Shoah1985

Claude Lanzmann:
But a ghetto like Warsaw's, in a great capital, in the heart of the city...

Franz Grassler:
That was unusual.

Claude Lanzmann:
You say you wanted to maintain the ghetto?

Franz Grassler:
Our mission wasn't to annihilate the ghetto, but to keep it alive, to maintain it.

Claude Lanzmann:
What does "alive" mean in such conditions?

Franz Grassler:
That was the problem. That was the whole problem.

Claude Lanzmann:
But people were dying in the streets. There were bodies everywhere?

Franz Grassler:
Exactly. That was the paradox.

Claude Lanzmann:
You see it as a paradox?

Franz Grassler:
I'm sure of it.

Claude Lanzmann:
Why? Can you explain?

Franz Grassler:
No.

Claude Lanzmann:
Why not?

Franz Grassler:
Explain what? But the fact is... That wasn't maintaining! Jews were being exterminated daily in the ghetto wrote... To maintain it properly we'd have needed more substantial rations and less crowding.

Claude Lanzmann:
Why weren't the rations more humane? Why weren't they? That was a German decision wasn't it?

Franz Grassler:
There was no real decision to starve the ghetto. The big decision to exterminate came much later.

Claude Lanzmann:
That's right, later. In 1942.

Franz Grassler:
Precisely.

Claude Lanzmann:
A year later.

Franz Grassler:
Just so. Our mission, as I recall it, was to manage the ghetto, and naturally with those inadequate rations and the over-crowding, a high, even excessive death rate was inevitable.

Claude Lanzmann:
Yes. What does "maintain" the ghetto mean in such conditions, the food, sanitation, etcetera? What could the Jews do against such measures?

Franz Grassler:
They couldn't do anything.

Claude Lanzmann:
Why did Czerniakow commit suicide?

Franz Grassler:
Because he realised there was no future for the ghetto. He probably saw before I did that the Jews would be killed.