by Yitzhak Arad
The Head of the SS Main Office for Economic Affairs and Administration, SS Obergruppenführer [Oswald] Pohl, has ordered that care is to be taken to make use of the human hair collected in all concentration camps. This human hair is threaded on bobbins and converted into industrial felt. After being combed and cut, the women’s hair can be manufactured as slippers for submarine crews and felt stockings for the Reichsbahn.6
This order related to the women prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps and to Jewish women brought for extermination to the death camps.
In Sobibor the barber shop was in a special barrack in the middle of the “tube,” and in Belzec it was in a barrack close to the gas chambers. In Treblinka the barber room was set up at the end of the barrack where the women disrobed, near the entrance gate to the “tube,” and near the site where the “gold Jews” worked. Adjacent to the barber shop, a disinfection room was established, where several prisoners were engaged in cleaning the hair.7
The initiation of the cutting of women’s hair at Treblinka was described by Stangl:
One day we received a disinfecting machine without having been told what it was for. I asked about it in Lublin. I was told in reply that from now on we were to cut the women’s hair. The hair should be cleaned and packed in bags. . . . I recall that at Lublin they explained that the hair was intended for insulating submarines. Wirth himself must have told me that.8
The Sorting Team for Clothing and Belongings
(Lumpenkommando).
This was the largest labor team, numbering eighty to one hundred twenty men, and was subdivided into several smaller groups. The team worked in the square, where the victims’ belongings were piled, and in the storage sheds. Its main job was to collect the victims’ clothing and belongings, examine them, sort them by categories, tie them in bundles of ten or twenty-five units in each category, prepare them for shipment, and load them on freight cars. The team workers were given a personal number, which they wore on their collars and which they had to list on each bundle they prepared. The clothing was first examined for documents, photographs, hidden money and valuables, and the yellow patch or any other mark which could identify the clothing and other items as having belonged to Jews. All these were to be removed. Any sloppiness, or Jewish identifying marks left on the clothing or other belongings, could be traced to the perpetrator by his personal number on the bundle. In such an event the worker paid for his mistake with his life.
The Forest Team (Waldkommando)
and the Camouflage Team (Tarnungskommando).
A special group known as the forest team, which numbered a few dozen prisoners, was set up to cut wood for heating and cooking in the camp. It was put to work in the forests near the camp. When the cremation of the corpses started, this team was enlarged, for it also had to supply the wood for the bonfires on which the corpses were burned.
In Treblinka a second prisoners’ group worked outside the camp. It was called the camouflage team and numbered approximately twenty-five. Its task was to camouflage with branches the camp’s outer and inner fences, especially the fences around the extermination area and the “tube.” This was intended to prevent outside observation of camp activities, as well as observation from within the camp of what transpired on the way to the gas chambers and in the extermination area. The team workers would cut branches in the forests near the camp and weave them into the barbed-wire fences. Since it was constantly necessary to replace dried-out branches with fresh ones, the camouflage work was continuous. These groups of prisoners left the camp confines under a strong guard of Germans and Ukrainians.
In addition to these groups in the main camp, whose work was connected with the extermination process, part of the prisoners were employed at other activities. Groups of prisoners were engaged in construction of barracks, in stringing barbed-wire fences, and in paving roads inside the camps. In the autumn and winter a special “potato team” was established. Potatoes were the camp’s principal food, and as winter approached, large quantities were brought to the camp. To prevent the potatoes from freezing and spoiling, special cellars were prepared where they would be processed daily. The potato workers supplied the potatoes to the kitchens of the SS, the Ukrainians, and the Jews. Some prisoners worked in the vegetable garden, pigsty, chicken coop, and cowshed, and in the SS personnel’s baths. A few prisoners were employed in cleaning and disinfecting the huts and toilets.
There were also prisoners who supplied direct personal services to the SS and Ukrainians. They included doctors, a dentist, and several barbers. A small group of boys was employed to polish and clean the shoes and uniforms of SS personnel. These boys worked in and around the SS barracks. In addition, there were groups of skilled workers, like tailors, shoemakers, smiths, mechanics, carpenters, and others, known as the “court Jews,” who continued to extend services to the German and Ukrainian staff, as they had since the first stages of the camps’ activity.
The Prisoners in the Extermination Area
The decision to establish a permanent prisoner staff in the camp applied to the extermination area as well. The Jews there faced more difficult living and working conditions than those throughout the rest of the camp. They had to remove the bodies of the dead from the gas chambers and carry them to the burial ditches, located up to 100 meters away. This work was carried out at a constant run, since the extermination rate, and consequently the work pace of the entire camp, was determined by it. Prisoners who could not stand up to this pace of work were beaten and shot. Moreover, the nature of their work affected the men to an extreme, and before they would collapse physically they would often break emotionally. Thus the attrition rate in the extermination area was high; workers there survived but a few days, and dozens were shot daily, sometimes for no reason at all. Others were brought to replace them from among the prisoners in the other part of the camp or directly from the incoming transports. The decision to create a permanent camp work force brought about a drop in the rate of executions of workers in the extermination area and some improvement in their living conditions. A core of prisoners who could handle the work for longer periods began to form. Here, too, the prisoners were divided into work teams.
The Gas Chamber Body-Disposal Team.
This group of several dozen men had the job of removing the bodies from the gas chambers and taking them through the rear doors to the concrete platform built alongside the chambers. There they laid the bodies for removal by the body transport team. The body-disposal team’s work was the hardest physically and emotionally. After gassing, the hundreds of people packed standing up in the gas chambers became a solid block of bodies. Separating and removing them was extremely difficult. At times the workers who entered the chambers immediately after they were opened were themselves poisoned by the residue of gas remaining there.9
Gas Chamber and “Tube” Cleaners.
This group cleaned the blood and excrement off the floor and walls of the gas chambers, as the chambers had to be clean before introducing a new group of victims. This group also cleaned the “tube” and scattered fresh sand on the ground.
The Body-Transport Team (Leichenkommando).
This was the largest prisoner work team in the extermination area, comprising some one hundred men. Its task was to carry the bodies from the platform next to the gas chambers to the mass burial ditches. After experimenting with various methods of conveying the bodies, the Germans fixed upon stretchers as the fastest way. Two men carried the stretcher, which looked like a ladder with leather carrying straps. The bodies were placed on the stretchers face up to facilitate the work of the Dentisten.
The “Dentists.”
The prisoner work team known as the Dentisten was located between the gas chambers and the burial ditches. It numbered about twenty to thirty men whose job was to extract, with pliers, the gold, platinum, and false teeth from the corpses. The dentists also examined the bodies, especially those of the women, for valuables hidden in the body orifices. Part of the team worked a
t cleaning and sorting the extracted teeth and preparing them for shipment.
The Burial Detail.
This group of several dozen men worked at the burial ditches. After the victims’ bodies were thrown into a pit by the body-transport workers, the corpses were arranged in rows by the burial detail. To save space, the bodies were arranged head-to-foot; each head lay between the feet of two other corpses, and each pair of feet between two heads. Sand or chlorine was scattered between the layers of bodies. Approximately half the team worked inside the ditches arranging the corpses at the same time that the other half was covering a layer of bodies with sand. When a ditch filled up, it was topped off with earth and a new ditch was opened.
Kitchen and Service Workers.
A kitchen and a laundry for the prisoners were established in the extermination area to prevent any contact between the prisoners in the two sections of the camp. A group of craftsmen was also organized in the extermination area for building and maintenance tasks, again in order to avoid contact with the main camp. These innovations caused the Jewish prisoner group in the extermination area to grow to around two hundred; at times it neared three hundred.
The absolute division of the Jewish prisoners between those in the main camp and those in the extermination area existed in Sobibor and Treblinka. There is no certainty whether such a division existed in Belzec. One of the two survivors of Belzec, Rudolf Reder, in his book about this camp, referred to all the Jewish prisoners in this camp as one group. However, in the testimonies given by SS men who served in Belzec, the Jews were divided into two separate groups.10
Work team assignments were not permanent, with the exception of certain specialists. The size of the work groups also varied from time to time. Men would be transferred from group to group according to requirements and priorities determined by the Germans. When the number of deportee transports increased, the groups engaged in the work connected directly with the extermination process were expanded. When transport frequency dropped, more prisoners were sent to the sorting team to prepare clothing and belongings for shipment from the camp and to maintenance and construction works. Occasionally, work teams were set up ad hoc for a specific task and then disbanded. Prisoner traffic between the main camp and the extermination area was one-way only. Those sent to the extermination area for work never returned to the main camp. Details of what went on in the extermination area were to remain secret from the rest of the camp’s prisoners.
The process of reorganizing the Jewish prisoner cadres in the camps and converting them into a permanent staff continued for many weeks. In Treblinka, the last camp where this change took place, it lasted from the second half of September until the end of October. To assure control and identification of prisoners, each received a number, which he had to wear on the left side of his chest. The number was backed by a triangular piece of leather, and each work team’s triangle was of a different color.11 The numbers were given out in late 1942.
Even after the reorganization, the executions of Jewish prisoners from the work staff continued, but on a far more limited scale than had existed in the past. Nor were such executions within the framework of a fixed policy of renewing the cadres every few days. Now the victims were prisoners whom the SS men found unfit to continue working, or those punished either individually or collectively for real or imagined violations. Those who were executed were replaced by new deportees. This was the procedure that would be maintained for the remainder of the camps’ existence.
15
Women Prisoners
The permanent prisoner staff in the camps also included Jewish women. In Sobibor Jewish women prisoners were employed from the early stage of the camp’s activity. From a transport which arrived in Sobibor on June 2, 1942, three girls were taken by SS Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner and left there to work. Ada Lichtman, one of those girls, describes her first day in Sobibor:
We were ordered to clean thoroughly a villa where the Germans lived. After work we were taken to an area with some barracks, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence where we were given a room with three wooden beds, one over the other. Close to our room lived the skilled workers. . . . In the evening, two men brought two big boxes with dirty laundry, and a Ukrainian guard told us that it should be ready within two days. . . . The washing required many different kinds of work. The laundry was full of lice, so first of all it had to be disinfected. We had to raise the water from a deep well with heavy wooden buckets tied to a rope. The laundry had to be boiled at a distant place. The wet laundry was transported in a baby carriage.1
The number of women in Sobibor increased gradually. They cleaned the SS living barracks, worked in the kitchen, and ironed the clothes of the SS men. In the autumn about fifteen young women and girls, who were asked whether they knew how to knit, were taken by SS Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner from a transport and put in a special room. Wagner brought them wool, taken from baggage left by the murdered Jews, and ordered them to knit knee-high socks and pullover sweaters. These would warm the SS men of the camp in the coming winter. Wagner made the women work and sleep in the same barrack, away from the other prisoners, who were infected with lice. He gave them clothes, soap, and water so that they could keep clean and not infect the woolen socks and pullovers with lice. The capo of this knitting group was Mrs. Shapiro, a Viennese woman.2
From the transports from Holland and other European countries to Sobibor, additional girls and young women were selected. From a transport that arrived from Holland on April 9, 1943, twenty-eight women were selected for work. At that time the women were employed not only in services, but also in sorting and packing the clothes and other articles left by the victims. Other women were engaged in the vegetable garden and flower beds that were planted at the gate and along the roads in the camp. The SS men selected some women singers for entertainment. From one of the transports from Vienna, they selected three beautiful singers, who were forced to perform. After a short period, when the SS men had enough of their performances, they were executed.3
In the last months of the camp, women were even engaged in construction works. At that time the number of Jewish women in Sobibor reached 150.4 According to available evidence and documentation, there were no women among the Jewish prisoners in the extermination area of Sobibor. At the end of the war, eight Jewish women prisoners from Sobibor had survived.
In Treblinka, among the Jews originally employed in building the camp, there were a few women who worked in the SS kitchen as helpers to the Polish female cooks from the surrounding villages.5 With the organization of a permanent prisoner staff, camp authorities decided to set up a Jewish women’s work team for the laundries. The Lower Camp held three such laundries—for the SS men, the Ukrainians, and the Jewish prisoners. About twenty-five to thirty women were selected from the transports that arrived during the second half of September 1942. Of these, most were sent to work in the laundries; a few professional seamstresses were attached to the men working in the sewing shop; and others were placed in the kitchen. Their number gradually grew, until by the end of the winter of 1942/43, there were about fifty women in the camp.
Occasionally additional women were selected from new transports. Bronka Sukno, who arrived from Warsaw in Treblinka on January 18, 1943, relates how she alone was selected:
After we arrived at Treblinka, they separated the women from the men and ordered us to remove our shoes and clothing. I stood at the [transport] square without disrobing. A moment later I was pushed by SS man Franz Suchomel into a hut where clothing was being sorted. . . . After about two hours there, Suchomel took me to the laundry where the Germans’ clothing was washed and ironed. On the way Suchomel told me not to ask any questions, and to remember that I had neither heard nor seen a thing. The next day they took me to work in the tailor’s shop. . . .6
Most of the women at Treblinka were young, between eighteen and thirty, although there were a few younger girls and a few older women. The women’s capo in the Lower Camp was a woman named P
erla or, as she was usually called, “Paulinka.” She was notorious for her poor treatment of women prisoners and her informing to the Germans.7
There were no women among the prisoners in the extermination area until mid-February 1943. A typhus epidemic had swept the camp that winter and claimed many victims, particularly in the extermination area. As a result, camp authorities decided to improve sanitary facilities in that part of the camp by setting up a laundry for the clothing of the prisoner work teams there. Until then the prisoners had been wearing the same filthy clothes, soaked with the blood of the corpses they handled, for weeks and even months on end, seldom receiving a fresh change of clothing from the Lower Camp. A group of young women was selected from a transport of Jews brought from the Grodna area in February 1943, and transferred to the extermination area. Eli Rozenberg describes their arrival: “At that time thirteen girls were brought to the camp: six were employed in the laundry, three in the kitchen, one by the camp doctor as an aide, and the others were allotted to the various capos. . . .”8 As few women were also transferred from the Lower Camp to the extermination area, this meant that the total number in the Upper Camp reached fifteen or twenty. The women’s capo there was Lila Ephroimson. Sonia Lewkowicz, the sole survivor of the group of women who worked in this part of the camp, gave highly favorable testimony on Ephroimson’s behavior as women’s capo.9
There was also a married couple, the Blau family from Vienna, in the extermination area—a highly unusual circumstance. Treblinka commander Stangl knew the Blau family from his own days in Vienna; when they arrived at Treblinka in a transport, Stangl recognized them by chance and saved them. A while later Blau was appointed “camp elder” in the extermination area, and his wife was transferred there, too. Later, Blau was exempted from this task for health reasons, following which, as Suchomel relates: “. . . Stangl then appointed him and his wife as cooks for the Jews. The old lady Blau was a good cook and she often made me meals. I ate the food in our dining hall and she often cooked me special dishes.”10