The German pressure on the Slovaks was relatively mild, possibly due to a bottleneck at Auschwitz resulting from the ongoing deportations from the West, the final transports from the Reich and the General Government, and the transports from Salonika, followed by the typhus epidemic in the camp that diverted transports to Sobibor. The fate of the remnants of Slovak Jewry would be sealed on the very eve of Germany’s collapse.
There was a measure of coordination between the deportations from Slovakia and from Croatia (or, more precisely put, from “Greater Croatia”). As we saw, the 40,000 Jews in Pavelic’s state, together with the Serbs and the Gypsies, were hunted down by the Croats, despite Italian efforts to protect as many of them as they could, in their own zone. The Germans, probably unimpressed by the thoroughness of the Ustasha butchering operations and worried from early 1943 on about the psychological impact of Stalingrad, took direct control of the final phase of the liquidation. A first wave of deportations had already substantially decimated the Jewish population in August 1942. The second wave followed in the early summer of 1943, after a visit by Himmler to Zagreb, on May 5. The mopping-up operations that took place after the end of Italian control of the Dalmatian coastal regions were only partly successful, as groups of Jews succeeded in joining Tito’s partisans.51 Throughout the entire period the local Catholic church played a major role in accepting or stemming the Ustasha persecutions and massacres, as already mentioned; we shall return to this issue in the next chapter.
During the first days of 1943 (possibly even at the end of 1942), while Dannecker was about to start the deportations from neighboring Thracia and Macedonia, Rolf Günther arrived in Greece to coordinate the deportations from Salonika. In early February, Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner followed.52 Within a month everything was ready. The first train, with some 2,800 Jews, left the northern Greek city for Auschwitz on March 15, 1943; the second train departed two days later. Within a few weeks 45,000 out of the 50,000 Jews of Salonika had been deported and mostly killed on arrival.53 Simultaneously deportee trains were leaving Thracia and Macedonia for Treblinka.
A host of factors have been adduced to explain the flawless implementation of the German assault upon the Jews of Salonika while the same operation encountered serious obstacles, a year later, when the deportation of the Jews of Athens started. The arrival in Salonika of Eichmann’s top men certainly played an important role, as did the eager collaboration of Vassilis Simonides, the German-appointed governor-general of Macedonia, and the “determination” of the Wilhelmstrasse delegate to Greece, Günther Altenburg.54 Other elements of course reinforced the efficiency of the German officials and the role of Simonides and like-minded Salonikans. Historian Mark Mazower mentions the periodic tension between the Greek inhabitants of the city and the still incompletely assimilated post–World War I Jewish refugees (and thus the lack of active solidarity of the population), the immediate compliance of Chief Rabbi Zwi Koretz, the spiritual head of the community, with all German orders, the absence of any information among the local Jews about the fate that awaited them once they boarded the trains and, also, the absence of a Greek resistance movement that would play a major role a year later, during the deportation of the remaining Jews of the country.55
It has been argued that the total incomprehension of local Jews regarding German policies stemmed—as in Thracia and Macedonia—from the intrinsically different historical memory of these mainly Sephardi communities. They had direct experience or detailed knowledge of Turkish atrocities, of expulsions from Asia Minor, in short of the misery, discrimination, massacres, and resettlements of the World War I years and their immediate aftermath.56 Many of these Jews probably imagined their fate at the hands of the Germans in somewhat similar terms. Whether this was a significant factor in their attitudes is less certain, however: No Jew in occupied Europe imagined what the German measures would be.
During the two years that had elapsed between the German occupation of Greece and the beginning of the deportations, the Jewish community of Salonika had undergone the usual persecutions: looting of libraries and synagogues by the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, conscription of thousands of men to forced labor for the Wehrmacht, involvement of Greek collaborators and sundry prewar fascist groups in anti-Jewish propaganda, and, of course, the usual expropriations.57
By February 1943 the Jews of the city had been marked with the star, segregated in a run-down area, and robbed by Germans and Greeks of whatever remained of their possessions. The Jewish police participated in the razzias and the extortions in a particularly vicious way, while the head of the community, Rabbi Koretz, was spreading soothing comments.58 A camp set up near the railway station, in a tightly enclosed part of the Jewish quarter, became the assembly and transit site from which batch after batch of the Salonikan Jews boarded the trains.59
As the first Jews were on their way to Auschwitz, a strange diplomatic imbroglio caused some annoyance in Berlin, without influencing, however, the speedy implementation of the deportations. First, the acting Greek prime minister, Constantine Logothetopoulos, protested against the German measures and had to be reassured by the combined persuasive talents of Altenburg and Wisliceny. The ICRC delegate in Athens, René Burckhardt, was more troublesome, as he insisted that the Jews of Salonika be sent to Palestine instead of Auschwitz.60 The exasperated Germans finally demanded his removal from Greece.61 The most concrete interference, as usual, came from the Italians.
There had been some dispute about the role of the Italian consul in Salonika as the deportations started. It seems proved now that, from the outset, Consul Guelfo Zamboni did not spare any effort to protect as many Jews as possible: “It should be recalled that protection was granted not only to Jews of Italian nationality, but also to those who claimed a right to such nationality, or raised some forgotten, real or fabricated, familial relationship to Italian Jews, or even in some cases to Jews who in fact did not have any such relationship but who, in the consul’s opinion, had clearly contributed to the cultural or economic interests of Italy in the city or the region.”62
The Italian minister plenipotentiary in Athens, Pellegrino Ghigi strongly supported Zamboni’s interventions, as did the Foreign Ministry in Rome. It seems that the Italians even appealed to the Wilhelmstrasse to obtain the release of some of the protected Jews who had already been deported—to no avail, of course.63 All in all the Germans tried to block the Italian initiative. “Inland IIg,” which succeeded the former “department Germany,” recommended the rejection of Rome’s demands for reasons that illustrate the changing context of the German operations. The Swedes were also demanding exemptions for their newly minted nationals. A positive response to the Italians, Inland II argued, could only strengthen such demands. Moreover, accepting the Italian request would bolster the increasingly hostile attitude of Balkan states regarding German anti-Jewish policies. Finally “the Reich’s reputation” in the whole of Greece would suffer if Italy succeeded in its intervention.64 The Italians nonetheless managed to transfer some 320 protected Jews to Athens.65 As for the pliant Rabbi Koretz and a few other privileged Jews, they were sent to Bergen-Belsen, where Koretz died of typhus on the eve of liberation.66
The old Jewish cemetery of Salonika, with its hundreds of thousands of graves, some of which dated back to the fifteenth century, was destroyed: The Germans used the tombstones for paving roads and building a swimming pool for the troops; the city used the space for developing its vast new university campus.67 What happened to the remnants of generations of Salonikan Jews is nowhere told.
IV
For the Germans carrying the Jews to their death remained a logistic headache to the very end; for some of the Jews the transports as such became death traps, there and then.
In Holland, Belgium, and France the Jews were mostly assembled in Westerbork, Malines, or Drancy (where a sufficient supply of inmates to fill the transports remained the main priority); in these national assembly centers, special trains arrived at regular weekly intervals.
In the Reich itself, however, where no such central assembly camp existed, a Russenzug (“Russian train”) arriving from the East with laborers had to be readied at one of the main departure cities and scheduled so as to allow for the timely arrival of connecting trains from smaller towns with their own loads of Jews. This demanded complex scheduling in and of itself, also due to the irregular arrivals of the trains from the East.
As the Russenzug from Brest-Litovsk to Cologne, programmed to carry 1,000 Jews from Düsseldorf to Izbica, had not yet left Brest, a Düsseldorf police official reported in March 1942, it was to be replaced by Russenzug RU7340 from Russia to Hemer, in Westphalia. The train was to be ready to leave Düsseldorf on April 22, 1942, at 11:06 (it should have arrived in Düsseldorf on the twentieth or twenty-first, after thorough cleaning and delousing); it included twenty cars of unspecified type. Since most trains for the East comprised diverse types of cars, loading at the cattle station was not possible.
For the transport of seventy Jews from Wuppertal to Derendorf, one four-axle car or two two-axle cars would be added to passenger train Pz286 leaving Steinbeck at 14:39, arriving at Düsseldorf Main Station at 15:20. The one hundred Jews from Mönchen-Gladbach would be transported in two cars added to passenger train Pz2303 leaving Mönchen-Gladbach at 14:39 and arriving at Düsseldorf at 15:29. For the 145 Jews from Krefeld, the passenger train leaving Krefeld at 15:46, arriving at Düsseldorf at 17:19, would get two additional four-axle passenger cars and one freight car. The freight car had to be ordered from the merchandise station in Krefeld with the destination Izbica.
The railway administration in Essen allocated a special train, Da152, with passenger cars to which two merchandise cars would be attached for baggage. The cars had to be ordered in Essen with the destination Izbica. The merchandise cars would be directed to the slaughterhouse station, whereas special train Da152 and the cars from Wuppertal, Krefeld, and Mönchen-Gladbach would be directed to the Tussmannstadt platform.68 Of course, in the Reich such problems rapidly dwindled in 1943.
Periodically the Reichsbahn had to be paid for its services. Although most of the transports were easily funded by the RSHA from the victims’ assets, at times the payments were not readily available or the moving of the trains through several currency zones created complex accounting problems for all involved.69
The major challenge, however, was the availability of trains as such. Thus in early June 1942, Himmler’s adjutant, SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, demanded the personal intervention of the secretary of state at the Transportation Ministry, Dr. Theodor Ganzenmüller, to ensure the daily deportations from Warsaw. On July 27 Ganzenmüller reported to Wolff: “Since 22.7. a train with 5,000 Jews travels daily from Warsaw over Malkinia to Treblinka. Moreover, twice a week a train with 5,000 Jews travels from Przemysl to Belzec. Gedob [the “General Directorate of the Ostbahn”] stays in ongoing contact with the Security Service in Cracow.”70 Wolff ’s notorious answer of August 13 remains engraved in history: “Hearty thanks in the name of the Reichsführer SS for your letter of July 28, 1942. With great joy I learned from your announcement that, for the past fourteen days, a train has gone daily to Treblinka with 5,000 members of the chosen people.”71
Wolff ’s plea to Ganzenmüller—and Himmler’s own repeated demands for help—are perplexing in regard to deportations within the General Government, given the short distances between any of the ghettos and the “Aktion Reinhardt” camps. The matter looks even more perplexing if we take into account that in the overall daily traffic of 30,000 trains operated by the Reichsbahn in 1942, only two Sonderzüge (“special trains”) per day carried Jews to their death during that same period.72 Yet Wolff ’s and Himmler’s nervousness was partly justified. The Reichsbahn gave very low priority to the “special trains” in its planning: “[They] were put into unoccupied slots intended for through freight trains or were run as freight extras. The result was that they were allowed onto the main line only after all other traffic had passed. Wehrmacht trains, military supply trains carrying armaments and coal trains all moved before the Sonderzüge. This explains the long stops in sidings and yards recorded in the anecdotal evidence of survivors and guards. Moreover, the trains were assigned old, worn-out locomotives and old cars, explaining their slow speed and frequent stops for repairs.”73
Yet, as the “special trains” represented such a minute fraction of the overall traffic, timely planning ultimately allowed almost any problem to be solved. From September 26 to 28, 1942, a conference of Transportation Ministry officials attended either by Eichmann or by Rolf Günther rose to the challenge in a highly positive spirit. After a listing of the number of trains required for the district-by-district deportation of the Jewish population of the General Government to the extermination camps, the protocol expressed the overall confidence of the participants: “With the reduction of the transport of potatoes, it is expected that it will be possible for the special train service to be able to place at the disposal of the Directorate of the German Railways in Cracow the necessary number of freight cars. Thus the train transportation required will be available in accordance with the above proposals and the plan completed this year.”74
Notwithstanding such goodwill, the Reichsführer had to plead again with Ganzenmüller on January 20, 1943, and explain that in order to ensure internal security East and West, the accelerated deportation of the Jews was essential: “I must receive more transport trains, if I want to complete this rapidly,” Himmler wrote. “I know very well the overstretched situation of the railways and what constant demands are made upon you. Nonetheless, I must address my request to you: Help me and get me more trains.”75
As for the “cargo” itself, it did not cause any major problems. Of course there were the usual suicides and some attempts to flee before boarding the trains and others during the transports. Thus, on April 23, 1942, the Krefeld Gestapo informed Düsseldorf that among the Jews scheduled for deportation on April 22, Julius Israel Meier, Augusta Sara Meier, Else Sara Frankenberg, and Elisabeth Sara Frank could not be evacuated as the first three had committed suicide, and the fourth had disappeared.76
Throughout the deportation period there are no records of any fights breaking out on the trains between the deportees and the guards. Deaths during the transports were frequent, from exhaustion, thirst, suffocation, and the like. They were duly accounted for and reported. On April 13, 1943, for example, a police lieutenant Karl reported about a transport from Skopje (Macedonia) to Treblinka: “On March 29, at 6:00, the loading of 2,404 Jews into freight cars commenced at the former tobacco sheds. Loading was completed at 12:00 and at 12:30 the train departed. The train passed through Albanian territory. The final destination, Treblinka (the camp), was reached on April 5, 1943, at 7:00…. The train was unloaded that same day between the hours of 09:00 and 11:00. Incidents: Five Jews died en route. On the night of March 30—an elderly woman of seventy, on the night of March 31—an elderly man aged eighty-five; on April 3 an elderly woman aged ninety-four and a six-month-old child. On April 4 an elderly woman aged ninety-nine died. Transport roster: received 2,404—less 5—total delivered at Treblinka: 2,399.”77
Oskar Rosenfeld’s journey from Prague to Lodz had been relatively easy at the end of 1941.78 Generally the travel from Western Europe, Italy, or even from Germany, appears to have been less lethal than the transports within Eastern Europe or from the Balkans to Auschwitz or Treblinka. The Italian writer Primo Levi, to whom we will return, briefly described his journey from the assembly camp at Fossoli di Carpi, near Modena, to Auschwitz in early 1944:
“Our restless sleep was often interrupted by noisy and futile disputes, by curses, by kicks and blows blindly delivered to ward off some encroaching and inevitable contact. Then someone would light a candle, and its mournful flicker would reveal an obscure agitation, a human mass, extended across the floor, confused and continuous, sluggish and aching, rising here and there in sudden convulsions and immediately collapsing again in exhaustion.”79 Levi evokes
the changing landscape, the successive names of cities, Austrian first, then Czech, and finally Polish: “The convoy stopped for the last time, in the dead of night, in the middle of a dark silent plain.”80 They had arrived.
Most deportees would have considered Levi’s journey a luxury trip. Usually freight cars had insufficient openings for fresh air and an entirely insufficient supply of water. Even the relatively privileged transport from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz in June 1944, described by Ruth Kluger, gives an intimation of the more common traveling conditions: “The doors were sealed, and air came through a small rectangle that served as window. Maybe there was a second rectangle at the back of the car, but that was the place for the luggage…. Only one person could stand in this privileged spot [the small rectangle for air], and he was not likely to give it up. Rather he was apt to be someone who knew how to use his elbows. There were simply too many of us…. Soon the wagon reeked with the various smells that humans produce if they have to stay where they are…. The train stood around, it was summer, the temperature rose. The still air smelled of sweat, urine, excrement. A whiff of panic trembled in the air.”81
All of this was still peaceful. With a few more deportees per car, everything changed. Barely some weeks later, in July 1944, the very short trip (140 miles) from the Starachowice labor camp to Auschwitz unfolded differently. According to surviving deportees, the train was brutally overloaded on orders of the Starachowice police chief, as the Red Army was approaching. Around 75 women were packed per freight car, and separately 100 to 150 men were crammed into each wagon.82 The journey lasted thirty-six hours. The struggle for water and mainly for air soon started in the men’s cars. “Nineteen-year-old Ruben Z. was ‘very lucky’ to find a place beside the small window for fresh air at the beginning of the trip. He got several beatings from people who were desperate to get near the window, and was finally pushed away and lost his place. He became so dizzy and weak that he could not remember what happened thereafter, other than that fifteen people had died in his car by the time they reached Birkenau.”83 In one car 27 men died; in another, 30 out of 120 men.84
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