by Yitzhak Arad
People sent to Sobibor during the first months of its operation had not heard of the place. Yitzhak Lichtman, who was expelled in the middle of May 1942 from Zolkiewka (Lublin district) to Sobibor, testified that he had never heard of Sobibor and that “the Germans had succeeded in concealing the existence of this camp. On the train to Sobibor, we were told by some Poles that we were being taken to be burned. We didn’t believe them. We thought that the Poles, who were anti-Semites, wanted to scare us.”5
Whereas the deported Jews from the Lublin, Lvov, and Cracow districts knew nothing about the real purpose of the evacuation, some news about Belzec did reach the Jewish Underground organization in the Warsaw ghetto. The first Jewish Underground newspaper that wrote about the deportations to Belzec was Nowe Tory (“New Tracks”), of the Bund organization, in April 1942.
New facts about the evacuation of Jews from Lublin are arriving all the time and continue without interruption. . . . Until now two transports of deported left already—about 6,000 people. Now are awaiting the deportation of additional 20,000 Jews. It was possible to ascertain definitely that the evacuated were deported to the famous camp of Belzec, where hundreds of young Jews were murdered in an inhuman way. . . . Among the [local] population rumors are being spread that in this camp extermination is being carried out like in Chelmno, by poisoning with gas. The Jewish population of Lublin is so terrorized that they are going to the collection points without trying to resist. On the way to the collection points, masses of Ukrainians are waiting and are beating the deportees and robbing them of the rest of their property. The Germans are telling the unfortunates that they are being deported to Jekaterynoslav (East Ukraine).
From Izbica (Lublin) district 1,000 Jews were deported in an unknown direction on March 19. A week later, on March 26, the remaining 7,000 people were deported. There is no doubt that they were deported to Belzec, where they are murdered with poisonous gas. Such news arrived also from Rava-Russkaya, Bilgoraj, Okuniew, Wawer, and other places.
Horrible news arrived from Lvov. Recently, the Germans published an order about the evacuation of 33,000 Jews from the city. The evacuation had to be carried out according to the plan—1,000 people per day. But in the middle of March, two transports left with 13,500 people in both of them. It was impossible to find out about their direction or destination. Their fate arouses the greatest anxiety. . . .6
The Dror (Zionists) Underground newspaper Yediot (“News”), June 9, 1942, stated: “Turobin (Lublin district). On May 31 all the Jews from this township, numbering 1,500 souls, were deported in unknown directions, very few remained on the spot. . .7
The information about Belzec came mainly from Poles who lived close to the camp and from Polish railway workers, and it reached the Polish Underground. From their Underground publication, it reached the Jewish Underground (see chapter 43).
The news about the deportations and the mass killings carried out in Belzec which reached the Jewish Underground in the Warsaw ghetto did not reach the majority of the people and did not heighten the awareness of the Jewish population there about the dangers they were facing. When the deportations actually started there, on July 22, 1942, the Warsaw Jews did not know what awaited them at the end of the journey.
Jacob Wiernik, who was sent from Warsaw to Treblinka on August 3, 1942, wrote:
. . . Rumors abounded that they were sending us to work in the Ukraine. . . . I knew it was our lot to suffer, to wander, to starve . . . but I honestly did not believe that the hangman’s noose was hovering mercilessly over our heads, over that of our children, and that our very existence was at stake. . . .8
And Marian Platkiewicz, also bound for Treblinka, wrote:
At that time the general opinion in the Warsaw ghetto was that Treblinka was no more than a forced labor camp. . . . According to another version, a transit and selection station had been built there for those sent to do agricultural work in the Ukraine. . . .9
Even the testimonies of those sent to Treblinka in September 1942 reflect their ignorance of their true destination and fate.10
Rumors made the rounds in the Warsaw ghetto concerning letters and messages arriving from the deportees which indicated that they were in Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Pinsk, and even Smolensk, and that they were working. If such letters did arrive, at least some of them had been forged by the Germans to fool the Jews in the ghetto. However, a small proportion of those expelled from the Umschlagplatz were indeed sent to labor camps, and messages from them, or from people who had seen them, contributed to the general ignorance and illusion concerning the fate awaiting the vast majority of the ghetto Jews.
Second Phase: September 1942 until the End of the Deportations
The Germans did not succeed in preventing information from leaking out about the existence of the death camps of Belzec and Treblinka for a prolonged time. From August/September 1942, rumors and information about these camps and the actual fate of the deportees spread gradually among the remaining Jews in the ghettos and labor camps of the General Government.
Tadeusz Pankiewicz wrote about the news that reached the Cracow ghetto:
A few months later [after the deportations of June 1942], some information started to reach the ghetto. This was the first time names like Belzec, Majdanek, Treblinka were heard, camps with high smoking chimneys of crematoria. But even then, there were not yet any thoughts of mass murder. . . . One day, with the speed of lightning, a story spread that a man escaped from a transport in Belzec. This courageous man was the dentist Bachner. . . . From him, the escapee from the extermination transport, it became known in the ghetto the truth about the existence of camps where Germans are killing, gassing, and cremating the arriving prisoners.11
The underground newspaper of the Bund, Oif der Vach (“On Guard”), which appeared in Warsaw on September 20,1942, wrote about Treblinka:
The Jews of Warsaw Are Killed in Treblinka During the first week of the “deportation Aktion” Warsaw was flooded with greetings from the deported Jews. The greetings arrived from Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Kosov, Malkinia, Pinsk, Smolensk. All this was a lie. All the trains with the Warsaw Jews went to Treblinka, where the Jews were murdered in the most cruel way. The letters and greetings came from people who succeeded in escaping from the trains or from the camp. It is possible that in the beginning, from the first transports, some of the Warsaw Jews were sent to Brest-Litovsk or Pinsk, in order that their greetings would mislead, deceive, and provoke false illusions among the Jews in Warsaw. Actually, what was the fate of the deported Jews? We know it from the stories of the Poles and of those Jews who succeeded in escaping from the trains or from Treblinka. . . .
The size of Treblinka was one-half square kilometer. It was surrounded by three fences of barbed wire. . . . After unloading the train of the living and the dead, the Jews were led into the camp. . . . During the descent from the train, shots were fired on those who were slow or even for no reason. Those who died en route or were shot on the spot were buried between the first and second fence. . . .
The women and children from the arriving transport were divided into groups of 200 each and were taken to the “baths.” They had to take off their clothes, which remained on the spot, and were taken naked to a small barrack called the “bath,” which was located close to the digging machine. From the bath nobody returned, and new groups were entering there constantly. The bath was actually a house of murder. The floor in this barrack opened up and the people fell into a machine. According to the opinion of some of those who escaped, the people in the barrack were gassed. According to another opinion, they were killed by electrical current. From the small tower over the bath, there were constant shots. There was talk that the shots were aimed at the people inside the barrack and those who survived the gas. The bath absorbs 200 people every fifteen minutes, so in twenty-four hours the killing capacity is 20,000 people. That was the explanation for the incessant arrival of people in the camp, from where there was no return, except a few hundred who succeede
d in escaping during the whole time. . . . During the daytime women and children were liquidated and during the nights, the men. . . .
The escape from the camp was difficult and dangerous, but there were people who tried to do it, in spite of the fact that the camp was strongly illuminated during the night. . . . Why wasn’t a mass escape organized? There were rumors in the camp that it was surrounded by a strong guard and the fences were electrified. The people were broken from their terrible experiences at the Umschlagplatz, on the train and in the camp. The general depression influenced also those who were, by nature, more active. . . .
An SS man gave a speech before each of the arriving transports and promised that all of them would be sent for work in Smolensk or Kiev.
The night between August 19 and 20, when Warsaw was bombarded, there was a blackout in the camp for the first time. An SS man addressed the assembled Jews. He told them that an agreement had been reached between the German government and Roosevelt about the transfer of European Jews to Madagascar. In the morning they would leave Treblinka with the first transport. This announcement aroused a great joy among the Jews. As soon as the all-clear signal was given, the extermination machine started its “normal” activity. Even inside the camp, the Nazis continued to mislead the Jews until the last moment. . . .
There were three such camps: one in the vicinity of Pinsk for the eastern areas, another in the area of Lublin at Belzec, and the third, the largest, was Treblinka near Malkinia.12
It took several months from the time that the first shreds of information about Belzec and Treblinka reached the ghettos until the remainder of the Jewish population realized that when they were deported they were being sent to their death.
The secrecy surrounding Sobibor and the activities there was preserved for a much longer period. The camp was in a more remote and desolate area. Fewer transports arrived there, and very few people succeeded in escaping. Sobibor was the camp “in the vicinity of Pinsk” mentioned in the Underground newspaper Oif der Vach. Even as late as the end of 1942, Sobibor was unknown to the Jews in the ghettos. Abraham Wang, who was deported there at the beginning of 1943 from Izbica, which was close to Sobibor, testified that when the people arrived at Sobibor, they did not know what place they had come to, what Sobibor was, and what happened there.13
When the information about Belzec and Treblinka finally reached the Jewish population in the ghettos of Poland, the deportations did not continue as smoothly as before. Jews went into hiding inside the ghettos, and bringing them to the collection points and trains was no longer as easy as it had been before. In the east and northeast of Poland, in the area of the forests, groups of youngsters tried to escape and join or form partisan units. In other places Jews resisted. Yet these limited responses could not and did not bring about any substantial change in the fate of the majority of Jews, who were doomed to deportation and extermination. For them there was no escape, and hiding in the ghetto was only a temporary rescue.
Rudolf Reder, one of the two survivors of Belzec, wrote about the deportation from Lvov:
Two weeks before the deportation, people spoke everywhere of the approaching disaster. We were in despair. This time we knew the meaning of “deportation”. . . . The Legend of Belzec became a truth we knew about, and we trembled with fear. Days before August 10, people ran around the streets of the Jewish quarter, full of despair, but powerless, asking one another what to do. Early in the morning of August 10, the Jewish quarter was surrounded by Gestapo men, SS, Sonderdienst, who, in teams of four or six, patrolled the streets. The Ukrainian police were very helpful to them. . . .
For several days these patrols carried out house-to-house searches. People who did not have stamped work permits or people whose work permits were not valid were expelled from the houses. Those who resisted got a bullet in the head. . . . I was caught in a hiding place, beaten, and taken. We were packed densely inside a tram where it was impossible to move or breath, and taken to the Janowski camp. It was evening. We were kept in a closed ring on a big lawn. There were 6,000 of us. We were ordered to sit, forbidden to get up, to smoke. We were illuminated by a searchlight from a watchtower. It was bright as day. Surrounded by armed beasts, we were sitting tightly squeezed, young and old, women and children of all ages. There were some shots, somebody got up, maybe he wanted to be killed. We sat during the whole night in deathly silence. Neither children nor women cried. At six o’clock in the morning, we were ordered to get up from the wet grass, and a long column of the doomed marched to the Kleparow railway station. We were surrounded by Gestapo men and Ukrainians. Nobody could escape. . . .14
On the eve of the deportation from the Grodno ghetto, in January-February 1943, Tzipora Birman, a member of the Zionist anti-Nazi Underground movement there, wrote about hope for a miracle and the frustrating facts about the forest as a way of rescue for the Jews:
No tranquillity was in the ghetto . . . there was again talk about an Aktion. Almost all of the people knew already that the deportations were to Treblinka. Many responded: We shall not go, let them kill us on the spot. But this was only talk. All the people packed their bundles. They still hoped, perhaps some miracle would happen on the train; they put their trust in a miracle and went silently to the cruel death. We sent a group into the forests . . . it was hard to get arms in the ghetto. We believed that they would purchase arms there. We sent them to find a way for us also. They left, but did not reach the forest. One returned, four were killed. Leizer Reizner (the one who returned) told us the terrible things he had seen. Hundreds of killed Jews were lying in the forests of Marcikance; dozens were still alive asking for death. Better to die than to live such a life. Our hopes about the forests vanished. It is impossible with no arms . . . the failure with the forest depressed us. We were left with no way out. There was no choice but to die honorably in the ghetto. We started to prepare a counteraction. . . .15
The deportations carried out in January-February 1943 were fraught with difficulties and resistance, which caused casualties even to the Germans. When on January 18 the Germans tried to expel from the Warsaw ghetto 8,000 Jews who did not have work permits, they could not find them—despite this particular Aktion coming as a surprise. To carry out the deportation, they caught 3,000 Jews who worked in the German enterprises, although the Nazi authorities had not intended to deport them. On the day of the deportation, there was armed resistance by the Jewish Underground, and the Germans suffered casualties—dead and wounded. The deportation continued four days. The Germans succeeded in deporting 5,000–6,500 Jews to Treblinka, a few thousand less than the fixed goal. About a thousand Jews were shot in the houses and while trying to evade deportation.
During the deportations from Bialystok, February 9–13, 1943, tens of thousands of Jews went into hiding. Houses were burned and blown up to force the people to leave the hiding places. There were acts of resistance, and Germans were killed and wounded. Close to 10,000 people were taken to Treblinka, and about 900 were killed on the spot. The planned deportations met with more and more difficulties. When the Germans decided to liquidate the remnants of the Warsaw ghetto on April 19, 1943, there was an uprising that lasted weeks and months. An uprising also took place in August 1943, when they decided to liquidate the Bialystok ghetto.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews, including the heads of the Judenrat, who were deported from their home towns in the spring or summer of 1942 did not know their destination or fate, and even if rumors reached them about the existence of death camps, they did not believe them. When these Jews were expelled from their homes and told that they were being sent to labor camps somewhere in the East, they accepted this and were unaware of the true meaning of deportation.
The surprise, brutality, and swiftness of execution of the deportations, the shootings and killings inside the houses and on the streets, generated panic and shock and indeed may be said to have mesmerized the Jews. The belief and hope of the victims that they were being sent to work, the unawareness of their true des
tination, enabled the Nazis to carry out the deportations at this stage with relative ease. However, at the end of that summer and in the autumn of 1942, when information about the death camps began seeping back into the ghettos and the Jews realized what it meant to be deported, they tried to find ways to survive. They went into hiding and to the forests and tried to escape; they resisted and fought, but the odds were against them.
To find rescue and to survive, they needed the active help of large segments of the local populations, but this was not forthcoming. Instead, those who did try to escape encountered indifference, sometimes even hostility, and very little help (see chapter 42). Under those conditions, even the knowledge of the true aim of the deportations did not leave the victims any viable alternatives. At that stage, the deportations became more difficult for the Nazis. They were in need of larger security forces, they met with resistance, and they suffered some losses, but on the whole they carried out and accomplished the extermination actions according to their basic plans.
31
Escape from the Trains and Spontaneous Acts of Resistance
As time passed and more information reached the Jews in the ghettos of the General Government about what was happening in the camps, more and more people attempted escape. The terrible conditions inside the densely packed deportation trains and the resulting death toll also encouraged attempts at escape. The doors of the freight cars were closed from the outside at the embarkation station, so the escapes were usually carried out through the small windows of the freight cars, which were covered with barbed wire, or by breaking some wooden board through the door, wall, or floor. For the most part, the escapes occurred while the train was moving; only sometimes were escapes attempted when it stopped at a station.