Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

by Yitzhak Arad

  When we reached Treblinka and the Germans opened the freight-car doors, the scene was ghastly. The cars were full of corpses. The bodies had been partially consumed by chlorine. The stench from the cars caused those still alive to choke. The Germans ordered everyone to disembark from the cars; those who could were half-dead. SS and Ukrainians waiting nearby beat us and shot at us. . . .5

  The platform and the nearby square were filled with corpses removed from the cars and the bodies of those shot on the spot. Oskar Berger, who was brought to Treblinka on August 22, describes the scene:

  As we disembarked we witnessed a horrible sight: hundreds of bodies lying all around. Piles of bundles, clothes, valises, everything mixed together. SS soldiers, Germans, and Ukrainians were standing on the roofs of barracks and firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Men, women, and children fell bleeding. The air was filled with screaming and weeping. Those not wounded by the shooting were forced through an open gate, jumping over the dead and wounded, to a square fenced with barbed wire.6

  Abraham Kszepicki gave a detailed description of what went on in Transport Square:

  The square where we sat was guarded on all sides. By a telephone pole were two notice boards. I read the announcements on them printed in large letters: “Jews of Warsaw, Attention . . .” These were instructions for people arriving at a labor camp; they were told to deposit their clothes for disinfection and were promised that money and valuables would be returned. . . . An SS man arrived and selected ten young men out of our group; he didn’t want older men. A while later another SS man demanded sixty men; I was among that group. They marched us two by two through the square we had traversed when we left the freight cars, then to the right, to a larger square, where we were confronted by a staggering sight: a huge number of corpses, lying one next to the other. I estimate there were 20,000 corpses there . . . most of whom had suffocated in the freight cars. Their mouths remained open, as if they were gasping for another breath of air. . . . Hundreds of meters away, a scoop-shovel dug large quantities of earth from the ditches. We saw a lot of Jews busy carrying the bodies to these huge ditches. Some of them transported the bodies in handcarts to the ditches at the edge of the square. These Jews did everything at a run. . . . The bodies were laid in the ditches, row upon row. A group of laborers were pouring chlorine on the corpses. . . . I should mention that those buried at this square were not gas-chamber victims, but rather the bodies removed from the transports and those who had been shot at Treblinka. . . . Often we heard pistols shooting and bullets whistling. We didn’t hear the screams of those shot; the Germans fired at the nape of the neck, and the victim never even moaned. . . .

  The German who brought us to work had the impression that one of the youths in our group was working sloppily. He took his rifle from his shoulder, and before the youth knew what was happening, he was no longer alive. A few minutes later the same thing happened with another Jew, shot by a Ukrainian, who took a packet of money from the man he shot. . . . Within a short time, only ten men remained in our group. . . . At night another transport arrived at the camp. We ran toward the cars. I was shocked. All the cars were filled only with the dead—asphyxiated. They were lying on top of one another in layers, up to the ceiling of the freight car. The sight was so awful, it is difficult to describe. I asked where the transport had come from; it turned out from Miedzyrzec. . . . There was nowhere to place the corpses. Near the railroad tracks were large piles of clothing, and under these were still-unburied bodies. We laid the bodies in layers, near the railway. Occasionally, moans could be heard from under the piles of clothes as people recovered consciousness and asked in a weak voice for water. There was nothing we could do to help; we were dying of thirst ourselves. . . . Those still alive were moved to the side, nearer to the clothes. It was dark, and the Germans didn’t notice. Among those living I found a baby, a year or a year and a half old, who had woken up and was crying loudly. I left him by the side. In the morning he was dead. The next day, our first job was to remove the bodies of the people from Kielce from the barrack. . . . Later we had to remove the bodies of people who had drowned in a well. How they had drowned, what had happened to them, I didn’t know. I was told they had committed suicide.7

  Those who had not died en route or been shot on the platform passed through Transport Square, then the “tube” to the gas chambers. Abraham Goldfarb described what happened to those who arrived alive and were taken through this route:

  On the way to the gas chambers, on both sides of the fence, stood Germans with dogs. . . . The Germans beat the people with whips and iron bars so they would run and push to get into the “showers” quickly. The women’s screams could be heard far off in other sections of the camp. The Germans urged the running victims on with yells of “Faster, faster, the water’s getting cold, and others have to use the showers, too.”8

  To avoid the blows, the victims ran as fast as they could to the gas chambers, the stronger pushing aside the weak. At the entrance to the gas chambers stood two Ukrainians, Ivan Demaniuk and Nikolai, one armed with an iron bar and the other with a sword, and they, too, urged the people on with blows to push their way in—200–250 in a chamber of 16 square meters. When the gas chambers were full, the Ukrainians closed the doors and started the engine. Twenty to twenty-five minutes later, an SS man or one of the Ukrainians would peep into the chambers through a window in the door. When they thought everyone had suffocated, they ordered the Jewish prisoners to open the rear doors and remove the bodies. When the doors were opened, all the corpses were standing; because of the crowding and the way the victims grasped one another, they were like a single block of flesh.9

  To drown out the victims’ screams on their way to the gas chambers—so that they would not be heard throughout the camp—the SS arranged an orchestra. Kszepicki relates:

  As I stood near the “shower” at Treblinka, I discovered something new. For some time I had thought I was hearing music. I thought it was a radio receiver installed by the Germans so that—God forbid—they should not be removed from their native culture in this out-of-the-way spot. Now I could ascertain that their concern for musical culture was even greater. Forty meters from the gas chambers, near the path where the Jews were led to the “showers,” a small musical ensemble stood under a tree. Three Jews with yellow patches, three musicians from Stock, stood and played there on their instruments They played enthusiastically. It was difficult to make out their repertoire . . . these were apparently the latest hit songs favored by the Germans and Ukrainians.10

  Even in this smoothly efficient process there were sometimes breakdowns and disruptions in the operation of the gas chambers. In the initial phase, the operators did not know how long the victims should be left in the chamber until they had suffocated. There were instances when the gas chambers were opened too early and the victims were still alive; the doors would have to be closed again. The engines that produced and fed the gas into the chambers also broke down, causing stoppages in the extermination operation. Breakdowns of this nature also occurred when the victims were already inside the gas chambers, and they would then be held there for long hours until the engines had been repaired. The removal of bodies from the gas chambers and their transport in trolleys to the ditches was also a slow process, and it delayed the arrival of new victims to the gas chambers. The hand-pushed trolley used to transfer the corpses to the pits would often derail and overturn, and it finally was decided to dispense with it altogether. Instead, the prisoners dragged the bodies by their feet to the ditches.

  During the first five weeks of the killing operation in Treblinka, between July 23 and August 28, about 245,000 Jews were deported there from the Warsaw ghetto and Warsaw district; from Radom district, 51,000; from Lublin district, 16,500, bringing the total in this period to about 312,500.11 (See Appendix A.) SS Unterscharführer August Hingst, who served at that time in Treblinka, testified that “Dr. Eberl’s ambition was to reach the highest possible numbers and exceed all the other camps.
So many transports arrived that the disembarkation and gassing of the people could no longer be handled (nicht mehr bewältigt werden konnte).”12 From the technical and organizational standpoint, the camp was simply unable to absorb such a large number of victims.

  The three gas chambers, with their frequent technical breakdowns, were the main bottleneck, and the surplus from each transport had to be shot in the reception area. Many prisoners and more pits were required for burying the thousands of people who were shot, in addition to those thousands who died inside the densely packed freight cars on their way to the camp. The problem of digging more burial pits was partially solved by a scoop-shovel that was brought from the quarry in the nearby Treblinka penal camp. But since new transports arrived several times daily, still more and more corpses were left unburied.

  Near the barracks and the adjacent square, the scattered piles of victims’ belongings multiplied, as no one processed them. The barrack designed to serve as a storehouse for victims’ belongings filled up quickly; the barrack originally intended for the men to undress in was also turned into a storeroom and filled with clothes. Every new transport added to the piles of clothing; there was no ordered attempt to remove the belongings from the camp. There was total confusion in the reception area. The camp was in chaos. Even security became lax, and there were several instances of escape.

  Dr. Eberl, the commander of Treblinka, was incapable of maintaining control over the situation. With transports coming in all the time and both corpses and clothing piling up in the reception area, transports would have to be delayed at way stations. The result was a higher death toll in the freight cars themselves—with all its ramifications once the transport reached the camp.

  Information on what was going on in Treblinka finally reached Globocnik. Operation Reinhard headquarters was also made aware of reports that large sums of victims’ money and valuables, which should have been forwarded, were disappearing into the camp staff’s pockets, while part of the money was finding its way from Dr. Eberl’s Treblinka camp headquarters directly to Eberl’s superiors in the euthanasia program, at Hitler’s chancellery in Berlin.13 The entire situation demanded the immediate intervention of Operation Reinhard headquarters.

  12

  Reorganization in Treblinka

  In the second half of July 1942, the three death camps were in operation; however, serious administrative problems were involved in keeping them active. It became necessary for Globocnik to establish an authority within Operation Reinhard headquarters that would be directly in charge of the camps. Himmler’s order of July 19, 1942, which stated that by the end of December 1942 all the Jews within the General Government, with a few exceptions, should be liquidated, set a time limit for the entire operation. This made the need for a commanding authority to supervise and guide the activities in the camps even more urgent. The main problem was to accelerate the extermination process by shortening the time it took to liquidate a transport after its arrival at the camp. This required streamlining the extermination process and increasing the absorptive capacity of the gas chambers. To carry out this improvement and to achieve more control and more efficient supervision over the activities in the camps, Christian Wirth was appointed inspector of the three death camps at the beginning of August 1942. This was after he had completed the reconstruction of the gas chambers in Belzec and had been replaced there by SS Hauptsturmführer Gottlieb Hering. Wirth took with him from Belzec Oberscharführer Josef Oberhauser, who became his aide-de-camp. Wirth’s new headquarters were in Lublin in the “old airport” camp.

  The first problem Wirth had to deal with as inspector of the death camps was the chaotic situation in Treblinka. In the last week of August, 1942, Globocnik and Christian Wirth visited Treblinka. Josef Oberhauser, Wirth’s assistant, who accompanied him to Treblinka, testified:

  In Treblinka everything was in a state of collapse. The camp was overstocked. Outside the camp, a train with deportees was unable to be unloaded as there was simply no more room. Many corpses of Jews were lying inside the camp. These corpses were already bloated. Particularly I can remember seeing many corpses in the vicinity of the fence. These people were shot from the guard towers.

  The pictures taken from the Kurt Franz Album were recognized as authentic by the court of Dusseldorf in the Treblinka trial.

  “Kurt Seidel Street” (see map of Treblinka). From the Kurt Franz Album.

  I heard then in Treblinka how Globocnik and Wirth summed up the following: Wirth would remain in Treblinka for the time being. Dr. Eberl would be dismissed immediately. In his place, Stangl would come to Treblinka from Sobibor as commander. Globocnik said in this conversation that if Dr. Eberl were not his fellow countryman, he would arrest him and bring him before an SS and police court.1

  At that time, Sobibor had been inactive for over a month due to the repairs being done on the railway leading to the camp, so Stangl was available. Furthermore, Globocnik had faith in Stangl’s ability, on the basis of his accomplishments in Sobibor. Stangl was replaced in Sobibor by Obersturmführer Franz Reichleitner, who had served in the euthanasia program. Dr. Eberl left Treblinka at the end of August 1942, and Stangl arrived at the beginning of September. Stangl described his arrival in Treblinka:

  When I arrived at Treblinka the first time, a large board was located in Reception Square. As I remember, on this board were noted ten clauses. These clauses stressed how the arriving Jews should behave. It is clear that in this written announcement the mission of this camp, in some way, was disguised. Maybe it related to a resettlement camp. But I know that it alluded to the fact that all have to go to the baths and in the meantime the clothes would be disinfected. . . . In the framework of the reorganization, Wirth ordered the signboard removed. In its place, the SS men would verbally announce (to the deportees) the directions which were until then written on the board. These short announcements were translated by the working Jews.2

  SS Oberscharführer Kurt Franz, who had been appointed Stangl’s deputy, arrived a few days later. Kurt Franz, like Stangl, had been with the euthanasia program. Prior to his arrival at Treblinka, he had served at Belzec under Christian Wirth. There Franz had excelled in his display of zeal and cruelty in dealing with the Jewish victims. His transfer to Treblinka and his promotion to deputy camp commander were Wirth’s decision. Kurt Franz described his arrival in Treblinka:

  It was late summer or the beginning of autumn 1942, when I came from Belzec to Treblinka. I went by foot from the railway station of Malkinia to Treblinka; when I arrived it was already dark. Everywhere in the camp there were corpses. I remember that these corpses were already bloated. The corpses were dragged through the camp by working Jews. . . .

  These working Jews were driven by the guardsmen [Ukrainians] and also by Germans. . . . I reported to Wirth in the dining room. As I remember, Wirth, Stangl, and Oberhauser were there. . . .3

  Wirth remained in Treblinka for approximately three to four weeks to help Stangl restore order to the camp. To regain control over the situation, and first of all to evacuate the thousands of corpses piled in the reception area, Wirth and Stangl asked Operation Reinhard headquarters to stop the transports to Treblinka temporarily. Globocnik agreed, and on August 28, 1942, the deportations from Warsaw and other places ceased.4

  Commander Stangl with his deputy, Kurt Franz, at the entrance to a barrack at Treblinka. From the Kurt Franz Album.

  “The Zoo” (see number 15 on the map of Treblinka). From the Kurt Franz Album.

  With the suspension of the transports to Treblinka, work commenced on clearing the multitude of corpses piled up near the station platform and around the reception area. It was carried out by Jews who had remained from the last transports, left alive by camp command decision until the cleanup was completed. Kszepicki describes the prisoners’ living and working conditions at the time:

  At seven in the evening there was a roll call; they counted us—we were about 500. They appointed a Jewish commander—a capo, the engineer Galew
ski. That day, like every day, the roll call lasted two hours. The next morning there was another roll call. Since first counting us they had instituted some order, and the roll calls were held three times a day. Food distribution was also organized. A field kitchen was set up near the well, and there they gave us half a liter of soup three times a day. We received no bread, but there was no lack of food, since we could take it from the bundles left behind by the Jews brought for extermination. The kitchen food also came from these bundles. . . . After roll call we were taken to work at the big square, where there were mass graves. This time I worked at transferring corpses to the big ditch near the fence. After a few days, the scoop-shovel stopped working. A new system was instituted—burning the corpses in the ditches. All kinds of articles were used to light the fires, including empty valises and the junk which was collected in the course of cleaning the square. The body-burning continued day and night, and the entire camp was filled with smoke and the stench of burned and burning bodies. Still there were endless quantities of bodies. It was necessary to clean the area fully of the remains of the last transports . . . bodies, dozens of bodies, hundreds, thousands of men, women, and children who had been murdered. Corpses of people of different ages, in different positions, with different expressions frozen on their faces the moment they breathed their last. All around, just earth, sky, and corpses! A factory of horror whose sole product was bodies. Evidently only a German could become accustomed to a place like this. I didn’t get used to the sight of corpses until the end. . . .