Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

by Yitzhak Arad

  Gypsies from the General Government who were not sent to Auschwitz or to the Operation Reinhard camps were shot on the spot by the local police or gendarmes. In the eastern region of the Cracow district, in the counties of Sanok, Jaslo, and Rzeszow, close to 1,000 gypsies were shot. About 100 Gypsies were shot in some places in the county of Radomsk in the Radom district during the second half of 1943. There are testimonies that hundreds of Gypsy families were shot in the counties of Siedlce and Ostrow-Mazowiecka in the Warsaw district.14 There were many other places where Gypsies were shot, but no information or testimonies were left. Likewise, the total number of Gypsies from the General Government of Poland who were exterminated in the death camps or shot in the localities they lived in, or even of those who survived the Nazi occupation, is unknown. No comprehensive research on the subject has been carried out, and no further data are available.

  21

  The Economic Plunder

  The high authorities of the SS took steps to ensure that all the belongings, especially those of any value, of the Jews that were exterminated in the death camps would remain under their control and further their goals. The belongings and valuables were slated for distribution among the SS men and their families, to the Department for Volksdeutsche (VoMi), an organization in the SS responsible for the affairs of the Volksdeutsche whose purpose was to aid the Germans living in the German-occupied European countries, as well as to the Economic Ministry and the Reichsbank.

  In an order dated September 26, 1942, from SS Brigadeführer August Frank, one of the heads of the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) of the SS, to Operation Reinhard headquarters and to the commandant of Auschwitz, the guidelines for the treatment and distribution of the belongings of the Jews who had been brought to the death camps were set out:

  1. All money in bills of the Reichsbank [i.e., German money] will be deposited in Account No. 158/1488 of the WVHA in the Reichsbank.

  2. Foreign currency, rare metals, diamonds, precious stones, pearls, gold teeth, and pieces of gold will be transferred to the WVHA for deposit in the Reichsbank.

  3. Watches, fountain pens, lead pencils, shaving utensils, pen knives, scissors, pocket flashlights, and purses will be transferred to the workshops of the WVHA for cleaning and repair and from there will be transferred to the troops [i.e., SS] for sale.

  4. Men’s clothing and underwear, including shoes, will be sorted and checked. Whatever cannot be used by the prisoners in the concentration camps and items of special value will be kept for the troops; the rest will be transferred to VoMi.

  5. Women’s underwear and clothing will be sold to the VoMi, except for pure silk underwear (men’s or women’s), which will be sent directly to the Economic Ministry.

  6. Feather-bedding, blankets, umbrellas, baby carriages, handbags, leather belts, baskets, pipes, sunglasses, mirrors, briefcases, and material will be transferred to VoMi. Payment will be arranged later.

  7. Bedding, like sheets and pillowcases, as well as towels and tablecloths will be sold to VoMi.

  8. All types of eyeglasses will be forwarded for the use of the Medical Authority. Glasses with gold frames will be transferred without the lenses along with the precious metals.

  9. All types of expensive furs, styled or not, will be transferred to the SS-WVHA. Furs of lesser quality will be transferred to the Waffen SS clothing workshops in Ravensbrück bei Fürstenberg in accordance with Order BII of the SS-WVHA.

  10. All articles mentioned in paragraphs 4, 5, 6, or little or no value will be transferred by the SS-WVHA for the use of the Economic Ministry. With regard to articles not specified in the aforementioned paragraphs, the Chief of the SS-WVHA should be consulted as to the use to be made of them.

  11. The prices for the various articles are set by the SS-WVHA. . . . Therefore the price of a pair of used pants will be 3 marks, a woolen blanket—6 marks. . . . Check that all Jewish stars have been removed from all clothing before transfer. Carefully check whether all hidden and sewn-in valuables have been removed from all articles to be transferred.1

  This comprehensive written order was a summary of existing verbal instructions and procedures. Its aim was to institute formally the transfer of the goods and to prevent substantial sums of the money, valuables, and better clothing left by the victims from being pilfered by individuals or establishments outside the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office.

  To exploit these goods maximally and to carry out Frank’s order, a detailed work system had to be developed. Inside the camps the prisoners had to be put to work sorting the articles according to their destination and preparing them for transportation. In addition, a central location and authority, where to the goods from the death camps would be transferred, had to be put into operation in the framework of Operation Reinhard. In the camps all the work involved in preparing the goods was carried out by special work teams of Jewish prisoners. They sorted and subdivided the belongings left by the victims. It was their responsibility to search the clothes for money or valuables and to remove the yellow stars, documents, or any other mark that could in any way identify the items as having belonged to Jews. Those who would use these goods should not know for certain their source or former owners; they could only surmise. For neglecting this order and leaving valuables or any Jewish identification, the prisoners who were in charge of this work were taken to the gas chambers or shot. The SS men who were in charge of the prisoner work groups also bore responsibility for strictly carrying out these orders. SS Unterscharführer Heinrich Unverhau, who was in charge of such a work group in Belzec, testified:

  A pile of shoes and boots at Belzec.

  SS Sturmbannführer Hering accused me of being a saboteur because of the fact that during the sorting of the clothes that were sent for utilization in Germany, a yellow Jewish star was found. Some money was also found there. These clothes belonged to Jews who were killed in Belzec.2

  In Belzec, the victims’ belongings were temporarily stored in the locomotive shed, a few hundred meters outside the camp, close to the railway station. The clothes and other articles that were left in the undressing barrack or on the train platform were transferred to the locomotive shed by hand lorries pushed on the railway track by a work group of Jewish prisoners. Another group of prisoners sorted the belongings there and prepared them for transport. The money and valuables were put in valises and taken by prisoners, escorted by SS men, to camp headquarters near the railway station.

  In Sobibor, the undressing barrack and the sorting and storing barracks were close to one another, and were adjacent to the railway station. These storing barracks could accommodate all the goods until their dispatch, because there were considerably fewer articles than in Belzec or Treblinka, proportionate to the smaller number of victims in this camp. From the stores, the goods were taken to the station and loaded by the prisoners onto a train. A Polish railway worker at Sobibor station, Jan Piwonski, testified:

  I saw how the goods which were of no value to the Germans were burned. The other goods were loaded on freight cars and sent to Germany. Such transports with objects and clothing departed twice a month. Valuables, gold, and money were packed in an iron box and sent to Berlin twice a week. . . . I myself saw these boxes. The guards [Ukrainians] said that inside those boxes were gold, money, and valuables.3

  In Treblinka the situation was different. In the first months of the camp’s operation there were so many transports that the barracks that had been constructed for clothes storage could hold only a small fraction of the belongings. Therefore, the victims’ belongings began to be concentrated in the reception area. After they were sorted into categories, a large amount, mostly clothing, was left in the reception area until it was ready for transport by train. Another part of the belongings, mostly small but more valuable articles, were stored in a barrack near the train platform and in a barrack near the transport yard that at first had been intended to serve as an undressing barrack for the men. However, its purpose was altered, and the me
n were made to undress outside. The sorting of the belongings was done by prisoners working in sorting groups.

  Oscar Strawczinski, a Jewish prisoner who was put to work at sorting, relates:

  The group to which I belonged, consisting of several hundred people, reaches the yard and begins working. . . . On the blankets and tablecloths that are spread on the ground are piled all kinds of articles, from imported material and expensive suits to plain rags. . . . From the suitcases we remove notions, cosmetics, soap, matches, medicines. It seems that there is nothing that we do not remove here in quantities—all sorts, from the most expensive tins to the few potatoes that the poor Jews brought with them. The sorted articles are brought nonstop to the edge of the yard, where they are piled up and up. The suitcases with valuables have a special place; into them are put things made of gold, watches, rings, diamonds. Wedding rings make up the greatest quantity of valuable articles. There are also great quantities of foreign exchange, dollar bills and coins, pounds sterling and gold Russian coins. Polish money is gathered into large piles. From time to time some “gold Jews” come to the yard and take suitcases full of valuables and money to their workshops and leave behind the empty suitcases that they brought with them. These are also filled up within a short time. . . .

  The entire yard gives the impression of a market. There is a special place for housewares and bottles. Among the housewares there are utensils of the most expensive nickel or aluminium as well as old broken pots. . . .

  I work in a group of twenty men. They make us sort packages from the transport from Czechoslovakia. I open a package and find underwear, suits, shoes, notions, and so on. I am still new at this work so I am not sure what to throw onto the pile of silk clothing, of partially silk clothing, wool, cotton. . . . One must always be in motion; to rest or sit down is prohibited—one could pay for that dearly. . . .4

  After the initial sorting of the belongings in the sorting yard, there was an additional sorting according to the quality and value of the articles. Household goods and old, poor quality articles, which were not worth sending even as raw material, were burned on the spot in a special pit prepared for this purpose.

  The gold teeth that had been extracted from the corpses of the victims after they had been removed from the gas chamgers were packed, transferred to the camps’ headquarters, and from there sent to their destinations. Abraham Lindwaser, who was made to extract teeth in Treblinka, relates that during the period that the transports arrived, every week an average of two suitcases full of gold, each with 18 kg, were sent from Treblinka. The money, gold, and valuables were sent from Treblinka in an armored car or in a special railway car with an SS and Ukrainian guard escort.5

  SS Unterscharführer Gustav Münzberger relates:

  I know that Matthes [who was in charge of Camp III], at the end of each day when a transport arrived, used to take the gold to the Lower Camp. This relates to gold teeth and valuables of gold that had been found on the corpses. This gold was brought in a small case.6

  Shmuel Rajzman testified that he, the “camp elder” Galewski, and the capo of the Lazarett, Ze’ev Korland, kept a secret watch on the number of transports of Jews that were brought to the gas chambers in Treblinka and then the transports leaving Treblinka with the belongings of the victims. According to Rajzman, the transports with belongings included 248 railway cars of clothing, 100 cars of shoes, 22 cars of material, 260 cars of bedding, about 450 cars with various different articles and household goods, and hundreds more cars with various rags—all in all, about 1,500 cars full of belongings.7

  Franciszek Zabecki, a Pole who worked in the railway station at Treblinka, writes that from the account that he kept while watching the railway station at Treblinka, more than 1,000 cars full of the victims’ belongings passed through the station. This estimate is very close to exact, as verified by documents that have come into our possession from the Gedob relating to three freight trains with clothing that were sent from Treblinka to Lublin by way of Siedlce. The first was on September 9, at which time 51 cars left; the second was on September 13, on which date 50 cars left; and the third on September 21, with 52 cars. In all, in a matter of twelve days in September 1942, 153 cars full of victims’ clothing left Treblinka.8 If we assume that the clothing was approximately one-third, or a little more, of the victims’ luggage, which also included bedding, kitchen utensils, and other possessions, then besides the 153 cars of clothes that were sent from Treblinka, there were between 250 and 300 cars with other articles, which means a total of 400 to 450 cars. This, then, was the amount of the belongings that were accumulated in the camp during its first few months of operation, during which time approximately one-third of the Jews who would eventually be killed there were brought to Treblinka. Therefore, we may estimate the quantity of belongings that the Jews brought with them during the entire period of the camp’s operation at a minimum of 1,200 railway cars.

  All the trains with clothing were sent to the camp in the old airport of Lublin. In this camp the SS clothing workshops were located; they were subordinate to the central Waffen SS clothing workshops in Ravensbrück, Germany. At the beginning of March 1942, these clothing workshops in Lublin were transferred to the command of Globocnik as a sub-camp of Majdanek. This became the collection, disinfection, repair, and sorting place for the clothing taken from the victims of Operation Reinhard before their belongings were distributed to the various authorities stipulated in the order of SS Brigadeführer August Frank.

  About 500 to 700 Jewish prisoners, mainly women, worked in this camp. The old hangars were converted into stores for the clothing. In March 1943, the camp was placed under the command of Christian Wirth, as an integral part of Operation Reinhard. Wirth’s headquarters were even located in this camp. Ernst Gollak, an SS man who served for three years in the SS clothing workshops, from January 1942 onward, testified:

  . . . from May or June 1942, in this clothing camp of Lublin, furs and coats of Jews who were in the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka, and Sobibor were disinfected and sent to Germany. These articles were brought by freight trains, unloaded by the [Ukrainian] auxiliaries and later by the working Jews, disinfected, and loaded again in the freight cars. I was in charge of a group of twenty to thirty Jewish women who were trained as disinfectors. . . . The clothing was divided according to men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing. Then it was subdivided again; outer and under clothing, shoes, etc. Where these sorted clothes were sent I don’t know exactly. I once saw on the freight cars the names of the train stations: Berlin, Glogau, Breslau, and Hirschberg. . . .9

  There are some very important Nazi documents concerning the economic aspects of Operation Reinhard and the quantity of goods, money, and valuables that Germany aggregated from the extermination actions. A report submitted by SS Sturmbannführer Georg Wippern, the administrative head of Operation Reinhard, to Himmler’s headquarters gave details of Jewish property received for delivery up to February 3, 1943. The summarized total sum in German marks of this four-page report is as follows:

  1. Cash and cash balance delivered

  RM 53,013,133.51

  2. Foreign currency in notes

  1,452,904.65

  3. Foreign currency in gold coins

  843,802.75

  4. Precious metals

  5,353,943.00

  5. Miscellaneous

  26,089,800.00

  6. Textiles

  13,294,400.00

  RM 100,047983.9110

  SS Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, issued a report on February 6, 1943, regarding “Hitherto utilization of textile materials originating from the evacuation of the Jews.” This report includes the textile materials forwarded from Auschwitz and from Operation Reinhard and to whom they were submitted. According to this report, the Reich Economic Ministry received 262,000 complete men’s and women’s outfits, over 2.7 million kg of rags, 270,000 kg of bed feathers, and 3,000 kg of women’s hair—a
ll transported in 570 freight cars. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) received 211 freight cars full of men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing. The Reichsiugend-führung (command of the youths of the Reich), the I. G. Farben industry, the Todt Organization, concentration camps, and the General Inspector of Transport Leaders all received an additional 44 freight cars full of clothing. The total was 825 freight cars containing textile materials.11

  This report relates to the textile materials transferred during 1942. That year the majority of deported Jews were sent to the death camps of Operation Reinhard rather than to Auschwitz; therefore, these camps were the main source of the textiles mentioned in Pohl’s report.

  Fritz Katzman, the SS and Police Leader in the district of Galicia, from where most of the Jews were deported to Belzec, submitted a report to Higher SS and Police Leader of the General-Government Friedrich Krüger on the “Solution of the Jewish Question in Galicia.” This report, dated June 30, 1943, describes the sequence of the persecution and liquidation of the Jews in East Galicia (Lvov region) and relates also to the property of the victims.

  Simultaneously with the evacuation Aktionen, Jewish property was collected. Valuables were secured and handed over to the “Reinhard Special Staff.” Apart ftom the furniture and large quantities of textiles, etc., the following were confiscated and delivered to the “Reinhard Special Staff”. . . .