by Yitzhak Arad
The uprisings in Treblinka and Sobibor did not result in the closing of these death camps or stop the killing there. The decision to close these camps had been taken by the SS authorities before the uprisings. But the uprising in Treblinka did hasten the closing of the camp and the cessation of the killings there.
The uprising in Sobibor brought about a change in the plans for this camp. The original idea had been to turn Sobibor into a concentration camp for treating captured Soviet ammunition. Now it was decided that the Sobibor death camp would be entirely demolished and dismantled.
The uprisings in Treblinka and Sobibor can be considered a success from the point of view of the prisoners. Their main aim had been a mass escape and rescue of the camp inmates, all of whom were doomed to certain death. Even if most of the prisoners were killed during the uprisings and the ensuing pursuit, and less than one-third of the prisoners succeeded in escaping, we may still claim that this aim was achieved. This is most apparent if we take the alternative of Belzec, where no uprising took place. In this camp there were only two survivors, Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman.
There were 850 prisoners in Treblinka on August 2. About 100 did not even attempt to escape, as most of them were too weak or sick. They were all shot on the spot. Half of those who participated in the uprising were killed during the uprising, in the camp or close to the fences. Approximately the same number—about 350–400 prisoners—succeeded in escaping. In the search and pursuit actions undertaken by the German security forces in the late afternoon and during the night of August 2, about 200 prisoners were caught and shot. Approximately 150–200 prisoners succeeded in evading the pursuit, but most of them did not survive the war. No more than 70 prisoners from Treblinka remained alive at the end of the war.
In Sobibor there were about 600 prisoners on October 14, besides the 80–100 prisoners in Camp III. At least 150 prisoners, including those in Camp III, did not try to escape or were caught in the camp. They all were shot the following day. About 230–270 prisoners were killed during the uprising inside the camp or at the fences and minefield. During the searches and pursuit, 100 of the 300 prisoners who escaped from the camp were caught and shot. From the 200 prisoners who evaded the pursuit, about 130–150 found their death between that time and the liberation and 50–70 survived. All together about 120–130 prisoners from Sobibor and Treblinka survived the war.
The survival of these prisoners takes on an additional, important aspect. As part of Nazi Germany’s attempt to hide the crimes they had committed, they strove not to leave any living witness to their evil acts. The survivors from Treblinka and Sobibor undermined this intention. They, the eyewitnesses, told the firsthand story of what had transpired in these camps.
The first booklets about what happened in these camps were published as early as 1944. While in the Underground in Warsaw, Wiernik wrote his book A Year in Treblinka. In May 1944, Wiernik’s manuscript was brought by a Polish Underground courier to England, and at the end of that year it was published in the United States and Palestine. This was the first comprehensive publication by an eyewitness. Since that time many books, articles, and diaries have been written and published by the survivors of these camps. They also appeared as the main witnesses at the Treblinka and Sobibor war-crimes trials. Their testimonies are a primary source for historical research, including the research for this book.
45
Operation Erntefest
The uprising of the Jews in Treblinka and, to an even larger extent, the uprising in Sobibor and its aftermath shocked the German authorities in the General Government and throughout the higher echelons of the SS. They became especially alarmed when they realized that what happened in Sobibor, with less than 1,000 Jews, might happen in other camps in the Lublin district, where 42,000–45,000 Jews were still being kept as slave workers in German industrial enterprises. Labor camps under the command of the Operation Reinhard staff were located in Trawniki, Poniatowa, and other places in the Lublin district. There were also Jewish prisoners in the Majdanek concentration camp.1
In a conference held by Hans Frank in Cracow on October 19, 1943, five days after the Sobibor uprising, the issue of the Jews in the labor camps was raised. From the minutes of this conference:
Police Major-General Hans Grünwald [the commander of the Order Police in the General Government] confirmed the data about the security situation given by SS Oberführer Bierkamp [the commander of the Security Police in the General Government]. . . . The camps with Jews in the General Government constituted a great danger, and the escape of the Jews from one of these camps [Sobibor] proved it. It was followed by a debate on that same problem. In connection with this, the Inspector of the Armament, General Schindler, SS Oberführer Bierkamp, and Major-General Grünwald were instructed by the Governor-General to inspect all the Jewish camps in the General Government in order to determine how many of the Jews there are used as a work force. The remainder were to be removed from the General Government.2
Himmler, however, did not wait for the results of the inspection of the camps as decided upon at the conference held by Hans Frank. He was determined to act quickly, before the example of Sobibor would influence prisoners in other camps. He decided to annihilate the Jews in these camps immediately. Friedrich Krüger, the Higher SS and Police Leader of the General Government, was ordered by Himmler to carry out the liquidation action. The code name for this action was Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”). Krüger delegated this mission to Sporrenberg, the newly appointed SS and Police Leader of the Lublin district.3
The whole action was planned as a military operation. For reasons of secrecy and to prevent rumors about the killings from seeping out from one camp to another, Operation Erntefest had to be executed simultaneously in the three main camps: Poniatowa, Trawniki, and Majdanek. As such an action required large forces, several thousand police and SS men, including Waffen SS units, were concentrated for this operation from different places in the General Government and from East Prussia. The large forces, the element of surprise, and the swiftness of the operation were designed to safeguard against any resistance and provide the means to quell it quickly in the event that it should happen—what transpired in Sobibor would not be allowed to happen again.
On the eve of the Erntefest operation, there were about 15,000 Jews, including women and children, in the Poniatowa labor camp. Most of them had been transferred there from the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising, and they were working in the Walther C. Többens clothing enterprises. In the last days of October, Jews from the camp were taken to dig two trenches close to the entrance gate of the camp. The Jews were told that these were defense trenches against air attacks and they were to be dug in zigzags. The length of both trenches was 95 meters, the width 2 meters, and the depth 1.5 meter.4
Scharführer Heinrich Gley testified about what happened there on November 3:
In November 1943—I don’t remember the exact date—one night I was called to [Gottlieb] Hering [the commander of Poniatowa]. . . . When I entered Hering’s room, there were two police officers with him. . . . The officers informed Hering that the whole camp was surrounded by a police unit. . . . This police unit was under orders to liquidate all the Jews in the camp, without any exception. During the conversation, the officers expressed the opinion that the liquidation of the Jews was inevitable because otherwise security could not be guaranteed. Whether the assumption about the endangered security situation was based on the report of the successful uprising in Sobibor, I don’t know. . . .
In the meantime all the Jews were ordered to concentrate in some specified places. They were separated in such a way that the Jews from the main camp were in the large hall and the Jews from the “settlement” were to line up at a square.
From my room I could see how the Jews, entirely nude, were taken from the hall to the trench. This trench was zigzag. It was about 300–500 meters distant from the main hall. A tight chain of armed policemen guarded the way. I could not see the shootings, but I
heard the shootings. After the action was finished, I saw the corpses. . . .
In the evening, after completing the action, the police unit left. According to my estimation, the strength of the police unit was between 1,000–1,500 men.5
In the Poniatowa camp there was a Jewish Underground group, which had even succeeded in obtaining a few weapons. In the afternoon, when the killing action was approaching its end, a group of Jews closed in one of the barracks, members of the Underground group, resisted being taken to the trenches and opened fire on the SS men. They burned some of the nearby barracks that contained clothing. But the Germans set the barrack with the resisting Jews on fire, and all of them were burned alive. Polish firemen from the town of Opola Lubelski arrived to put out the fire in the clothing barracks, and some of these firemen testified that wounded Jews were also thrown into the burning barracks.6
About 150 Jews were left to clean the area and cremate the corpses of the killed. Fifty Jews who succeeded in hiding themselves during the shooting joined them. But two days after the massacre, these 200 Jews were shot because they refused to cremate the corpses. In their place, 120 Jews were brought from other camps to carry out this work.7
In the Trawniki labor camp there were between 8,000 and 10,000 Jews—men, women, and children—most of them from the Warsaw ghetto. The majority worked in the Schultz enterprises of furs, brushes, etc. Like in Poniatowa, on November 3, 1943, the camp was surrounded by Waffen SS and police units. Early in the morning the Jews were driven from their barracks and taken in batches to the training camp of the SS auxiliaries in Trawniki. There they were forced to undress, put their clothes in a huge heap, and enter the trench, where they were shot. Those who arrived afterward were forced to lie on the corpses that had been shot before. When there was no more room in the trench in the training camp, some of the Jews were shot in the sand or in a gravel pit in the labor camp. To overcome the cries of the victims and the noise of the shooting, loudspeakers were installed in the camp and music was heard throughout the entire area. By late afternoon the murder action was completed. All the Jews had been shot and the few Jews who had succeeded in escaping from the shooting site had been caught and shot.
A German manager of the Schultz enterprises in Trawniki, Kurt Ziemann, testified about the events on the morning of November 3:
The labor camp was surrounded. As we found out later, there was an entire SS battalion . . . young SS men from the Waffen SS. . . . We were asked to come to the headquarters of the training camp. . . . The commander of the Waffen SS unit announced to us that the enterprise would not be operational that day We could see that the Jews were taken in groups from the labor camp to the training camp. There they had to undress and put their clothes in a huge heap. Everything was done at a run. I could not see the execution place from where I was standing. The nude Jews disappeared behind a barrack. We merely heard the shooting. . . . The next morning I went to Warsaw for 3–5 days. When I returned, already at the station I could smell the odor of the corpses that had been cremated. . . .8
A group of 100–120 Jews from the Milejow camp (east of Lublin) were brought to cremate the corpses of the murdered. After two or three weeks, when they finished the cremating work, they were also shot. They were shot in small groups, and each group had to cremate the corpses of the previous group. The last group was cremated by the Ukrainian guards.9
In the Majdanek concentration camp, the preparation for the action began in the last days of October. About 300 prisoners dug for three days three trenches, each 100 meters long and 2 meters deep, in the southern part of the camp, close to the new crematorium and the fences. About 100 SS men came to Majdanek from other areas of the General Government and reinforced the camp staff. On November 2, 1943, two mobile loudspeakers were installed, one close to the trenches, the other close to the entrance gate of the camp. During the night of November 2/3, the guards around the camp were reinforced.10
At the morning roll call, all the Jewish prisoners, who were mixed in groups with other prisoners, were ordered to leave the rows and create a separate column. These Jews, together with those who were sick with typhus, were taken to the trenches and shot. The shooting began at six or seven in the morning and was covered by the dance music blaring from the loudspeakers. In the meantime columns of marching Jews from other camps in Lublin—those from the old airport, the DAW enterprises, and some other satellite camps of Majdanek—began arriving in Majdanek. All together there were about 10,000 Jews. They were brought to sub-camp V, which was close to the shooting site, and from there they were taken in groups of 100 to a barrack and forced to undress. A passage was cut in the fences of sub-camp V, and, through it, the naked Jews were driven to the shooting site. The men and women were taken to the shooting site in separate groups. They were forced to lie down in the trenches and were shot by SS men standing on the edge of the pit. After the first groups were shot, the bottom of the trenches was full and all the others were forced to lie on top of those who had been shot before.
The shooting action lasted until five o’clock in the afternoon. The SS men who carried out the shooting were relieved by others a few times during the day, but the music coming from the loudspeakers played continuously. About 18,000 Jews were murdered that day in Majdanek.11
Among the Jews concentrated in sub-camp V and waiting to be taken to the shooting site, there were some cases of suicide. There were also some acts of resistance. About twenty-five Jews who tried to find hiding places in the barracks of sub-camp V were found there the day after the shooting and were shot in the crematorium.
About 300 men and 300 women remained in Majdanek to take care of the clothes left by the murdered. After completing this work, the women were taken to Auschwitz. The men were taken to cremate the corpses of the murdered: after that the too were shot.12
With the completion of the Erntefest operation, only a few small labor camps under the authority of the German air force, with a population of about 2,000 Jews, remained in the Lublin district.13 The Erntefest operation was the last mass killing of the Jews who had still remained in the General Government and the closing Aktion of Operation Reinhard. Approximately 42,000 Jews were murdered during Operation Erntefest.
46
The Liquidation of the Camps and the Termination of Operation Reinhard
The principal decision to terminate Operation Reinhard and close the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka was taken by Himmler during his visit to Lublin in March 1943 (see chapter 22). At that time almost all the Jews in the General Government had already been annihilated and the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was in full operation and could meet the needs of the Nazi extermination machine. The final date for the closing of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka now depended on when the cremation of the corpses would be completed. The SS authorities planned to leave absolutely no trace of the death camps. All construction in the camps was to be destroyed or evacuated. The whole area was to be cleaned of debris, plowed over, and trees were to be sown and planted.
The first camp to be dismantled and closed was Belzec.1 The mass deportation to this camp stopped in December 1942. Some transports of Jews from the district of Lvov, which arrived in Belzec after this date, were sent from there to Sobibor. But the liquidation process took several months. Scharführer Werner Dubois, who was in Belzec at that time, testified:
The transports to Belzec and, consequently, the gassing operations, stopped quite suddenly. . . . As staff members of the Belzec camp, we were informed that the place would be rebuilt completely. A working group of Jews, whose size I don’t remember, was in charge of the demolition work. It is worth mention that at that time [March-April 1943] the cremation of the corpses was terminated and the graves were leveled. The camp was emptied entirely and leveled accordingly. I heard that some planting was done there. The Jewish work commando, after accomplishing this work, was taken to Sobibor. I remained in Belzec for two more days, together with some of my colleagues and guards, to carry out the last
clearing and loading. . . . Some time later, when I was in Sobibor, I heard that during the transport of the Jewish work commando from Belzec to Sobibor, some mutiny and shooting took place which led to some deaths. . .2
The transport of the Jewish prisoners from Belzec to Sobibor at the end of July 1943 was the closing act of this camp. When the prisoners left Belzec, they were told that they were going to Germany to work. Some escaped from the train (see p. 265), and when the others arrived in Sobibor they grasped what truly awaited them. They resisted disembarking from the train and being taken to the gas chamber, but they were overcome and shot.
The last commander of Belzec, SS Hauptsturmführer Gottlieb Hering, was appointed commander of the Poniatowa labor camp. Most of the German staff from Belzec was sent to serve in Treblinka, Sobibor, and Poniatowa.
After the camp buildings were dismantled and the German and Ukrainian staff had left, people from the neighboring villages and townships started digging in the area of the camp, searching for gold and valuables. A Pole, Edward Luczynski, who lived in Belzec, testified:
After leveling and cleaning the area of the extermination camp, the Germans planted the area with small pines and left. At that moment, the whole area was plucked to pieces by the neighboring population, who were searching for gold and valuables. That’s why the whole surface of the camp was covered with human bones, hair, ashes from cremated corpses, dentures, pots, and other objects.3