by Yitzhak Arad
The next day we drove in Captain Wirth’s car to Treblinka, about 120 km. northeast of Warsaw. The equipment in that place of death was almost the same as at Belzec, but even larger. Eight gas chambers and veritable mountains of clothing and underwear, about 35–40 meters high. Then, in our honor, a banquet was held for all those employed at the establishment. Obersturmbannführer Professor Doctor Pfannenstiel, Professor of Hygiene at the University of Marburg/Lahn, made a speech: “Your work is a great work and a very useful and very necessary duty.” To me, he spoke of the establishment as “a kindness and a humanitarian thing.” To all present, he said: “When one sees the bodies of the Jews, one understands the greatness of your work!”2
This report was one of the first and most important documents relating to Operation Reinhard. It includes facts and events that Gerstein personally witnessed and some that were told to him by Globocnik or Wirth. The report of what Gerstein saw as an eyewitness is reliable; the “facts” based on what his hosts told him were to some extent exaggerated by them or simple boasting. Globocnik’s story about the visit of Hitler and Himmler on August 15, 1942, was untrue. Hitler never visited Operation Reinhard headquarters, and it is unlikely that he met Globocnik at some other place. The visit and conversation were Globocnik’s own invention, probably to stress his high status and the importance of his mission. There is, however, a possibility that such a conversation transpired with Himmler during his visit to Lublin in the middle of July 1942. Its veracity aside, this story is important as an insight to Globocnik’s view and ideological approach to the extermination of the Jews.
The number of people murdered per day in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka as given by Globocnik was also exaggerated. This could only be an estimate of the theoretical absorption capacity of the gas chambers in the camps if they were to operate twenty-four hours a day without pause or disturbance.
SS Obersturmbannführer Dr. W. Pfannenstiel testified about his visit to Belzec before the Land-Court of Darmstadt in the Federal Republic of Germany, on June 6, 1950. This eyewitness evidence of the mass extermination of Jews in Belzec, as given by a high SS officer, a physician and university professor, is extremely important. According to his own evidence, Pfannenstiel’s mission was to advise on prophylactic problems in the Lublin district. Regarding the circumstances that made him visit Belzec and what he saw there, he stated:
As a disinfector, I received an order to go to Lublin in the summer of 1942. There I had to advise about the reconstruction of the city’s water supply and sewer system. I went to Berlin to get a car because at that time a journey by train took too much time. I could not get a car. I was told that Dr. Gerstein was going to Lublin, too, and I should contact him. I did so. Dr. Gerstein explained to me that he had to travel through Prague. I agreed. Our car was followed by an empty truck. While traveling, Dr. Gerstein told me that he had to pick up prussic acid from a factory in Kolin near Prague. He did not tell me for what purpose. I did not even ask, as it was obvious that it was for disinfection and that Dr. Gerstein was in charge of disinfections.
In the factory, which was a small one, I found out that the prussic acid was in the form of gas. . . . Then together with Dr. Gerstein we went to Lublin. . . . there I devoted my time to the task assigned to me. At that time I found out that there was a camp in Belzec where Jews were being murdered. I wanted to see this camp. The commander was a certain Wirth. . . . I made a request to visit the camp. Globocnik, who was very proud of his creation, gave permission. Globocnik took Gerstein and me to the camp. The next day, before noon, a transport with Jews arrived, including men, women, and children. They were decently received by the Jews who worked in the camp, and they were told not to be afraid. They had to undress and to give away their belongings. It was announced to them that they would be directed for work, and in order to prevent epidemics, they had to be deloused. They were told that they must inhale something. Then, after the women’s hair was cut off, the whole transport was taken to a building of six chambers. Only four chambers were needed. When the people were closed in the chambers, the gas from an engine was piped in. When the Jews were led into the chambers, an electric light was on inside and everything went quietly. But when the light was extinguished, screams were heard from the chambers. Gradually they became silent. When silence prevailed in the chambers, the outside doors were opened. Then the corpses were taken out, checked for gold teeth, and afterward they were put, layer upon layer, in a pit. This work was again carried out by Jews. No physician was present. The corpses were not exceptional. Some of the faces were blue. This was not surprising, because death was caused by suffocation. As I remember I traveled back to Lublin with Globocnik that same day.
When Globocnik granted me permission to visit the camp he stressed that I should not speak about what I would hear and see with anybody, for that would be punishable by death. When I returned to Berlin, I reported to the SS Reich physician Professor Dr. Ernst Grawitz what I saw and my disgust at what I had observed. He promised me that he would take care to stop these matters. What happened henceforth, I do not know. . . .
Why I actually asked to visit the camp can be explained by curiosity. I wanted especially to find out whether any atrocities were carried out during the extermination of these people. I found the atrocity particularly in the fact that the killing took eighteen minutes. I told this to Globocnik. He thought that with prussic acid it would go faster. As a matter of fact, prussic acid was not used, because Gerstein drew his attention to the dangers of prussic acid in the form of gas. If I was correctly informed, the containers with the prussic acid were buried. . . .3
This evidence and the earlier testimony, which is almost identical, given by Dr. Pfannenstiel at the main office of the Land Justice Administration in Marburg/Lahn on November 9, 1959, both verify the basic facts of Gerstein’s report.
Gerstein’s mission did not bring about any changes in the gassing system in the Operation Reinhard death camps. Carbon monoxide, supplied by truck or tank engine, as introduced by Wirth, remained the means of killing used in these camps. The fact that Gerstein witnessed in Belzec a breakdown of the diesel engine that supplied the gas and during which people were locked inside the gas chambers for almost three hours until the engine started working did not cause any change in the procedure. Wirth refused to give up the gassing system he had developed. His professional pride did not permit him to admit that the use of Zyklon B for mass killings, as developed by Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, was preferable to carbon monoxide. He asked and subsequently persuaded Gerstein not to propose to Berlin any other type of gas or gas chamber for Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Gerstein did not even carry out any killing experiments with the Zyklon B he had brought with him from Kolin. The gas was buried on the pretext that it had been spoiled in transit.4
14
Jewish Working Prisoners
The lack of a permanent and experienced cadre of Jewish prisoners to carry out the physical work involved in the extermination process, and the daily murder of some of those already engaged in this work and their replacement by others taken from the newly arriving transports, caused a constant disruption and slowdown of the liquidation activities in the camps. Realizing the source of the problem, the camp authorities in each camp decided to turn the temporary Jewish prisoner work force into a permanent one. According to this plan, each Jewish prisoner would belong to a particular working group and would become a specialist in the work he was assigned. These people would be kept working as long as they were fit and selections and executions would continue for those who became too weak or too ill to keep up to the required pace.
The first camp in which such a change was instituted was Sobibor, in May/June 1942. Moshe Bahir, who arrived in Sobibor at that time with a transport of Jews from Zamosc, wrote:
To my great good fortune I was part of the second transport, some of whose members were selected as permanent workers. Before that, they would take out 200 men from each transport to load the belon
gings. As soon as the work was finished, they shot them. I, however, was privileged to be counted among the “permanent workers” of the camp.1
Stangl, as commander of Sobibor, grasped at an early stage the importance of a permanent work cadre and subsequently introduced it in his camp. In Belzec, the establishment of a permanent cadre of Jewish prisoners took place some time toward the end of the first period of its activity (June/July 1942). Rudolf Reder wrote that when he arrived in Belzec on August 11, 1942, he already met there Jewish prisoners who were engaged in different activities and that he was attached to such a “permanent” work group.2
In Treblinka this change took place only in September 1942, after Stangl became commander of the camp. There the killing of Max Bialas had prompted the camp command to rethink its approach regarding the Jews working in the reception area. While the thousands of Jews who were transported daily to Treblinka knew nothing of their fate until they were actually inside the gas chambers—and in their ignorance they were not expected to show resistance—the Jews selected for temporary work were a potential danger to the Germans, and the Berliner incident had proved it. These Jews quickly learned of what was happening around them—that their families were no longer alive and that it was their fate to die, too, in a few hours or days. Under such circumstances, when people knew they had nothing to lose, an act of despair like that of Meir Berliner could happen again and again.
Stangl understood this well. In view of his own experience as commander of Sobibor, Stangl decided to stop the existing practice of constant selections and replacement of the reception area workers and to organize a permanent cadre of Jewish prisoners. Accordingly, the daily mass killings of the Jews employed in the reception and extermination areas were stopped. Tanhum Greenberg, a Treblinka prisoner, described Wirth’s announcement of the change in their status:
An SS Obersturmführer arrived from Lublin. He wore glasses. They lined us up at the barrack entrance, and he made a speech: You Jews, you should work hard. Whoever works will have everything. He shall get good food and drink. Workers will get medical treatment. There will be a hospital with doctors. The sick will be taken to the hospital and receive special food until they recover and return to work. . . . You Jews should remember that Germany is strong. Five cities will be built for Jews; there they will work and live well, and no one will be taken away. Treblinka will be one of these cities where Jews will live. There will be no more selections.3
The Jewish prisoners were transferred to the living quarters of the “court Jews,” where conditions improved. Kalman Taigman described the merging of these two groups of prisoners in Treblinka:
After the roll call they put us into two barracks fenced with barbed wire. Everyone got a place to sleep. There we met a group of Jews who were called the “court Jews.” They were from the region of Treblinka, mostly skilled craftsmen. . . . The “court Jews” were not as restricted in the camp as the rest of the prisoners. They could move about freely . . . they had their own kitchen and plenty of food At first they kept their distance from us, didn’t want any contact with us, as if they weren’t interested in what was happening in the camp. They were even afraid to approach us. It was only after the camp commander announced that there was no longer any special status to the “court Jews,” that all the Jews were equal and no further distinctions would be made between them, that the “court Jews” began to approach us. . . .4
The guiding principle in the reorganization of the Jewish prisoners’ work was that at each station along the route of death—from the freight car, via the train platform, the undressing area, to the gas chambers and burial ditches—work teams would be assigned specific tasks with specific responsibilities at which they would become expert. In charge of each work team was a capo, who was one of the prisoners. The capo was responsible for the prisoners’ work, and they had to obey his orders. The capo wore a yellow armband bearing the black letters c-a-p-o; he was armed with a club or whip. Larger work teams were subdivided, and each sub-group was headed by a foreman (Vorarbeiter), who wore his title on a black armband. At the top of the hierarchy of Jewish prisoners was the “camp elder” (Lagerältester), whose title was emblazoned in white letters on a black armband. The first “camp elder” in Treblinka was Engineer (Marceli?) Galewski from the Lodz region. When he was sick, he was replaced for a short time by Rakowski, but later he was reappointed.
In Sobibor, the “camp elder,” who was there called “chief capo” (Oberkapo), was Moshe Sturm, nicknamed “the Governor.” In the late summer of 1943 he was executed and replaced by a man the Jews nicknamed “the Berliner” because of his German origin. There is no information about the “camp elder” in Belzec.
A separate hierarchy, headed by a different “camp elder,” was organized among the Jewish prisoners of the extermination area, who were kept isolated from the other Jews in the camp. In Treblinka the first “camp elder” in the extermination area was named Blau; he was replaced by a prisoner named Singer. Both were from Austria. Stangl, who was himself an Austrian, gave preference to Austrian Jews as camp functionaries.5 In each barrack a “barrack elder” was appointed to be in charge of everything that happened in the barrack, including cleanliness, the sleeping places of each prisoner, and ascertaining that all the prisoners left the barracks for work. The “camp elder,” “barrack elder,” and capos had the authority to punish prisoners and were exempted from physical labor.
Prisoner work teams were labeled according to the tasks for which they were responsible. The prisoner teams that came into direct contact with deportees on the train platform and at Transport Square were given a special insignia, a colored armband. As the camp prisoners wore normal civilian clothing, the colored armband was intended to identify the members of the work team from among the transport deportees and prevent prospective victims from saving themselves by joining work teams—a subterfuge which had hitherto been exploited often. In choosing the work teams for the platform and Transport Square, the Germans gave preference to German-speaking Jews who could transmit the orders to the Jewish victims when they arrived.
An SS man from among the German staff of the camp was in charge of each prisoner work group. In some cases one SS man supervised two or three work groups. The capos generally served as intermediaries between the SS man and the prisoners.
The Organization of Labor in the Main Camp
(Reception Area)
Platform Workers (Bahnhofkommando).
This group of forty to fifty prisoners worked at the train platform. The team’s job was to open the freight cars and transfer the orders of the SS man in charge to disembark from the train. After the victims disembarked, the team workers removed the bodies of those who had died en route and transferred them to the burial ditches. Then they cleaned the cars and removed any remaining belongings to eliminate any traces of the transport cargo. Two or three prisoners would clean each freight car, and within ten to fifteen minutes the entire train had been cleaned. In Treblinka the platform workers’ team wore blue armbands, and thus were known as “the blues.”
Transport Square Workers (Transportkommando).
This group of about forty prisoners was engaged in the activities carried out on the square where the victims undressed. They directed the victims, relayed the German orders to undress, and distributed string for tying shoes together so they could be easily reused in the future without having to sort them. The team workers aided in undressing small children and in taking the clothes and baggage left by the victims to the sorting area or stores. They also carried deportees who were too weak to make their own way to the gas chambers to the shooting ditches. (In Treblinka these were located in the reception area, and in Sobibor and Belzec in the extermination area.) In Treblinka this team wore red armbands and became known as “the reds,” or, in the prisoners’ special slang, the “burial society” (Chevra kadisha).
The “Gold Jews” (Goldjuden).
This group comprised nearly twenty people, most of them former jewe
llers, watchmakers, and bank clerks. Their task was to receive and sort the money, gold, valuables, foreign currency, and bonds taken from the arriving Jews. Some of the group worked at the undressing area, receiving money and valuables from the victims on their way to extermination. Members of this group had to carry out body searches on the women after they had stripped and before they were taken to the gas chambers. The women had to lie on a special table, where they would be thoroughly searched, including in their genitalia.
One section of this group worked at the square and stores where the belongings left by the victims were sorted and checked. They received the money and valuables and prepared them for shipment from the camp. These “gold Jews” were considered extremely privileged, because they could secretly siphon off money and valuables of considerable worth, even in the camp. On their part, the SS personnel needed them to secure their share of the wealth that passed through the camp.
The Hair Cutters (Friseurs).
This group comprised those prisoners who cut the hair of the women victims before they entered the gas chambers. They numbered about ten to twenty men, mostly professional barbers. The hair cuttings in the camps began in September or October 1942, after the SS Main Office for Economic Affairs and Administration had issued the following order on August 16, 1942: