They would do hard work digging underground munitions warehouses. He was given good clothes and blankets, obviously from the previous convoy, and allowed to eat all he wanted. When not enough people had volunteered, the Germans made some threats and then picked people, all the while running around a flock of geese, their calls meant to cover the cries of the Jews. The Germans demanded sixty strong people, and reasoning that food would be needed to do hard labor, Lerner volunteered. Lerner says that everyone was herded off the train. When they arrived at the camp labeled Sobibor, it was too late.įILM ID 3336 - Camera Rolls #7-9 - 03:00:06 to 03:31:45 The occupants of Lerner's railcar had opened a hole in the bottom of the car to use as a toilet, and they could have escaped through there, yet nobody did because they could not believe that they would all be killed. A Polish train worker told them they were bound for Sobibor to be cremated. Lanzmann then gets into an argument with the translator over the specifics of a certain word.Ġ2:24:25 Lerner tells that one night in September 1943, everyone in the camp was taken by train to Lublin, at what would be Majdanek, when they were told there was no room, the train departed.
He contracted typhus and was bedridden for several weeks. All of these Russian prisoners happened to be Jewish. He was far too frail to work, and thus was put, by his Jewish comrades, into the Russian POW camp nearby. Lerner says that he was simply very lucky to survive all of these captures, being taken to a new camp each time and never getting shot.Ġ2:11:14 Lerner tells the story of when he was recaptured by the Germans and placed into the Minsk ghetto. He was beaten often, and bedridden for long periods, yet managed to appear at roll calls so that he would escape the execution that the sick were subject to. Lerner says that he escaped from camps many times, because he would rather die by a bullet than die by starvation. He simply had nothing to lose and didn't want to die of starvation.įILM ID 3335 - Camera Rolls #4-6 - 02:00:06 to 02:35:33 Lerner first talks of his uncanny ability for escape, saying that he was in eight camps in six months. His father was religious enough to have a beard until 1938 when "anti-Semitism became such that the Poles would catch the Jews who had a beard, they would drag them by the beard, they would tear it out." He then talks about the friend with whom he escaped, saying that they had met before leaving on the train. His father was a baker with his own store, where his mother worked. Only then was he recaptured and taken to a different work camp.Ġ1:22:23 Lanzmann asks Lerner about his family and early childhood. After two months of watching people starve to death or be shot by the Germans as a type of sport, he flees with a friend, sneaking out of the barbed wire and running through the adjacent fields and forests for two days before encountering anybody. It was then he decided that he must escape. He talks of conditions in the freight cars, and then of the conditions of his time working at a military airport.
He was separated from his family, whom he never saw again, and then put onto a train with many other young Jews who were able to work. He begins when he was a 16-year-old being transported from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. Lerner's apartment in Jerusalem.įILM ID 3334 - Camera Rolls #1-3 - 01:00:07 to 01:33:27Ġ1:00:46 Lerner, seated in front of a window looking into the camera, is talking to a translator and Lanzmann off-screen. Lanzmann found this interview so compelling that he used none of it in Shoah but instead made a separate film about Lerner, called "Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 P.M." The interview took place over four hours in Mr. He relates the Sobibor revolt in great detail, including his role in killing two Germans. One of the leaders of the revolt in Sobibor, Lerner talks about his knack for escaping from camps - he escaped from eight camps before arriving at Sobibor.
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