by Yitzhak Arad
The workload in the camp was dwindling. Often we were idle. We were ordered to flatten a lot of dirt, hundreds of pits and mounds that had hitherto not bothered a soul. We dug up the hard-packed earth, transferred dirt from one spot to another, and slowly smoothed out the rolling terrain. For some time we had been receiving better and more satisfying portions of food. We got the impression that the Germans wanted to kill us all and were trying to dull our senses and deceive us with their behavior.16
June passed without anything out of the ordinary happening in the Lower Camp. In the extermination area, the cremations continued at full speed. The smoke and stench of burning flesh reached the Lower Camp. From the newspapers that Marcus, the head of the putzers, managed to remove from the SS barracks, the prisoners learned of the extensive German setbacks in North Africa and on the eastern front. In July, news arrived of the Allied invasion of Italy. The general feeling was that Nazi Germany was on the way to eventual collapse. However, the prisoners’ assessment that the Germans would not let them leave Treblinka alive brought about a renewal of Underground activity.
Galewski, the “camp elder,” now joined the Organizing Committee and became its central figure. Other new recruits were Moniek, a young, dynamic fellow from Warsaw who served as capo of the “court Jews.” A single testimony also places Rudolf Masarek, a twenty-eight-year-old half-Jew who had served as a lieutenant in the Czech army, in the Organizing Committee. He had been married to a Jewess and chose to accompany her when she was deported to Theresienstadt and then to Treblinka. She was taken to the gas chambers, but he was left alive to work.17
The Organizing Committee, led by Galewski, now contained about ten members, most of them capos and work-team leaders. From the original Organizing Committee remained Ze’ev Korland, the Lazarett capo, who was second to Galewski in the Underground, and Sadovitz and Salzberg. It was largely because of them that the idea of revolt remained alive during the period of Underground inactivity. The new Organizing Committee now intensively renewed activity, but as clandestinely as possible. That the head of the Committee was the “camp elder” and most of its members capos facilitated meetings; these could be camouflaged as work conferences. Generally the meetings were held in the tailor shop.
Since the Underground had previously failed to procure weapons through the Ukrainians, it was decided that the uprising would rely upon those arms that could be removed from the camp’s weapons storeroom by using the key which the Organizing Committee had already obtained. That this was possible had already been proven: the putzers’ first and only attempt to remove hand grenades from the storeroom, and even to return them, had gone unnoticed by the camp authorities. This time, it was clear, the boys would have to be briefed more thoroughly and professionally if they were to remove combat-ready weapons and grenades.
Weapons could only be removed from the storeroom during the day, when the SS men were not in their barracks. This factor in effect determined the timing of the uprising—it had to take place during daylight hours, before the SS men could return from their daily tasks and discover that the weapons were missing.
This fundamental conception of the uprising as a daytime operation, when the prisoners were scattered among their work teams, also dictated the Underground’s organizational system. The Underground members were divided into squads of five to ten men, according to the work teams in which they would be located when the uprising began. Every work team would include Underground cells. Since there were informers among the prisoners, the organizers were careful when recruiting new Underground members and chose only trustworthy and capable people. By July 1943, the Underground numbered about sixty members, subdivided into smaller groups.18
Despite this progress in planning the uprising and organizing the Underground, the timing of the revolt remained a subject of indecision, for a number of reasons. For one, it was clear that most of the prisoners would die in the course of the uprising and escape. The prisoners also were well aware that the possibilities for finding shelter or aid after the escape were extremely limited. Then, too, during these months of June and July 1943, life in the Lower Camp had become easier than before; transports did not arrive, and this made life physically and emotionally more tolerable for the prisoners. Moreover, the disciplinary regime was somewhat relaxed. While fears about the future—the knowledge that one day they would all be eliminated—were constantly in the prisoners’ thoughts, the present was at least tolerable. The leaders of the Organizing Committee therefore would, from time to time, postpone the day for the uprising. What ultimately brought on the revolt were the developments and reports passed on by the Underground that had been organized in the extermination area. The Underground in the extermination area began organizing in late April/early May 1943, a few weeks after the transfer of Zialo Bloch and Adolf Freidman. At that time the principal task of the extermination area prisoners was to open the mass graves and burn the bodies. Bloch and Freidman were appointed heads of work teams. Some evidence even places Zialo Bloch as capo shortly thereafter.19
Bloch and Freidman, after studying conditions in the extermination area and meeting with the prisoners, held exploratory conversations about the idea of resistance, and then began to form an Underground and establish an Organizing Committee similar to the one in the Lower Camp. This was in late May/early June 1943.
Aside from Bloch and Freidman, the names of Organizing Committee members in the extermination area cannot be determined with any certainty. One of those connected to Underground activity there was Jacob Wiernik, an expert builder who enjoyed special status in the extermination area due to the SS camp command’s respect for his construction skills. Other Underground members from the Lower Camp were also transferred to the extermination area at this time, and they joined the Underground in their new location.
The extermination area was much smaller than the Lower Camp. The work was carried out in the open, near the mass graves and the cremation grills, and at the end of the workday the prisoners were closed into a barrack and an adjacent fenced-in compound. Under these conditions, it was extremely difficult to hide Underground activity. Moreover, the Underground members had to keep their distance from the “camp elder,” Singer, and several others who were suspected of informing to the Germans.
Bloch and Freidman, with their background in the Lower Camp Underground, based their plans from the beginning on close coordination of the uprising with their comrades there, and on any further progress with regard to arms procurement. They were well aware that the Underground’s main numerical strength was in the Lower Camp and that only there could arms be purchased from the Ukrainians or stolen from the weapons storeroom. They also realized that the overriding condition for a successful uprising in the extermination area was for it to be synchronized with the revolt in the Lower Camp and, in fact, be part of a general uprising throughout the entire camp. One problem, therefore, was to establish reliable communications with the Underground in the Lower Camp. An opportunity soon presented itself.
Wiernik was ordered by the camp commander to build a log guardroom in the Lower Camp. With the help of eight other prisoners, Wiernik first built the structure in the extermination area, then dismantled it and rebuilt it in the Lower Camp. During his stay in the Lower Camp, Wiernik established contact with the Underground leaders there. He told them about the Underground in the extermination area and requested instructions regarding the date of the uprising, but did not receive a clear reply. Wiernik later wrote of the event: “ . . we returned to our camp filled with hope of liberation, but with nothing concrete.” Wiernik does not mention with whom he met in the Lower Camp.20
Even though they had received no firm commitment about a date for the uprising, these contacts with the Lower Camp Underground gave impetus to the organizational preparations and operational planning in the extermination area. The Organizing Committee meetings were held in the evenings, after the prisoners had been locked in their barracks. Wiernik writes:
When all the pr
isoners who were tired from work and from suffering would fall asleep, we would gather in the corner of the barrack on an upper bunk and take counsel. The younger ones among us, who pressured for immediate action, even without a detailed plan, nearly had to be restrained by chaining them down. We decided not to act without the Lower Camp, because to do so would have been suicidal. In our camp we were a small group, and not all were in any sort of combat condition.21
The Underground members were now organized in teams of five, each with an appointed leader. These teams were drawn from the various work stations: grave openers were on the same team; body burners were together, and so on. While there are no precise data available on the number of extermination area prisoners organized into teams of five, the total can be assumed to include several dozen.
The principal element of their operational plan called for the SS men and Ukrainians to be attacked at their posts by the nearest team of five the moment the uprising broke out. The weapons would consist of the tools already in the prisoners’ possession, depending on their work—for example, axes, pitchforks, and shovels. To these the weapons taken from the Germans and Ukrainians would quickly be added. Usually there were between four and six Germans in the extermination area during work hours. One of them was in charge of the cremation operation and was known as the Brennmeister (literally, “burn master”). Two or three operated the excavators and another one or two SS men were posted for supervision. About eight Ukrainians manned the watchtowers and other guard posts and were in charge of the gas chambers. The center of activity for the SS men and Ukrainians was the guardroom, which was adjacent to the old gas-chamber structure. An SS man was always present there.22
During the second half of July, work in the extermination area was close to termination. There were no new transports, with the exception of a group of Gypsies and a transport of Jewish prisoners from Treblinka labor camp, both of which were taken straight to the gas chambers. More than three-quarters of the burial pits in the camp had been opened, and the corpses extracted and cremated. Part of the prisoners began filling the empty pits with earth and planting trees to erase traces of the murder. The prisoners sensed that the end was very near—a matter of weeks before their work was finished. A verbal message to that effect was passed on to the Lower Camp Underground by Wiernik. The message included a demand to launch the uprising soon and to set a date for it immediately. The replies brought back by Wiernik placated the extermination area Underground. Galewski, with whom Wiernik had spoken, told him that the day of liberation was near and called upon the extermination area Underground to be patient.23
Wiernik continued to relay demands to launch the rebellion soon, but the responses received from the Lower Camp were ambiguous. The Lower Camp Organizing Committee—not confronted with the same sense of a rapidly approaching end to the camp’s usefulness as were the extermination area prisoners—still hesitated to fix a final date for the uprising, although in the Lower Camp, too, it was obvious that the end could not be far away.
In the extermination area Underground leadership meetings, demands were now made to launch the uprising even without coordination with the Lower Camp. Others argued that such a move would meet with total failure. Thus the tension among the extermination area Underground members reached a peak. Moreover, the number of prisoners privy to the secret of preparations for an uprising also had risen, and this, too, added to the tension. The general feeling was that within a few days the work would be completed and the prisoners would be eliminated, while the Lower Camp continued to delude itself.
The SS men in the extermination area even held a celebration to mark the approaching completion of their task. Wiernik writes:
The party began as the excavator that had been removing our brothers from their graves moved to a resting position. The arm and shovel were raised high, like a turret gazing proudly into the sky. Guns were fired into the air to celebrate. Then there was a feast: they drank, joked, and enjoyed themselves.24
The extermination area Organizing Committee met and decided to send the Lower Camp an ultimatum: if they did not immediately fix a date for the uprising, and if it did not take place by early August, the extermination area Underground would take action independently. Wiernik delivered the ultimatum to the Lower Camp.25
34
The Plan for the Uprising in Treblinka
The ultimatum, coming after the reports from the extermination area of the near completion of the body burning, finally put Galewski and his comrades in a position where they had to make an immediate decision. They, too, realized that the end was near. The prisoner population in the Lower Camp was gradually being reduced; some were transferred to work in the extermination area, while others had died or had been murdered in the Lazarett. The total number of Lower Camp prisoners had dropped from about 800 to between 500 and 600. This factor also strengthened the sense of a rapidly approaching end. Then, too, the ultimatum from the extermination area was clear and unequivocal. The Organizing Committee members were well aware that if a rebellion were to break out in the extermination area alone, all the prisoners in the camp would be killed—including those in the areas not involved in the uprising. With these considerations in mind, the Organizing Committee decided on Friday, July 30, or on Saturday, July 31, that the uprising would take place on Monday, August 2, in the afternoon. Wiernik brought the announcement to the extermination area Underground, but the hour of the uprising was not specified.1
With the date decided upon, the Organizing Committee now worked out the operational details. It had already been determined in principle that the rebellion would take place during the day. The timing constraint also fit in with another assumption—that it was more convenient to attack the SS men and Ukrainians during the day, when they were scattered throughout the camp, interspersed with prisoner work teams, and not grouped together. With the proper planning and organization, they could all be overcome at the same time, and it might even be possible to do it quietly. The night hours were not suitable for yet another reason—at night the prisoners were locked into their barracks and were under tight Ukrainian and SS guard. The Underground leaders assumed that within a short time after the uprising and escape, German security forces in the region would be called in to pursue them. The chances for eluding the German pursuers would be better at night. These two factors—the necessity of initiating the rebellion during work hours and the preference for eluding pursuing forces under cover of darkness—determined fixing the hour for 4:30 in the afternoon, about thirty minutes before work normally came to a stop in the camp.
The need to begin the uprising in the afternoon hours of a regular workday explains the choice of Monday, August 2. The decision was reached on Friday or on Saturday, and on Sunday the prisoners did not work in the afternoon, so the first practical day for the rebellion was Monday. When zero-hour was fixed at 4:30, the passage of a trainload of 400 to 500 Polish and Jewish prisoners from Treblinka penal camp, who were returned daily from work at Malkinia at 4:45 p.m., was also considered. The Underground planners hoped to stop this train and free its passengers, who, they hoped, would join the uprising.2
The final plan called for taking control of the camp, setting it on fire, and only then abandoning it. The planners believed that their numerical superiority, the weapons they would have, and the element of surprise would give them a good chance of succeeding. They also hoped that after they had eliminated most of the SS men, the Ukrainians would cease to resist. The German setbacks at the front had on several occasions provoked the Ukrainians into criticizing the Germans openly in conversations with Jewish prisoners. There had also been a few instances of Ukrainians fleeing Treblinka into the nearby forests.3
According to the plan, SS personnel would be attacked and eliminated quietly at the beginning of the uprising. They would be approached at their workplaces. Alternatively, an attempt would be made to lure them into the various workshops just before zero-hour—using some excuse such as measurements for a suit at the t
ailor’s or a new pair of shoes at the shoemaker’s—where a group of rebels would be waiting to eliminate them. In this way, it was hoped, the rebels could obtain additional weapons from the SS, besides those removed from the storeroom.
The Ukrainians would be handled differently. Those at guard posts had to be killed and their weapons taken. But regarding the others, who would be at the Max Bialas Barracks, the plan was to capture them alive, take their weapons, and hold them under guard until the camp had been abandoned.4
The majority of the prisoners were not members of the Underground, and it was decided not to tell them of the planned uprising until it actually took place. The presence of informers among the prisoners, some of whom, such as Chezkel and Kuba, were known to the Underground, required that the utmost caution be exercised at all phases of preparation. According to the plan, after the takeover of the camp, all the prisoners would be assembled, captured weapons would be distributed, and all would leave the camp for the forests together. The general direction of flight would be north and east, crossing the Bug River and heading toward Puszcza Bialowiezska.
The operational plan that had been formalized at the meetings of the Lower Camp Organizing Committee included the following phases:
• Phase I: Acquiring weapons through covert and quiet action; 2:30–4:30 p.m. The putzer boys would remove the weapons from the storeroom and distribute them among the fighting squads at their workplaces. Those Germans who came or were lured into the workshops would be quietly eliminated.
• Phase II: Takeover by force and destruction of the camp; 4:30–5:30 (approximate) An exploding grenade would signal the start of the uprising. Camp headquarters would be attacked, as would the SS men and Ukrainians scattered about the camp at their workplaces; the camp telephone line would be cut, and the buildings set on fire. In the extermination area the SS men and Ukrainians there would be eliminated and the gas chambers destroyed.