They were mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and grandparents young and old tradesmen, teachers, students, scientists, and doctors. ![]() While it is important for students to realize that millions of Jews died at the hands of the Nazis in the extermination camps, it is equally important that they see the victims of the Holocaust as individuals. Used by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.Students’ information about the Nazi extermination camps is often in the form of dates, place names, and numbers. Interview reprinted from Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny. And because it worked, it was irreversible. But-how can I explain it-they were naked, packed together, running, being driven with whips like… Q: Could you not have changed that?… In your position, could you not have stopped the nakedness, the whips, the horror of the cattle pens? A: No, no, no. I sometimes stood on the wall and saw them in the tube. Q: There were so many children, did they ever make you think of your children, of how you would feel in the position of those parents? A: No… I can’t say I ever thought that way… you see, I rarely saw them as individuals. Wirth said, “What shall we do with this garbage?” I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo. It had nothing to do with humanity it couldn’t have it was a mass-a mass of rotting flesh. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. Q: When do you think you began to think of them as cargo? A: I think it started the day I first saw Totenlager in Treblinka. They were cargo.Įchoes and Reflections Teacher’s Resource Guide Those big eyes… which looked at me… not knowing that in no time at all they’d all be dead… Q: So you didn’t feel they were human beings? A: Cargo. I thought then, “look at this this reminds me of Poland that’s just how the people looked, trustingly, just before they were put in tins.” Q: You said “tins.” What do you mean? A: …I couldn’t eat tinned meat after that. They were very close to my window, one crowding the other, looking at me through the fence. The cattle in the pens, hearing the noise of the train, trotted up to the fence and stared at the train. Q: Would it be true to say that you finally felt they weren’t really human beings? A: When I was on a trip once, years later in Brazil… my train stopped next to a slaughterhouse. The following is an excerpt from one of their discussions in prison. The interviews were published in a book entitled Into That Darkness. Interview While in prison Stangl was interviewed by Gitta Sereny, a British journalist. Stangl was tried in Germany and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 1971. About to be charged in May 1948, Stangl escaped to Rome, Syria, and eventually Brazil where he and his family lived under their own names until discovered in 1967. However, Stangl was found out when the Americans began investigating the Euthanasia Program. He also spent time at the San Sabba concentration camp.įranz Stangl, Yad Vashem Photo Archive (5318/89)Īfter the war Stangl returned to Austria, where he was arrested by the Americans for being an SS member (they did not know that he had participated in the extermination of Jews). After the prisoner revolt in Treblinka in September 1943, Stangl and his staff were transferred to Trieste, Italy to organize anti-partisan actions. Later that year he became commandant of Treblinka where he was responsible for the deaths of 870,000 Jews. ![]() In March 1942, Stangl became commandant of the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland. In 1940, Stangl joined the Euthanasia Program at its Hartheim castle institute-one of six centers where people with mental and physical disabilities and other “asocial” Germans were killed. INTERVIEW WITH FRANZ STANGL About Franz Stangl Born in Austria in 1908, Franz Stangl joined the Austrian police in 1931 and became a criminal investigations officer in the political division.
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