Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

by Yitzhak Arad

  However, the expulsion plan for the 200,000 Jews from Rumania to Belzec, which was the closest death camp to this country, met with several obstacles. The representatives of the Rumanian railways, who were asked to attend a special conference regarding their participation in transporting the Jews, never arrived. Nevertheless, the deportation was still planned, and it was decided to dispatch fifty freight cars, carrying 2,000 Jews, along with one passenger car for the escort, every two days. The departure point in Rumania had to be Adjud on the Ploesti-Cernauti line through the border station of Sniatyn in the General Government and from there through Lvov to Belzec.18

  Notwithstanding all these plans, the deportation of the Rumanian Jews to Belzec did not materialize. A combination of squabbles within the Rumanian administration, a protest submitted by the United States to the Rumanian government in September 1942 regarding the planned deportation, and various efforts by Jewish leaders within Rumania prevented the implementation of the German plan.19

  7

  Expulsion from the Ghettos

  The extermination process began with the deportations from the ghettos. A master plan was formulated to determine to which death camps Jews from each district would be sent; this was determined in accordance with the killing capacity of each camp and the available transportation (mainly trains). The deportations executed within the framework of Operation Reinhard were coordinated by Sturmbannführer Höfle.

  The SS authorities in charge of the deportations developed a method that became routine procedure in all the ghettos. The basic principles were surprise, speed of execution, terror, and ensuring that the victims were unaware of their destination and fate. The Jewish councils and general Jewish population were informed of their imminent expulsion and what they were permitted to take only a few hours or, at most, one day before the deportations actually started. At the same time, the ghetto was surrounded by security reinforcements to prevent escape and resistance. With the onset of the deportation itself, small security units, composed of SS men, Ukrainians, local Polish police, and sometimes members of the Jewish police in the ghettos, dispersed throughout the ghetto and ordered the Jews to leave their homes and congregate at the assembly points. From there they were taken on foot, under police escort, to the embarkation stations. The sick and elderly, those who were unable to walk, and those who refused to leave their homes were very often shot on the spot.

  In the trial records of Karl Streibel, the commander of Trawniki training camp, whose units took part in the deportations from the ghettos in the Lublin district, we find the following description of the deportations:

  The Conduct of the Evacuation Aktionen

  All the deportations were carried out according to the same scheme. The Jewish living quarter that was to be evacuated was cordoned hermetically by the local [police] units in the early morning hours. The blocking forces were under order to shoot any person attempting to escape the blockade. Then, the so-called “cleaning units,” which were formed under the command of members of the local gendarmerie or security police, entered the living quarter. The Jews were ordered to go to a designated assembly square.

  Afterward, the houses and apartments were searched for Jews who had gone into hiding or had remained behind, and they were driven into the streets violently. The old, sick, and feeble who could not go to the assembly square and the Jews who tried to escape were shot. . . .

  At the assembly square, the Jews, who usually carried hand baggage, had to sit down to enable the guard units better observation of the crowd. Jews who stood up or somehow aroused the attention of the guards were beaten or shot. At the beginning, some of the Jews who were employed by German enterprises or institutions as skilled workers, and as such were indispensable, were individually or with their families separated [from the others] and exempted from deportation. In Aktionen in which the whole locality had to be “cleansed of Jews,” all Jews were deported.

  When all the Jews slated for transport were assembled, they had to line up in marching columns and, under heavy guard, were taken to the railway station. Sometimes they had to cover distances of many kilometers. The Jews, on their way to the railway stations, were urged on by shouting and beatings. Jews who could not keep up with the marching columns and lagged behind were beaten, and if that did not help, they were shot. Those who tried to escape were shot immediately.

  At the railway station the Jews were made to sit down. When the freight cars were ready, embarkation began. Usually, the number of Jews assembled exceeded the normal capacity of the cars. The Jews were then pushed in by force. Up to 150 people were crammed into one freight car. On these occasions, there were shootings into the cars to create more places. The freight cars were then closed, and the Jews were taken to the extermination camps, and there they were killed.

  When for some reason the deportation to an extermination camp was impossible, the Jews were shot on the spot. Sometimes they themselves had to dig the mass graves and later fill them up. Usually, for this purpose a working group was selected and later, after finishing the work, they were also shot.

  The Units Participating in the Evacuation Aktionen

  Jewish affairs were in the jurisdiction of the local commander of the security police branch. The members of this branch always took part in the evacuation Aktionen in their locality. In almost every locality where a Jewish living quarter [ghetto] existed, there was also a gendarmerie post. The members of this post were in charge of security and order, which included regularly guarding the Jewish quarter. To the gendarmerie were subordinated the local Polish or Ukrainian police. The members of the gendarmerie post took part in the evacuation Aktionen.

  However, the local security police branch and gendarmerie post could not carry out large evacuation Aktionen with only the people who were under their command. In such cases they were reinforced by SS or police units from their locality or vicinity. To support the local forces in the execution of some of the Aktionen in the district, the SS and Police Leader of the Lublin district had reinforced the local forces with [Ukrainian] guardsmen from Trawniki.

  The size of the Ukrainian unit assigned to such Aktionen varied. It was fixed according to the extent of the planned evacuation Aktion and the strength of the other forces in dispositon. Smaller units numbered about thirty people; larger ones reached company strength (90–120 guardsmen). . . . These units were used to encircle the Jewish living quarter, to search and evacuate the houses, to guard the Jews at the assembly place and on their way to the railway station. They provided the shooting unit during the mass shootings. The members of this unit behaved particularly brutally and ruthlessly with the Jews and carried out the shootings willingly. They drank a lot of alcohol and tried to extract money and valuables from the victims. . . . The Aktion usually lasted two days or even more.1

  In each locality this basic scheme was adapted to local conditions: the size of the Jewish community doomed to deportation, the strength of the German forces allotted to the Aktion, the transportation means, and time limits.

  Lublin

  The first large-scale deportation within the framework of Operation Reinhard was from the Lublin ghetto to the Belzec death camp. Globocnik wanted first of all to get rid of the Jews from the Lublin district, who were directly under his jurisdiction and in his immediate vicinity. The closeness to Belzec caused no transportation problems, and the priority of deporting the Jews from Lublin district served some additional purposes. Globocnik had a colonization plan, confirmed by Himmler, to create in the future in the city of Lublin a German quarter as a first step in repopulating the entire city by Germans. The removal of the Jews from the city left vacant places and served this purpose. The deportation of the Jews from the ghettos in the Lublin province also enabled Nazi authorities to bring Jews from Germany, Slovakia, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Lublin and keep them there temporarily, until they would be sent to the death camps.

  The deportation from Lublin began on March 16, 1942, late in the evening.
The heads of the Jewish Council (Judenrat) were called to the SS office and were handed the deportation order. On March 17, 1942, a meeting of the Jewish Council was called, and the deportation order was read out to those present.

  The following are the minutes of that meeting:

  Protocol No. 14/138

  The plenary meeting of the Jewish Council of Lublin of 17/3/42.

  Attendance: 22 members

  Chairman: Head of the Council, Eng. H. Becker

  Protocol written by: The member of the Council and Secretary, Advocate, [David] Hochgemein.

  Deportation Order

  In the city of Lublin there will remain only those Jews who have a stamp of the Security Police on their work permits. They will remain with their wives and children. Those who are to be deported may take with them one handbag weighing 15 kg, all their money and valuables. . . . They should be prepared to walk about 3 kms on foot; from then on, there will be transport. The epidemic hospital with its patients and staff will remain. About 1,400 people will be deported every day. The deportation will start from the hill, from Unitzky Street. Those Jews who remain after the departure in the empty flats will be shot. . . .2

  At the trial held in Wiesbaden, Germany, of a group of SS men who had operated in Lublin, a description was given of the deportation of the Jews of Lublin:

  The fenced-off ghetto was surrounded from the outside by forces of the Order Police and Ukrainian auxiliaries [Trawniki men]. Inside the ghetto, along Lubartowska Street, the expulsion commandos operated in accordance with their orders: small units of Trawniki men, under the command of Germans, woke up the sleeping inhabitants with shouting and ordered them to leave their apartments without delay and to congregate in the street; otherwise they would be shot. . . .

  The Aktion was carried out with cruelty. In their surprise, the people became panic-stricken. The drunken Ukrainians used their weapons indiscriminately and many were killed on the spot. No selection was held at this deportation. The people, with no distinction of age or sex, were lined up in marching columns and led under escort to the synagogue. There they had to remain until dawn, when they were taken on foot to the Umschlagplatz [transfer station] near the slaughterhouse, where they embarked for Belzec.3

  The deportations continued in this way for weeks. A survivor of the Lublin ghetto describes them:

  The expulsions were carried out at night. Every night there were selections. The people, with their personal documents in their hands, had to pass along tables placed in the streets at which German policemen and men of the Jewish Order Service sat. Every night brought a new surprise. The families of the craftsmen who worked at Lipowa Street 7 were confident that nothing would happen to them. They went to the checkpoints and were deported; those who did not have work permits went into hiding and survived. The Germans needed a certain quota of people for deportation, and they did not care who went for destruction. . . .

  . . . The SS men spread rumors that the deportation was to Russia where there was a need for working men. The bewildered people believed them. . . .4

  The Jews left in Lublin were enclosed in a small ghetto in Majdan-Tatarsk and later deported to Majdanek, where they were murdered.

  Deportations from Small Ghettos

  The Jews from hundreds of small ghettos were expelled from their homes and forced to walk to the railway stations. Horse-drawn carts were sometimes mobilized from the neighboring villages by the local police for the transportation of small children and the elderly. Jews from ghettos close to the death camps were expelled on foot or by means of horse-drawn carts directly into the camps. Where the capacity of the train was larger than the number of Jews from one ghetto, Jews from several ghettos were concentrated and expelled together. A survivor of one such expulsion describes the event:

  I lived in the township of Turobin in the Lublin district. On May 10, 1942, Jews from neighboring townships were brought into Turobin. On May 12, SS men and Ukrainians surrounded the town. Early in the morning, they announced that we were going to be deported and that by 9 o’clock all Jews should be in the town square. I came there with my aunt. My uncle and their children went into hiding. I was so fed up with the life we had been leading that I decided to go, but it didn’t occur to me that we were going to be sent to a death camp. At the square were carts for the children and for the bundles. All the rest were compelled to go on foot. Many people, the elderly and sick and those found in the houses, were shot on the spot. Close to me was a paralyzed man in a wheelchair. An SS man approached him, put his gun to the man’s head and pressed the trigger. No shot came. The man’s face convulsed, his eyes filled with tears, but the SS man continued his “game” and finally shot him. I stood close by, frozen, unable to cry.

  After some hours came the order to move. We left the town, mainly families with their old, their babies, and their bundles. On the way we were joined by Jews from Wisokie. We marched silently, guarded by Germans and Ukrainians on horses and bicycles. The weak fell and remained behind. From time to time we heard shots; those who had remained behind were shot. We marched for two days and two nights—about 30 km. We passed through Polish villages. People stood and watched us. Some of them laughed, others closed themselves into their houses, but there were also some who gave us water.

  When we passed through Zolkiew and Gorzkow, the local Jews joined our marching column, and our number increased to 4,000. We continued walking. The sky became cruel to us. After the burning sun, which weakened us and caused deaths, came a storm with torrential rain, thunder, and lightning. We were soaking wet and the marching column became part of the mud. It was hard to walk.

  We arrived at the railway station in Krasnystaw, where we stayed for a few hours. Then the Ukrainians pushed us into the train, about 150 to each freight car. We were told that we were going to the Ukraine to work. On the other hand, there were people who were told that we were being sent to Majdanek camp. But when we looked out through the small window, we realized that we were not going in the direction of Lublin. That meant that our destination was not Majdanek. We were delighted. After a few hours of traveling, we arrived at Sobibor.5

  Shooting Aktionen

  In the final stages of this process, the Jews from most of the ghettos in the General Government were sent to death camps. There were, however, some townships in which the Jews were not sent to the death camps, but were shot in their own vicinity. There were a few reasons for these Aktionen: the lack of transportation, the inability of the death camps to receive these deportees on a definite date, and, in some cases, the desire of local Nazi authorities to collect for themselves the goods and valuables of the victims.

  One of these shooting Aktionen took place in Lomazy, in the northeast section of the Lublin district, and was described in the Streibel-Trawniki trial:

  About 1,600–1,700 Jews lived in Lomazy in August 1942. They were kept in a separate quarter. This township was subordinate to the security police post of Biala Podlaska. In September 1942 the reserve police battalion 101 was stationed in the northern part of the district of Lublin. The Aktion against the Jews in Lomazy lasted from the middle of August 1942 until the end of the month. The 2nd company of the reserve police battalion 101, including the witness Franke, surrounded the Jewish living quarter in the early morning hours. Then the members of the battalion, under the command of the officers of the security police branch of Biala Podlaska, evacuated the people from the houses and apartments. The Jews were assembled on the sport grounds. Following instructions, the children and elderly, the sick and weak, who were not able to walk, were shot on the spot.

  At the sports stadium, the Jews were divided by sex; they had to sit on the ground for a long time.

  During this period of waiting, a police unit received an order to organize a working group of fifty Jews and take them to a forest at a distance of 1 km. There they had to dig a large pit. In the morning hours Jews were taken to the execution place by groups, as they had been divided, according to sex; they had to lie down,
close to the pit. Any contact between men and women was prevented and forbidden. The pits where the executions were carried out were only 40–50 meters away from the place the Jews were being kept, but could not be seen by them. The whole execution area—the waiting place, the way to the pits, and the pits themselves—was surrounded by members of the police units.

  The Jews had to undress right before the shootings and hand over their valuables. Then, in groups of ten to twenty people, they had to run the 40–50 meters to the pits between two rows of guards. In doing this they were rushed on by shouting and the rifle butts of the guards. The Jews had to lie in the pits face down, and then they were shot. The next group of victims had to lie down in a row behind those who had already been killed or on top of them, and then they, too, were shot. The executions continued in that way until the pit 1.80 meters deep was filled to the edge with corpses.

  The Jewish working group, which had dug the pit, had to cover it with earth at the end of the Aktion. Finally, these people had to dig a small pit in which they themselves were killed and buried.

  In the shooting Aktion in Lomazy a unit of about 40 guardsmen from Trawniki participated. They arrived in Lomazy after the members of the reserve police battalion 101 had driven the Jews to the sport grounds. The guardsmen were sent to the Aktion as an execution unit because members of the police battalion which had carried out the shooting Aktion in Josefow were unwilling to repeat it.

  The guardsmen stood by the pits and carried out the shootings with their rifles. They drank so much liquor that during the shooting inconceivable scenes took place. Because of their drunkenness their shots missed the target, many times, and the shots did not cause the victims’ immediate death. In the afternoon the guardsmen were so drunk that they could not continue the executions. The members of the police battalion continued with the executions while the guardsmen slept out their drunkenness close to the execution area. Later in the afternoon the guardsmen returned and continued with the shootings until the end of the Aktion. Afterward they supervised the Jewish working group which had covered the pit, and finally they also shot those people.6