TRAP WITH A GREEN FENCE: SURVIVAL IN TREBLINKA (Die Falle mit dem grünen Zaun: Überleben in Treblinka)

Memoir by Richard Glazar, 1992

In Die Falle mit dem grünen Zaun: Überleben in Treblinka (1992; Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka, 1995) Richard Glazar recorded his camp experiences as an Arbeitsjude (work Jew) in Treblinka, the largest of five Nazi camps devoted exclusively to extermination (some 900,000 Jews were murdered there). Written in Czech immediately after World War II, the memoirs would lie unpublished for more than four decades before the author translated them into German and had them issued in 1992. The title refers to the green leafy fence that greeted the unsuspecting transports as they stepped out of the trains. There, surrounded by such harmless bucolic accoutrements as a tractor and signposts, they would wait in line to be taken directly to the gas chamber: "The narrow strips of grass along the barracks are supposed to have a soothing effect on the passerby. The deep rich green of the fence contrasts with the bright pastel green of the grassy embankment."

Centering around Glazar's 10-month stay as a sorter of the death transports' clothes—from October 1942 until the armed inmate uprising of 2 August—the book is unique for its objectivity. Glazar dispassionately recounts the camp's extermination operations, describes the day-to-day routines of staff and inmates, and reconstructs conversations between prisoners and guards and administrators. A detailed sketch drawn by Esther-Maria Roos, according to the information provided by the author, helps the reader to visualize the layout of the camp. Glazar's spare and economical style reflects the objectivity with which he performed his tasks: "Sorting has become routine for me … Most of all I stay alert, and that is how I work: continuously on guard, always sniffing the wind, sensing whence the next danger might come, where the warning sounds."

Comprising 22 chapters ranging in length from two to sixteen pages, the memoir places his account of Treblinka within the context of his experiences during World War II. The early pages describe Glazar's interrupted university studies in Prague and his hiding in a rural Czech village as a farmhand (1939-42). The major portion dealing with Treblinka takes us from his deportation to Theresienstadt (September 1942) through his 10-month incarceration in Treblinka working closely with the fellow prisoners in his unit and then climaxes in the 2 August Treblinka uprising, during which he made his escape. The remaining quarter of the memoir details his flight across Poland with his closest friend since Theresienstadt, Karel Unger, whom he had been lucky enough to work with throughout the months at Treblinka. Through quick-wittedness and good fortune, Glazar and Unger made it to Mannheim, Germany, with "proper" legal documentation as Vladimir Frysak and Rudolf Masarek, respectively. They lived out the rest of the war in private quarters posing as Czech Gentile workers with the German Todt Organization.

Especially incisive are Glazar's portraits of the SS officials and guards at Treblinka, whose sadistically motivated acts of torture and murder were often provoked by their desire to appear more powerful than their associates vis-á-vis the inmates: a rivalry that made the existence of the worker Jews even more unbearable. Glazar also describes the ongoing black market trading between the inmates and the SS and the Ukrainian guards in goods stolen from the incoming transports. Perceptively he reveals how the welfare of the working Jews depended directly on the number of deportation trains arriving at Treblinka. (Sometimes Glazar could wear new clothes every day and was eating butter, chocolate, and sugar.) Because their very existence depended on extermination, inmates would even pretend not to recognize relatives and friends among the new arrivals and unblinkingly allow them to go to their deaths. Invaluable is Glazar's seventh chapter with its 10-page description of the planning and execution of the Treblinka uprising of 2 August, which for all intents and purposes shut the camp down. Eventually the Nazis attempted to obliterate all traces of the operation, building a farm on the site to house Ukrainians.

The final chapter—a type of epilogue—describes Glazar's appearances as one of only 54 official witnesses of the Treblinka Uprising at the Düsseldorf trials in 1963 and 1971. What gave Glazar the greatest satisfaction he had possibly ever known was that not one of the Treblinka defendants claimed to have acted out of conviction. To Glazar's great disappointment, however, neither the actual architects of the physical death plant at Treblinka nor the bureaucratic pencil pushers in charge of the operation from afar were ever brought forward as defendants.

The candor and succinctness of the memoirs, written as they were immediately following the war, lend them a riveting immanence.

—Steven R. Cerf