outside world. Their faces wore an expression of deep resignation, [2] a kind
of indifference towards their own fate, which they could not fight anyway,
a stupor. I was seized by horror when I gradually began to realise what I was
looking at and what awaited these martyrs condemned to slaughter. I searched
for some kind of human expression among the faces that would show they
were still capable of reacting, but apart from an expression of terrible despair
(and this only by a few), I saw nothing. For me it was simply incomprehensible
to see this large body of Jews escorted by 4 or 5 Polish policemen, 4 or
5 gendarmes, and Jewish policemen. As I later learned, the Germans had
warned the Jewish policemen that an escape from the transport could cost
them their [own] heads. The Jews had almost no luggage with them. The macabre
march passed by, and about five minutes later the second part of the procession
arrived. Peasant carts came carrying the old, the sick, and the women,
8 to 12 persons on each cart. [3] Whereas the pedestrian procession had been
silent, with no shouting, voices could be heard from the carts – exclamations,
albeit stifled, and quiet moans: “O dear God! Help! Woe is me! My children!”
The voices were restrained. It turned out that there was a strict order not to
shout. Sighs escaped from deep inside, fearfully and through clenched teeth.
I spoke to some Christian women and asked them what was going on.
They replied that this was one of the Jewish transports. The deportation of the
Jews – the Aktion as it was called – had already begun on the previous Tuesday,
2 June.²²⁸ That was when the transport had departed. Some 9 to 10 thousand
Jews from the whole area – townships and villages – had been concentrated
by the Germans in Hrubieszów. Ale ja ich wcale nie żałuję,²²⁹ the Christian
woman continued. When one of the Christians said that he knew that Poles
had hidden Jews in their homes during the Aktion, another retorted: Jabym
pierwszy takiego s-s-a zabił, któryby się odważył schować Żyda!²³⁰ Meanwhile,
I got the feeling that Ch. and I were an object of interest to a secret agent.
The whole area is swarming with these creatures among the Polish population.
They rummage and search [4] among the Poles for people who display
228 The first deportation of Jews from Hrubieszów to the Sobibór death camp took place on 2 and 7–9 June 1942.
229 (Polish, in Latin characters) But I don’t feel sorry for them at all.
230 (Polish, in Latin characters) I’d be the first to kill the son-of-a-bitch who dared to hide a Jew!
