by Yitzhak Arad
The train arrived at 8:15 on June 17 at the labor camp, which was close to the Sobibor station, where the camp commander, Oberleutnant Stangl, received the 949 Jews. The disembarkation began immediately and was completed at 9:15. The departure from Sobibor to Lublin with the “special train” followed immediately after the unloading of the Jews, at 10:00. . . .5
Some transports with Jews from Germany also arrived in Belzec. Some sources mention a transport with Jews from Würzburg which was sent for liquidation in Belzec.6
In addition to the 10,000 or more Jews from Germany and Austria who were killed in Sobibor, tens of thousands more found their death in Belzec and Treblinka. At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, Heydrich mentioned the number of 175,500 Jews who lived at that time in Germany and Austria. It is hard to estimate how many of these Jews were sent to the Lublin district and found their death in Operation Reinhard death camps.
An unusual instance in which a non-Jewish German woman was murdered at Treblinka together with her two children was described by Jacob Wiernik:
A transport arrived. Everything proceeded normally. While they were undressing, a woman stepped out of the line with her children—boys. She identified herself as a German by birth who had been included in the transport by mistake. All her papers were in order, and the two boys weren’t circumcised. The woman was attractive, and her eyes showed fear. She held her children, calmed them, and promised that everything would be cleared up quickly and they would go home to their father. The Germans ordered her and her children to leave the group. She thought she had been saved, and calmed down. But that’s not the way it was. They had sentenced her to die with the Jews, since she had seen too much and might spread it around. Whoever enters Treblinka was doomed, and this woman and her children marched together with the others—to die. . . .7
Slovakia
The deportation of the Jews from Slovakia to the ghettos in the Lublin district and to Auschwitz, which began on March 25, 1942, was based on an agreement between the Slovakian and German governments. By October 20, 1942, about 58,000 Slovakian Jews had been deported, 39,000 of them to the Lublin district, the remainder to Auschwitz.8 The transports were carried out in Slovak trains and under Slovak guard up to the border. At the first station within the confines of the General Government, the train and its human cargo passed into the hands of the Germans, who escorted the train to its destination. In some of the ghettos to which the Slovakian Jews were brought, there were still some local Jews left. In some places they found empty ghettos; the former inhabitants had already been annihilated in the death camps. A survivor of such a journey, who passed through Sobibor and some labor camps but who succeeded in escaping and returning to Slovakia, testified about his experience:
On May 21, 1942, our transport, consisting of about 1,000 Jews, was deported from Sabinov via Zilina, Cadca, directly to Poland. At the boundary we were told to line up. We were counted by the SS [men] on the station platform, while the women were counted in the carriages. Then we continued our journey for three or four days until we reached Rejowiec-Lubelski [Lublin district], where we left the carriages. During the entire time we suffered from thirst, as we had been given water only on two occasions and no food at all; but we had left provided with plenty of provisions. . . .
On the next day, May 27, two transports of a size similar to ours arrived from Stropkov and Humenne, so that we were then all together 3,000 Slovakian Jews. . . .
On August 9, 1942, German police suddenly ordered a general lineup. The entire Jewish population, including the Jews of the ghetto as well as the labor camp, all together about 2,700 people, had to line up on the main square before the school with their luggage. All those who had not been able to obey the order owing to illness or exhaustion were shot in their quarters. . . .
We were taken over at Rejowiec railway station by the so-called “Black Ukrainians.” There we were squeezed into waiting cattle trucks, 120 to 150 persons per truck, without being registered. The doors were then closed from the outside, and the trucks were left standing at the station till 8 p.m. . . .
We arrived at Sobibor shortly past midnight, where SS men with nagaikas [horse whips] received us. There at last we got a little water, though no food. We were subsequently lined up in a pine alley, divided by sexes, and twenty-five men were told to fall out to clear luggage and corpses out of the trucks. We never saw these men again. In the morning we saw most of the women move in ranks of four to a yard some distance away. At 8 a.m. the SS lieutenant came to us and told all those who had previously worked at draining swamps to fall out. About 100 men and 50 women stepped forward, 155 in all, to whom the lieutenant remarked cryptically: “You are born anew.” From the remaining group, mechanics, locksmiths, and watchmakers were separated, while the rest had to follow the women to the yard in the distance, and shared their fate. . . .
Our group of 155 was brought to Ossowa, where we spent one night. We were very well received and fed there by the Jews. At Ossowa there were about 500 German and Czech Jews. Jewish Ghetto Police accompanied us to Krychow. . . .
On October 16 we were told that a certain proportion of workers was to be sent to the “Jewish City” of Wlodawa on the Bug, 25 km from Krychow Four days after they arrived at Wlodawa, the entire Jewish population there was deported to Sobibor. . . .9
From the 39,000 Slovakian Jews who had been deported to the Lublin district, about 24,500 were murdered in Sobibor, 7,500 in Belzec, and 7,000 in Treblinka.10
The Transports from Theresienstadt Ghetto
(Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia)
Thirteen transports, comprising about 13,000 Jews, were sent from Theresienstadt to ghettos of the Lublin district between March 12 and June 13, 1942. At least 6,000 of these Jews were murdered in Sobibor and about 7,000 in Belzec. Other transports, with about 4,000 Jews, reached ghettos of the Lublin district in October 1942.11 They were most likely deported to Sobibor or to Belzec. Five transports, comprising about 8,000 Czech, German, and Austrian Jews, were sent to Treblinka from the Theresienstadt ghetto between October 5 and October 25, 1942. The first two transports departed on October 5 and 8, and carried 1,000 Jews each. The last three, each of 2,000 Jews, departed on October 15, 19, and 22. The trip to Treblinka took two days. Richard Glazer, one of the survivors of these transports, described what transpired on the way and upon arrival:
After a month in Theresienstadt I was notified that I was to leave the next day for another camp, in the East. . . .
We, our Czech transport, traveled on a passenger train; later I was to find out how rare that was; only transports from the “West”—Germany, Austria, Holland, etc.—traveled on passenger trains with their comparative comfort; everybody else went in cattle trucks. The people supervising our transport were police—in green police uniform. They appointed some of the young men as monitors and gave them armbands. It wasn’t particularly rough, or frightening. True enough, the police officer in charge expressed himself rather oddly. “I am to bring a thousand pieces,” he said, “and a thousand pieces I am going to bring. So anybody who puts his head out of the window is going to have it blown off; we shoot.” We thought he was being unnecessarily crude; no need, we thought, to frighten the women and children that way; but we didn’t really give it a second thought. We left Theresienstadt on October 8 and we traveled two days. First we thought we were going in the direction of Dresden, but then the train turned and we went east. During the nights it stood more than it moved. The last morning we saw in the distance the outline of a city; it must have been Warsaw. We got to Treblinka at 3.30 p.m. We all crowded to look out of the windows. I saw a green fence, barracks, and I heard what sounded like a farm tractor at work. I was delighted. The place looked like a farm. I thought, “This is prima [marvelous]; it’s going to be work I know something about. . . .”
I saw men with blue armbands on the platform, but without insignia. . . . There were loud announcements, but it was all fairly restrained: nobody did anything to us.
I followed the crowd: “Men to the right, women and children to the left,” we had been told. The women and children disappeared into a barrack further to the left and we were told to undress. One of the SS men—later I knew his name, Küttner—told us in a chatty sort of tone that we were going into a disinfection bath and afterward would be assigned work. Clothes, he said, could be left in a heap on the floor, and we’d find them again later. We were to keep documents, identity cards, money, watches and jewelry with us. . . . And just then another SS man (Miete was his name) came by me and said, “Come on, you, get back into your clothes, quick, special work.” That was the first time I was frightened. Everything was very quiet, you know. And when he said that to me, the others turned around and looked at me—and I thought, my God, why me, why does he pick on me? . . . and of course, never forget that we had no idea at all what this whole installation was for. . . .12
The Theresienstadt deportees were taken directly to the gas chambers, but a few dozen had been selected to reinforce the Jewish prisoner cadres in the camp. Thus a few were saved.
Greece and Yugoslavia
On February 2, 1943, the SS and representatives of the Bulgarian government signed an agreement that specified that 14,000 Jews living in areas recently annexed to Bulgaria would be delivered to the Germans for transport to the East no later than April 15 of that year. These annexed areas included Thrace in Greece and Macedonia in Yugoslavia.
Some 5,500 Jews lived in the parts of Greece annexed by Bulgaria, in the towns of Kavalla, Drama, Xanthi, Serrai (Serres), Dede-Agatch (Alexandroupolis), Souphlion (Soufli), and Komotini. Over 4,000 of them were arrested on March 4, 1943, and taken to Dupnitsa and Gorna-Dzhumaia internment camps in the new territories of Bulgaria. After ten days in the camps, on March 18–19, they were transferred by train to the port of Lom on the Danube. Jews from the Yugoslav town of Pirot, which also had been annexed to Bulgaria, were also brought to this river port. At Lom, the Bulgarian authorities transferred the Jews, who numbered 4,215, to the Germans. On March 20–22, the Jews boarded four boats headed for Vienna. The trip on the Danube to Vienna took five to eight days. According to several accounts, Jews on one of the boats were drowned—either accidently or deliberately. From Vienna, the Jews were sent by train to Treblinka on March 26 and 28, 1943, and they all were exterminated upon arrival.13
The parts of Yugoslav Macedonia transferred to Bulgaria after the German conquest contained a Jewish population of about 8,000, in the communities of Skopje, Bitola, and Stip. From March 11, 1943, they were concentrated in an internment camp established at the tobacco warehouse called the Monopoly in Skopje. About the conditions at that camp, Elena Leon Ishakh from Bitola testified as follows:
In one room there were over 500 of us. We arrived in Skopje around midnight and were locked up in the building of the Monopoly. The entire following day we and the Jews from Stip were kept under lock, because the search and plunder of the Jews from Skopje was still going on. Having been locked up in the wagons the day before, and now the whole day in the building without latrines, people were compelled to relieve themselves in the corners and thus the air soon became unbearable. . . . Whenever one of us would peek through the window, a police officer would fire his pistol into the air. On 13 March, they finally let us out to use the latrines. . . . They let out the 500 of us who were in the room for half an hour and then locked us up again, so that more than half the people were unable to relieve themselves or to get water. . . . They let us out only once a day, section by section, and then for such a short time that many of the weak, ill, and invalids could not get down the stairs. . . . Hunger pervaded. . . . Only on the fifth day did the camp authorities set up a kitchen, but for over 7,000 of us there were too few stoves. Food was doled out starting at eleven in the morning, and the last ones were fed around five in the evening.
Food was distributed once daily and consisted of 250 grams of bread and plain, watery beans or rice. . . . They also gave us smoked meat, but it was so bad that, despite our hunger, we couldn’t eat it. . . . Not even one-fifth of us had dishes, so that several people had to use the same dish.
Under the pretext of searching us to find hidden money, gold, or foreign currency, they sadistically forced us to undress entirely. . . . In some cases they even took away baby diapers. . . . If anything was found on somebody, he was beaten. . . .14
The Jews from Skopje camp were deported to Treblinka in three successive transports. The first transport, with 2,338 Jews, left on March 22 and arrived at Treblinka on March 29. In each of the freight cars was a small barrel of water and several buckets into which people could relieve themselves. The luggage that people were permitted to take was 40 kilograms per adult and 20 per child. An eyewitness described the departure of this transport:
The first transport departed on 22 March 1943. The previous day, only about 1,600 people were selected for this transport. They were given food for a trip lasting fifteen days, namely, 1¼ kilos bread, ½ kilo kashkaval (a hard cheese), 2 kilos marmalade, 2 kilos peksimit (a kind of bread or biscuit), and 1 kilo of unboiled smoked meat. Everyone refused to take the meat as a sign of protest. The morning of that same day it was announced unexpectedly that an additional 800 people would be leaving. Since the train was supposed to leave soon, these people were hurriedly forced onto the transport and many of them did not manage to secure any food. When an individual’s turn came to be transported, no one asked whether that person was ill, whether a woman was pregnant or whether she had given birth just the day before.15
The second transport, with 2,402 Jews, left on March 25 and arrived at Treblinka on March 31 in the evening. The third transport, with 2,404 Jews, left on March 29 and reached Treblinka on April 5. The trip from Skopje to Treblinka lasted six days.16
The first transport from Skopje was guarded by a platoon of Bulgarian soldiers up to the Lapovo train station in Yugoslavia, where responsibility was transferred to the German military police. The two other transports were guarded by the German military police from their departure from Skopje (which was under Bulgarian rule) all the way to Treblinka. In a report given by the German officer who was in charge of the third transport, he described the route and events on the way from Skopje to Treblinka:
Work Report
Subject: Escorting the Jewish Transports
12 April 1943
On the basis of a telephoned command from SS Hauptsturmführer Danker, the train left Skopje on March 23,1943, at 12:00, escorted by platoon No. 1, which comprised thirty men and was commanded by Police Sergeant Buchner. The train arrived at 23:00. On March 29, at 06:00, the loading of 2,404 Jews onto freight cars commenced at the former tobacco sheds. Loading was completed at 12:00, and at 12:30 the train departed. The train passed through Albanian territory. The final destination, Treblinka (the camp), was reached on April 5,1943, at 07:00, via Czestochowa, Piotrkow, Warsaw. The train was unloaded that same day between the hours 09:00 and 11:00. Incidents: Five Jews died on route. On the night of March 30—an elderly woman of seventy; on the night of March 31—an elderly man, aged eighty-five; on April 3—an elderly woman, aged ninety-four and a six-month-old child. On April 4 an elderly woman aged ninety-nine died.
Transport Roster:
received 2,404
less 5
total delivered at
Treblinka
2,399
[signed] Karl, Military Police Lieutenant and Company Commander.17
Reports like this were prepared for every transport. All told, 7,144 Jews were sent from Yugoslav Macedonia to Treblinka, and, with the exception of twelve who had died en route, they all died in the gas chambers.
The transport trains from those parts of Greece and Yugoslavia under Bulgarian rule, as well as those from Salonika, traveled via Vienna and Cracow to the extermination camps. The regional administrations of the German railway authority in Vienna and Cracow issued trip-plan orders for these trains, including a demand that the railway workers deliver an exact report of the number of peo
ple in each transport. A cable sent by the Generaldirektion der Ostbahn in Cracow on March 28, 1943, detailed this request:
German Railroads
Service Cable, received March 28, 4:25
From Malkinia . . . original: Generaldirektion der Ostbahn, Cracow.
To Treblinka train station, in regard to DA trains from Bulgaria and Greece. In accordance with special train trip-plan orders, arriving passenger count and careful check of data on transport certificate are mandatory. Irregularities in data should be noted, e.g., received 490 people here and not 510, transport certificate, etc., should be sent immediately to Cracow VK WEMI.
Gedob Cracow.18
Between March 15 and May 9, the Jews of Salonika, Greece, were sent to Auschwitz for extermination. A document of the German railroad authority in Vienna, dated March 26, 1943, mentions a forty-eight-car train carrying deportees loaded at Salonika that passed through Cracow and from there to Malkinia.19 Since in many documents relating to transports to Treblinka Malkinia is noted as the destination station, it would appear that at least one transport from Salonika, carrying 2,800 Jews, arrived at Treblinka. Stangl also testified that transports from Salonika arrived at Treblinka. Shmuel Wilenberg bore witness to such a transport:
During those days of March 1943, a train’s whistle signaled the arrival of a new transport. This time, a most strange crowd issued forth from the cars. The new arrivals, with tanned faces and jet black, curly hair, spoke among themselves in an unrecognizable language. The baggage they took with them from the cars was tagged “Salonika.” Rumors of the arrival of Greek Jews spread like lightning. Among the arrivals were intellectuals, people of high station, a few professors and university lecturers. While they had come all this way in freight cars, the strangest thing to us was that the cars had not been locked and sealed. Everyone was well-dressed and carried lots of baggage. Amazed, we eyed marvelous oriental carpets; we couldn’t take our eyes off the enormous reserve of food. We began salivating as we stared at bags loaded with delicacies, fruits, and drinks. Besides food, these Jews took along a reserve of clothing, various and sundry accessories, trinkets. . . .