Russia, Ukraine and Poland: a ghost train carries the memory of the extermination camps. The voices of the survivors tell us what is impossible to see. «Once I dreamed that a certain past would never come back. But I was wrong. It is always here». «I hate train stations, railway tracks, wagons. I feel as if all trains would take me to Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka».

AS FONTES
TREBLINKA ouve as vozes de vários testemunhos do extermínio. A parte principal corresponde a excertos das memórias de Chil Rajchman cuja publicação teve lugar já neste século, após a morte do autor.
Chil Rajchman, um judeu polaco, foi detido com a irmã mais nova em 1942 e enviado para Treblinka, um campo onde foram exterminadas mais de 750.000 pessoas. Mal chegaram, a sua irmã foi enviada nas câmaras de gás, mas Chil Rajchman escapou à execução, trabalhando sob ameaças e espancamentos contínuos durante dez meses como barbeiro, separador de roupas, carregador de cadáveres, arrancador de dentes.
Em Agosto de 1943, houve uma revolta no campo e Rajchman foi um dos poucos que conseguiu escapar vivo. Em 1945, passou a escrito este testemunho único, que só foi publicado pelos seus filhos no início do século XXI.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Treblinka is a film that came to me slowly, in a process that had no regular plan. 

Five years ago, I wrote a project about a Holocaust survivor, Marceline Loridan-Ivens – Joris Ivens’ widow – who was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau when she was 13. She lost her father in Auschwitz and worked as a prisoner in Birkenau. The experience marked her for the rest of her life. 

When I first met Marceline, I recognized and greatly admired the survivor in her. Many of the witnesses of the horror took their lives while they were in the camps, many others committed suicide after returning to normal life. 

At the beginning, my intention was to build a documentary based on conversations, but mainly focusing on the memories of dead people who still live with the survivors throughout their life. 

Marceline used to say «I hate trains, no matter where they are going». She felt, somehow, that all trains were always leaving to Auschwitz. In an attempt to evoke this impossible place between life and death, I decided to shoot the entire film aboard long distance trains in Eastern Europe. The whole shooting took place in three countries: Russia, Poland, and Ukraine.

Focusing on the Holocaust, I could do all the shooting in Polish trains, or in the different camps I visited during my research - Treblinka, Auschwitz, Birkenau, among others. But the mass tourism that has taken over some Holocaust venues shocked me and made me think about the banalization of horror, which could be a perverse counterpart to the banality of evil, studied by Hanna Arendt. 

Standing in complete contrast to the organised tourism of the Holocaust, are two experiences I had while reading books about the death camps: Treblinka : a survivor’s memory by Chil Rajchman (I could barely draw breath as I read it), and Gitte Sereny’s research Into That Darkness, with hundreds of hours of crossed interviews centred on Frank Stangl, the Chief commander of Treblinka. I felt as though I was watching the most brilliantly written documentary I could ever imagine. 

Reading these books, confirmed (for me, at least) that words could be stronger than images. Especially nowadays, when images of horror have become so normal and banal. 

At the same time, with everything we have witnessed over the last two years, the darkest side of humanity - in all its horror and indifference - was present to me while making this film. The ghost universe is a common experience shared by men and women who have survived mass murder: the victims of Nazi camps, but also the survivors of massacres in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, or, more recently, in Syria and Iraq.

Treblinka is a film of voices and naked bodies, mostly reflected on the train windows. The audience may feel uncomfortable with the beauty of the rough images. But I believe beauty has always been used by painters to portray the most horrific situations. 

Almost all the texts are Russian translations from Chil Rajchman’s memories, a few others are conversations I remember having had with different survivors.

«Who am I?» and «Why should I keep living?» are questions endless repeated by the survivors.

- Sérgio Tréfaut