by Yitzhak Arad
“Reports on the Situation in Occupied Poland” were published in London periodically by the Polish Ministry-of-Interior-in-Exile. Some of these publications were retained in the Underground archives in Poland and the archives of the Government-in-Exile in London. In the report of the Delegatura for April 1942, Belzec was mentioned:
The camp was fully completed a few days before March 17, 1942. From that day transports with Jews began to arrive from the direction of Lvov and Warsaw. . . . On the first day five transports arrived, afterward, one transport arrived daily from each direction. The transport enters the railway spur of Belzec camp after disembarkation, lasting half an hour, the train returns empty. . . . The observatiohs of the local population (the camp is within sight and hearing distance of the inhabitants near the railway station) led all of them to one conclusion: that there is a mass murder of the Jews inside the camp. The following facts testify to this:
1. Between March 17 and April 13, about fifty-two transports (each of eighteen to thirty-five freight-cars with an average of 1,500 people) arrived in the camp.
2. No Jews left the camp, neither during the day nor the night.
3. No food was supplied to the camp (whereas bread and other food articles had been dispatched to the Jews who had worked earlier on the construction of the camp).
4. Lime was brought to the camp.
5. The transports arrived at a fixed time. Before the arrival of a transport, no Jews were seen in the camp.
6. After each transport, about two freight cars with clothing are removed from the camp to the railway stores. (The guards steal clothes.)
7. Jews in underwear were seen in the area of the camp.
8. In the area of the camp there are three barracks; they cannot accommodate even one-tenth of the Jews.
9. In the area of the camp, a strong odor can be smelled on warmer days.
10. The guards pay for vodka, which they drink in large quantities, with any requested sum, and frequently with watches and valuables.
11. Jews arrived in Belzec [the township] looking for a witness who would testify that Jews are being killed there. They were ready to pay 120,000 zloty. . . . They did not find a volunteer. . . . It is unknown by which means the Jews are liquidated in the camp. There are three assumptions: (1) electricity; (2) gas; (3) by pumping out the air.
With regard to (1): there is no visible source of electricity; with regard to (2): no supply of gas and no residue of the remaining gas after the ventilation of the gas chamber were observed; with regard to (3): there are no factors that deny this [possibility]. It was even verified that during the building of one of the barracks, the walls and floor were covered with metal sheets (for some purpose).
In the area of the camp huge pits were dug in the autumn. At that time it was assumed that there would be underground stores. Now the purpose of this work is clear. From the particular barrack where the Jews are taken for so-called disinfection, a narrow railway leads to these pits. It was observed that the “disinfected” Jews were transported to a common grave by this trolley.
In Belzec the term Totenlager [“death camp”] was heard in connection with the Jewish camp. The leadership of the camp is in the hands of twelve SS men (the commander is Hauptmann Wirth) who have forty guards for help.2
Another report from the Delegatura to the Government-in-Exile in London about Belzec was dated July 10, 1942:
According to information from a German employed in the extermination site, this place is located in Belzec, close to the railway station, and is fenced off by barbed wire. Inside and outside the fences Ukrainian sentries are posted. The extermination is carried out in the following manner: the train with the Jews, after its arrival at Belzec station, follows the spur until the fences that surround the place of extermination. There the railway workers are changed. From this place until the disembarkation point at the end of the spur, the train is driven by a German locomotive driver. After unloading, the men are taken to the barrack on the right, the women to the barrack on the left, where they have to remove their clothes, as if they were going to baths. After removing their clothes, both groups proceed to the third barrack, with an electrical floor, where the extermination is carried out. Afterward, the corpses are transferred by trolley to a trench behind the fence, which is 3 meters deep. This trench was dug by Jews, and all of them were subsequently liquidated. The Ukrainian guards on the spot have to be liquidated after the action is completed. The Ukrainian guards are lavishly provided with money and stolen valuables. For a liter of vodka, they pay 400 zloty; for a prostitute, 2,000 zloty plus jewelry.3
This report was published in London by the Polish Ministry of Interior at the beginning of 1943. Another report published by the ministry in the same year stated:
Near Belzec there are large gas chambers where Jews in groups of hundreds are gassed [simultaneously]. Their bodies are then cremated, and what remains is used as a fertilizer. In this way the Germans fulfill to the letter the Führer’s words that the Jews are the “garbage of humanity.”4
The reports about Belzec that reached London were handed over by the Polish Government-in-Exile to Dr. Ignacy Schwarzbart, a Jew and a member of the Polish National Council. On November 15, 1942, Schwartzbard published in London an open statement with all the known details about the extermination actions going on in Belzec.5
Sobibor was mentioned in the reports of the Polish Underground only a few times, and no details were given. Hints that killings were going on in Sobibor reached Warsaw as early as the end of April or May 1942, at the start of the deportations to this camp. The report published in London by the Polish Ministry of Interior at the beginning of 1943 stated that “At this time (April-May) Warsaw heard the first terrible news of the camps in Sobibor (Wlodawa district) and in Belzec (southeastern Poland), where Jews were poisoned en masse in special gas chambers or electrocuted. . . .6
There were no detailed reports about Sobibor and the extermination there published in 1942 or 1943. As this camp was built in a remote and desolate area, less transports were deported there and few deportees or prisoners succeeded in escaping; therefore, only very limited information about Sobibor reached the Polish Underground and London.
News about Treblinka and the mass murder that was being perpetrated there reached the Armia Krajowa from the first weeks that the camp existed. The interest exhibited by the Underground in what was going on in the desolate area of Treblinka dated from early summer of 1941, when, in anticipation of the Soviet attack, German units were concentrated there and the labor and penal camp of Treblinka I was activated. This camp was first slated for Polish prisoners who were sent there for such crimes as not appearing for work, not handing over agricultural produce, food speculation, and other “minor” crimes. Jews from the area of Treblinka and from Germany were also brought there.
The order for the establishment of this camp was publicized in the official newspaper of the General Government, Amtlicher Anzeigner, on December 2, 1941, but the camp had been operational even earlier. However, in May 1942, when the Germans began erecting another camp in the vicinity of Treblinka it aroused the interest of the Polish Underground.
The first transports from the Warsaw ghetto to the new camp—trains full of Jews that returned empty—set off a wave of rumors about what was happening inside the camp. The primary source for these rumors was the people who lived in the area and the Polish railway workers who transported the trains with the Jews until the railroad station in the village of Treblinka and returned them empty. Another and most important source was those Jews who, in the first days of the camp’s operation, had succeeded in escaping. Franciszek Zabecki, a railway-traffic supervisor at Treblinka station and a member of the Polish Underground, reconnoitered the area of the camp as early as the first days of its operation. He writes:
I rode my bicycle in order to find out what was going on there. The concrete road on which I rode was a straight distance of about 200 meters from the camp. I got off my bicycle as if I we
re fixing it. I fixed it for more than ten minutes. From the camp I heard screams of desperation and crying that pierced the air, and songs and psalms and prayers of supplication in Yiddish and Polish reached my ears. Above all there was a constant rat-a-tat-tat of shots from machine guns. . . . The news of the tragedy in Treblinka was passed on to the world, but they could not prevent it. The fate of the Jews was sealed.7
General Bor-Komorowski, the second-in-command of the Armia Krajowa, wrote in his autobiography:
Not later than July 29 we learned from reports of the railway workers that transports were being taken to the concentration camp of Treblinka and that the Jews were disappearing there without trace. There can no longer be any doubt that the deportations are the beginning of extermination.8
In the Information Bulletin of the Armia Krajowa of August 17, 1942, there is a detailed reference to the extermination in Treblinka:
Report No. 30 (55)
. . . The progress in the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. The decrease in the number of inhabitants in the ghetto at the present stage totals 200,000 persons, that is, 50 percent of the situation that existed before July 22. . . . In the period between July 23 and August 7, the following transports left for Treblinka . . . a total of 113,100 people. Besides these transports from Warsaw, every day additional trains from other cities reach Treblinka. For example, at the beginning of August a transport arrived from Radom, so that all together every day three transports arrive, each with sixty cars, of them fifty-eight with Jews. In each car there are 100 people. After the engine leaves the station, they force the Jews to undress in order to go, supposedly, to the showers. Actually they are taken to the gas chambers, exterminated there, and then buried in prepared pits, sometimes when they are still alive. The pits are dug with machines. The gas chambers are mobile, and they are situated above the pits. On August 5, there were 40,000 Jews in the camp, and every day 5,000 are killed. The Ukrainians, under German command, carry out the liquidation. By September 10, the Aktion in the Warsaw ghetto is supposed to end.9
In a comment attached to this report, it was noted that there was no corroboration from any other source for the item about “mobile gas chambers.” In this report, Treblinka is mentioned without being called an extermination camp, and it is possible that it was not yet clear to the Underground that two Treblinka camps now existed—the labor and penal camp, and the extermination camp.
In the Information Bulletin of September 8, 1942, the “Treblinka extermination camp” is first mentioned as separate from the labor camp.
Report No. 33 (58)
. . . The Treblinka extermination camp, the place where the Jews are being killed, is located near the labor camp. It is situated 5 kilometers from the Treblinka station, and 2 kilometers from Poniatowo station. There is a direct telephone line to Malkinia. There is an old camp (for Poles) and a new camp whose construction is still underway (exclusively for Jews). . . . The extermination of the Jews is now carried out in a way that is completely independent of the old camp. A locomotive pushes the cars with the Jews to the platform. The Ukrainians remove the Jews from the cars and lead them to the “shower to bathe.” This building is fenced off with barbed wire. They enter it in groups of 300–500 people. Each group is immediately closed hermetically inside, and gassed. The gas does not affect them immediately, because the Jews still have to continue on to the pits that are a few dozen meters away, and whose depth is 30 meters. There they fall unconscious, and a digger covers them with a thin layer of earth. Then another group arrives. . . . Soon we will relay an authentic testimony of a Jew who succeeded in escaping from Treblinka. . . .10
In this edition of the Bulletin, there already appears an accurate description of the gas chambers as a permanent structure, and not as mobile units as was cited in the August 17 report; on the other hand, the description of the victims walking dozens of meters to the pits after the gassing is not true and is based on unreliable information.
The October 5 report stated:
. . . The death camp continues its activity. Transports arrive from all areas of the General-Government (lately from Radom, Siedlce, and Miedzyrzec). At present, not twenty but only ten freight cars are taken to the platform, as it takes a long time to get rid of the corpses of those who died on the way (20–30 percent). The gas chambers are operated in the following system: outside the building, an engine works twenty-four hours a day. Its exhaust is connected to the wall of the barrack and through it the gas is introduced. The gas is a combination of poisonous liquid mixed with the gasoline from the engine and kills the people who are locked in. Within the camp, in addition to the Jewish workers, there is a Jewish orchestra and a group of Jewish women for entertaining the staff. By the end of August, 320,000 Jews were murdered in Treblinka. . . .11
The Information Bulletin of October 23 reports the continued building in the extermination camp and the enlarged gas chambers with a new capacity of 750 people each, rather than the 350 previously.12 This report relates—albeit inaccurately—to the new building with ten new, larger gas chambers, which were built to replace the old structure, in which there had been three smaller gas chambers.
In the document dated November 15, 1942, a long detailed description is given of the Treblinka camp. This document was prepared in the Warsaw ghetto as an appendix to another report, entitled “The Destruction of Jewish Warsaw,” and which was transmitted via the Delegatura to London on January 6, 1943. The appendix on Treblinka was entitled “Treblinka—The Monument of Eternal Shame to the German People.” In this document there is a description of the construction of the Treblinka extermination camp, its location, its size, and a detailed plan, including a sketch of the area. This report includes a description of the dozens of new gas chambers and other structures in the camp. With regard to the camp staff, it states that in addition to the Germans and Ukrainians there are also Jews, whom the document calls “Jewish auxiliaries,” who are employed at auxiliary works, in sorting the clothes of the murdered and removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burying them. The document mentions the extremely difficult conditions under which the prisoners are kept, the daily killings among these Jews, and that their life expectancy in this camp was no more than two weeks. In the description of the way the transports were treated, there is reference to the deceptive plays of the Germans and a description of the extermination process from the moment the people disembarked on the platform—the way they were tortured—until they were led into the gas chambers, as well as the system of burying the corpses. In conclusion, it stated that by then two million Jews had been murdered in Treblinka—the majority of Polish Jewry. The report concludes by asking why the new gas chambers were built, as the majority of Polish Jewry had already been killed, and states that, according to one eyewitness, the Germans had already killed a group of Poles in the middle of August.13
This report is the first in which there is a comprehensive description of the Treblinka extermination camp. The facts are, for the most part, correct. Their source is escapees from the camp who reached the Warsaw ghetto and who gave testimony for the Ringelblum Archive and to Jewish Underground groups in the Warsaw ghetto. This report is based therefore on the descriptions of witnesses who had seen for themselves the process of extermination, who had lived in the camp for days or weeks as prisoners, who had been employed at various jobs, and who had succeeded in escaping. The facts that they related on the basis of what they had seen were accurate, but the reference to two million Jews who had been murdered was incorrect. In the period to which the report refers, one-fourth to one-third of the number cited in the report had been murdered. Also the detail about the murder of a group of Poles in Treblinka was incorrect.
Another document that was transmitted by the Delegatura to London included material on the destruction of the Jews of Poland. There are two testimonies of escapees from Treblinka, a diagram of the camp, and reports on the extermination activities that were going on there. This document, sent to London at the end of M
arch 1943, is long and detailed, like the report of November 15, 1942, and it contains a description of the camp, the extermination process, the life of the camp staff, and more. One testimony is of a Jewish officer from Warsaw who was in Treblinka for only five days and escaped in September 1942. The document also includes a section of the Wiadomosci (News) published by the Underground Jewish National Committee in Warsaw, in which the process of extermination in Treblinka was described; a report on the high mortality rate in the trains on the way to the camp; and a report of the killings in the Lazarett.14
The fortnightly summaries of the Office of Information and Propaganda of the Armia Krajowa published in January 1943 contained news of deportations of Jews from the district of Bialystok to Treblinka. Appendix no. 45 to the fortnightly report of January 15, 1943, refers to the period of January 1–15:
. . . Treblinka. New transports of Jews to their death continue to arrive. For example: on November 20, 1942, forty freight cars arrived from Biala Podlaska; on November 21 and 22, every day forty freight cars from Bialystok; on November 24, forty freight cars from Grodno. During these five days, thirty-two freight cars with Jews’ clothing were sent from Treblinka to the Reich. Lately there are transports with Jews from eastern Galicia and Rumania. . . .15
Appendix no. 46, which was sent on January 31, 1943, refers to the period January 6–31, 1943: