Thomas Blatt recounts being deported by truck in April 1943 from the Izbica ghetto and his first impressions of the Sobibor killing center.
Transcript
THOMAS BLATT: They passed the turn off to Trawniki, and now we know in front of us is Sobibór, and we know what Sobibór is. And some people...and everything is in the dark...uh....uh... in the truck. It's dark. And I hear voices, "Let fight. We will die anyway." I know the voices. "No, we will die anyway. Let's die together with the families."
But the mood is that we will...when we stop, we will throw ourselves on the Nazis. Finally, the truck stopped. And I remember still a voice. Somebody cut the...I remember still while driving... my... my...in fact, my father's face...he was sweating terrible. I remember wiping my father's...wet forehead. It's wasn't completely dark. It was still...from the front some light coming.
And I remember the voice, and finally the truck stopped....stopped and I hear a voice. Somebody cut open the canvas and noticed...looked outside that and said, "Ist schwarz von Ukrainen." "It's black from Ukrainians." Now this meant Ukrainians...the Nazis...they walked with...because they walked with nothing...they had black uniforms. When he said, "It's black," he meant it was so many of them. It's no use.
And he told us to go down. And we go down and really, there were many Nazis. We were surrounded very tight with machine guns and everything. Probably the Nazis did...had experience. They did know that this a crucial time when people coming and seeing there in front of Sobibór. So we stood up. We get out and we stood in front of the gate.
What did I see? I see a big fence camouflaged by pine branches, braided in...in the barbed wires, and a gate. On top of the gate a big sign, black and white, "SS Sonderkommando." "Sonderkommando" meant special command. The gate opened. We go in. They told us to go in. I go in, and I can't believe it. I...my dreams and my nightmares...what I heard about Sobibór...I imagined Sobibór's a Hell. Belzec's a Hell. Sobibór a Hell. It looked like a Hell. And how's a Hell? I have it from my...my aunt's descript...descriptions. Dark, and people running around with tar and with whatever. It's miserable.
What did I see? A beautiful, little place. Lawns, beautiful flowers. A nice train station. Nice little houses. "Schwalbennest" was the title of one house. It means...uh...uh... "Schwalbennest" [Translation: "Swallows'Nest]...uh...how is it in English?
Anyway and...uh...they told us to stop; and I think, "This can't be a death camp. How could such a place be a death camp?" Birds are whistling. Nice trees. I still will remember the shape of the...of the sky...of the...uh....(pause)
Oh, what is in the sky? The clouds? The clouds! And I didn't want to die. But I've seen the fire. From...there was far away, farther, there was a...where they burned the people. I've seen the fire from behind...was again a fence camouflaged. And I could feel the smell.
The administration area featured the killing center’s main entrance and the living quarters of the SS men and the guards. It also contained Camp I. This area held a few hundred male and female Jewish prisoners, kept alive to work as forced laborers in workshops and to maintain the killing center.
This photograph, taken from one of the watchtowers in the spring of 1943, shows the German staff’s living quarters at the Sobibor killing center. The buildings—17 in all—housed the SS men as well as administrative and support functions. The small houses with flower boxes and decorative fences were designed both for the comfort of the SS men and to deceive the arriving victims about Sobibor’s true purpose.
In postwar testimonies, several survivors recounted the horror they felt during their deportation and the confusion they experienced upon arrival at Sobibor, which was designed to look like a country village.
View of the German staff’s living quarters, spring 1943. —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz
In the photograph, the railway tracks that brought transports of Jews can be seen at the lower right. The main entrance of the camp is on the left, flanked by flagpoles with the Nazi and SS flags. Above the entrance is a sign that reads “SS Special Detachment” in German. The building in the foreground is a guard house. The house on the far left, nicknamed the “Swallow's Nest” by the SS, was moved from a nearby ghetto. Prisoners were forced to dismantle the houses in the surrounding ghettos after their Jewish population had been murdered at Sobibor and reuse the building materials to construct the German living quarters.