‘We rushed to the fence,’ said Philip Bialowitz. ‘We were shooting back as the men in the guard towers were shooting at us with machine guns.’22
‘We ran out of the workshop,’ recalled survivor Ada Lichtman. ‘All around were the bodies of the killed and wounded. Some of them were exchanging fire with the Ukrainians, others were running toward the gate or through the fences.’23 The SS opened a vigorous fire, shooting down people as they ran or climbed. Many were killed after getting over the wire when they stepped on landmines. In horrific scenes, hundreds of survivors, many wounded, charged for the forest with German bullets stitching the earth around them.
‘We ran through the exploded minefield holes,’ said Thomas Blatt, ‘and we were outside the camp. Now to make it to the woods ahead of us. It was so close. I fell several times, each time thinking I was hit. And each time I got up and ran further … 100 yards … 50 yards … 20 more yards … and the forest at last. Behind us, blood and ashes. In the greyness of the approaching evening, the towers’ machine guns shot their last victims.’24
Once in the forest and out of range of the guards, the survivors searched around desperately for friends and relatives before striking off in large groups. These large groups eventually broke up into smaller and smaller groups as the pressure of searching for food and water took its toll. Sasha initially led a party of about fifty survivors. But on 17 October, he halted the group in the forest and selected several men. They were all armed with Mauser rifles taken from the Trawnikis. Sasha only left one rifle with the main group. Though the people protested at his decision to leave on what he said was a ‘reconnaissance’, they couldn’t stop him and he promised to come back for them. He never did. Sasha, as a soldier, probably realized that trying to feed and protect such a large group was foolhardy, so he took a hardcore of armed men and they struck out on their own, giving them a better chance of making it. Some Sobibor survivors never forgave Sasha for abandoning them in the forest in this way.
An estimated 158 Jews were killed by the guards during the revolt, or blown up by mines. The SS, Wehrmacht and Order Police murdered a further 107 during hunts for the escapees. Another fifty-three died from other causes before the end of the war. There were only fifty-eight known survivors (forty-eight men and ten women) from Sobibor. After the revolt, the SS decided to close down killing operations at Sobibor. Camp III was disassembled and the remaining Sonderkommandos shot. Furious that the revolt could even have occurred, the SS took further revenge measures against the Jews that were under their control, culminating in the murders of 42,000 in Lublin District three weeks after the revolt in Operation ‘Erntefest’. The Germans had plans to use the remainder of Sobibor Camp for other purposes, and although they based a small guard detachment of Trawnikis at the site until March 1944, it never held any more prisoners.25
Leon Feldhendler hid in Lublin until the end of the German occupation in July 1944. He was shot dead in his flat on 2 April 1945 in mysterious circumstances – possibly murdered by a rival Zionist group or the victim of a robbery gone wrong. Thomas Toivi Blatt was initially hidden by a Polish farmer after the escape, but was later shot and wounded by the same farmer. Blatt survived the war, moving to Israel and then the United States. He wrote the book Escape from Sobibor in 1983, seeing it turned into a successful film, and two further books on the camp. He is one of a tiny handful of survivors who is still alive, and lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Sasha joined the Soviet partisans, sabotaging railway lines, cutting telephone wires and conducting hit-and-run attacks on the Germans. Once the Red Army had occupied Poland, Sasha, like all other Red Army soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Nazis, was punished on Stalin’s order. He was conscripted into a tough penal battalion and sent to the front. But Sasha’s commanding officer was so shocked by Sasha’s story of what happened at Sobibor that Sasha was sent to Moscow, where he spoke before a commission of inquiry. Promoted to captain, Sasha was decorated for gallantry and finally discharged after suffering a foot injury. The Soviets refused to allow him to testify before the Nuremberg Trials, and in 1948 Sasha was arrested during a campaign against ‘disloyal Jews’. Stalin’s death in 1953 saved Sasha from further suffering, and he was released. He worked in a small amateur musical theatre. Refused permission by the Soviet authorities to testify at the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem in 1960, Sasha died in 1990.
Commandant Karl Reichleitner was transferred to Trieste and Fiume in Italy along with nearly all the Aktion Reinhard death camp personnel, where they formed a special SS unit, Sondertruppe R, detailed to fight partisans and murder Jews. Reichleitner was killed at the age of 37 by partisans on 3 January 1944.
Chapter 8
Harvest Festival
‘If this Jewish business is ever avenged on earth, then have mercy on us Germans … But orders are orders.’
Major Wilhelm Trapp
Reserve Police Battalion 101
The final survivors of the liquidations of the Warsaw and Bialystok Ghettos existed on borrowed time, for the Germans had no intention of allowing them to live. The uprisings at Warsaw, Bialystok and Vilnius, coupled with the revolts at Sobibor and Treblinka, had convinced the SS that leaving tens of thousands of Jews alive in the General Government would only lead eventually to more disobedience and resistance, and that this disobedience would only be emboldened by the approach of the Red Army to occupied Poland. The solution was terrifyingly final – simply execute all remaining prisoners that were employed as slave labourers by the huge SS industrial and manufacturing concern Ostindustrie. The factories and workshops had been relocated from major Polish cities to a series of concentration camps at Trawniki, Poniatowa and Majdanek, as well as sub-camps at Budzn, Krasnik, Pukawy, Lipowa and several other locations.
The camp at Poniatowa had become a major manufacturing centre. Located near to Lublin, Poniatowa had begun life as a prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag 359. The camp housed 24,000 Soviet PoWs, of whom 22,000 died of brutality, starvation and disease between September 1941 and summer 1942, part of the Nazi policy of killing off most of the 3 million Red Army soldiers captured during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Surrounded by barbed wire, the camp consisted of brick residential blocks constructed around a factory built just before the war by the Poles. The Germans added the fences and sixteen wooden guard towers, each mounting a machine gun. Guarded by a German Army reserve unit, Landdeschutzenbataillon 709, the treatment meted out to the Red Army captives demonstrated that the army was just as capable of appalling cruelty as the SS. The victims were buried in thirty-two mass graves dug outside the camp. Some 500 Red Army survivors agreed to collaborate with the Germans and became Hilfswillige, meaning ‘Volunteer Helpers’, more commonly known to the Wehrmacht as ‘Hiwis’.1
The eradication of most of the Soviet prisoners provided an opportunity for the SS, who immediately took over the camp. The factory area could be used profitably, so Poniatowa received a visit from SS-Untersturmführer Amon Göth in October 1942. Göth later infamously commanded the Plaszow Concentration Camp outside Krakow and was immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. Göth’s task was to organize a work camp for Jews, and he decided that Poniatowa could hold at least 9,000 in its current state. SS Higher Command agreed and transferred in 15,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, enlarging the camp’s accommodation with the addition of thirty wooden barracks to cope with the extra numbers. The Jews were employed by the Walter Toebbens Company, and Toebbens, who had good relations with Aktion Reinhard chief Odilo Globocnik, personally encouraged the Jews in his factory to move to Poniatowa, telling them that it was the best way for them to save their lives.
The camp was divided into three distinct areas: factory buildings; administration block; and prisoner barracks. Most of the Jews were Polish, but 3,000 were Austrian or Slovak, and due to their nationality and language abilities they were favoured by the SS and permitted to live with their families in a special area of the camp known as ‘The Settlement’, wh
ere conditions were much better than those endured by the rest of the prisoners. These ‘special’ prisoners were permitted to trade with local Poles for food and other necessities, and indeed early on the SS turned a blind eye to the healthy black market at Poniatowa, hoping by their leniency to convince the Jews of their value to the German war effort. The Toebbens factory mostly produced uniforms for the German Army.
Though tolerating the black market, the SS was nonetheless brutal, and the camp staff personified this. Around forty SS-TV officers and NCOs ran Poniatowa, with about 600 Ukrainian and Latvian Trawnikis assisting.
The commandant of Poniatowa was a trusted Aktion Reinhard operative, SS-Hauptsturmführer Gottlieb Hering. Born in 1887, Hering had been an army sergeant in the First World War, winning the Iron Cross 1st Class. He joined the police in 1919, becoming a detective sergeant in the Kriminalpolizei (‘Kripo’) in Goppingen near Stuttgart. Made an officer in 1929, Hering was, bizarrely when considering his later activities, well known for his actions against Nazis. A Social Democrat, Hering was an expert people-hunter. But he had personally known senior Nazi Christian Wirth since 1912, and after Hitler came to power Hering was permitted to continue as a police officer over the vehement opposition of local Nazis and SA. In May 1933, Hering, sensing change in the wind, swapped allegiances, joining the Nazi Party; within a year he was appointed head of the Goppingen Kripo, later transferring to Stuttgart. In 1939, Hering was sent to Gotenhafen, tasked with resettling ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in the new General Government. Hering’s career took a turn towards the macabre when he joined the infamous Aktion T4 euthanasia programme in 1940, working as office manager at the Hartheim Institute. The Aktion Reinhard staff was recruited almost exclusively from the ranks of the T4 Programme, and Hering replaced his friend Wirth as commandant of Belzec at the end of August 1942, serving until the camp’s closure in June 1943. Heinrich Himmler was impressed by Hering’s murderous efforts and promoted him to SS-Hauptsturmführer. Hering’s brutality was not limited to exterminating Jews. He also had little qualms about liquidating anyone who didn’t agree with the goals of Aktion Reinhard. ‘Hering and Wirth were definitely wicked people, and the whole staff at the camp was afraid of them,’ recalled SS-Scharführer Heinrich Unverhau. ‘I heard that Hering shot two Ukrainian guards who expressed their dissatisfaction with what was going on in Belzec.’2 Hering was an intimidating figure. ‘He was a tall bully, broad shouldered … with an expressionless face,’ said survivor Rudolf Reder. ‘He seemed to me as if he were a born bandit … the SS feared him greatly. He lived alone, attended by a Ukrainian orderly who served under him.’3
Hering was appointed commandant of Poniatowa, which was now a sub-camp of Majdanek, in June 1943. Deputy Commandant was SS-Untersturmführer Wahlerang, known to the prisoners as ‘Glove’ because of his habit of always wearing a pair of white gloves when on duty. But the main executioner at Poniatowa was an SS-TV NCO named Heinrich Gley.
SS-Oberscharführer Gley was born in Mecklenburg in 1901 and was too young to have fought in the Great War. Instead, he had joined the Reichswehr, the inter-war German Army, rising to the rank of corporal, before joining the SS in 1934. Another Aktion T4 veteran, Gley had served at Belzec, conducting selections of Jews on the rail ramp before being appointed commander of the work camp at Poniatowa.
The administration of the factory was in the hands of civilians, led by the director, Ernst Jahn, a Volksdeutsche who was openly hostile to the brutal SS policies. Jahn was later murdered, most probably by the SS, and replaced by a manager called Bauch.
As large numbers of Jews from Warsaw had been shipped to the camp, among them were several members of the secret Jewish Combat Organisation ZOB. Once at Poniatowa, they immediately set about trying to obtain supplies and weapons and began planning an uprising. Meilech Finekind, who had been born in Warsaw in 1898, commanded the ZOB cell at Poniatowa. Finekind had been a member of Polish socialist and Zionist organizations since his teenage years and was one of the founding members of the ZOB in the Polish capital.4
The ZOB established contact with the Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland, who managed to smuggle in money, medicines, instructions and a few firearms. Inside the camp, false ‘Aryan’ work permits and passes were forged, which allowed several Jews to leave Poniatowa, some returning to Warsaw. But Finekind’s unit had few guns and would not have been able to launch an uprising against the overwhelming force that the SS could bring to bear. For now, however, nobody seriously entertained the notion that the Germans might liquidate the camp – the Toebbens factory and its workers were deemed too valuable to the Nazi war effort.
The Jews, as with many other places in the Nazi empire where they slaved, had seriously underestimated the will of the SS to completely eradicate them.
In late October 1943, Commandant Hering suddenly ordered that the prisoners should excavate a series of ‘anti-tank ditches’ or ‘air-raid shelters’ within the camp and close by. Production slowed as large work parties armed with picks and shovels set to work digging the ditches.
Ludwiga Fiszer, a Jew in her late thirties, was an inmate at Poniatowa along with her husband and young daughter. On 24 October, Fiszer, along with all of the other factory workers, reported as usual for counting on the parade square. It was a freezing day, with little sun. ‘The head count was dragging on. Fish [a Kapo] reported his toll to the camp supervisor, [SS-Oberscharführer] Gley, who in turn passed it on to camp commandant Hering,’ Fiszer recalled. Everything appeared to be normal until SS-Untersturmführer Wahlerang arrived. ‘Lingering, like a performer waiting for the audience to applaud, he came slowly towards us.’5 Wahlerang barked orders at the Ukrainian guards, and soon the workforce was divided between those who would continue on to their shifts at the factory, and the rest, including Fiszer, who remained on the Appellplatz. ‘We were given shovels and were directed to the woods to do different work.’6
One work party that included Fiszer was taken to a large house in the woods that the prisoners had nicknamed ‘The Hotel’ because it was used to accommodate the German SS. ‘In the woods, near the hotel we were ordered to make a clearing and to dig a ditch. The field was covered with shrubbery and roots. The designated area to be cleared was about half a kilometre long,’ Fiszer said.7 The SS had marked off an area with wire cables and stakes that measured a metre wide and 2 metres deep. The prisoners attacked the earth with pickaxes and shovels. Unfortunately for this party, deputy commandant Wahlerang was in charge.
‘The SS officer Wahlerang didn’t let up for one minute,’ Fiszer said. ‘“Swing those shovels, heave those axes,” he ordered while he was beating and whipping us with all his strength. He yanked women’s hair, battered, trampled and beat us with all his strength. His friend Gircik [Ukrainian SS] also whipped and set his dog on us while shouting, “Tempo! Tempo!”.’8
At 4.00pm the prisoners expected, as they had at the factory, to stop work and be escorted back to their accommodation. But the deputy commandant had other ideas. ‘Wahlerang drove the tired, feverish, thirsty labourers to continue. Gircik, on the other hand, always accompanied by his black dog, whistled and ordered us to stop work,’ Fiszer remembered. Wahlerang went crazy. ‘Suddenly we heard Wahlerang’s thunderous voice, “Who allowed you to stop working?” and before Gircik had a chance to explain that he was acting on Hering’s orders, we grabbed our shovels and resumed digging. Those who did not manage to recompose themselves in time were the recipients of Wahlerang’s vicious boot.’9 Fortunately for the exhausted and starving prisoners, Commandant Hering arrived on site at 5.00pm and explained his orders to Wahlerang that work should cease, as it was getting dark. For several days the prisoners laboured to complete the ditches, the Germans constantly harrying them to work harder and faster. By early November, everything appeared to have been satisfactorily completed. The prisoners still had no idea what all the effort had been for.
In order to liquidate the workers at Poniatowa, the Germans decided to bring in specialists.
Heading the executions was 30-year-old SS-Oberscharführer Erich Muhlsfeld, who arrived with a group of guards from Majdanek. Muhlsfeld, who had a cold face, dead eyes and slicked back dark hair, had worked at Auschwitz I in 1940 before it had been expanded into an extermination centre, then at Majdanek. A true psychopath, Muhlsfeld would carefully oversee and take part in the mass killing of 18,400 people in just one day at Poniatowa.
Assisting the camp staff and Muhlsfeld’s execution specialists was Reserve Police Battalion 101. If any German unit involved in the Holocaust can be singled out as particularly heinous, then this collection of 500 middle-aged part-time policemen from Hamburg would qualify. That such a small unit would be responsible for the deaths of 83,000 Jews throughout the war in the East is a truly astonishing fact. Reserve Police Battalion 101 was one of many of these Ordnungspolizei units that followed the German Army through Poland and on into the Soviet Union in 1939–41. Though the Ordnungspolizei were not SS troops, they nonetheless joined the SS-Einsatzgruppen death squads in liquidating communities or shipping Jews to the camps. One Reserve Police battalion had shot 3,000 people at Bialystok on 12 July 1941. Another battalion, No. 133, had shot 10,000–12,000 Jews at Stanislawow on 12 October 1941, while Reserve Police Battalion 45 had enthusiastically assisted at the Babi Yar Massacre, where over 33,000 had perished.
Reserve Police Battalion 101 had murdered 36,972 Jews during the Polish Campaign in 1939. During the operations in the Soviet Union, the unit helped round up Jews to be fed into the gas chambers, or organized and carried out large-scale shooting massacres. By the time the unit arrived at Poniatowa in October 1943, it had shot its way across the General Government, killing tens of thousands. To say that they were experts in killing would be a gross understatement – Reserve Police Battalion 101 possessed the experience, organization and lack of humanity necessary to ensure that the liquidation of the Poniatowa Jews would proceed smoothly, and perhaps most importantly, quickly. The Germans had chosen the codename for the operation to kill the remaining Jews in the General Government: Aktion Erntefest (Operation Spring Harvest). It was to be a harvest of blood.
Holocaust Heroes Page 14