Szymon Binke - June 16, 1997
Witnessing a Beating
And what happened to Targovnik?
He came in, in the same transport we did, in, into Auschwitz and he was beaten all night long. He was beaten to death.
By whom?
By the uh, people that worked the uh, bath house.
Jews.
Jews, yes. Oh well, not all of 'em of were Jews. Some of 'em were, they were all uh, uh, uh, prisoners. But uh, some of 'em might not have been Jews. There was some uh, non-Jews that were in concentration camps, there were political prisoners, there were criminals. The political prisoners had a, they had a triangle sewed onto their, the political was a red triangle, the criminal was a green triangle, ours supposedly was supposed to have been a yellow, but very few of us had it, you know, by the time we got in. Well, everybody knew what we were in for.
So you think other Łódźers, people from Łódź, beat him, Targovnik?
Not, not the people that came in on our transport. Maybe some of our people told those people who he was. And uh, I remember when we first, when they first undressed us, you know, you went into this building, it's a bath, they take all, everything away from you and you wind up naked and uh, he came out to my father, says, "Aaron, let's try and stay together," and my father just walked away from him, because he knew what he did to him uh, in the ghetto. And that's, then after that, that they started beating on him and in the morning he was dead, he was all black and blue, I mean from head to toe. Just kicked him and beat him and with sticks and...
So you saw him?
Oh yeah. I saw him. I saw him being beaten to death. Yeah. Took hours. We were just laying down.
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