East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"

by Philippe Sands

He spoke in a measured and calm voice of the journey from the Warsaw ghetto in August 1942, transportation by rail in inhumane conditions, eight thousand people in overcrowded cattle cars. He was the only survivor. When the Russian prosecutor asked about the moment of arrival, Rajzman told him how they were made to undress and walk along Himmelfahrtstrasse, the “street to heaven,” a short walk to the gas chamber, when suddenly a friend from Warsaw singled him out and led him away. The Germans needed an interpreter, but before that he loaded the clothes of the dead onto empty trains that departed Treblinka. Two days passed, then a transport arrived from the small town of Vinegrova, bringing his mother, sister, and brothers. He watched them walk to the gas chambers, unable to intervene. Several days later, he was handed his wife’s papers, with a photograph of his wife and child. “That is all I have left of my family,” he said in the courtroom, a public act of revelation. “A photograph.”