Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination

by Saul Friedlander

  During these same days, Korczak noted a street scene: “The body of a dead boy lies on the sidewalk. Nearby, three boys are playing horses and drivers. At one point they notice the body, move a few steps to the side, go on playing.”131

  On August 4 Korczak described another minute episode: In the early-morning light he was watering the flowers on his windowsill while in the street an armed German soldier stood watching him. “I am watering the flowers. My bald head in the window—What a splendid target. He has a rifle. Why is he standing and looking on calmly? He has no orders to shoot. And perhaps he was a village teacher in civilian life, or a notary, a street sweeper in Leipzig, a waiter in Cologne? What would he do if I nodded to him? Waved my hand in a friendly gesture? Perhaps he doesn’t even know that things are as they are? He may have arrived only yesterday, from far away.”132

  The following day the whole orphanage, like all Jewish orphanages in the ghetto, was ordered to proceed to the Umschlagplatz. Korczak walked at the head of the column of children marching to their death. On August 6 Lewin noted: “They emptied Dr. Korczak’s orphanage with the doctor at the head. Two hundred orphans.”133 Kaplan was no longer alive to describe the deportation of Korczak’s children. His ultimate diary entry had been written on August 4; the last line read: “If my life ends—what will become of my diary.”134

  By September 21 the great Aktion was over: 10,380 Jews had been killed in the ghetto during the deportations; 265,040 had been deported to Treblinka and gassed.135

  Capt. Wilm Hosenfeld, head of sports facilities for Wehrmacht officers in Warsaw, knew quite a lot about what was happening to the Jews—although he refused to believe in systematic murder—as his diary throughout the Aktion indicates. “If what they are saying in the city is true,” he noted on July 25, 1942, “and it does come from reliable sources—then it is no honor to be a German officer, and no one could go along with what is happening. But I can’t believe it. The rumors say that thirty thousand Jews are to be taken from the ghetto this week and sent east somewhere. In spite of all the secrecy people say they know what happens then: Somewhere near Lublin, buildings have been constructed with rooms that can be electrically heated with strong current, like the electricity in a crematorium. Unfortunate people are driven into these heated rooms and burned alive, and thousands can be killed like that in a day, saving all the trouble of shooting them, digging mass graves and then filling them in. The guillotine of the French revolution can’t compete, and even in the cellars of the Russian secret police they hadn’t devised such virtuoso methods of mass slaughter. But surely this is madness. It can’t be possible. You wonder why the Jews don’t defend themselves. However, many, indeed most of them, are so weak from starvation and misery that they couldn’t offer any resistance.”136

  In brief notes jotted down at the end of 1942, Ringelblum established a clear distinction between the previous period and the one that had started during the last few months: “The latest period. The time of atrocities. Impossible to write a monographic study because—the shadows of Ponar, 9,000 from Slonim, expulsions—the tragedy of Lublin…Chelmno—gas. Treblinki [sic]…. Time of persecutions, and now the time of atrocities.”137

  Treblinka, the last and deadliest of the “Aktion Reinhardt” camps, had been built to the northeast of Warsaw, close to the Warsaw-Bialystok railway line, on sandy terrain stretching to a bend in the river Bug. The closest station was Malkinia, from which a single-track line led to the camp. The “lower” or first camp extended over the larger area; it included the assembly and undressing squares and, farther on, workshops and barracks. The second or “upper” camp was isolated from the first by barbed wire and thick foliage fences that hindered unwelcome observation. A heavy brick building concealed the three gas chambers linked to a diesel engine by a system of pipes (a larger building with ten gas chambers would be added in October 1942). As in Chelmno, Belzec, or Sobibor, on arrival the deportees had to undress and leave all clothes or valuables for the sorting squads. From the “undressing square” the victims were driven to the gas chambers along “the road to heaven” (Himmelstrasse), a narrow corridor also hidden from the surroundings by thick branches. A sign pointed “to the showers.”138

  SS Obersturmführer Richard Thomalla had been in charge of the construction of the camp. Euthanasia physician Dr. Irmfried Eberl was appointed first commandant, and on July 23, 1942, the exterminations began. According to SS Unterscharführer Hans Hingst’s testimony, “Dr. Eberl’s ambition was to reach the highest possible numbers and exceed all the other camps. So many transports arrived that the disembarkation and gassing of the people could no longer be handled.”139 Within days Eberl completely lost control of the situation. By the end of August some 312,000 Jews, mainly from Warsaw but also from the districts of Radom and Lublin, had been gassed at the new camp.140

  Eberl’s “incompetence” was compounded by widespread corruption: The money and valuables carried by the victims found their way into the camp staff ’s pockets and also into those of the commandant’s euthanasia colleagues in Berlin.141 When Globocnik became aware of the situation in Treblinka in August, he traveled to the camp with Wirth and Josef Oberhauser. Eberl was relieved of his position then and there, and Wirth was ordered to move in and tidy up the chaos so that Stangl, the Sobibor commandant, could take over, which he did in early September.142

  In his prison interviews with Sereny, Stangl described his first visit to Treblinka while Eberl was still in charge: “I drove there, with an SS driver…. We could smell it kilometers away. The road ran alongside the railway. When we were about fifteen, twenty minutes’ drive from Treblinka we began to see corpses by the [railway] line, first just two or three, then more, and as we drove into Treblinka station, there were what looked hundreds of them—just lying there—they’d obviously been there for days, in the heat. In the station was a train full of Jews, some dead, some still alive…that too, looked as if it had been there for days…. When I entered the camp and got out of the car on the square I stepped knee-deep into money; I didn’t know which way to turn, where to go. I waded in notes, currency, precious stones, jewelry, clothes…. The smell was indescribable; the hundreds, no, the thousands of bodies everywhere, decomposing, putrefying. Across the square, in the woods, just a few hundred yards away on the other side of the barbed-wire fence and all around the perimeter of the camp, there were tents and open fires with groups of Ukrainian guards and girls—whores, I found out later, from all over the countryside—weaving drunk, dancing, singing, playing music.”143

  VI

  In Lodz in the fall of 1942, as had been the case in Warsaw, the Germans established priority rules of their own. On September 1 the deportations started. The patients of the ghetto’s five hospitals were “evacuated” within two hours; whoever protested was shot on the spot. In all 2,000 patients, including 400 children, were carted away. Once the Germans had arrested most of the patients, they checked the hospital registry, and if anybody was missing, most of the time family members were taken instead.

  According to Josef Zelkowicz, one of the ghetto chroniclers and a Yiddish writer of some renown, who apart from his “official” contributions to the “Chronicle” also kept a private diary, the procedure was in fact more tortuous: “The authorities insisted that all patients who escaped from the hospitals be turned in,” he recorded on September 3. “However, since some were missing and many others could not be handed over because they had ‘backing’ and connections in the ghetto, it was agreed with the authorities that the kehilla would transfer two hundred other people in their stead. Those to be sacrificed would be sought not only among the escapees but among people who had been hospitalized at some other time, for any illness and had long since been discharged but lacked [protectors]. Even those who had never been hospitalized but who had applied for hospitalization on the basis of a doctor’s recommendation would be included.”144

  The deportation of the sick was immediately followed by an order to evacuate some furth
er 20,000 Jews, including all children under ten and all the elderly above sixty-five. As these categories totaled only 17,000 people, 3,000 unemployed or unemployable inhabitants were added.145 “In the evening,” Sierakowiak recorded on September 3, “disturbing news spread that the Germans had allegedly demanded that all children up to the age of ten must be delivered for deportation and, supposedly, extermination.”146

  On September 5 Sierakowiak’s mother was taken away. “My most sacred, beloved, worn-out, blessed, cherished Mother has fallen victim to the bloodthirsty German Nazi beast!!! Two doctors, Czech Jews, suddenly arrived in the Sierakowiaks’ apartment and declared the mother unfit for work; throughout the doctors’ visit, the father continued to eat the soup left by relatives in hiding and was also “taking sugar out of their bag.” The mother left, with some bread in her bag and some potatoes. “I couldn’t muster the willpower to look through the windows after her or to cry,” Sierakowiak went on. “I walked around, talked and finally sat as though I had turned to stone…. I thought my heart was breaking…. It didn’t break, though, and it let me eat, think, speak and go to sleep.”147

  On September 4 Rumkowski addressed a crowd of some 1,500 terrified inhabitants assembled on “Fireman’s Square”: “The ghetto has been dealt a grievous blow. They ask that we give them that which is most precious—the children and old people. I was never privileged to have a child of my own and therefore I devoted my best years to children…. In my old age I am compelled to stretch out my hand and beg: ‘My brothers and my sisters, give them to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children!’…I must carry out the grim bloody surgery, I must amputate limbs to save the body! I must take away children and if I do not, others too may be taken…. I wanted at least to save one age group—from age nine to ten. But they would not relent…. We have in the ghetto many tuberculosis patients; their days or perhaps weeks are numbered. I do not know—maybe it is a satanic plot, maybe it is not—but I cannot refrain from presenting it: Give me these patients and it may be possible to save healthy people in their stead.”148 “The President cries like a little boy,” Zelkowicz added.149

  After describing the deportations, the chroniclers added a highly significant postscript conveying, as Sierakowiak had confessed about himself, the prevailing emotional numbness of the ghetto population: “The populace’s strange reaction to the recent events is noteworthy. There is not the slightest doubt that this was a profound and terrible shock, and yet one must wonder at the indifference shown by those…from whom loved ones had been taken. It would seem that the events of recent days would have immersed the entire population of the ghetto in mourning for a long time to come, and yet, right after the incidents, and even during the resettlement action, the populace was obsessed with everyday concerns—getting bread, rations and so forth—and often went from immediate personal tragedy right back into daily life.150

  Zelkowicz, who had written the chronicle entry about emotional numbness, offered some explanation for it in his private diary on September 3; it could have been called “the psychology of starvation.” While mentioning how death had become “a daily event that surprised and frightened no one,” the diarist noted that a distribution of potatoes had been announced on that same day; that had become the real event. “As long as a ghetto inhabitant lives, he wants at least once, if only for the last time, to experience the sense of satisfaction, to gorge himself. Afterward, whatever will be, will be…. So whenever there is talk about handing out potatoes, everything that has happened till now is shunted aside…. Yes, potatoes will be given out; it’s a fact. Starting tomorrow, Friday, September 4…. The crowd is elated…. The people can only wish one another: may we be the privileged to eat these potatoes while we are still alive.”151

  Between August 10 and 23, 1942, many of the Jews of Lwov were deported to the Janowska Road slave labor camp and, after a further selection, from there to Belzec. Some 40,000 of the victims arrested during the August roundup were exterminated.152 The remaining Jews of the city were driven into a ghetto, soon surrounded by a wooden fence. The Judenrat office was relocated to the ghetto area, but the Judenrat officials and among them the chairman, Henryk Landesberg, were not to resume their functions. According to the Germans, Landesberg had been in touch with the Polish underground.153 The chairman and twelve other Jewish officials were to be publicly hanged from the roof of the building and from lampposts.

  The executions took some time, as the ropes used for the hangings broke; the victims who fell to the pavement were compelled to climb the stairs leading to the roof and were hanged again. The highest spot was kept for Landesberg, as chairman. He fell to the pavement three times and three times was brought back to his balcony. The bodies were left on display for two days. A survivor from the ghetto described the scene. “I went with my mother to the office of the Jewish community regarding an apartment and there in the light breeze, dangled the corpses of the hanged, their faces blue, their heads tilted backward, their tongues blackened and stretched out. Luxury cars raced in from the center of the city, German civilians with their wives and children came to see the sensational spectacle, and, as was their custom, the visitors enthusiastically photographed the scene. Afterward the Ukrainians and Poles arrived by with greater modesty.”154 The Germans sent the bill for the ropes to the new Judenrat.155 As for the Jews of the Lwov ghetto, they did not survive long: Most were liquidated in sporadic Aktionen and the remnant transferred to the Janowski camp in early 1943. When Lwov was liberated at the end of July 1944, out of a community of some 160,000 Jews in June 1941, some 3,400 were still alive.156

  In nearby Drohobycz, the writer Bruno Schulz, who, as will be remembered, was painting the walls of SS Felix Landau’s mansion and of the local Gestapo offices, was still alive in the autumn of 1942, protected by his “patron.” In the meantime he had had to move into the ghetto and was by then mainly employed in cataloging the approximately 100,000 books seized by the Germans in the town and assembled at the old-age home.157

  Schulz sensed that his end was near. “They are supposed to liquidate us by November [1942],” he told a Polish ex–fellow teacher of the local gymnasium.158 And indeed on November 19 a shooting incident in the ghetto triggered wild reprisals against the population. Landau was away; the Gestapo man’s personal enemy, SS Scharführer Karl Günther, seized the occasion of the “wild action,” tracked Schulz on one of the ghetto streets, and killed him. About one hundred Jews were murdered in the action: On the next day their bodies were still lying on the streets.159

  In July 1942 the chief of the Vilna Jewish police, Jacob Gens, became the sole head of the Vilna ghetto. Among community leaders he was in many ways atypical. Born in Kovno, he fought as a volunteer in the Lithuanian war of independence in the aftermath of World War I and was promoted to officer rank. He married a Christian and was well regarded by Lithuanian nationalists (he himself was a right-wing Zionist, a member of Wladimir Jabotinski’s Revisionist Party). In Philip Friedman’s words “it remains something of a mystery why Gens had accepted the position [of chief of the ghetto police].”160 His wife and daughter remained on the Aryan side of the city. He possibly felt a moral obligation to take the position offered by the Germans. In the first letter Gens sent his wife from the ghetto, he wrote. “This is the first time in my life that I have to engage in such duties. My heart is broken. But I shall always do what is necessary for the sake of the Jews in the ghetto.”161

  During the selections of late November 1941, Gens succeeded in saving some lives in particularly difficult circumstances; his standing among the inhabitants grew and the Germans also kept adding to his tasks. But in mid-October 1942 the almost legendary “kommandant” was confronted with a grim challenge: the order to kill Jews.

  Gens and his policemen were sent to a nearby town, Oszmiana, where about 1,400 Jews had been assembled for extermination. The police chief negotiated with the Germans, who finally agreed that only 400 Jews were to be murdered. Gens’s men and some Lithuanians carried
out the executions. Somehow news of the approaching operation had spread in the ghetto as the policemen got on their way. Rudashevski was outraged by the very idea of such participation: “…Jews will dip their hands in the dirtiest and bloodiest work. They wish simply to replace the Lithuanians…. The entire ghetto is in uproar about this departure [of the Jewish policemen to Oszmiana],” he recorded on October 19. “How great is our shame, our humiliation! Jews help the Germans in their organized, terrible work of extermination.”162

  In fact the ghetto was not in an uproar, contrary to what Rudashevski intensely hoped for and reported. It seems rather that the inhabitants accepted Gens’s reasoning and his justifications: Saving some by sacrificing others. “The tragedy is that the…public mostly approves of Gens’s attitude,” Kruk wrote on October 28. “The public figures that perhaps this may really help.”163

  It was not only the ordinary population of the ghetto that supported Gens’s decision; on October 27 the highly respected YIVO founder and linguist Zelig Kalmanovitch noted in his diary. “The rabbi [of Oszmiana] ruled that the old ones should be handed over. Old ones who asked that they should be taken…. If outsiders [the Lithuanians or the Germans] had done the job—there would have been more victims and all the property would have been stolen.”164 These lines do not reveal if Kalmanovitch was merely recording Gens’s arguments or expressing his own agreement. But he did so at length a few days later when Gens was again ordered to participate with his policemen in an Aktion in ´