks, shocked and with difficulty in getting the words out, pointed to himself and said, ‘That was me! I put you into the clothes.’ There was a deafening silence as the two men faced each other, in total disbelief, as they both attempted to digest what had just been discovered.” (157)
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[photo: Micha Hacohen at Treblinka – June 2016]
Soon after helping these young men escape, Chaim was moved to the Upper Camp, and forced to work with the corpses after the gassing was complete. He worked in the Upper Camp for the rest of his at Treblinka – until the Uprising on August 2, 1943. Chaim tells many gruesome stories of life in the Upper Camp. But the story I want to share is his telling of the death of a group of women who had fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
It was May 1943 and this group of young fighters marched down the Road to Heaven. They were chanted in powerful loud voices:
“Take revenge! Take revenge! Let the world know what happened here!”
As they entered the gas chamber, they stood “[p]roud, strong and undefeated, they stood together in a circle in the middle of the gas chamber and, at the top of their voices, recited the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. It was so moving and inspirational for men like Chaim, who stood outside the gas chambers waiting to remove the dead, that they temporarily forgot where they were and stood up a little bit taller with pride. When at last there was that same total eerie silence coming from the gas chamber, the door flew open and the group of young men and women who only moments before were so full of life, were now still and silent, entwined together in their circle.” (58)
This description is as heartbreaking and moving as any I have encountered.
Source: Zylbersztajn, Malka, L’Chaim: the Exceptional Life of Chaim Sztajer, Jewish Holocaust Center, Elsternwick, (2108).
Next blog post: Chaim’s and the Treblinka Uprising.
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[photo: Goldberg and Maleszewski families walking towards the site of Treblinka, June 2016]
