In the infirmary wagon, Regine Krochmal saw her chance. She heaved herself up to the small window and wriggled through, dropping to the ground outside. She was immediately startled by the sounds of machine pistols being fired close by and ‘savage roaring by the Germans’. Krochmal dropped to the ground and lay still, hoping that the frantic SiPo men would not see her in the gloom.11
When the first shots rang out, Buvens, standing on the engine plate, turned to his fireman. ‘Come on, we’re going to hide between the coal,’ he said. ‘There’s a thick plate, we’re the safest over there.’12 Scrambling over the coal, the two men took cover as shots came from the woods and the Germans started to return fire with rifles and machine pistols.
Meanwhile, Maistriau had moved along the train to the next wagon and was desperately trying to cut the wires holding the bolts shut. He jammed the torch into the waistband of his trousers so that he could use both hands. Suddenly, something cracked the air close to his head. He turned and stared up the length of the train to where a SiPo guard was running towards him, recycling the bolt on his Mauser rifle as his jackboots crunched on the gravel. The SS man stopped, raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The bullet narrowly missed Maistriau’s head. The young Belgian realised that he had run out of time.
‘Come out!’ screamed an infuriated German voice. August Buvens gingerly left the safety of the coal car and climbed down to where a SiPo officer and two men stood. Buvens noticed the automatic pistol that the officer held in one gloved hand. Gunfire was still coming from the woods nearby, while other SiPo men returned fire from between the wooden wagons.
‘Why have you stopped the train?’ demanded the angry officer.
‘When there’s a red sign, I have to stop,’ replied Buvens.
‘What kind of light is that?’ said the officer, pointing with his pistol in the direction of the lantern lying on the track. ‘What’s the meaning of it?’13
Buvens told him he didn’t know, but was under obligation to stop for red lights. The officer gestured for Buvens to walk towards the light, the two following SiPo levelling their rifles at his back as he walked. But suddenly the firing started again, the SiPo men returning fire. Buvens fled back to cover behind the train. The officer ordered his men to shoot out the light, which they did after missing several times.
‘Driver, restart the train!’ ordered the SiPo officer. ‘Now!’ he bellowed, pointing his pistol at Buvens’ head. Buvens quickly climbed up onto the engine and started shunting the train forward at a walking pace.
Regine Krochmal had not stirred from her hiding place near the stopped train. She had listened to the shooting, shouting and occasional cries as the Germans shot down other escapers. After what seemed like hours, but was actually only a few minutes, the train abruptly started moving again. Once the long line of clanging and rattling wagons had moved away from her, Krochmal jumped up and ran to a little house that she had seen nearby. A young man appeared in the doorway. Krochmal proudly announced that she was a Jew, and that she had jumped from the train. The young Belgian raised a finger to his lips, quieting her, then took her arm and led her quickly around to the back of the house, where there were two haystacks. He pushed her into one and covered her with straw before he ran back to his house. He just made it before the unmistakable sounds of Germans with Alsatian dogs was heard approaching.14 The SS had a search party at the site of the train ambush with typical German rapidity and efficiency. They were determined to round up the escaped Jews and collect the bodies of those who had been shot or had been killed jumping from the train.
As the train started away, Robert Maistriau had dived into some bushes where a couple of freed Jews were waiting for him. He told them to hit the deck. Looking up, he saw the train’s red tail lights disappearing into the distance, the air still smelling of smoke and cordite. Moving further away, Maistriau joined up with more of the people that he had saved. He quickly distributed a few francs among the group. One woman embraced him passionately, saying she didn’t know how she could thank him. Another wanted his name and address, but Maistriau knew that it would be folly to give out such information in case the Germans recaptured any of these people. Mission accomplished, the trio of Resistance members and the people they had saved dispersed across the Belgian countryside, their futures in the lap of fate.
Regine Krochmal remained concealed inside the haystack while she listened to the young Belgian talking to the SS search party. He plied them with drinks and seemed to put them at ease, for after a time the Germans left without conducting a more thorough search of the property and its environs. The Belgian brought Krochmal food and told her where the nearest tram stop was, about a twenty-minute walk away. The tram would take her from Haacht to Brussels.15 Shaking hands, Krochmal started walking, thankful for the knife that Dr Braun had given her at Mechelen and for the selflessness of her Belgian saviour.
Although the Belgian Resistance operation was over, and several dozen people were successfully freed from Transport XX, it was by no means the end of the story. The incident had emboldened some of the other prisoners still held inside the train to attempt to save themselves. In one wagon, Louis de Groot, one of the Jews that the Germans had made responsible for preventing escapes, worked with some other prisoners in breaking through the wooden slatted air vent. Ignoring the pleas of some of the other prisoners, who feared that they would be executed because of De Groot’s attempt, he managed to struggle through the hole and jumped from the moving train. A girl followed him, then De Groot’s brother, Abraham, and two boys.16
In the wagon that contained young Simon Gronowski and his mother, Chana, a group of men managed to get the door open an hour after the Resistance raid. By now the train was travelling at high speed, and the relief the people felt inside the wagon was immense as cool fresh air wafted inside their stygian wooden cell on wheels. The problem was now how to get off a train that was moving quickly through the darkened night without getting killed. Chana gave Simon a 100-franc note that he tucked into his sock for safekeeping. Then Chana lowered her son over the door edge until his feet reached the foot rail beneath the wagon. ‘But at first, I did not dare to jump because the train was going too fast for me,’ Simon recalled. ‘I saw the trees go by and the train was getting faster. The air was crisp and cool and the noise was deafening. I remember feeling surprise that it could go so fast with thirty-five cars towed. But then at a certain moment, I felt the train slow down. I told my mother: “Now I can jump.” She let go of me and I jumped off.’17 The little boy picked himself up and stood watching the train steaming away from him. ‘The train was moving slowly forward – it was this large black mass in the dark, spewing steam. I wanted to go back to my mother but the Germans were coming down the track towards me.’ Gunfire had broken out again as the SiPo tried to pick off the escaping Jews. ‘I hadn’t decided what to do, it was a reflex. I tumbled down a small slope and just started running for the trees.’18 Simon never saw his mother again.
Some time later, covered in mud and dust, Simon knocked at the door of a farmhouse some way from the railway tracks. He explained to the woman who answered that he had been playing with his friends and had become lost. The woman took him to the local police station.
At the station, police officer Jan Aerts had been having a busy night. So far his men had brought in three bodies of Jews who had been shot or had died jumping from Transport XX. Simon stood before the tall policeman. ‘The sight of this man in uniform with his gun on his belt, terrorized me,’ Simon later said. ‘I was sure he would bring me back to the Germans.’19 Aerts asked Simon what had happened, and the young boy stuck to his cover story, adding that he needed to get home to Brussels. Aerts was no fool – he suspected immediately that Simon was an escaped Jew from the train. But instead of arresting Simon and handing him back to the Germans, Aerts decided to risk his life and help the little boy. He took him to his house, where Aerts’ wife fed Simon and gave him some fresh, clean clothes. Later that night, Aerts esco
rted Simon onto a train bound for Brussels and gave him a ticket. Soon Simon was reunited with his father, who was still in hiding, and the two managed to survive the war, protected by very brave Catholics.
In total, around 200 people managed to escape from the train before it crossed the German border. Of those who escaped, the Germans killed at least twenty-six and wounded many others. Some were immediately recaptured, but about 100 people managed to remain free.20 On 22 April 1943, Transport XX arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau. All trains that were sent from Mechelen after Transport XX were heavily guarded by the addition of a reserve company of troops from Brussels until they crossed the German frontier. This measure made escapes almost impossible.
The three brave Resistance heroes who risked everything to stop Transport XX had mixed fates. A month after the train raid, the Gestapo arrested Dr Livschitz. He managed to overpower his guard, steal his uniform and brazenly walk out of Gestapo Headquarters in Brussels. On 26 June 1943, the German Feldgendarmerie stopped Livschitz and his brother, Alexander, and their car was searched. Weapons were found and both men were handed over to the Gestapo. On 17 February 1944, Liveschitz was executed by firing squad in Schaarbeek.
Jean Frankleman was arrested on 4 August 1943 and imprisoned at Fort van Breendonk. He survived the war. Robert Maistriau also fell into German hands and was held as a political prisoner at Fort van Breendonk before being transferred to Germany. He survived slave labour in Buchenwald and Dora Concentration Camps before being liberated in 1945 by the US Army at Bergen-Belsen. Regine Krochwals continued her Resistance activities in occupied Belgium until the Gestapo again arrested her. Held as a political prisoner in Fort van Breendonk, she was released by her fellow inmates after the Germans retreated on 3 September 1944.21
Simon Gronowski became a lawyer in Brussels after the war. The policeman who saved his life on 19 April 1943, Jan Aerts, was declared a ‘Righteous Gentile’ by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem for his brave act of humanity.
Transport XX was the only Holocaust train that was stopped during the war, and its story stands as a unique and uplifting action from one of the darkest episodes in Belgian history.
Chapter 5
The Hour
‘We knew what lay hidden beneath the surface of this soil. We were the only ones left alive to tell the story. Silently, we took our leave of the ashes of our fellow Jews and vowed that, out of their blood, an avenger would arise.’
Yankel Wiernik
Treblinka II
Meir Berliner, a young Jew from the Warsaw Ghetto, had arrived at Treblinka in early September 1942. At the time, the Germans would select several hundred prisoners from the daily transports who would be forced to work for the SS, sorting the belongings of those who had been sent to the gas chambers. Berliner was one of those men who were destined to live a few days longer than their families and friends, before they too would face liquidation by the SS and replacement by fresh prisoners. In this manner, the Germans hoped to preserve the secret of Treblinka by disposing of any witnesses to their crimes. At evening roll call on 10 September, Berliner and several hundred other slaves lined up for counting, the parade being taken by SS-Unterscharführer Max Bialas, supported by a dozen Ukrainian SS guards. Berliner had decided to strike, as he had judged it likely that Bialas was about to send the entire group to the gas chambers.
When he had arrived at the camp, Berliner had managed to secrete a knife in his clothing, the Germans at this stage being less than thorough in their searching of new arrivals. Suddenly, Berliner drew the knife and lunged at a very surprised Bialas, stabbing him deeply in the chest. Seconds later, Berliner was gunned down by panicking Ukrainian SS men, who started firing their rifles indiscriminately into the shouting and screaming crowd of Jewish prisoners. At least ten were killed and many more injured before SS NCOs arrived to take charge.1
SS-Unterscharführer Bialas was taken off the square by medics and rushed by train to hospital, but he would die on the way from his wound. In camp that day was the bespectacled SS-Sturmbannführer Christian Wirth, inspector of the Aktion Reinhard death camps. Wirth, who sported a toothbrush moustache in honour of his Führer, arrived on the square accompanied by Treblinka’s terrifying deputy commander, SS-Untersturmführer Kurt Franz, his large St Bernard dog Barry straining on its lead. On Franz’s order, ten prisoners were dragged out and immediately shot as a warning to the others that resistance would not be tolerated. But this was not the end of the lesson; on the following day another 150 Jews were taken out of roll call and shot.2 The Jews absorbed the message loud and clear. Individual acts of resistance against the SS were valiant but ultimately futile. The murder of one SS man had cost the lives of 160 prisoners. It hadn’t been worth it. If the Jews were to survive to bear witness to what was happening at Treblinka, then they had to find a better way to resist.
The one thing that emerged out of Berliner’s sacrifice was a decision by the SS to create a permanent Jewish Sonderkommando to help dispose of bodies, sort belongings and maintain the fabric of the camp. No longer would the SS select a few hundred prisoners from incoming transports, work them for a few days, murder them and then replace them with fresh people. New prisoners would be assigned to the existing Sonderkommando as and when required, to replace prisoners who had died or been executed. This meant that a permanent force of Jews existed at Treblinka, and for the Jews this meant that they had an opportunity of forming a resistance organization right under the Germans’ noses.
Treblinka – a name that today represents mass murder. To the Jews of Europe it was almost entirely unknown. But Treblinka fitted into the carefully conceived Aktion Reinhard plan to destroy the Jews of Europe. Three specialized killing centres were constructed in quiet corners of Poland, into which were fed the Jewish populations of vast stretches of Europe. They were Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. They were designed and built by the same SS architect, Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla, and staffed by men who had been intimately involved with the T-4 euthanasia programme in Germany. Such men were already adept at gassing operations and were hardened mass murderers.
There was already a camp at Treblinka that predated the more infamous Reinhard facility. Known as Treblinka I, it was founded on 15 November 1941. Treblinka was a nowhere place, a poor little village 50 miles north-east of Warsaw. Before the war, it was the site of a gravel pit whose product was used in making concrete. The advantage was that Treblinka was connected to most of the major Polish cities by the Mallinia-Sokolow Podlaski railway junction and had its own village train station. The SS quickly took over the gravel pit, which was used to supply materials for a road-building programme in the Soviet Union. A workforce of mostly Polish civilians was sent to the Treblinka I camp, usually on sentences of six months’ hard labour, providing a stable workforce of approximately 1,000–2,000 prisoners. In command was a hard SS-Totenkopfverbande (SS-TV) officer, SS-Sturmbannführer Theodor van Eupen. Thirty-four-year-old Van Eupen claimed to be a German-Dutch aristocrat. Though well mannered, he was a noted sadist who enjoyed personally shooting prisoners with his Luger. He was also less than popular among his SS colleagues for his disconcerting habit of dispatching subordinates to combat units on the Eastern Front for the slightest infractions of the regulations. Van Eupen had a pleasant garden and a duck pond constructed adjacent to his house, where his wife and two young sons were regular visitors.
During the three years of its operation, over 20,000 people, including some German, Czech and French Jews, worked at Treblinka I, and over 10,000 never left, dying of brutality, overwork, starvation, disease or accidents. Van Eupen and his subordinates terrorized the prisoners. He commanded several other SS-TV officers and NCOs and about 100 brutal SS-Trawnikis – Ukrainian and Latvian ex-Red Army prisoners-of-war who had changed sides.
During the victorious advance of the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa, 3 million largely poorly educated peasant soldiers were captured in huge encirclements, as the Red Army, its mi
litary leadership crippled by the loss of its most experienced officers during Stalin’s purges of 1938, struggled to resist a numerically smaller but infinitely more modern, highly mobile and determined opponent. The Germans herded Soviet prisoners into huge, often open-air, prison camps, where they were largely left to die of starvation, disease and brutality, this war crime being primarily the responsibility of the regular German Army rather than the SS. After a few months, the survivors were used as slave labour – literally being worked to death alongside the Jews. However, the Germans realized that they also had an untapped manpower resource at their disposal that might be used for other purposes. One of the problems that faced Heinrich Himmler in his attempts to increase the size of his SS was access to German manpower. The German Armed Forces only permitted a small number of men to be conscripted each year to join the SS, so Himmler was forced to look elsewhere for personnel. The Ukrainian prisoners were often anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic, which made many of them perfect candidates for the SS. Many people across Europe at the time were deeply anti-communist, and many also had mixed feelings about the Jews, so the SS harnessed these feelings and recruited widely, especially among the embittered right-wingers who had opposed a war with Germany in the first place. Such foreign levies were outside of Army recruitment restrictions, meaning that the SS soon became extremely diverse in national and even ethnic make-up. The SS recruited large numbers of French, Belgians and Dutch, alongside Finns, Danes and Norwegians. In the Baltic States, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians volunteered in large numbers, and there was even a tiny British contingent of the SS that was largely recruited from among Sir Oswald Mosley’s former Blackshirt fascists who had been captured by the Germans whilst serving in the British Army. Named the British Free Corps, it only ever amounted to three-dozen men, and was actually rather an embarrassment to the Nazis. Himmler even permitted recruitment of Bosnian Muslims into the SS for use against Yugoslav partisans and Chetniks.3
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