"These are fat Jews. All of them will be good for soap." | Winston Smith Ministry of Truth Archive

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"These are fat Jews. All of them will be good for soap."

Polish Jew Dr. Josef Buzminsky, who jumped from a train headed for Belzec, demonstrates how an SS man tore

a baby "apart the way you would tear up a rag" in the Przemysl Ghetto. You can watch the footage here.

Buzminsky managed to fit in an impressive number of atrocity stories in his brief testimony at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, but unfortunately only the tearing the baby like a rag is included in the footage made publicly available. Only moments later he told the court about how he and 50 other Jews had hidden in a bunker to avoid being deported to Belzec. When discovered the Germans had initially planned to shoot them, but one SS man pointed out the Jews were fat and would make good soap. So instead of shooting the Jews they put them on a train to Belzec to make soap out of them:

Q. Where did these transports go, Dr. Buzminsky?

A. All the deportations were to Belzec.

[...]

Q. Let us come to the operation of November, in which you, too, were deported. Do you remember this operation?

A. Yes. On 18 November the ghetto was surrounded and towards morning SS men entered. Together with 50 others, I sat in the bunker. The operation ended at approximately 3 o'clock in the afternoon. After 3 o'clock someone in the bunker pushed aside the sack which closed off the hatch of this bunker. We heard a voice and we saw a guard, an orderly of the "Ordnungsdienst," who said: If there is anyone here in the bunker - please come out for otherwise they are going to throw hand-grenades. Not far from there - about 50 metres away, SS men were walking. One of the women inside the bunker pushed her daughter out of the window of the bunker, so that she could save herself. When the daughter crawled through the hatch, the SS men spotted her, they began to hit her, to kick her and she showed them where the entrance to the bunker was.

Q. And then they took you out of the bunker?

A. Yes.

Presiding Judge: Were you also in this bunker?

Witness Buzminsky: Yes. The SS men and the Gestapo stood in a row, and each one had a rod in his hand. Everyone who came out of the bunker received blows. Anyone who had the strength and managed to run - got his blows, but he managed to run. In the end he had to stand in line. The weak ones got their blows and were killed on the spot. Amongst them there was a girl, the daughter of a certain lawyer, who was ill. They brought us to the square, stood us in a line, took from us all the valuables that there were, and stood us up to kill us by shooting. I stood in line together with my brother and we deliberately tried to face the muzzles of their guns so that they would shoot us in the heart.

Attorney General: Why?

Witness Buzminsky: For we knew that normally they only shot one bullet, and anyone who still remained alive, was buried alive, and thereafter they added lime to the pit - to the grave. At the very last moment, a group of SS men came there and asked what was going on. One of the said that they had taken fifty Jews from the bunker and were shooting them, as they had been ordered to do. Then the commander said to them: "These are fat Jews. All of them will be good for soap." And then they took us to the train, to a transport that was still waiting there and had not left. The loading was done in the following way: These were high Russian freight-waggons; they had no steps and each one had to lift the other in order to put him into the waggon.

Surrounding us were the SS men with dogs, and a group of men stood before the entrance to the waggon. An elderly woman stood there and at a particular moment a SS man set his dog on her. The dog jumped on her and tore off a piece of flesh from her buttocks, and brought the piece of flesh to his master. She screamed in great fright and jumped into the high waggon, on top of the people. All these Germans laughed a great deal. We were loaded - more than one hundred people - into this waggon and they slammed the door.

Q. Dr. Buzminsky, did you know that this was a transport to death?

A. Yes.

Q. Why did you people enter the waggon?

A. We were helpless. They pushed us in there, and our morale was completely broken. They had prepared us for over many months. When we heard their voice, we lost all will-power. We trembled. It was a mass psychosis. People weren't able to overcome it. In the waggon we were all pressed together, we were crowded together, and in front of the waggon there stood Ukrainians who guarded us, and they laughed and said: "Very good, we will have a lot of soap.""All of them are going in order to be turned into goulash."

Q. Perhaps we can now make it short, Dr. Buzminsky. You jumped from this train?

A. Yes.

Q. You walked in the direction of the forest, you hid yourself and went back to Przemyzl?

A. Yes.

Q. After some time you entered a bunker together with a number of people, and there a Polish woman hid you?

A. I first returned to this Polish woman, for I had nowhere to go back to. She had been left on her own. They killed her father and transferred the remaining members of her family to Germany for labour. She remained with her small sister, aged 7, and when she saw me bleeding all over and broken, this woman, who had previously been my neighbour in the place where I lived, took me in, washed me and gave me a place where I could sleep.

Q. And you remained there until the Russian army reached Przemzl and liberated you?

A. Before that I went back to the ghetto ... [his tales continue on the link below]

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Session 24, May 2, 1961

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