This is a selection of random testimonies and eyewitness accounts by victims and perpetrators. The testimonies are from several interviews. I will not indicate who the victims or who the criminals are. I think it is quite clear from the language they use.
Lilly Kaplan
“Some gentlemen showed up, I don’t remember if it was two or three or four, and they again sent us out to line up and 500 of the 2,000 were taken to Essen. If I tell you that you’re almost feelingless, you don’t analyze yourself. You take each day and you do what you have to do and you cope with what you have to cope. And I don’t remember ever, you know, you say to yourself whatever will be will be. We had one concern is what we’re going to eat and are we going to be very hungry? Are they going to let us live, or are they going to kill us?”
Albert von Dijk
“I asked myself ‘Where are all these bodies from, where do they come from?’ That was the mystery of Dora. Then I guessed that there was a factory over in the mine where all these things were being made. Then to my right, I suddenly saw a cove. Moving in there were prisoners in striped clothes and I saw how they were carrying heavy stones which looked just ghastly and I thought ‘Where have we landed?’ I thought ‘Is this hell?'”
Pater Gereon Goldmann
“We are the race that must dominate the world. That is what we have been told. And all others must bow to the Nordic race, for they are only slaves. We are the masters of the world.”
Karl Stojka
“It was not Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, or whatever the others were called, who had me dragged away and beaten. No, it was the cobbler, the neighbor, the old man, the milkman, the postman, those without form suddenly given armbands and a cap on their heads and then they were the master race.”
Hans Münch
“They said, you perform the hardest service any soldier has to carry out. Namely, exterminating the Jews. The Jews are our misfortune and you can say: we were there, we got through it, we were courageous, we did all that.”
Kurt Franz
“I cannot say how many Jews in total were gassed in Treblinka. On average each day a large train arrived. Sometimes there were even two. This however was not so common. In Treblinka I was commander of the Ukrainian guard unit as I had been in Belzec. In Treblinka as in Belzec the unit consisted of sixty to eighty men. The Ukrainians’ main task was to man the guard posts around the camp perimeter. After the uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp more or less single-handedly for a month; however, during that period no gassings were undertaken. It was during that period that the original camp was demolished. Everything was leveled off and lupins were planted.”
Ralph Giordano
“Shortly after the seizure of power – it must have been in the summer of 1935 – I go out on the street and there are four of my friends. One is being pulled along by Heinemann, my best friend. And I can see something in their faces that wasn’t there the day before. And Heinemann said to me ‘Ralle,’ I was called Ralle. ‘Ralle, we won’t play with you any more, you’re a Jew.'”
Hans Frankenthal
“I can still see my mother sitting there, sewing the yellow stars to our clothes. And I protested and said loudly that I wouldn’t wear it. And my father replied ‘Wear it with Pride.'”
Hans Friedrich
“Try to imagine there is a ditch, with people on one side, and behind them soldiers. That was us and we were shooting. And those who were hit fell down into the ditch. They were so utterly shocked and frightened, you could do with them what you wanted. I only thought, ‘Aim carefully’ so that you hit properly.”
Sources
https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust/images-videos
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/karl-stojka
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