Voices from the Holocaust

by Jon E. Lewis

  Despite all these measures for the regulation of Jewish labour, a start was made in April 1942 on the evacuation of Jews from the District of Galicia, and this was carried out steadily.

  When the Higher SS and Police Leader again intervened in the Jewish question in general on 10 November 1942, and a Police Order was issued for the formation of Jewish quarters, 254,989 Jews had already been evacuated or resettled. Since the Higher SS and Police Leader gave further instructions to accelerate the total evacuation of the Jews, further considerable work was necessary in order to catch those Jews who were, for the time being, to be left in the armaments factories. These remaining Jews were declared labour prisoners of the Higher SS and Police Leader and held either in the factories themselves or in camps erected for this purpose. For Lvov itself a large camp was erected on the outskirts, which holds 8,000 Jewish labour prisoners at the present time. The agreement made with the Wehrmacht concerning employment and treatment of the labour prisoners was set down in writing …

  In the meantime further evacuation was carried out vigorously, with the result that by 23 June 1943 all Jewish quarters could be dissolved. Apart from the Jews in camps under the control of the SS and Police Leader, the District of Galicia is thus free of Jews (Judenfrei).

  Individual Jews occasionally picked up by the Order Police or the Gendarmerie were sent for special treatment. Altogether, 434,329 Jews had been evacuated up to June 27, 1943 ... [This is followed by a list of 21 camps in which there were still 21,156 Jews.]

  Together with the evacuation Aktionen Jewish property was collected. Valuables were secured and handed over to the Special Staff ‘Reinhard’. Apart from furniture and large quantities of textiles, etc., the following were confiscated and delivered to Special Staff ‘Reinhard’:

  As of 30 June 1943:

  25,580 kg. copper coins

  53,190 nickel coins

  97,581 gold coins

  82,600 silver chains

  6,640 chains, gold

  4,326,780 broken silver

  167,740 silver coins

  18,490 iron coins

  20,050 brass coins

  20,952 wedding rings gold

  22,740 pearls

  11,730 gold teeth bridges

  28,200 powder compacts silver or other metal

  44,655 broken gold

  482,900 silver flatware

  343,100 cigarette cases silver and other metal

  20,880 kg rings, gold, with stones

  39,917 brooches, earrings, etc.

  1,802 rings, silver

  6,166 pocket watches, various

  3,133 pocket watches, silver

  1,256 wrist watches gold

  2,892 pocket watches gold

  68 cameras

  98 binoculars

  7 stamp collections complete

  5 travel baskets of loose stamps

  3 sacks of rings, jewellery not genuine

  1 box corals

  1 case corals

  1 case corals

  1 suitcase of fountain pens and propelling pencils

  1 travel basket of fountain pens and propelling pencils

  1 suitcase of cigarette lighters

  1 suitcase of pocket knives

  1 trunk of watch parts

  Currency: Bank Notes and Metal

  There were also other immense difficulties during the Aktionen as the Jews tried to avoid evacuation by all possible means. They not only tried to escape, and concealed themselves in the most improbable places, drainage canals, chimneys, even in sewage pits, etc. They barricaded themselves in catacombs of passages, in cellars made into bunkers, in holes in the earth, in cunningly contrived hiding places, in attics and sheds, inside furniture, etc.

  As the number of Jews still remaining decreased, their resistance became the greater. They used weapons of all types for their defence, and in particular those of Italian origin. The Jews bought these Italian weapons from Italian soldiers stationed in the district in exchange for large sums in złotys ...

  Subterranean bunkers were discovered which had cleverly concealed entrances, some in the flats, and some out of doors. In most cases the entrance to the bunker was only just large enough for one person to slip through. The entrances to the bunkers were so well hidden that they could not be found if one did not know where to look …

  Owing to increasingly grave reports of the growing arming of the Jews, the sharpest possible measures were taken for the elimination of Jewish banditry in all parts of the District of Galicia in the last two weeks of June 1943. Special measures were needed for the breaking up of the Jewish quarter in Lvov, where the bunkers described above had been installed. In order to avoid losses to German forces, brutal measures had to be taken from the outset; several houses were blown up or destroyed by fire. The astonishing result was that in place of the 12,000 Jews registered a total of 20,000 were caught …

  Song of the Bialystok Ghetto, Poland, circa 1943

  ANONYMOUS

  The Jewish Ghetto in Bialystok, Poland, was established following the German takeover of Russian-occupied Poland in 1941. Upwards of 60,000 Jews were herded into a small quarter of the city astride the Biala river, many of them forced to labour in armaments and textile factories overseen by the Judenrat.

  In the ghetto factories we slave,

  We make shoes and we produce,

  We knit and sew and weave.

  And for that we earn a pass

  For a ride to Treblinka, alas.

  Alas, how bitter are the times,

  But deliverance is on its way;

  It’s not so far away.

  The Red Army will come to free us,

  It’s not so far away.

  The Jews of Bialystok staged a failed uprising in August 1943 against deportations to Treblinka. Some fighters, however, managed to escape the ghetto cordon to join the Polish partisans. Of the surrendered Jews, almost all were murdered or died of starvation and disease.

  ‘A page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned’: The Posen Speeches, 4–6 October 1943

  REICHSFÜHRER–SS HEINRICH HIMMLER

  The speeches delivered by Himmler to assembled SS officers, Reichsleiters and Gauleiters in Posen (Poznań) in occupied Poland are one of the few occasions on which the Nazi leaders did not use euphemisms when referring to the events of the Holocaust. The speeches also clearly show Himmler’s role as architect of the ‘Final Solution’.

  I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.

  Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and never will speak.

  That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that tact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it; everyone shuddered, and everyone was clear that the next time, he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary.

  I am talking about the ‘Jewish evacuation’: the extermination of the Jewish people.

  It is one of those things that is easily said. ‘The Jewish people is being exterminated,’ every party member will tell you, ‘perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them. Ha! A small matter.’

  And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: All the others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew.

  And none of them has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1,000. And to have seen this through, and – with the exception of human weaknesses – to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned.

  Because we know how difficult things would be, if today in every city during the bomb attack
s, the burdens of war and the privations, we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and instigators. We would probably be at the same stage as 1916–17, if the Jews still resided in the body of the German people.

  We have taken away the riches that they had, and I have given a strict order, which Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out, we have delivered these riches completely to the Reich, to the State. We have taken nothing from them for ourselves. A few, who have offended against this, will be [judged] in accordance with an order, that I have at the beginning: He who takes even one mark of this is a dead man.

  A number of SS men have offended against this order. There are not very many, and they will be dead men – without mercy! We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything. That we do not have. Because at the end of this, we don’t want, because we exterminated the bacillus, to become sick and die from the same bacillus.

  I will never see it happen, that even one bit of putrefaction comes in contact with us, or takes root in us. On the contrary, where it might try to take root, we will burn it out together. But altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character.

  [...]

  I ask of you that which I say to you in this circle be really only heard and not ever discussed. We were faced with the question: what about the women and children? I decided to find a clear solution to this problem too. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men – in other words, to kill them or have them killed – and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth. For the organization which had to execute this task, it was the most difficult which we had ever had …. I felt obliged to you, as the most senior dignitary, as the most superior dignitary of the party, this political order, this political instrument of the Führer, to also speak about this question quite openly and to say how it has been. The Jewish question in the countries that we occupy will be solved by the end of this year. Only remainders of odd Jews that managed to find hiding places will be left over.

  The Posen speech of 6 October seemingly implicates Albert Speer in the Final Solution, as Himmler directly addresses him in the course of his peroration on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of April–May 1943:

  This entire ghetto was producing fur coats, dresses, and the like. Whenever we tried to get at it in the past we were told: Stop! Armaments factory! Of course, this has nothing to do with Party Comrade Speer. It wasn’t your doing. It is this portion of alleged armaments factories that Party Comrade Speer and I intend to clear out in the next few weeks.

  Speer, Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, maintained after 1945 that he left the town hall in Posen before Himmler made his speech, and was ignorant of the Holocaust.

  ‘Tell our brothers ... we went to meet our death in full consciousness and with pride’: A Young Polish Girl Shouts Her Defiance, Auschwitz-Birkenau, 17 November 1943

  ANONYMOUS

  The girl who made the ‘very short but fiery speech’ described below was part of an underground Jewish group.

  A certain young Polish woman made a very short but fiery speech in the gas-chamber, addressing all who were present, stripped to their skins. She condemned the Nazi crimes and oppression and ended with the words, ‘We shall not die now. The history of our nation shall immortalize us, our initiative and our spirit are alive and flourishing, the German nation shall as dearly pay for our blood as we possibly can imagine. Down with savagery in the guise of Hitler’s Germany! Long live Poland!’

  Then she turned to the Jews from the Sonderkommando. ‘Remember that it is incumbent on you to follow your sacred duty of revenging us, the guiltless. Tell our brothers, our nation, that we went to meet our death in full consciousness and with pride.’

  Then the Poles kneeled on the ground and solemnly said a certain prayer, in a posture that made an immense impression, then they arose and all together in chorus sang the Polish anthem; the Jews sang the Hatikvah.

  The cruel common fate in this accursed spot merged the lyric tones of these diverse anthems into one whole. They expressed in this way their last feelings with a deeply moving warmth and their hope for, and belief in, the future of their nation. Then they sang the ‘Internationale’.

  One of the Sonderkommandos in the gas-chamber did follow the ‘sacred duty’ incumbent upon him; he made a detailed manuscript of the events he had witnessed – including the girls’ defiance as described above – and buried it for later finding. Other Sonderkommandos secreted their testimonies, among them Salmen Gradowski, who hid his notes in a pit of ash, rightly deducing that one day ‘people will certainly dig to find traces of millions of men who were exterminated’. He wrote in his covering letter:

  Dear finder, search everywhere, in every inch of soil. Tens of documents are buried under it, mine, and those of other persons, which will throw light on everything that was happening here ... We ourselves have lost hope of being able to live to see the moment of liberation.

  A Performance of Verdi’s Requiem, Theresienstadt, circa 1944

  ANNA BERGMAN

  Despite deportations, hunger and disease, the Theresienstadt ghetto developed a rich cultural life: Designed to house privileged Jews, Theresienstadt’s inmates included world-famous artists, musicians and writers. At least four concert orchestras were established in the camp, while the lending library held 60,000 volumes.

  There was a performance of Verdi’s Requiem, the first public-performance with all the trimmings, and the Germans came to listen to what the Jews could do. This was performed with all the hidden meanings stressed. Well, they finished and waited and waited, and the conductor turned round, and everyone waited: to applaud or not? And then the Germans started to applaud. You can’t imagine the irony, the absolute stupidity: the Germans came to the performance, they applauded and they left. And the Jews applauded, everyone was in tears. It was magnificent.

  Pretending to be Aryan, Kraków, Poland, c. 1944

  LEAH HAMMERSTEIN SILVERSTEIN

  Born in Praga, Poland, Leah Hammerstein Silverstein worked under a false non-Jewish identity in the German-run hospital in Kraków.

  At another time I was sitting in front of a big basket with vegetables, cleaning it, and the sun rays came on my head and one of the girls said, ‘Look, her hair is reddish like a Jewess.’ And everybody laughed, and I laughed most hilariously, you know, but inside, you know, the fear was gnawing on my insides … At another time the kitchen chef grabbed me and put my head on the table. He was preparing the sausage for the evening supper.

  And he put this long knife to my neck and said, ‘You see, if you were Jewish, I would cut off your head.’ Big laughter in the room, and I laughed most hilariously, of course. But you know what it does to a psyche of a young girl in her formative years? Can you imagine? With nobody to console you, with nobody to tell you it’s okay, it’ll be better, hold on. Total isolation, total loneliness. It’s a terrible feeling. You know, you are among people and you are like on an island all alone. There is nobody you can go to [to] ask for help. You can ask nobody for advice. You had to make life-threatening decisions all by yourself in a very short time, and you never knew whether your decision will be beneficial to you or detrimental to your existence. It was like playing Russian roulette with your life. And it was not only one incident. It was this way from the moment I came on the Aryan side.

  Auschwitz Observed, April 1942–April 1944

  RUDOLF VRBA AND ALFRED WETZLER

  Vrba and Wetzler were two Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz; their report on conditions inside the camp, transcribed by Dr Oscar Krasniansky of the Slovak Judenrat, was the first eyewitness account of Auschwitz, togethe
r with an attempted estimate of numbers murdered. The ‘Vrba-Wetzler report’ is also known as ‘The Auschwitz Protocols’.

  On 13 April 1942, our group of 1,000 men was loaded on to railway carriages at the assembly camp at Sered’. The doors were sealed, so that nothing would reveal the direction of the journey. When they were opened after a long while, we realized that we had crossed the Slovak frontier and were in Zwardoń. Until then the train had been guarded by Hlinka men, but it was not taken over by SS guards. After a few carriages had been uncoupled from our convoy, we continued on our way, arriving at night at Auschwitz, where we stopped at a siding ... Upon arrival, we were counted off in rows of five. There were 643 of us. After a walk of about twenty minutes with our heavy packs – we had left Slovakia well equipped – we reached the concentration camp of Auschwitz.

  We were led at once into a huge barracks, where we had to deposit all our luggage on one side and on the other undress completely, leaving our clothes and valuables behind. Naked, we then proceeded to an adjoining barracks, where our heads and bodies were shaved and disinfected. At the exit, every man was given a number, beginning with 28,600. With this number in hand, we were then herded to a third barracks, where so-called registration took place. Here the numbers we received in the second barracks were tattooed on the left side of our chests. The extreme brutality with which this was done made many of us faint. The particulars of our identity were also recorded. Then we were led by hundreds into a cellar and later to a barracks, where we were issued striped prisoners’ clothes and wooden clogs. This lasted until 10 a.m. In the afternoon our prisoners’ outfits were taken away from us and replaced by the ragged and dirty remains of Russian uniforms. Thus equipped, we were marched off the Birkenau.