by Yitzhak Arad
. . . Treblinka. Now they are in the process of liquidating the remaining Jewish centers in the areas of Grodno and Bialystok. The victims are brought twice a week from collection camps in Kelbasin and Zabludow. The Jews stay in these camps three weeks on the average. The regime there is horrible, so only shadows of the people arrive in Treblinka. . . . Every night there are new victims from cold and hunger, typhus, dysentery, breakdowns; and the machine guns substantially lessen the transports to Treblinka. From the beginning of November, innovations were introduced in Treblinka: the women’s hair is shorn before they undress. The hair is packed in bags. Organs are removed from the corpses and after certain treatment sent to army hospitals for transplants during surgical operations. . . .16
These two reports include accurate information for the most part, but there are some inaccuracies: there were no transports to Treblinka with Jews from eastern Galicia or Rumania. And there is no basis to the item on the removal of organs from corpses for transplants in army hospitals.
In the report of July 9, 1943, there is a passage referring to the number of victims in several camps:
. . . the crimes in numbers. From the railroad documents they can estimate the number of people who were deported in closed transports to Auschwitz, Belzec, and Treblinka. In this estimate, smaller groups and transports in automobiles were not included. From March 1942 until April [1943], 19,710 Poles were sent to Auschwitz, and 1,075,600 Jews to Treblinka and Belzec. The highest frequency of transports of Poles was in January (9,500 deportees). The largest number of Jews deported was in July 1942 (319,000), August (217,000), and September (280,000). . . .17
This report refers only to Treblinka and Belzec; there is no mention whatsoever of Sobibor. Fifteen months after Sobibor was in operation as a death camp, there were still few testimonies about it.
In 1943, a book was published in the United States entitled The Black Book of Polish Jewry in which there are descriptions of the persecution and extermination of the Jews of Poland; these descriptions were, in great part, based on the reports of the Polish Underground that reached London. This book brought before the American and world public the mass extermination of the Jews that had been carried out in occupied Poland. The extermination activities in Belzec and Treblinka are described there at length and in detail, and dozens of pages are devoted to the subject. Sobibor is mentioned only twice in the entire book and, even then, only in a few words, as one of the places in which Jews were murdered.
The revolts in Treblinka and Sobibor were also mentioned in the Polish Underground publications. In the weekly review of the main events that had occurred in Poland published on August 13, 1943, we find:
Treblinka set on fire. In Treblinka no. 2, besides a unit of SS and Ukrainians (160 men), there was a Jewish auxiliary group of 600 people who aided in the extermination activities. On the third of this month, this group attacked the guards, disarmed them, took over the arms storeroom, burned the buildings, and broke out to the forests. In the fighting, about 200 Jews fell. Germans and Ukrainians were injured, and evidently about fifty were killed. . . .18
On August 10, 1943, the leftist Underground newspaper in Warsaw, Glos Warszawy (“The Voice of Warsaw”), no. 49 (58), carried news of the uprising in Treblinka:
News from Treblinka. Last week, news reached the capital on events in the notorious “death factory” Treblinka. Based on shreds of reports from various sources, the chain of events was as follows: in Treblinka there were still 3,000 Jews, who lived under the threatening guns of the Gestapo [and] were put to work burying the thousands of victims, [and who] serviced the gas chambers and did all kinds of other jobs. After a time, when they no longer had any strength, these miserable victims were murdered and replaced by others. Finally they rebelled. These desperate Jews killed a few dozen Gestapo, took over the arms storeroom and removed the weapons, set fire to some of the buildings, and escaped to the forests in the area. About 2,800 people, most of them armed, succeeded in escaping to the forests. As partisans they entered into battle with units sent against them in a punishment action, and caused them heavy losses.19
On August 18, the Information Bulletin published a report on the uprising in Treblinka, stating that the Jews killed thirty guards, took their arms, set fire to the camp, and about 1,800 escaped.20
On August 26, in a review of the situation in occupied Poland by the Delegatura, the uprising in Treblinka also appeared:
. . . bloody rebellion in Treblinka. In the Jewish Treblinka there were of late a few hundred Jewish craftsmen who were employed by the Germans, as well as workers at various jobs in the camp. Recently they were put to work at opening the mass graves of the Jews murdered in Treblinka and burning the bodies that were inside. Some of these Jews who still lived in Treblinka established an Underground fighting organization. One day at the beginning of August, they found the right moment for action: some of the German/Ukrainian camp staff had left for a swim. The Jews attacked the rest of the staff, disarmed them, killed about fifty Germans and Ukrainians, and burned the barracks. All the Jews that were in the camp escaped to the forests in the vicinity of Treblinka. The Germans conducted extensive pursuits in these forests. Some of the Jews were caught and killed, some escaped. . . .21
In the newspaper reviews of the Underground in Poland from the end of 1943, published by the Ministry of Interior of the Government-in-Exile in London, which refer to the period September—October 1943, there are quotations from two Underground newspapers in Poland—The Struggle, a paper with anti-Semitic leanings, and W.N.R., the newspaper of the Polish Socialists and sympathetic to the Jews—and both of them carried a report on the uprising in Treblinka.22
In general, the reports on the uprising in Treblinka greatly exaggerate the number of rebels and the number of losses inflicted on the Germans and Ukrainians. The reason for the inaccuracies is primarily that the entire Polish Underground had had no direct contact with the prisoners in Treblinka or with the Jewish Underground that had been operating in the camp for many months. The source for earlier reports on Treblinka, which were usually reliable, was mostly Jews who had escaped from the camp or Polish railway workers who drove the trains. However, the reports on the uprising that are quoted here, although they were published a short time after the uprising, were based on inaccurate descriptions by the local population. The reports on the uprising that were published a few months later no longer repeat the numerical exaggerations. In the meantime, testimonies of survivors had been taken, and these contained more accurate details.
The uprising in Sobibor, like the other events there, was mentioned only briefly in the reports of the Polish Underground. The report of the Delegatura in the second half of November 1943 stated: “During the liquidation of Sobibor in the middle of October, the Jews set fire to the barracks and crematorium, killed some gendarmes, and hundreds of them escaped into the forests.”23
Some other reports about the uprising in Sobibor were dispatched by the Polish Underground to London in the beginning of 1944. The Polish Ministry of Interior published a report in which it was stated:
In the second half of October, there was a bloody and successful rebellion of Jews in the death camp of Sobibor. The prisoners, who numbered a few hundred, killed several dozen oppressors, SS men and Ukrainians. After setting fire to the camp, all the prisoners escaped.24
The Polish Underground—and especially the dominant element within it, which was organized in the Armia Krajowa and which was connected with the Government-in-Exile in London—knew what was going on in Treblinka and Belzec and, to a lesser extent, in Sobibor, from the start of the camps’ operation and reported about it in their various publications. This Underground took no practical steps to warn the Jews still in the various ghettos about the true purpose of the death camps and also did nothing to waylay the transports, such as sabotaging the trains and railroad tracks.
Stefan Korbonski, a leading figure in the Polish Underground, who was in charge of broadcasts from Poland and cland
estine radio contact with London, wrote in his memoirs that from the beginning of the deportation of the Jews from Warsaw to the death camps, radiograms reporting these events were sent to London regularly. Korbonski writes that the Polish authorities in London, in contrast to the usual procedure did not respond to these broadcasts and nothing was mentioned on the BBC. He claims that he insistently demanded a reply:
I sent a special radiogram in which I requested clarification of the reasons for their silence. My surprise grew when I did not receive any answer even to this radiogram. . . . This game went on for a few days, and evidently as a result of the daily alarms of the station in London, the government finally responded. The radiogram did not explain much. Its exact wording was: Not all your radiograms are appropriate for publication. . . . It was only about a month later that the BBC reported an item based on our information. Many months later, the entire matter was explained to me by an envoy of the government who was parachuted to the homeland: Your radiograms were not believed. The government did not believe them, and the British did not believe them. It was said that you exaggerated your anti-Nazi propaganda. Only when the British received confirmation of these facts from their sources was there consternation and the BBC transmitted your information.25
The Polish Underground transmitted to London the reports on the death camps and the extermination of the Jews of Poland via its messengers and radio stations. It did not hide these facts nor delay their relay, and the reports reached the Polish Government-in-Exile in London and the British Government. But, they were received with disbelief, doubt, and distrust. They did not receive the proper sort of publicity, and certainly no practical or direct action was forthcoming to stop the deportations to the death camps or to disrupt the extermination that was going on there.
44
An Evaluation of the Uprisings and Their Results
The Undergrounds in both Treblinka and Sobibor operated under extremely difficult and adverse conditions. The camps were small, easy to supervise, and offered no possible hiding places, and the prisoners were under the constant surveillance of the camp authorities. Yet the Underground leaders still succeeded in organizing a clandestine group and preserving the secrecy of its existence from the Germans, Ukrainians, and the majority of their fellow prisoners. The fact that it was done attests to outstanding leadership, a sharp eye in selecting the members for the Underground, and the manipulative ability to conceal the clandestine activities.
The Underground in each camp operated independently; there was absolutely no contact between them. They were not even aware of the existence of the other camp and an Underground organization there. Yet we find many similarities in the organization, plans, and activities in both camps. The conditions and structure of Treblinka and Sobibor were similar, and this was what probably dictated the way the organization and operation of the Undergrounds developed. The leaders of the Undergrounds came from the “elite” of the prisoners—the capos, heads of workshops, foremen. Even the size of the Underground was similar in both camps—about fifty to sixty members.
Both Undergrounds suffered setbacks and tragedies. In Treblinka it claimed the lives of Chorazycki and Rakowski. And the failure to smuggle out grenades and detonators from the camp armory in April 1943 could very well have caused the discovery of the organization and the postponement of the planned uprising. In Sobibor, the planned escape cost the lives of Joseph Jacobs and seventy-two of his fellow Dutch Jews. The discovery of a tunnel in Camp III of Sobibor brought on a reprisal action and the shooting of 150 prisoners there. But in spite of all these failures and losses of human life, the idea of resistance was not snuffed out.
Both Undergrounds tried to enlist the help of the Ukrainian guards. In Treblinka the effort was directed mainly at purchasing arms. In Sobibor they attempted to establish contact with partisans, to procure arms, and to receive help with the escape. Some Ukrainians with whom the Underground leaders were in contact promised to extend help and received substantial sums of money and valuables for this purpose. But there were no positive results from these contacts. The one exception was when five Jewish prisoners escaped from the extermination area in Sobibor together with two Ukrainian guards. In all other cases, the Jews were cheated out of their money, or even betrayed, as in the case of Jacobs in Sobibor. The Underground leadership in both camps finally reached the conclusion that no active help with arms or escape could be expected from the Ukrainian guards.
Even the hope that during the uprisings some of the Ukrainians who were former Soviet soldiers would join in the escape and the others would not fight against the Jews was not realized. The large majority remained faithful to the Germans, fought the Jewish rebels, and quelled the uprisings inside the camps. The hundreds of prisoners who were shot inside and close to the camps were in fact hit by the Ukrainian guards. Their loyalty to the Germans was particularly evident in Sobibor, where only two SS men remained active during the uprising, and the whole action against the escaping prisoners during these critical hours was carried out by the Ukrainians.
In Treblinka the Underground included prisoners from the two separate sections of the camp—the Lower Camp and the extermination area. The transfer of Zialo Bloch, a leading figure of the Underground in the Lower Camp, to the extermination area facilitated organizing the clandestine activity there. And the fact that the mason Wiernik had permission to go back and forth between the two parts of the camp also enabled the establishment of contacts and the coordination of activities. In fact, the uprising was carried out simultaneously and according to the same plan; prisoners from both sections of the camp met on the escape routes and mingled together. Jews from both parts were among the survivors.
In Sobibor the situation was different. There was no opportunity for contact between the prisoners in the two parts of the camp, and the Undergrounds in each section operated independently. No information about the Underground group in Camp III (extermination area) exists, except for the fact that a mass escape through a tunnel was planned and the digging required clandestine organization. As a result of the lack of contacts, the escape through the tunnel in Camp III, planned for the second half of September, was not coordinated with the uprising in the main camp a few weeks later, with the tragic outcome for the prisoners in Camp III. All those who were there when the tunnel was discovered were shot. The prisoners who were brought there as replacements were shot a day after the uprising. In both cases they were victims of reprisal actions. Had they only been aware of the conditions that prevailed in Sobibor in the late afternoon of October 14, when most of the SS men had already been liquidated, the prisoners in Camp III would have realized that they had a fair chance to escape during the uprising.
The plans for the uprisings in both camps called for them to begin in the afternoon while the prisoners and the SS men were dispersed at their workplaces. The darkness of the night was supposed to cover the escape and allow the prisoners more precious time to get as far from the camp as possible. In Treblinka the first stage of the uprising was aimed at removing the weapons from the armory; during the second stage they were to attack the SS men and take control of the camp. In Sobibor the first stage was the elimination of the SS men; the second stage was the escape. The plan in Sobibor did not call for taking control of the camp and destroying it as did the plan in Treblinka. The plan in Sobibor was less ambitious, with more modest aims, and, therefore, it had more chance to succeed. The implementation of the uprising plan was carried out more professionally from the military point of view in Sobibor than in Treblinka. This has to be attributed to Pechersky and the prisoners of war with him who had military training and combat experience.
Both plans were apt to succeed, but the tragic flaw in both was that alternative plans—in the event that action would not go according to plan—were never developed. And in both Treblinka—in the first stage—and Sobibor—in the second stage—without planned alternatives, the leaders lost control over people and events, and the organized action turned into an i
ndividual escape.
In Treblinka none of the leading figures of the Underground, among them Galewski, Korland, and Zialo Bloch, survived the uprising. All of them fell during the outbreak from the camp or in the ensuing pursuit. In Sobibor, the two leaders of the uprising, Pechersky and Feldhendler, succeeded in escaping and survived the war.
The local SS authorities feared being blamed of negligence if it became known that clandestine activity had been organized in the camp. The responsible parties could have been tried and sentenced, which is what happened to the SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw district, Ferdinand Von Sammern, after the uprising in the ghetto there.
The commander of Treblinka, Stangl, and his superiors in Lublin, Wirth and Globocnik, played down the uprising and escape of the Jewish prisoners and tried to keep it a secret. Stangl claimed that all the prisoners who ran away from the camp during the uprising were caught within a few hours after their escape.1 In fact, however, at that time 300 to 400 prisoners were still free outside the camp. In German reports, the uprising and mass escape from Treblinka was not mentioned. The fact that no German was killed during the uprising and only one was wounded made it possible to conceal the events in Treblinka, for when SS men were killed a report had to be submitted to the highest SS authorities in Berlin.
The uprising and escape in Sobibor could not be concealed. The call for help from this camp went out to various SS bodies and the highest army and civil authorities in the General Government. In addition, the killing of eleven SS men had to be reported immediately to SS headquarters in the Third Reich. The day after the uprising, October 15, in a report of the Order Police in the Lublin district it was stated that in Sobibor there had been a revolt of the Jewish prisoners, that they had overpowered the guards, seized the armory, and 300 of them had fled in an unknown direction, and that nine SS men had been killed, one SS man was wounded, one SS man was missing, and two foreign guards (Ukrainians) had been shot to death.2 The uprising in Sobibor was also described in the reports of the Mounted Squadrons of the SS and Police. The funeral of the killed SS men was attended by a high-ranking delegation from Hitler’s chancellery in Berlin, because most of the killed SS men were former members of the euthanasia program and were in part subordinate to it.