European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Documenting nazi crimes in Majdanek

I guess two men were interested in me.

One of them was an economist,

his last name was very strange - by the way he was Armenian and not Russian - Jekatow, the husband of Muta Dziewicka,

who offered me to work in the offices, in the economics office in PKWN.

And just after a moment professor Syngalewicz came to me, he was the professor of forensic medicine

and offered me to work with him in the Majdanek committee.

I took this offer.

We were travelling, watching and making notes, all things which were important enough we made notes about,

for example a story like this – we are going through the field,

there was supposed to be cabbage but were only dried stalks,

the ground was creaking and giving way under our feet.

Those were human bones,

it was the rest from the crematorium,

everything from there was emptied out there and dug up and then they planted cabbage there.

Then we came closer to the crematorium.

There were parts of bodies, some of them prepared to be taken to the chamber.

They did not look horrible, they were brown,

the smell was disgusting, it was such a hot day, August, in the middle of August in 1944.

We always had a scarf on our head to cover our hair and protect it from the smell,