Aaron Salzburg - July 24, 1984
Stories from Treblinka
How do you mean that the--you mentioned that the Polish farmers were better to the Jews. Did you see incidents of kindness?
I would think, I would think uh, that the Polish farmer and--the, the Polish farmer, in, in uh, in general, was a better character--more relaxed than the city people. The city people were bitter because uh, their economic situation wasn't as good as uh, as the farmer. The farmer lived a pretty comfortable living in Poland, where the city had it pretty tough. And I would say they were much more anti-Semitic than uh, anti-Semitic than uh, than the farmer. So uh, in general I would think uh, all the Jewish people lost to the Polacks were committed--the, the, the murders were committed by the people in the city, not, not, not by Polish farmers. And it's got to be remembered that the proportion between these two groups, Poland had about seventy-five percent farmers and twenty-five percent city dwellers--well that would be my estimate. I'm not sure on that. Following the return of uh, Schoime Katz--the name come back to me at the moment--I believe it was--the last name was Katz--maybe a week later another fella by the name [pause] Singer--a fellow maybe twenty years old--he, too, he was the second man to arrive coming back from Treblinka. I personally helped this young fella. I took him home to my house where I used to live. The Gendarmerie gave me the right to go back and sleep in my own house to guard my shop, where we had the carpenter shop. With the pretext I told them, there might be some break-ins and take the tools away and everything else. Since you people--since the Gendarmerie needed my work, my help. So they went along and they let me sleep in my house and I hide this fellow in uh, in my own house. He was of course a much more intelligent fella and they could get out a lot, a lot more of him. When he repeated the same story what happened our people in Treblinka, how they were gassed--and of course our leaders got convinced that uh, the first one told the truth, but unfortunately ??? was rounded up. Somehow the SS either was tipped off--and they rounded up the house where he slept, where he hide at night. He wouldn't give up--he wouldn't give, give himself up to be taken to the cemetery so he put up a fight and there must have been tens of them, including the Polish police and he was shot down there at his father-in-law's house. I believe this--the name of the street was Starawalowa.
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