by Yitzhak Arad
The odds for a successful escape were extremely low. The train guards, armed with rifles and machine guns, were dispersed throughout the train and fired on any escapee they spotted. Moreover, military or police patrols were stationed along the railway routes, on the bridges, and at other crucial points. Many who tried to escape were killed or wounded by the guards or patrols; others were killed or injured in an unsuccessful jump from the speeding train. In most cases, the wounded were immediately caught and shot.
Jerzy Krolikowski, a Polish engineer who was engaged at repairing a bridge close to Treblinka along which the deportation trains passed, writes:
More often than in the past, people tried to escape from the transports by breaking boards from the freight cars. Most of these experiments ended in the shooting of the escapee by the guards. The passing trains were usually accompanied by intense rifle fire. . . . Sometimes we could see naked people running through the fields. Most of them were shot by the guards, and only a few succeeded in escaping. . . .
For many of the prisoners, the Treblinka station was the last station in their life. The drunken guards “played” with them, proposing escape to them in return for money and valuables, and then shot them when they were running. . . . In the few cases where prisoners succeeded in escaping, it was because the drunken guards did not aim well1
Melech Helber testified about a successful escape from a train:
The liquidation of the last Jews at Siedlce was on November 30, 1942. . . . Feeling that I might need them, I took with me on the train some tools: pliers, a saw, and a drill. When the train moved, I tried to break the door with my tools. Finally, I succeeded. I jumped from the fast-moving train into the darkness of the night. Full of bruises and bleeding wounds, I lay half-fainting close to the railway track. I saw that others had jumped from the train. Some of them were caught by peasants armed with axes who waited near the track, robbed and killed them. After I had recovered a bit, I quietly left the place. . .2
A report of a German company commander of Police Battalion No. 133 to the commander of the Order Police in the Lvov district, dated September 14, 1942, describes the whole process of the deportation of Jews from the city and area of Kolomyya in the Lvov district to Belzec, and the escapes from the train.
Subject: Deportation of Jews
After carrying out the deportation of Jews in Skole, Stryj, and Khodorov on 3-5/9/42 . . . we were in Kolomyya according to the order, on the evening of 6/9/42.
The action in Kolomyya, carried out on 7/9/42, was, for all the forces that took part, easy and well prepared, contrary to the experience in Stryj. . . .
The loading of the transport train was completed at 17:00 hours. About 1,000 of the assembled Jews were released by the Security Police, 4,769 Jews were deported. . . . After we had nailed and sealed all the freight cars according to orders, the train left in the direction of Belzec at 21:00 hours accompanied by a guard of ten men.
In the darkness of the night, many Jews escaped, after removing the barbed wire from the air holes. Some of them were shot by the guards, but the majority were liquidated that night or the next day by the railway guards or by other police forces. . . .
. . . The total number of Jews was 8,205. During the Aktionen in the vicinity of Kolomyya on September 8 and 10, 400 Jews were shot, for unknown reasons. As I remember, during the big drive of the deported Jews in Kolomyya on September 10, the Security Police loaded all the Jews onto the thirty available freight cars. Considering the oppressive heat that prevailed that day, the stress of the Jews from the long foot marches or the day-long waiting, without the supply of any food worth mentioning, with the excessive overloading of most of the freight cars, with 180–200 Jews in each, the effect was catastrophic. . . .
Because of the strain on the Jews already described, the unfavorable influence of the heat, and the heavily overloaded freight cars, the Jews tried to break out from the standing train, again and again, using the darkness which fell at 19:30 hours. . . . The break-out attempts from the standing train, in the darkness, were prevented or the fleeing Jews were shot during the escape. Because of the heat, the Jews in all the freight cars were completely undressed. The train left Kolomyya at 20:50 according to plan. . . . After a short period of travel, Jews in some of the freight cars tried to break the boards of the train. In part they succeeded. When the train arrived at Stanislavov station, the necessary repairs were carried out by local craftsmen. . . . After the train traveled further and stopped at some station, big holes made by the Jews were again discovered in freight cars, and most of the barbed wire on the air windows had been torn down. In one of the freight cars, the Jews used a hammer and pliers. . . . We were forced at each stop at a station to nail the freight cars provisionally, otherwise we could not continue the journey. . . .
At 11:15, the train arrived at Lvov. . . . In Lvov, the locomotive was changed—we got an old one—so that the continuation of the journey was possible only with prolonged interruptions. The slow journey was exploited by those Jews who still had strength to slip through the openings and find rescue in escape, which was not dangerous on the slow-moving train. . . . Beyond Lvov, the guards ran out of the ammunition they had taken with them and the additional 200 bullets they had received from the army people. So, during the rest of the journey they used stones when the train was traveling, or their side-arms [bayonet] when the train stopped. . . . At 18:45, the train arrived at Belzec. . . .3
Iesaja Feder, who lived in Kolomyya and was among the deportees to Belzec, testified about his escape from the train on the way to Belzec:
We were told that we were traveling to work in the Ukraine, but somehow, while closed in the freight car, the word “Belzec” came up. After traveling some time, I decided to escape. We were a few youngsters, and we tore down the barbed wire from the small window. I climbed to the window, squeezed myself through and jumped. It was dark, and the SS guards were shooting all the time, even without seeing any escapee, just to frighten. I fell on the earth, the train passed by. . . . I was marching on a path, suddenly in front of me appeared a Ukrainian who shouted at me: “Where are you going?” I answered that I was on the way to Kolomyya. “So you escaped from the train. Let’s go to the police,” he said, and caught my hand. He was a strong peasant, and I was weakened from life in the ghetto, so I could not resist him. After marching a while, I asked him to let me urinate, and then I started to run. I ran as if Death were behind me, and succeeded in escaping. During daylight I continued to march. Passing a forest, I met a girl from Kolomyya with a broken leg. She had escaped from the same train as I had. She decided to stay for a while in the forest. I continued on my way when I found myself surrounded by three Ukrainians. They led me to a small barrack at a train stop, where I met some other Jews who had escaped the transport and had been caught. We were beaten up and taken to Kolomyya. Along the railway, many victims were lying who, like myself, had jumped from the train. Some were dead; others were still alive, but with broken hands and legs. In Kolomyya the Ukrainians handed us over to the railway police guards. We were again beaten up and then taken to the Gestapo and to prison.
For a few days we were kept in prison with no food, and afterwards we were taken to the railway station. We were packed, 160 people into a freight car. . . . The train moved. I decided to escape again. We again cut the barbed wire and, with help from other people, climbed through the small window and jumped from the train. I found some corn in the field and quelled my hunger. Two Ukrainians approached me. I had some money and offered it to them. They let me go. Having no place to hide myself, I went back to Kolomyya, where some Jews were still kept in a labor camp. On the way I met a Polish woman. She took me, the stranger, to her house, kept me there for two days. She fed me, prepared me an armband with a Star of David that the Jews were wearing. She led me to a group of Jews who worked in the neighborhood, and with them I returned to the ghetto.4
Another survivor, Giza Petranker, testified about her escape from a train on the way fro
m Lvov to Belzec. While jumping from the train she was wounded by a bullet in her hand. Barefoot and almost nude, she and a little girl who had also escaped from the train succeeded in reaching the ghetto in Zolkiew. This after wandering and hiding for four days. But her repose was short. When Jews from Zolkiew were deported to Belzec, she was caught and sent with them. She succeeded again in jumping from the train and returned to Zolkiew, where a ghetto still existed. Many Jews who escaped the trains were gathered in this ghetto and the ghetto inhabitants, who gave them refuge, nicknamed them “jumpers” or “parachutists.” When the Zolkiew ghetto was finally liquidated, all the escapees from the transports to Belzec shared the fate of the local Jews.5
There were also escapes from the deportation trains to Sobibor, but to a lesser extent than to the other two camps. Sobibor, as a death camp, was almost unknown to the Jews in the ghettos until late autumn 1942. Therefore, only a few Jews escaped from the trains in the first six months of Sobibor’s existence. Even after this period, by the fall of 1942, the information about Sobibor reached only the ghettos in the vicinity of this camp. Shlomo Alster, who was deported at the end of October or beginning of November 1942 from the ghetto of Chelm, which was not far from Sobibor, testified:
When on the way it became known to us that we were being taken to Sobibor, which meant for us death, people started to jump from the freight cars. The guards were shooting at the escapees, and most of them were hit by the bullets. . . .6
Israel Trager, who was also on a train from Chelm to Sobibor, said:
When the Germans saw that the Jews were jumping, they stopped the train and opened up with intense fire on the fleeing Jews. Most of them were hit. The dead Jews were loaded onto the freight cars and the train moved again, increasing its speed to make it more dangerous to jump.7
Another ghetto close to Sobibor was in Wlodawa. Hella Fellenbaum-Weiss testified about the deportation that took place in November 1942:
We left for Sobibor in carts. One might wonder why so few tried to escape, since we knew the fate awaiting us. . . . Our cart was guarded by an armed Ukrainian who watched us [constantly]. German soldiers with machine guns rode alongside us on horseback. At the border of a wood, my young brother gave a farewell sign, left the cart, and started to run, followed by my older brother. My little brother fell; the other escaped. I learned later that he, too, was murdered.8
All the known, available testimonies about the escapes from the transports to Sobibor are not of people who escaped themselves, but only of people who witnessed the escapes. Very few, perhaps none, of those who were deported to Sobibor and tried to escape or succeeded in escaping survived the war. The small number of those who tried to escape and the remoteness and isolation of Sobibor made it easier for German security forces to catch and kill these escapees.
Very few attempts were made to escape from trains deported to Operation Reinhard camps from other European countries. Those who wanted to evade the “deportation to labor camps in the East,” as the Jews were told, tried to find refuge before they were taken to the trains. All the others believed that they were really going for work “somewhere in the East.” Only in one testimony about a deportation from France to Sobibor is there mention of people having escaped from the train (see p. 147).
The scale of the escape attempts from the deportation trains to the death camps of Operation Reinhard was influenced by the knowledge and awareness of the Jews as to the destination of the transports and what awaited them after arrival.
The chances for survival after the escape and of finding a refuge also influenced the decision to jump from the train. Most of those who escaped the transports faced a hostile or indifferent population with little help forthcoming. Therefore, almost all of the escapees tried to reach the ghettos that still existed and find shelter there. But those who succeeded in reaching the ghettos had only a short respite. When the ghettos were liquidated, the escapees were again deported to the death camps. Thousands of Jews who tried to escape the transports found their death while jumping or from the bullets of the guards. Some were caught by local people and handed over to the police or to the Germans. Hundreds who succeeded were unable to find refuge; they were caught, killed, or deported once more to the death camps. Yet despite all the factors working against them, some of the escapees managed to survive the war, in part with the help of local people.
The overwhelming majority of the Jews did not try to escape, however. They arrived in the camps and disembarked from the trains, completely unsuspecting. They obeyed the orders of the SS men and went quietly to the gas chambers. There were, however, some individuals or groups of deportees who grasped what was happening and staged spontaneous acts of resistance and mass flights. Cases of group resistance usually occurred with transports that arrived from ghettos where some information about extermination had reached the Jews prior to deportation, and therefore they were more suspicious about the place to which they had come.
After Max Bialas’s murder in Treblinka and the collective punishment that followed, during which about 150 Jews were killed in September 1942, there were no attempts at resistance for approximately three months. The next act of resistance witnessed by prisoners in the camp and testified to by them later occurred in the first half of December 1942. At the time the transports to Treblinka, which were originating in the ghettos and collection camps in the area of Bialystok-Grodno, increased. The directorate of the German railway announced to Operation Reinhard headquarters that from December 15 there would be a hiatus in the appropriation of railroad cars for the transport of Jews because of the military priority on the eastern front; Operation Reinhard headquarters therefore decided to increase the transports to Treblinka until the train allotment ceased. The commanders of the camp agreed that some transports could arrive in the evening and after dark, even though until that time transports were received only during the day.
In the second week of December 1942, in the evening hours, a transport of about 2,000 Jews was brought to Treblinka from the Kelbasin camp near Grodno and included people from Grodno and the surrounding area. When the transport entered the camp, most of the prisoners had already been locked into their barracks. Only the “blues” and “reds,” along with SS men and Ukrainians, waited on the platform and in the transport yard, ready to receive the deportees. When the people from the transport disembarked, they had no idea where they were. They asked the Jewish prisoners if they were in Treblinka, but their questions were left unanswered.9 The deportees were brought to the transport yard and were ordered to undress and go to the “baths.” Some obeyed the order and were taken through the “tube” to the gas chambers. Among the last who remained in the transport yard and who had not yet undressed were a few dozen youths. The intertwined barbed wire all around, the flames rising from the direction of the Lazarett, the confusion of the naked as they were pushed into the “tube” were enough for them to realize the truth about the place. What happened then is related by Kalman Taigman, one of the prisoners who received the transport:
There were still many youths there. Some of them began calling out not to listen to the Germans and not to undress. A great riot began. The Germans opened fire on the crowd. The SS men, with Kurt Franz at the head, cruelly beat the men, women, and elderly indiscriminately. We stood at the side and witnessed the scene. Germans and Ukrainians were [stationed] on the roofs, and they also began firing into the crowd. We heard an explosion. It seems that a Jew threw a grenade in the direction of the shooting, and we saw how a seriously wounded Ukrainian was evacuated from the yard. . . .10
Dozens of youths who were still in the transport yard began beating the Ukrainians and Germans with their fists and, with knives they had brought with them, tried to break through the fences and escape. Other people from the transport joined them, and many dispersed throughout the various sections of the camp. Some succeeded in breaking through into the living barracks of the Jewish prisoners and sought cover. The Germans and Ukrainians, with the help of the capos
and the prisoners themselves—who were afraid to hide the resisters—removed them from the barracks and escorted them to the extermination area. The rest of the escapees were also caught throughout the camp. Dozens were shot on the spot as they resisted capture, and the others were taken to the gas chambers. In the corridor at the entrance to the gas chambers, the people continued to resist and absolutely refused to enter the gas chambers. The Germans and Ukrainians shot into the corridor. Many were killed, and the rest were finally forcibly pushed into the gas chambers.
The prisoners in the extermination area heard the shots, but had no idea what was going on outside. Wiernik writes:
We were locked into the barracks. The Germans and Ukrainians handled the victims without us. Suddenly we heard noise, yells and shots. Many shots. We didn’t move from our places. We waited impatiently for the morning light. We wanted to know what happened. The next day the area was full of murdered people. During work, the Ukrainians told us that the people from the transport had refused to be taken to the gas chambers. A tragic struggle had developed. They destroyed everything in sight and broke the crates with gold that stood in the corridor of the gas chambers. They grabbed sticks and anything they could get their hands on and began resisting. But the bullets cut them down. In the morning the yard was still full of the dead and the instruments they had used to defend themselves. They fell in battle. The rest were thrown into the gas chambers . . . by dawn the whole thing was over. . . .11
The prisoners removed the bodies from the gas chambers and corridor and transferred them to the burial pits. The floors were cleaned and the walls were painted so that no trace of blood would remain. The gas chambers had to be ready to receive new victims. The murdered who were scattered throughout the various areas of the camp were also removed. The “tube” was cleaned, and the barbed wire that had been damaged during the attempted escape was repaired. The Germans learned a lesson from this mass resistance incident, and subsequent transports to Treblinka were not received after dark.