Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Hearing of Killings in Ghetto
Do you remember why people were executed?
Oh, they uh, in Zduńska Wola, in Purim 19... in Purim 19...we were talking about something--we were talking about this uh, 1940, no? When we find out where the people disappeared.
Oh yes, you were talking about this, sorry.
Yeah, so what happened, it developed a pardon that they took, first they took the people and have the Jewish police arrest 'em, arrest 'em...
Mm-hm.
...and keep them a day lock up. Then they took them over to the, to, to the uh, to the, to the German--to the city police. And from there they put them on a bus or something and drove them away. So they took money and hired Polacks just--the Polacks they could move around, whatever, they were free. If a Polack didn't engage himself in political activities or underground activities he, he could survive the war like, like under no--under not normal conditions, under the conditions which prevailed at that time.
Mm-hm.
So they probably paid off Polacks and have 'em watch 'em, where they take those peoples. And they brought back the news, they could just take those peoples and put them in vans and they gas 'em. They put in pipes and they...
They gas them in the vans.
In the vans. That was the first experiments how to, how to kill people. And we knew about it.
So in other words, the Poles told you about it.
The Pole told us and it spread. The young people knew, the young people knew. We didn't, we didn't tell the parents or the elders, but young people from my generation, from my age we knew it. We knew in 19...
Did you believe it?
Sure we didn't believe.
You did believe it.
You see, the Germans their, their, their, their biggest victory was, was the psy...psy...psychological victory, see. They, they adjusted your mind that that's the way it is and there's no other way out. We got used to it to take all those things for normal, like we take today for normal to have a nice home, to have all the freedoms we wanted, to have a nice car, you know, and to go on vacation and to enjoy your life. At that time, that was the conversation of the day and the mind got adjusted to it that that's the way it is. It, it, it never will be different.
Well, what was it...
Because at that time they were winning the war on all the fronts.
Yes.
Whatever they went they were victorious.
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