The Holocaust
Page 104
13 ‘The Story of an Unsung Hero’: The Voice of Auschwitz Survivors in Israel, number 27, June 1984.
14 Report from a Tribunal held at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, in February 1985; Jewish Chronicle, 8 February 1985; Jerusalem Post International Edition, 16 February 1985.
15 Testimony of Yossl Rosensaft (Chairman of the Belsen Committee after the liberation of Belsen in 1945), talking (in Yiddish) to Sam Goldsmith, a war correspondent: Goldsmith papers (first published in Hebrew in Haboker, Tel Aviv, 9 May 1945; reprinted in English in S. J. Goldsmith, Jews in Transition, New York 1969).
16 Proclamation No. 416, 16 June 1944: Lodz Chronicle, 16 June 1944: Dobroszycki, op. cit., pages 503–4.
17 Lodz Chronicle, 16 June 1944: ibid., pages 503–5.
18 Lodz Chronicle, 22 June 1944: ibid., page 513.
19 Lodz Chronicle, ibid., page 503, note 21.
20 Lodz Chronicle, 23 June 1944: ibid., pages 513–14.
21 Lodz Chronicle, 24 June 1944: ibid., pages 514–15.
22 Lodz Chronicle, 25 June 1944: ibid., page 515.
23 Testimony of Mordechai Zurawski: Eichmann Trial, 5 June 1961, session 65.
24 Testimony of Mordka (Mordechai, Mieczyslaw) Zurawski, of Wloclawek: Lodz, 29 October 1945: Bednarz, Das Vernichtungslager zu Chelmno am Ner, op. cit., page 210.
25 Testimony of Shimon Srebnik: Eichmann Trial, 6 June 1961, session 66.
26 Note of 9 September 1944: Bednarz, op. cit.
27 Cholawski, Soldiers from the Ghetto, op. cit., pages 176–7.
28 Czech, ‘Kalendarium’, op. cit., entry for 24 June 1944. Galinski’s camp number was 531; Mala Zimetbaum’s, 19880.
29 Fenelon, The Musicians of Auschwitz, op. cit., pages 160–1.
30 Recollections of Lena Berg: Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom, op. cit. pages 309–10.
31 Testimony of Raja Kagan: Eichmann Trial, 8 June 1961, session 70.
32 Recollections of Lena Berg: Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom, op. cit., page 310.
33 Fenelon, op. cit., page 167.
34 Testimony of Raja Kagan: Eichmann Trial, 8 June 1961, session 70.
35 Recollections of Lena Berg: Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom, op. cit.
36 Fenelon, op. cit., pages 166–7.
37 ‘List of Jews Executed in France’: Klarsfeld, op. cit., pages 641–54.
38 Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, op. cit., page 218. More than two hundred thousand unarmed people, Jews and Soviet prisoners-of-war, had been murdered at Maly Trostenets between the autumn of 1941 and the summer of 1944. The murders had been carried out in two hamlets near the villages of Blagovshchina and Shashkovka. Soviet research after the war estimated that about one hundred and fifty thousand people had been murdered in Blagovshchina and a further fifty thousand in Shashkovka, where the Germans had built a special ‘incinerator-pit’: Byelorussian Soviet Encyclopaedia, short encyclopaedia, volume 1, Minsk 1979, page 699. I am grateful to Yigael Zafoni for this reference.
39 Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz, a Doctor’s Eye-Witness Account, London 1962.
40 Arad, Ghetto in Flames, op. cit., pages 446 and 460.
41 Lederer, op. cit., page 228.
42 The Book of Alfred Kantor, New York 1971, plate 78. I am grateful to Roland Gant for a copy of this book.
43 Ibid., page 80.
44 Lederer, op. cit., page 229.
45 Steckoll, The Alderney Death Camp, op. cit., page 92.
46 ‘Transport Eb’ of 18 May 1944 and ‘Transport Ek’ of 28 September 1944: Lederer, op. cit., pages 231–2.
47 ‘Transport Eh’, 1 July 1944 (ten prisoners), ‘Transport Eg’, 4 July 1944 (fifteen prisoners) and ‘Transport Ej’, 27 September 1944 (twenty prisoners): ibid., page 232.
48 Meir Ronnen, ‘The Legacy of Herr Doktor Candid’, Jerusalem Post, 20 January 1984.
49 Documents concerning Oscar Schindler: Yad Vashem archive.
50 Bartoszewski, Warsaw Death Ring, op. cit., page 326.
51 Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish Gazetteer, op. cit., page 81.
52 Jeno Levai (editor), Eichmann in Hungary, Budapest 1961, page 126.
53 Report of 11 July 1944: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NG-5616.
54 Elenore Lester, Wallenberg: the Man in the Iron Web, New Jersey 1983; Alexander Zvielli, ‘Doomed Saviour’, Jerusalem Post, 15 July 1983.
55 Braham, The Politics of Genocide, op. cit., volume 2, pages 788–9.
56 Lutz papers: Yad Vashem archive.
57 Testimony of Dr Aharon Peretz: Eichmann Trial, 4 May 1961, session 28.
58 Testimony of Dr Tania Ipp: Yad Vashem archive.
59 Testimony of Miriam Krakinowski: Yad Vashem archive.
60 Vera Elyashiv, recollections, op. cit.
61 Testimony of Shalom Cholawski: Eichmann Trial, 12 June 1961, session 73.
62 Testimony of Abba Kovner: Eichmann Trial, 4 May 1961, session 27.
63 Testimony of Abraham Karasick: Eichmann Trial, 4 May 1961, session 27. Karasick joined the Red Army. He was demobilized in 1945 and went to Palestine. Interned in Cyprus by the British in 1947, he finally settled in Israel in 1949.
64 Hirshaut, Jewish Martyrs of Pawiak, op. cit., page 228.
65 Eliezer Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli (memorial book of Siauliai—Shavli—Schaulen), Jerusalem 1958.
36. JULY–SEPTEMBER 1944: THE LAST DEPORTATIONS
1 Hizkia M. Franco, Les Martyrs Juifs de Rhodes et de Cos, Elizabethville (Katanga) 1952, page 91.
2 Ibid., pages 97–8.
3 Violette Fintz, in conversation with the author, Cape Town.
4 John Bierman, Odyssey 1940, New York 1984, pages 218–19.
5 Franco, op. cit., page 99.
6 Violette Fintz, in conversation with the author, Cape Town.
7 Franco, op. cit., page 101.
8 Violette Fintz, in conversation with the author, Cape Town.
9 Franco, op. cit., page 104. (In the journey by sea, five Jews had died; at Haidar camp, and in the combined, sea and rail journey, twenty-two died.)
10 Bierman, op. cit., pages 222–3.
11 Levai, Eichmann in Hungary, op. cit., pages 127–9.
12 Falstein, The Martyrdom of Jewish Physicians in Poland, op. cit., page 324.
13 Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, op. cit., page 59.
14 Braham, The Politics of Genocide, op. cit., volume 2, page 1073.
15 Levai, op. cit., pages 142, 144, and facsimile of Iron Cross award, page 143.
16 Fritz Hesse, Das Spiel um Deutschland, Munich 1953 (Hewel was Ribbentrop’s liaison with Hitler, with the rank of Ambassador.)
17 ‘Convoy 77, July 31, 1944’: Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews, op. cit., pages 582–94.
18 Martin Gilbert, The Jews of Hope, London 1984, pages 157–61.
19 Lodz Chronicle, 22 July 1944: Dobroszycki, op. cit., page 532.
20 Lodz Chronicle, 23 July 1944: ibid., page 532.
21 Lodz Chronicle, 25 July 1944: ibid., page 534.
22 Diary entry, 31 July 1944: Eisenberg, Witness to the Holocaust, op. cit., page 324.
23 Diary entry, 3 August 1944: idem.
24 Friedman, Roads to Extinction, op. cit., page 348.
25 Testimony of Halina Zipora Preston (nee Wind), op. cit.
26 Sirkka Purkey, ‘The Treatment of Jewish Refugees in Finland’, op. cit.
27 Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, op. cit., pages 277–8.
28 Meed, On Both Sides of the Wall, op. cit., page 323.
29 Charles (Chaim) Goldstein, The Bunker, New York 1973, page 105.
30 Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, op. cit., page 287.
31 Meed, op. cit., page 327.
32 Ibid., pages 327–8.
33 Falstein, op. cit., page 344.
34 Ibid., page 338.
35 Ibid., page 489.
36 Borzykowski, Between Tumbling Walls, op. cit., pages 168–9.
37 Testimony of Ruth Chajet (born in Vilna on 20 July 1925), given to the Historical Com
mission in Feldafing, 2 January 1948: Yad Vashem archive.
38 The Diary of Anne Frank, op. cit., page 223.
39 Friedman, Roads to Extinction, op. cit., page 348.
40 Nyiszli, Auschwitz, op. cit., pages 128–30.
41 Ibid., page 133.
42 Friedman, Roads to Extinction, op. cit., page 348.
43 Maja Abramowicz (Zarch), typescript, op. cit., page 56.
44 Franco, op. cit., page 103.
45 Violette Fintz, in conversation with the author, Cape Town.
46 Bierman, op. cit., pages 223–4.
47 Franco, op. cit., page 103. Of the 1,673 Jews deported from Rhodes on July 23, 22 had died on the sea and rail journey.
48 ‘Letter from Lwow to a Palestine Resident’, Lvov, 24 August 1944: Bulletin, London, op. cit., April 1945.
49 Joseph Ariel, ‘Jewish Resistance and Self-Defence in France during World War II: Yad Vashem Studies, VI, Jerusalem 1967, pages 242–3. See also Anny Latour, The Jewish Resistance in France 1940–1944, New York 1981, pages 233–48.
50 Ladislav Lipscher, Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat, 1939–1945, Munich and Vienna 1980, pages 167–76.
51 Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, op. cit., page xxii.
52 Dorothy and Pesach Bar-Adon, Seven Who Fell, Tel Aviv 1947, pages 173–85. Havivah Reik was captured on 28 October 1944 and shot on 20 November 1944.
53 Czeslaw Mordowicz, in conversation with the author, Tel Aviv.
54 Yad Vashem photographic collection.
55 Georges Dunand, Ne perdez pas leur trace!, Neuchâtel 1951.
56 Bar-Adon, op. cit., pages 184–5.
57 Czech, ‘Kalendarium’, op. cit., entry for 30 August 1944.
58 Michael Etkind, in conversation with the author, London, 1 June 1982.
59 Czech, ‘Kalendarium’, op. cit., entry for 30 August 1944.
60 Ibid., entry for 5 September 1944.
61 Gisella Perl, I was a Doctor in Auschwitz, New York 1948, pages 114–15.
62 Lena Berg’s recollections: Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom, op. cit., pages 313–14.
63 Letter dated 6 September 1944: Bezwinska and Czech, Amidst a Nightmare of Crime, op. cit., pages 76–7. The editors (Jadwiga Bezwinska and Danuta Czech) write: ‘The manuscript of Salmen Gradowski was dug out on the site of crematorium II at Birkenau by Szlama Dragon, prisoner No 80359, former member of Sonderkommando. Dragon was one of the several members of Sonderkommando who had managed to survive the camp. He was lucky to have been able to escape from the evacuation transport (in the vicinity of Pszczyna), which had left Birkenau on January 18, 1945. After liberation he returned to the site of the camp where he was present when the Extraordinary Soviet State Commission investigated Nazi crimes, committed in the camp. He handed over the disinterred manuscript to the Commission.’
37. SEPTEMBER 1944: THE DAYS OF AWE
1 Yehoshua Robert Büchler, The Story and Source of the Jewish Community of Topoltchany, Jerusalem 1976, pages 79–83.
2 List of Jews to be evacuated from Topusko (Yugoslavia) to Bari (Italy), 3 September 1944: War Office papers, 202/293. The first twenty-nine Jews were airlifted out on 18 September 1944.
3 ‘Rijeka’ (Italian ‘Fiume’): Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, volume 14, column 185.
4 Liliana Picciotto Fargion, ‘Note biografiche dei decorati con medaglia d’oro’: Giuliana Donati, Persecuzione e Deportazione degli Ebrei dall’Italia durante la Dominazione Nazifascista, Milan 1975, pages 52–3.
5 Braham, The Politics of Genocide, op. cit., volume 2, pages 982–5.
6 Testimony of Yosef Buzhminsky: Eichmann Trial, 2 May 1961, session 24.
7 Evelyn Le Chěne, Mauthausen: the History of a Death Camp, London 1971, page 75.
8 Testimony of a former prisoner at Bor: Pazner papers, Yad Vashem archive. The Cervenka massacre took place on 8 October 1944.
9 Dr Konstantin Bazarov: letter to the author, 7 October 1978.
10 Steckel, Destruction and Survival, op. cit., page 38.
11 Testimony of Josef Zalman Kleinman: Eichmann Trial, 7 June 1961, session 68.
12 Testimony of Dr Aharon Beilin: Eichmann Trial, 7 June 1961, session 69.
13 M. Dworzecki, The Camps for Jews in Estonia (Hebrew, English summary), Tel Aviv, 1970.
14 Kulka, ‘Jewish Revolt in Auschwitz’, op. cit.
15 Testimony of Josef Zalman Kleinmann: Eichmann Trial, 7 June 1961, session 68.
16 Testimony of Dr Aharon Beilin: Eichmann Trial, 7 June 1961, session 69.
17 Leon Szalet, Experiment ‘E’, New York 1945, pages 70–1: Des Pres, The Survivor, op. cit., pages 104–5.
18 Sala Kaye, Holocaust Testimony 1, London 1983.
19 Testimony of Nahum Hoch: Eichmann Trial, 8 June 1961, session 71.
20 Levi Shalit, Beyond Dachau, Johannesburg 1980, pages 50–52.
21 ‘Transport Ek’, 28 September 1944: Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, op. cit., pages 232–4.
22 ‘Transport El’, 29 September 1944: ibid., pages 234–5.
23 ‘Transport Em’, 1 October 1944: ibid., page 236.
24 ‘Transport En’, 4 October 1944: idem.
25 ‘Transport Eo’, 6 October 1944: ibid., page 237.
26 Testimony of Alfred Oppenheimer: Eichmann Trial, 7 June 1961, session 68.
27 Testimony of Sara Tartakovskaya: Babi Yar memorial volume, op. cit.
38. REVOLT AT BIRKENAU
1 Manuscript, written in Greek, found in late autumn of 1980 in a thermos flask buried near Crematorium II, by Polish schoolchildren planting a tree: text sent to the author by the Auschwitz Museum.
2 Menasche, Birkenau (Auschwitz II), Memoirs of an Eye-Witness, op. cit.
3 Testimony of Raizl Kibel-Tabakman: Yad Vashem archive, 03/882.
4 Bezwinska and Czech, Amidst a Nightmare of Crime, op. cit., page 155, note 61.
5 Testimony of Israel Gutman: Eichmann Trial, 2 June 1961, session 63.
6 Kulka, ‘Jewish Revolt in Auschwitz’, op. cit.
7 Bezwinska and Czech, op. cit., page 65, note 91.
8 Garlinski, Fighting Auschwitz, op. cit., page 238 and page 239, note 1.
9 Kulka, op. cit.
10 Garlinski, op. cit., pages 239–40.
11 Dorebus was born in the Polish town of Zyrardow on 27 July 1906. He was deported to Birkenau with his Warsaw-born wife, Pesa. Handelsman was born in the Polish town of Lipsko on 30 August 1908. He was deported with his wife Chana, born in Sosnowiec. Pesa Dorebus and Chana Handelsman were both thirty-six years old at the time of their deportation: both are believed to have perished at Birkenau.
12 Testimony of Israel Gutman: Eichmann Trial, 2 June 1961, session 63.
13 Testimony of Raizl Kibel, Yad Vashem archive, 03/882.
14 Testimony of Israel Gutman: Eichmann Trial, 2 June 1961, session 63.
15 Testimony of Nahum Hoch: Eichmann Trial, 8 June 1961, session 71.
16 Salmen Lewental, manuscript: Bezwinska and Czech, op. cit., pages 177–8.
39. PROTECTORS AND PERSECUTORS
1 Testimony of Colonel D. S. Zilberman: Yad Vashem archive.
2 Levin, The Holocaust, op. cit., page 743, note 18.
3 Braham, The Politics of Genocide, op. cit., volume 2, pages 827–32.
4 Testimony of Arie Breslauer: Eichmann Trial, 1 June 1961, session 61. In Hungarian his name was spelt Leopold Breszlauer.
5 Braham, op. cit., volume 2, page 830.
6 Ibid., page 834.
7 Report by Rudolf Kastner (Rezso Kasztner): Eichmann Trial, 1 June 1961, session 62 (document 900).
8 Braham, op. cit., volume 2, pages 836–8.
9 Ibid., pages 838–9.
10 Bronia Klibanski, ‘The Archives of the Swiss Consul General Charles Lutz’, Yad Vashem Studies, XV, Jerusalem 1983, pages 357–65.
11 Testimony of Arie Breslauer: Eichmann Trial, 1 June 1961, session 61.
12 Report by a Jewish woman from Budapest: Bulletin, op. cit.,
April 1945.
13 Ibid.
14 Paul Gidaly, ‘Search for a Sister’: Jerusalem Post, 14 December 1979. Gidaly, who had escaped from a forced labour battalion, was using the identity of Ferdinand Hetzey, first-year medical student and ensign in the Hungarian army.
15 Braham, op. cit., volume 2, pages 839–40.
16 Judge Moshe Bejski, in conversation with the author, Jerusalem.
17 ‘The Story of an Unsung Hero’: The Voice of Auschwitz Survivors in Israel, number 27, June 1984. The surviving twins met at a reunion at Kfar Maccabia, Ramat Gan, Israel, on 29 February 1984.
18 Ernest Spiegel’s recollections, in conversation with the author, Jerusalem.
19 Agnes Zsolt, Budapest 1947: Dr Judah Marton, The Diary of Eva Heyman, Jerusalem 1974, page 20.
20 Letter from Joan Campion to the Jerusalem Post, 8 August 1979.
21 ‘Transport Ep’, 9 October 1944: Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, op. cit., page 238.
22 ‘Transport Et’, 23 October 1944: ibid., page 241.
23 ‘Transport Ev’, 28 October 1944: ibid., page 242.
24 Czech, ‘Kalendarium’, op. cit., entry for 28 October 1944.
25 Ibid., entry for 30 October 1944.
26 Notes of the unknown author: Bezwinska and Czech, Amidst a Nightmare of Crime, op. cit., page 120.
27 Recollection of Maria Rebhun, 12 January 1965: Oral History Program, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, Maria Rebhun was born in Warsaw in 1919.
28 Testimony of Mordechai Ansbacher: Eichmann Trial, 12 May 1961, session 38. Ansbacher was born in Wurzburg on 11 January 1927.
29 Testimony of Gedalia Ben Zvi: Eichmann Trial, 8 June 1961, session 71.
30 Testimony of Icchak Sohnenson (born in Vilna on 7 January 1931), testimony taken on 2 February 1965: Yad Vashem archive, 03/2743.
31 ‘Letter from the town of Biala Podlaska’, 30 October 1944: Bulletin, April 1945.
32 Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, op. cit., page 291.
33 ‘The Seven from Promyka Street’, a reminiscence of Dr Stanislaw Switala: Biuletyn, op. cit., numbers 65–66, Warsaw 1968, pages 207–8.
34 Czech, op. cit., entry for 3 November 1944.
35 Letter to the author.
36 Manuscript of the unknown author: Bezwinska and Czech, op. cit., pages 121–2.
37 Chaim Herman, letter of 6 November 1944: ibid., page 190, and note II. Herman had been brought to Birkenau from Paris on 4 March 1943. He had been born in Warsaw on 3 May 1901. His camp number was 106113. The letter was discovered in a bottle, hidden under the human ash near one of the crematoria, in February 1946.