Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

448 Pages·1987·44.49 MB·english

by  Yitzhak Arad

BELZEC. SOBIBOR. TREBLINKA
This page intentionally left blank
YITZHAK ARAD
BELZEC,
SOBIBOR,
TREBLINKA
THE
OPERATION REINHARD
DEATH CAMPS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://www.indiana.edu/-iupress
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
E-mail orders [email protected]
This work was made possible by a grant from the Memorial Foundation
for Jewish Culture.
First reprinted in paperback in 1999.
© 1987 by Yitzhak Arad
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on
Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arad, Yitzhak, 1926-
Bibliography: p.
Includes index
1. Belzec (Poland: Concentration camp)
2. Sobibor (Poland : Concentration camp)
3. Treblinka (Poland : Concentration camp)
4. World War, 1939-1945-Prisoners and prisons, German.
5. Holocaust, jewish (1939-1945)
I. Title.
D805.P7Z727 1987 940.54'72'4304384 85-45883
ISBN 0-253-34293-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-253-21305-3 (paper: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-34293-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-21305-1 (paper: alk. paper)
12 13 14 15 13 12 11 10
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction 1
PART ONE THE EXTERMINATION MACHINE
1 The "Final Solution": From Shooting to Gas 7
2 Operation Reinhard: Organization and Manpower 14
3 Belzec: Construction and Experiments 23
4 Construction of Sobibor 30
5 Construction of Treblinka 37
6 Preparing for the Deportations 44
7 Expulsion from the Ghettos 54
8 The Trains of Death 63
9 Belzec: March 17 to June, 1942 68
10 Sobibor: May to July, 1942 75
11 Treblinka: July 23 to August 28, 1942 81
12 Reorganization in Treblinka 89
13 The Mission of Gerstein and Pfannenstiel 100
14 Jewish Working Prisoners 105
15 Women Prisoners 114
16 Improved Extermination Techniques and Installations 119
17 The Annihilation of the Jews in the General Government 125
18 Deportations from Bialystok General District and Ostland 131
19 Transports from Other European Countries 138
20 The Extermination of Gypsies 150
21 The Economic Plunder 154
22 Himmler's Visit to Sobibor and Treblinka 165
23 The Erasure of the Crimes 170
v
vi BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA
PART TWO LIFE IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH
24 Portraits of the Perpetrators 181
25 The Prisoners' Daily Life 199
26 The Prisoners and the Deportees 209
27 Faith and Religion 215
28 Diseases, Epidemics, and Suicide 219
29 Social Life 226
PART THREE ESCAPE AND RESISTANCE
30 The Cognizance and Reaction of the Victims in Occupied
Poland 241
31 Escapes from the Trains and Spontaneous Acts of
Resistance 249
32 Escapes from the Camps 258
33 The Underground in Treblinka 270
34 The Plan for the Uprising in Treblinka 282
35 August 2, 1943: The Uprising in Treblinka 286
36 Pursuit and Escape from Treblinka 295
3 7 Ideas and Organization for Resistance in Sobibor 299
38 The Underground in Sobibor 306
39 The Plan for the Uprising in Sobibor 315
40 October 14, 1943: The Uprising in Sobibor 322
41 Pursuit and Escape from Sobibor 334
42 Survival among the Local Population 342
43 Reports about the Death Camps in Polish Wartime
Publications 349
44 An Evaluation of the Uprisings and Their Results 360
45 Operation Erntefest 365
46 The Liquidation of the Camps and the Termination of
Operation Reinhard 370
Epilogue 377
APPENDIX A The Deportation of the jews from the General Government,
Bialystok General District, and Ostland 381
APPENDIX B The Fate of the Perpetrators of Operation Reinhard 399
Bibliographic Key to the Notes 401
Notes 407
Index 427
Preface
Concentration camps and death camps were an integral component of Nazi Ger
many's governing system and a tool for achieving its political aims. These camps
were part of the so-called SS-State, headed by the Reichsfiihrer of the SS, Heinrich
Himmler. The concentration camps were spread all over Nazi-occupied Europe.
They served as places of detention and torture, centers of forced labor, and in
struments for the physical elimination of those elements-Jews and non-Jews alike
whom Nazi Germany considered its political opponents. The death camps, all of
them erected in Nazi-occupied Poland, served one purpose: the physical and total
extermination of the Jewish people. The crimes, cruelties, and murders committed
by Nazi Germany against the Jews reached their peak in these death camps, the last
station for millions of men, women, and children whose only "guilt" was being
Jewish.
There were five death camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor,
and Treblinka. Auschwitz-Birkenau was, simultaneously, also a concentration
camp. This book is a study of the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka,
which were established to expedite "Operation Reinhard"-the extermination of
the Jews who lived in the General Government of Poland. However, in addition to
the Jews of Poland, Jews from Holland, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Austria, and the Soviet Union were also murdered in the three
camps.
The book discusses primarily the tragic and cruel events that transpired within
these camps; it relates the complete story-from the preparations for construction of
the camps at the end of 1941 until their final razing in the autumn of 1943. The
physical layout of the camps, the transports to the camps and the deaths they
claimed, the process and technique of the extermination, the deeds of the SS men
who commanded and activated the camps and of the Ukrainian guards, who made
up the majority of the armed forces in the camps, are all fully described.
Moreover, the book tells the tale of the hundreds of thousands of victims who
were brought for extermination-although their stay in the camps usually lasted no
more than a few hours-from the time they disembarked onto the railway platform
until their corpses were removed from the gas chambers, buried in mass graves, and
later cremated.
In each camp, a few hundred Jews were removed from the transports to do the
physical work involved in the extermination process, as well as some service jobs.
Most survived for only a short time, from a few days to several months, and were
ultimately murdered, as were those who were sent directly from the transports for
extermination. The book describes the daily life and work of these Jews, their
Underground organization, the revolts and escapes from the camps. The number of
victims in each camp, grouped by location of residence on the eve of deportation,
and the timetables for the transports and murder are also included.
Nazi criminals who served in these camps stood trial in West Germany. The
trial of the SS men who had served in Belzec was held in Munich in January 1965.
VII
viii BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA
The primary defendant was Josef Oberhauser; there were six others. The trial of the
SS men who had served in Sobibor was held in Hagen and lasted fifteen months,
from September 1965 until December 1966. The leading defendant was Kurt
Bolender; there were eleven others. The first Treblinka trial, at which ten of the SS
men who served in the camp were brought to trial, among them Kurt Franz, the
deputy commander, was held in Dusseldorf between October 1964 and August 1965.
The second Treblinka trial, at which Franz Stangl, the commander of the camp, was
tried, was also held in Dusseldorf, from September 1969 to December 1970. These
verdicts appear as appendixes to this book.
At the time the paperback edition of this book was issued in 1999, the story of
the Operation Reinhard death camps had not yet been finished or closed. In recent
years the issue had come up repeatedly in denaturalization trials held in courts in
the United States and Canada, mainly against Ukrainians, the so-called Trawniki
men, who served as SS guards in the camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
This book is the fruition of extensive research by the author on the camps of
Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The primary sources were testimonies of survivors,
German documents, Underground sources, testimonies by Poles and Germans, and
German trial protocols. The research involved in the study of any topic concerning
the Holocaust, and, above all, the extermination camps, is emotionally difficult for
any historian, and especially for one who personally experienced those times. My
parents, Chaya and Yisroel Moshe Rudnitski, died in Treblinka, and only luck and
resourcefulness staved off the same fate from my sister Rachel and myself.
BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA