by Yitzhak Arad
• Phase III: Abandoning the camp and departure for the forests This phase was not planned in detail, but the main idea was that after the camp was destroyed and the prisoners were armed with the captured weapons, an organized departure to the forests, mainly under cover of night, would follow.
A final meeting of the Organizing Committee was held on August 1 and the plan for the next day’s uprising was approved. Shmuel Rajzman, who was present, writes:
At the Organizing Committee meeting, held late at night by the light of fires burning the bodies of hundreds of thousands of those dearest to us, we unanimously approved the decision to launch the uprising the next day, August 2.1 will never forget white-haired Ze’ev Korland, the eldest among us all, who, with tears in his eyes, administered to us the oath to fight to our last drop of blood for the honor of the Jewish people. Every man present sensed the tremendous responsibility involved in our decision to eliminate this creation of mad German sadism and bring an end to Treblinka.5
That same night the decision was passed on to all the members of the Lower Camp Underground—sixty men.6 In the extermination area, the announcement of the August 2 date brought by Wiernik aroused extreme excitement. In this part of Treblinka, most of the prisoners, while not Underground members, knew of the approaching uprising and supported it.
Because of the summer heat, work in the extermination area went on from four in the morning until twelve noon. From then on the prisoners were locked into a fenced-in compound, which included their barracks and a courtyard, near the camp’s southern fence. A Ukrainian guard stood near the entrance gate to the yard, while two others manned the guard towers. The extermination area Underground leaders realized that when the uprising began, in the afternoon, all the prisoners were liable to be locked up in this single area, making it difficult for them to fight. The problem was how to create a situation whereby at the moment the uprising began in the Lower Camp, a group of prisoners, all Underground members, would be outside the fenced-in compound in the extermination area. The Underground leaders decided that on the appointed day, when work stopped at noon, they would leave a large quantity of corpses near the cremation grills, and would claim that they had not had time to burn them; it would then be necessary to detail a group of prisoners to work in the afternoon, too. It was also decided to initiate additional jobs in order to create as large a group of prisoners as possible outside the barracks that afternoon.7
Another problem was the method of overcoming the Ukrainians who would be perched on the two watchtowers—one in the center of the extermination area, the other near the southeastern corner of the camp. Particularly threatening was the centrally located watchtower; it afforded unimpeded observation and control over all activity at the prisoners’ barracks and near the grills. It was decided that before the uprising began, one of the Underground activists would approach this tower and, offering the guard gold and dollars as payment for food, ask him to descend. In view of the Ukrainians’ eagerness for money and valuables, the guard could be expected to take the bait; when the uprising broke out, he would be on the ground and could be eliminated.8
Details of the operational plan for the extermination area were based on the Lower Camp’s plan. Once the uprising had begun in the Lower Camp, the extermination area Underground would attack their Ukrainians and SS men and eliminate them. Then they would set fire to the buildings, including the gas chambers, join up with the Lower Camp fighters, and together leave for the forests.
On the eve of the rebellion, the extermination area Underground leaders still did not know the exact zero-hour. They decided that Wiernik would try to find an excuse to go to work in the Lower Camp the next morning in order to obtain this information.9
Meanwhile, last-minute deliberations and briefings went on in both parts of the camp until late into the night of August 1/2, while the other prisoners slept. Few of those who knew what would happen the next day slept that night.
35
August 2, 1943: The Uprising in Treblinka
August 2 began like any other day in the Lower Camp and the extermination area: reveille, roll call, a meager breakfast, and report to work detail. Ostensibly a routine morning, one of many; however, the prisoners felt different. The Underground members barely succeeded in concealing their excitement. In the workshops they were sharpening knives and axes; the storeroom workers prepared tins of gasoline to burn down the warehouses. Many other prisoners noted the unusual attitude of their fellow workers and understood that something was about to happen. Indeed, many prisoners knew of the Underground’s existence, as well as of the general idea of an uprising and escape, and rumors abounded that the fateful day was near.
Sonia Lewkowicz states:
The truth is that I didn’t know when the uprising would break out. . . . For the past weeks they were saying every day that there would be a rebellion. But the day before it occurred, and especially on the actual day, we felt it had to be, it had to break out, because the entire camp seemed to be electrified. We could feel it. . . . Everyone prepared bundles of clothing for the way.1
Thus, tension among all the prisoners was high that day. Many secretly packed a bundle of clothing for the road, removed money and valuables from hiding places where they had been kept for the day of flight, and prepared themselves to buy their way to shelter and safety outside if possible. A careful eye would have noticed the prisoners’ unusual behavior and preparations. Galewski and the capos who belonged to the Organizing Committee made the rounds of the camp, calmed their comrades as best they could, and made sure that the work routine was maintained.
That morning, Wiernik and three other prisoners from the extermination area came to the Lower Camp. Wiernik had persuaded the SS official in charge of construction that he needed some boards from the building materials storeroom in the Lower Camp. While they were in the storeroom, Organizing Committee members managed to get word to Wiernik that zero-hour was set for 4:30 p.m. Wiernik and his comrades returned to the extermination area and confirmed to the Underground leaders there the go-ahead for the uprising.2
At 1:00 p.m., Galewski held the usual noon roll call, after which the prisoners dispersed to their work stations. This time, however, the work teams had been altered in composition: several of them now received reinforcements from other teams. This was not an unusual step; work requirements had dictated such changes in the past. Galewski, as “camp elder,” along with the capos and work foremen, had the authority to transfer men from one routine task to another. In this case the “potato-workers” team and the working group that tended the vegetable garden and the animals were strengthened with Underground members. They would have to attack camp headquarters and deal with the Ukrainians’ barracks.
The Organizing Committee members scattered themselves at different workplaces in order to take charge of the actions to be carried out nearby. The agronomist Sadovits was responsible for the vegetable garden, which was near camp headquarters and the arms storeroom, and was therefore appointed to supervise the removal of weapons. In the “ghetto” area, Salzberg, the head of the tailor shop and a member of the Organizing Committee, was put in charge of operations. Korland, the Lazarett capo, took command of the Underground members who worked in Sorting Square.
Galewski took up a position with Korland. As commander, he probably felt that he should be in the southern part of the camp, near the most convenient spot for breaking out—due to the relatively few SS men and Ukrainians stationed there—just in case the takeover operation failed and plans had to be changed. Another advantage of Galewski’s position was its proximity to the extermination area, thus facilitating contact with the Underground there. However, this position also had its limitations: as chief commander, Galewski was now too far from the two main actions planned for the entire operation—the removal of arms and the attack on camp headquarters and the main concentration of SS men and Ukrainians.
Early in the afternoon of that hot summer day, a group of four SS men and sixteen Ukrain
ians, headed by Kurt Franz, left the camp for a swim in the Bug River. This depleted the ranks of the camp’s security force considerably and worked in the rebels’ favor.3
Phase I of the uprising, which included the “quiet” preparatory actions, began with the renewal of work after the noon break. Rudek Lubrenitski, who was in charge of the garage and gasoline stores, sabotaged the engine of the armored car which was normally parked near the garage and the SS barracks, so that at the outbreak of the rebellion it would be out of commission.4 Axes and wire cutters were removed from the tool shed and distributed to Underground members.
Removal of the weapons was to begin at 2 p.m. As the hour approached, however, it was discovered that the SS man Müller, who was in charge of the camp ordinance and had been camp duty officer that night, had remained throughout the afternoon in the barrack next to the weapons storeroom. His presence there could disrupt the weapons-removal operation and endanger the entire uprising. The putzer boys, whose job it would be to remove the weapons, reported to Sadovits on the situation. Sadovits resorted to a trick to get Müller out of his hut. He told Müller that certain problems had arisen in the potato-workers team and that Müller was needed there. Müller left the barrack with Sadovits. Now two boys, led by Marcus, could begin removing the weapons. But due to the Müller incident, they were now slightly behind schedule.5
The weapons kept in the storeroom consisted of several dozen hand grenades, a few pistols, and over a dozen rifles. The boys wrapped the weapons in sacking, in small bundles. They removed a bar from the back window of the storeroom, facing the western fence, and passed the weapons out. From there they were taken to a lean-to at the nearby garage and delivered to Rudek Lubrenitski, who took charge of their distribution. The operation was slow: each sack had to be passed through separately and with utmost care. At the garage, the weapons were loaded onto a handcart used for moving building materials. A small group of construction workers had been especially assigned that day to the task of collecting odd building materials scattered over the northwest section of the camp. The sacks of weapons were hidden among whitened old boards and tins of whitewash on the cart and delivered to the Underground members at their workplaces. Marian Platkiewicz, who was with the potato group, testified: “Like every day, we were working at a pile of potatoes. Then, a handcart, pushed by two men from the construction group, passed by. Swiftly, they handed over to us some grenades and detonators. We put them into the buckets we used for potatoes.”6
While the weapons were being removed, preparations were in progress for setting fire to the camp. One of the Underground members worked at decontaminating the buildings throughout the camp. This prisoner would move about the camp spraying disinfectant on the buildings. That afternoon, as he set off to work, he filled his spray tanks with gasoline instead of disinfectant. Then he sprayed the barracks, the storerooms, and the workshops. These structures were all made of wood, and the gasoline ensured that they would burn well.7
Preparations during the morning in the extermination area included several activities. The prisoners employed at removing the bodies from the last ditches worked particularly hard that day so that the number of bodies they brought to the grills was far greater than that morning’s cremation capacity. The excess corpses remained lying near the grills. Prior to work’s end, Adolf Freidman, who was the foreman of the body-burning group, turned to the SS man Karol Petsinger, who was in charge of the cremation, and informed him that he and his team were ready to work in the afternoon to complete the burning of the remaining bodies. So that his willingness to volunteer would not arouse suspicion, Freidman asked in return for a double bread ration for the thirty men in his team. Petsinger agreed.8
Wiernik returned from the Lower Camp at about noon and confirmed that the uprising would begin at 4:30 p.m. The extermination area plotters received a second announcement concerning zero-hour from Ya’akov Domb, who drove a wagon to collect trash in the Lower Camp. While driving near the extermination area, Domb shouted out in Hebrew to prisoners working across the fence, “End of the world today, the day of judgment at four o’clock.”9
When work ended at noon, all the prisoners were returned to the fenced-in compound around their barracks. Throughout the extermination area, no SS men were to be seen, including the excavator operators. They, too, had finished work at noon and had gone to their mess hall in the Lower Camp. Only Ukrainian guards remained. That afternoon, thirty men, led by Adolf Freidman, went out to work by the grills. This group had been specially composed of young and fit men because they would have to overcome the Ukrainians guarding them. All members of this group were volunteers. Their work near the grills required them to be equipped with axes, shovels, and pitchforks. These tools would have to do as weapons.
Every afternoon, two or three prisoners would be allowed out of the barracks area to the well, some 20 meters from the gate in the barracks fence, to fetch water for the barracks kitchen for preparing supper and washing dishes. That day the water-fetchers were reinforced to five men, to further enlarge the number of prisoners outside the fenced-in barrack when zero-hour arrived. Zialo Bloch, the extermination area uprising commander, had decided that he had to be outside the barracks compound, so he and four other Underground members went out to draw water. The work of carrying the water was executed slowly that day, and the quantity of water brought to the kitchen was greater than usual—all in order that the work continue until zero-hour. The rest of the prisoners sat in the barracks or the yard of the compound in tense silence, waiting for the signal from the Lower Camp. A Ukrainian guard accompanied the water-fetchers, and another stood at the compound gate. The other Ukrainian guards were stationed near the body-burners and in the two guard towers—one in the center of the extermination area, the other near the fence.10
As these activities were going on, an unexpected event upset the plans. At about 3:30 p.m., Oberscharführer Küttner, commander of the Lower Camp, appeared at the Jewish prisoners’ barracks in the “ghetto.” The living quarters were empty, as no prisoners were allowed there during working hours, but there were many prisoners in the workshops. Küttner’s appearance on a normal day would not have aroused unusual suspicion, but his arrival at a time when preparations for rebellion were at their height caused considerable unrest among the Underground members in the workshops.
Kuba, who was “barrack elder” of barrack no. 2, invited Küttner into the barrack. No one knew what the two were discussing, but a suspicion arose that Kuba, who was known as an informer, had sensed that something was about to happen and was telling Küttner. Salzberg, appointed by the Organizing Committee to be in charge of the “ghetto” area, thought it best to eliminate Küttner on the spot and start the uprising then and there, even though the weapons had not yet been entirely removed and distributed and the workshop area Underground members had not received firearms. He sent a messenger to Galewski and Korland to report on the event and asked for an armed man to be sent to kill Küttner.
Meanwhile, Küttner, on his way out of the barracks, met a young prisoner who was not supposed to be there during work hours. Küttner searched the man and found packs of money, which the prisoner had prepared for his escape. Küttner hit the man and led him toward the “ghetto” gate. Salzberg and the other Underground members present now feared that if Kuba had not in fact informed about the rebellion, the young prisoner might break under the anticipated beatings and tell all. Immediate action was obviously necessary. At that moment the messenger returned from Galewski, accompanied by an Underground member named Wallabanczik, a young man from Warsaw who had been sent to shoot Küttner. Seeing Küttner leading the young prisoner toward the gate, Wallabanczik drew a pistol and shot him. Küttner fell, bleeding.11
The shot fired at Küttner at about 4:00 served as the signal to launch the rebellion. It was followed by more shots, and several minutes later by the sound of grenades exploding in different parts of the camp. Flames rose from several buildings and from the gasoline store.
The shot fired at Küttner, and the shots that followed, surprised most of the Underground members who were scattered about the camp. They had no way of knowing of the incident with Küttner in the ghetto. After this first shot, the commander of the uprising, Galewski, no longer had contact with those Underground teams positioned far from Sorting Square. No orders were given. Centralized control over the uprising had been lost.
In the absence of orders from the Organizing Committee, and despite the sudden change in the timetable, several groups of Underground members commenced operations against their predetermined objectives. The potato-workers team approached camp headquarters and threw several grenades at it. These caused no casualties among the SS personnel in the building. Rudek Lubrenitski and a comrade set fire to the gasoline store, causing explosions and a huge blaze, which spread to the surrounding area. They were both shot and killed by Ukrainian guards.12 The Sorting Square team opened fire on nearby Ukrainians and in the direction of the guard towers of the southern perimeter fence; the latter returned fire from automatic weapons and caused the team many casualties. The prisoners in the “ghetto” workshop area killed the informer Kuba and set fire to the workshops.