Grzegorz Kuczynski

In interview after interview with Poles in the villages around the Reinhard extermination camps, they knew what was happening. Here Lanzmann asks a farmer in Poniatowo, the closest village to Treblinka, whether he knew the Jews were being exterminated there: Farmer: “Oh, come on, sir. Come on. Is that even something to ask?” Lanzmann: “Did the stench of the bodies reach here too?” Farmer: “It did. With the wind… Very strong. Mornings, like now, or evenings, you heard the crying, everything.” Farmer: “Twenty cars, a hundred people each, on average, because those were cattle cars, of course, right? Those from abroad came in normal cars, all in order… Jews from abroad didn't even believe they were going to die. They believed it was the colonies. People warned them there, and they laughed at it.” Lanzmann: “How did you warn those Jews?” Farmer: “We said: you're going there. [draws a finger across his throat] No common language. That was the simplest way.” This comes from the Claude Lanzmann Shoah outtakes at USHMM (Treblinka, RG-60.5077), filmed in 1978. USHMM has no transcript for this reel, so I subtitled it from the Polish audio, checked against the interpreter's French. Cut and captioned by me.