by Yitzhak Arad
After Himmler’s visit, the date for closing and liquidating the camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka became dependent on the completion of the cremation of the victims’ corpses and the erasure of all traces of the crimes that had been carried out in these camps. The timetable for carrying out this decision lay mainly in the hands of the camp commanders and in their ability and desire to accomplish the erasure of the crimes as quickly as possible.
The decision to close and dismantle the camps of Belzec and Treblinka remained unchanged, but the fate of Sobibor underwent alteration. On July 5, 1943, Himmler issued an order not to dismantle Sobibor but to transform it into a concentration camp. This order was addressed to SS Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, who was in charge of the concentration camps, and to Globocnik and to the Higher SS and Police Leaders in the General Government and in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The first paragraph stated: “The transit camp Sobibor in the District of Lublin has to be transformed into a concentration camp. In the concentration camp a depot for booty ammunition has to be established.”9 Further, the order stressed that the Higher SS and Police Leaders had to deliver to this camp all kinds of ammunition taken from the enemy, and it specified how it should be treated there.
The order that Sobibor was to become a concentration camp meant it would now be subordinate to Pohl instead of Globocnik. Both Pohl and Globocnik were not satisfied with this change. On July 15, 1943, Pohl wrote to Himmler:
Reichsführer, following your order that the transit camp Sobibor in the District of Lublin should be transformed into a concentration camp, I had a talk on this subject with SS Gruppenführer Globocnik. Both of us propose to give up the idea of the transformation into a concentration camp. Your desired aim, namely to install in Sobibor a depot for booty ammunition, can be achieved without this change. Everything else in the above-mentioned order can remain. Please let me have your endorsement, which is important for Gruppenführer Globocnik and myself.10
On July 24, 1943, Pohl was informed that Himmler agreed to his proposal: namely, that Sobibor would be transformed into a booty ammunition camp, but would remain subordinate to Globocnik.11
Construction work on barracks and bunkers, where the boot ammunition would be stored and treated, was then begun in Sobibor. The camp was enlarged, and the whole northeast section close to the railway station was rebuilt. This new part of the camp was called Camp IV or North Camp. The construction work was carried out by prisoners, whose ranks were reinforced by more Jews removed from new transports.
23
The Erasure of the Crimes
The hundreds of thousands of Jews who had been murdered in the death camps of Operation Reinhard in the spring and summer of 1942 were originally buried in the huge pits that had been prepared for this purpose. The cremation of the corpses in the camps of Sobibor and Belzec began in the autumn of 1942 and in Treblinka in March 1943.
The idea of burning the bodies of Nazi Germany’s victims in Eastern Europe to erase any traces of the crimes had come up earlier. In the spring of 1942, Himmler decided that the corpses of Jews and the Red Army prisoners who had been shot in Soviet-occupied territories and buried there in mass graves should be removed and all trace of the killing should be erased. The same would be applied to those who were to be killed in the death camps operating at that time. Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office and the commander of the Einsatzgruppen of the SS that had carried out the mass killings in the Soviet-occupied territories, was entrusted with this task.
In March 1942, Heydrich met in Warsaw with SS Standartenführer Paul Blobel, the former commander of Einsatzkommando 4a, who had carried out the killings in Kiev and other places in the Ukraine. Heydrich discussed with Blobel the matter of his appointment to lead the operation of erasing all traces of the mass murders and the ways it would be implemented. Blobel’s appointment to this task was postponed for about three months because of Heydrich’s death, but in June 1942, SS Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, the head of the Gestapo, formally appointed Blobel the task of covering up the traces of the mass executions carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in the East. This task was top secret, and Blobel was ordered that no written correspondence should appear on the subject. The operation was given the code name “Sonderaktion 1005.” Blobel’s duty was to find the proper technical means and system for destroying the victims’ bodies, to coordinate and supervise the entire operation, and to issue the verbal orders for its implementation.1
After his appointment, Blobel, along with a small staff of three or four men, began experimenting with systems for burning bodies. The place chosen for these experiments was Chelmno, the first death camp that had been established and had been operating since the end of 1941. At that time, tens of thousands of Jews from the Lodz area had already been killed there; they were buried in pits in a wooded area. The pits were opened, and the first experiments were carried out. Incendiary bombs were tried, but these caused large fires in the surrounding woods. Then they started to cremate the bodies on wood in open fireplaces. The bones that remained were destroyed by a special bone-crushing machine. The ashes of the bodies and small fragments of bones were buried in the pits from which the bodies had been removed. At the conclusion of these successful experiments, the SS had found a simple and efficient way to erase their crimes.2
Following these experiements, the burning of the corpses of the victims murdered in Chelmno and in Auschwitz was begun, this as early as the last months of 1942. The results of Blobel’s experiments were sent to Globocnik so that he could introduce cremation of the corpses in the Operation Reinhard camps. But Globocnik was not eager to carry out the erasure mission; he even had “ideological” objections to it. He felt that the German people should be proud of having exterminated the Jews and should not hide this fact from future generations. According to Gerstein’s affidavit, Globocnik said, in August 1942, that instead of cremating the corpses and erasing the traces of the mass graves, they must be left and inside them “[we should] bury bronze tablets stating that it was we who had the courage to carry out this gigantic task” (see p. 101). For this reason Globocnik did not immediately enforce cremation of the corpses in the Operation Reinhard camps. Eventually, however, in spite of Globocnik’s attitude, the burning of the corpses was undertaken in the camps subordinate to him.
Sobibor was first. The reasons for the operation there were local. As a result of the hot weather in the summer of 1942, the buried corpses swelled, and the fully packed mass graves rose up above the surrounding surface. The entire area became infested with vermin, and a terrible stench pervaded the camp and its surrounding areas. The camp commanders feared that the drinking water, which came from dug wells, could be contaminated and poisoned. Therefore the decision was made to start burning the bodies in Sobibor. A big excavator was brought to the camp; a special group of Jewish prisoners was also assigned to this work. The decomposed corpses were taken out of the pits by the excavator and arranged on a big roaster built from old railway tracks laid over an empty pit.
Unterscharführer Becher Warner, who served as a driver in Sobibor from August through November 1942, testified at the Sobibor trial: “The corpses were taken out from the gas chambers and cremated on a specially prepared roaster. The ashes and the remains of the bodies were buried in a specially designated place, and later a forest was planted there. . . . As I have already said, I used to bring foodstuffs to the camp and also wood for cremating the killed. . . .”3
The commander of Trawniki camp, SS Sturmbannführer Karl Streibel, testified about the cremating sites he saw during his visit to Sobibor at the end of 1942:
Wirth led me through the Sobibor camp. I saw the gas chambers and the other facilities. I saw the ditches near the gas chambers. I could not see any corpses in the ditches, because they were covered with a layer of earth. But I saw the roaster made of railway lines where the corpses were burned. During my visit, there was no extermination operation. There were also no corpses burned
, but I could see the cremating sites. The roaster made from the railway lines was supported by a stone base.4
There were no survivors from among the Jewish prisoners who worked in the extermination area of Sobibor and were engaged in cremating the corpses. Therefore, no evidence, oral or written, was left by them about this operation. There are, however, some testimonies of Jewish prisoners who were in the other part of the camp. Leon Feldhendler wrote about the start of the cremation of the corpses in the camp:
In the first period, there was no crematorium. After gassing, the people were laid into the graves. Then, out of the soil, blood and a bad odor of gas began to surface; terrible smells spread over the whole camp, penetrating everything. The water in Sobibor became rancid. This forced the Germans to build a crematorium. It was a large pit with a roaster above it. The bodies were thrown on the roaster. The fire was ignited from beneath, and petrol was poured on the corpses. The bones were crushed into ashes with hammers. . . .5
The corpses of those who were gassed after cremation was instituted were not buried; they were taken directly to the roaster and cremated. The burning of the corpses of the newcomers and of those murdered earlier went on simultaneously. The smell of burned flesh prevailed throughout the camp and its vicinity.6
The opening of the mass graves in Belzec and the cremating of the corpses removed from them began with the interruption of the arrival of transports and of the killing activities there in mid-December 1942. At that time there were about 600,000 corpses of murdered Jews in the pits of the camp. SS Scharführer Heinrich Gley, who served at that time in Belzec, testified:
From the beginning of August 1942 until the camp was closed in September 1943 I was in Belzec. . . . As I remember, the gassing stopped at the end of 1942, when snow was already falling. Then the unearthing and cremation of the corpses began. It lasted from November 1942 until March 1943. The cremation was conducted day and night, without interruption. At first, the burning took place at one site, and later, at two. One cremating site had the capacity to burn 2,000 corpses in twenty-four hours. About four weeks after the beginning of the cremation operation, the second burning site was erected. On the average, during five months, at the first burning site about 300,000 corpses were cremated, and in four months at the second burning site, about 240,000 corpses. Naturally, these are average estimations. . . .7
An official Polish committee investigating German crimes in the Lublin area wrote in its concluding report:
From December 1942 the arrival of transports with Jews to the Belzec camps came to a standstill. The Germans then started to erase systematically the trails of their crimes. They started to remove from the graves, with special cranes, the corpses of the murdered, pour over them some highly flammable material, and cremate them in large heaps.
Later the procedure of burning the corpses was improved, and a roaster of railway tracks was built. The corpses were laid in layers, alternated with a layer of wood. The ashes from the burned corpses were put through a screening machine so that the valuables that might have remained with the corpses could be separated and removed. Subsequently, the ashes were buried. . . . The burning of the corpses was finished in March 1943. . . .8
Maria Damiel, a Polish woman who lived in the township of Belzec, testified:
We could see a machine that took out the corpses from the graves and threw them into the fire. There were a few such fires going simultaneously. At that time a dreadful smell dominated the whole area, a smell of burned human bones and bodies. From the moment they began burning the corpses, from all directions of the camp came the smell of the corpses. When the Germans completed the burning of the corpses, they dismantled the camp.9
As in Sobibor, also in Belzec there were no Jewish survivors from the prisoners who were engaged in the cremation of the corpses. But unlike Sobibor, in Belzec there were also no survivors from any other part of the camp who could give evidence about the cremating. Rudolf Reder escaped from Belzec at the end of November 1942, shortly before the cremation began, and he could not give firsthand testimony about the cremation of the corpses there.
The cremation of all the murdered in Belzec was accomplished by the end of April 1943.
The last camp where cremation of the corpses was instituted was Treblinka. During Himmler’s visit to the camp at the end of February/beginning of March 1943, he was surprised to find that in Treblinka the corpses of over 700,000 Jews who had been killed there had not yet been cremated. The very fact that the cremation began immediately after his visit makes it more than possible that Himmler, who was very sensitive about the erasure of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany, personally ordered the cremating of the corpses there. A cremation site was erected for this purpose in the extermination area of the camp.
Some of the Jewish prisoners who were employed in the cremation operations in the camp escaped during the uprising in Treblinka and survived the war. Therefore, there is more information and evidence on the cremation process and installations in Treblinka than in the other death camps. The cremating structure consisted of a roaster made from five or six railroad rails laid on top of three rows of concrete pillars each 70 cm high. The facility was 30 meters wide. The bodies were removed from the pits by an excavator. Stangl, the camp commander, relates:
It must have been at the beginning of 1943. That’s when excavators were brought in. Using these excavators, the corpses were removed from the huge ditches which had been used until then [for burial]. The old corpses were burned on the roasters, along with the new bodies [of new arrivals to the camp]. During the transition to the new system, Wirth came to Treblinka. As I recall, Wirth spoke of a Standartenführer who had experience in burning corpses. Wirth told me that according to the Standartenführers experience, corpses could be burned on a roaster, and it would work marvelously. I know that in the beginning [in Treblinka] they used rails from the trolley to build the cremation grill. But it turned out that these were too weak and bent in the heat. They were replaced with real railroad rails.10
The Standartenführer mentioned by Wirth in his conversation with Stangl was Paul Blobel, commander of Commando 1005. To introduce the cremation of corpses in Treblinka, experts were sent there from the other Operation Reinhard camps. SS Oberscharführer Heinrich Matthes, the commander of the “extermination area” in Treblinka, testified:
At that time SS Oberscharführer or Hauptscharführer [Herbert] Floss, who, as I assume, was previously in another extermination camp, arrived. He was in charge of the arrangements for cremating the corpses. The cremation took place in such a way that railway lines and concrete blocks were placed together. The corpses were piled on these rails. Brushwood was put under the rails. The wood was doused with petrol. In that way not only the newly accumulated corpses were cremated, but also those taken out from the graves.11
A special working group composed of Jewish prisoners in the extermination area was organized for the cremation operation. Additional prisoners were transferred for this operation to the extermination area from the Lower Camp, where the work had decreased significantly due to a reduction in the pace and number of transports.
After the cremation installation had been constructed, the process of removing the bodies from the pits began. The work was initiated by a single excavator; later, a second excavator was brought in. The shovel’s scoop removed six to eight corpses with each dip into the pit and dumped them on the edge of the pit. A special team of prisoners, working in twos, transferred the corpses to the crematorium on stretchers. There, another special team, called the “burning group” (Feuerkolonne), removed the corpses from the stretchers and arranged them in layers on the roaster to a height of 2 meters. Between 2,000 and 2,500 bodies—sometimes up to 3,000—would be piled on the roaster. When all was ready, dry wood and branches, which had been laid under the roaster, were ignited. The entire construction, with the bodies, was quickly engulfed in fire. The railings would glow from the heat, and the flames would reach a height of up to 10 meters.
At first an inflammable liquid was poured onto the bodies to help them burn, but later this was considered unnecessary; the SS men in charge of the cremation became convinced that the corpses burned well enough without extra fuel.
Yechiel Reichman, a member of the “burning group,” writes:
The SS “expert” on bodyburning ordered us to put women, particularly fat women, on the first layer on the grill, face down. The second layer could consist of whatever was brought—men, women, or children—and so on, layer on top of layer. . . . Then the “expert” ordered us to lay dry branches under the grill and to light them. Within a few minutes the fire would take so it was difficult to approach the crematorium from as far as 50 meters away. . . . The work was extremely difficult. The stench was awful. Liquid excretions from the corpses squirted all over the prisoner-workers. The SS man operating the excavator often dumped the corpses directly onto the prisoners working nearby, wounding them seriously. . . .12
Jacob Wiernik, who was in the “extermination area,” describes the fire itself:
It was genuine hell. From a distance it looked like a volcanic eruption boiling up through the earth’s surface and spreading flames and lava. Everything around was caught up in the noise and turmoil. At night the smoke, fire, and heat were unbearable. . . .13
The body-burning took on a rapid pace. To further streamline the operation, a new work team was set up to place the bodies on the stretchers. The idea was to keep the stretcher-bearers from having to place the stretchers on the ground and load the bodies themselves; during this time they could rest for a second. Under the new system the men who transferred the bodies did not set the stretchers down throughout the day. Other efficiency measures introduced included increasing the number of cremation sites to six—thus enabling the workers to burn up to 12,000 corpses simultaneously—and placing the cremating roasters nearer the mass graves to save time in transferring the bodies. The roasters occupied a good portion of the area east of the gas chambers, which was clear of mass graves and buildings.