However, had he not showed the slightest bit of remorse in his interviews, it would not have been possible for me to write a persona poem using his voice. However, how much of that matters when we write about a Nazi? How much compassion should a writer show towards someone who was responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people? How much compassion should a writer show towards someone who admitted to perceiving Treblinka’s victims (innocent women, children, men, and elderly) as “cargo” rather than “individuals” or “humans”? These are questions that I struggle with when I write about him. He was a man who showed sadness in his face-lines in his skin deepening like the dried earth during a drought-when he discussed the crimes he committed. The part of Franz Stangl that was not a complete monster was the man who was known to physically abuse only one prisoner (as opposed to his subordinates who abused countless prisoners in horrific ways). ![]() Survivors of Treblinka documented that despite being surrounded by death, he always wore a clean white jacket, which separated him from both the prisoners and uniformed staff at the extermination camp. The smell of decaying bodies was so intense that witnesses said they could smell it over a mile away. When he first arrived in Treblinka, the camp was a horror scene-the bruised and blackening dead, slowly decomposing into earth, piled not far from the train tracks. His arrogance came from his “success” as commandant of Sobibor and being asked to “clean up” the “mess” of Treblinka. Therefore, even though this poem describes a scene from an arrogant monster’s perspective, there was also a human deep down in Stangl. It could be a major first step towards a prisoner successfully returning to society after their release. Imagine how much of a difference that could make on someone coming to terms with how their actions affected others. Imagine if people who committed what society labels as “horrific crimes” spoke to people who truly expressed a willingness to listen. When prisoner rehabilitation comes up in the news, this is where my mind goes. At the end of the last interview with her, he hung his head in silence and died the next day of a heart attack. Sereny interviewed him for hours and hours-as she built trust with him, he told her his life story and what happened in Treblinka from his perspective. There are many aspects of Franz Stangl’s personality that intrigued me, but the most compelling was that despite him overseeing a place where the worst horror occurred, he appeared to show remorse at the end of his life (which was different from the behavior of many other captured Nazi officials). That is where I got the inspiration for this poem. After reading Into That Darkness, I began reading articles, watching documentaries, and listening to lectures on Treblinka. All the interviews that she had with Stangl occurred while he was in prison for crimes he committed during the Shoah. Sereny’s book includes interviews that she had with Franz Stangl (the former commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka), members of his family, and survivors of Treblinka. Austria also has no death penalty.After my chapbook about the Shoah, They Become Stars, was accepted for publication, one of the editors at Slapering Hol Press suggested that I read Gitta Sereny’s book, Into That Darkness. Its laws stipulate that a prisoner cannot be extradited unless the requesting nation agrees it will not apply the death penalty to the prisoner. Officials indicated there were no legal barriers to extraditing Stangl. Under Brazilian law, a prisoner can be kept under custody for that period. ![]() The extradition request must be considered by the Brazilian Supreme Court within 60 days. Evaristo de Morais Filho, a Brazilian lawyer retained by Treblinka survivors now living in Israel, will assist Austria in the extradition proceedings. Stangl, who fled from an Austrian prisoner-of-war camp in 1946, is on a list of missing war criminals issued by the Austrian Government in 1962. The Austrian Government started proceedings this weekend for the extradition of Stangl, who was traced by Simon Wiesenthal, head of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna. He worked as an automobile mechanic in a Volkswagen plant in Sao Paulo. Stangl had lived quietly with his wife and two daughters in Brazil, under an assumed name, since 1951. ![]() The Brazilian Federal Police is especially interested in finding out if he knows about other former Nazi war criminals possibly hiding in Brazil. Franz Stangl, the long-sought Nazi who is charged with the responsibility of killing 700, 000 Jews in the Nazi death camps of Treblinka and Sobibor, of which he was the commandant, and who was arrested in Sao Paulo last week at the request of the Austrian Embassy, is being held under maximum security detention in Brasilia, the Federal Security Police revealed today.
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