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- Herausgeber: ibidem
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
This book is a comprehensive account of the Belzec death camp in Poland which was the first death camp using static gas chambers as part of the Aktion Reinhardt mass murder program. This study covers the construction and the development of the mass murder process. The story is painstakingly told from all sides, the Jewish inmates, the perpetrators, and the Polish inhabitants of Belzec village, who lived near the factory of death. A major part of this work is the Jewish Roll of Remembrance, that covers the few survivors and details of some of the Jews among the many hundreds of thousands who perished in Belzec. The book is richly illustrated with historical and modern photographs, as well as documents and drawings, some of the photographs have never before been seen in public.
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ibidemPress, Stuttgart
FOR
ROBERTKUWALEK& SIR MARTIN GILBERT
Dedicated to the memory of
Billy Rutherford,&Harry
Table of Contents
Foreword
Professor Matthew Feldman
University of Teesside, UK
The death camp atBelzecwas the first site in history designed to kill human beings in an industrial manner in static gas chambers on an unparalleled scale. During the Second World War, the Third Reich deployed gassing and mass-cremation technologies in order to literally turn millions of victims into ash. In this sense, the Third Reich’s earliest extermination camp atBelzecremains a low-water mark in human relations with one another. Internecine wars and savagery have always pocked human history. But never before had mass murder and modern technology come together to provide a purpose-built, self-contained, assembly-line operation for the destruction of an entire people.
The death camps collectively known asOperationReinhard(t)[1],of whichBelzecwas theearliest constructed in 1941—it was joined bySobiborand Treblinka later in 1942—managed this genocidal process brutally, yetbureaucratically. In the months following Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June22,1941, mass shootings in the east had proven unsatisfactory and difficult to conceal.Expertise and personnel were then engaged from an earlier gassing program, also using carbon monoxide gas, which had murdered more than 72,000 patients in converted asylum facilities over the preceding two years.[2]
In a grisly process of trial and error, technicians from the euphemistically-entitled “Euthanasia Program”helped to develop mobile gas-vans, to murder Jews from theWarthegauregion,theywere murdered in the converted “palace”atChelmno. By the end of 1941, with the construction ofBelzecabout halfway completed, the Nazi leadership had decided upon aprocess of total destruction—one whereby European Jews would be gassed, pillaged,and disposed of, preferably in a secluded place nextto a main railway line in Nazi-occupied territory.[3]
It was this method, built from scratch and refined over the coming months, which was to be first perfected atBelzecin June 1942. Victims were sometimes murdered ata rate of 10,000 persons a day—inhermeticallysealed chambers,people piled into overcrowded trains before reaching their final destination,corpses pillaged for valuables after being gassed. Later the bodies were burned—these had been buried in mass graves at first, before trial and error made this, too, more efficient—over an enormous human grill, also designed by the overseers of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,”Heinrich Himmler’sSchutzstaffel—or SS.[4]
This uniquely insidious project was directed at the Jews of Europe. One of the very few survivorsfromBelzec,an enslaved worker named RudolfReder—kept barely alive as a camp handyman prior to escaping—established as early as 1946 that “Belzecserved no other purpose than that of murdering Jews.”After witnessing uncountable thousands of his fellow Jews from Poland sent to their deaths, some he knew well,Rederrecalled:
Words are inadequate to describe our state of mind and what we felt when we heard the terrible moans of those people and the cries of the children being murdered. Three times a day we saw people going nearly mad. Nor were we far from madness either. How we survived from one day to the next I cannot say, for we had no illusions. Little by little we too were dying, together with those thousands of people who, for a short while, went through an agony of hope. Apathetic and resigned to our fate, we felt neither hunger nor cold. We all waited our turn to die an inhuman death. Only when we heard the heart-rending cries of small children—“Mummy, mummy, but I have been a good boy” and“Dark.dark”—did we feel something.[5]
This inhumanity was meted out to a minimum of 434,508 people atBelzec, nearly all of them Polish Jews.[6]According to a recent debate in the pages ofEast European Jewish Affairs, the number is likely still higher: perhaps 600,000 Jews were murdered there, or even 800,000.[7]Who knows,for instance, how many unregistered trains, containing some 50 boxcars filled with thousands of terrified Jews,were diverted toBelzecduring the height of its activityin Summer-Autumn 1942?Affixing a precise number of victims is as impossible as imagining the individual fate of Jews suffocated at one of the principal charnel houses of the Holocaust—and indeed in human history—Belzec.
Notwithstanding this staggering reality, relatively little has been written to date onBelzecby scholars in English. This is borne out by the scattered references toBelzecin excellent studies on the Holocaust that have been recently published by Christopher Browning, Saul Friedlander,and PeterLongerich.[8]One reason for this is the relatively stronger documentation left behind at other extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau,where more than a million Jews were killed, before the SS beat a hasty retreat from the advancing Soviet forces. Another factor is clarified by the extremely small number of survivors fromBelzec. And still another reason is the sheer scale of the Final Solution, involving not only the gassing of Jews in their millions, but extended to millions more deaths through shooting, starvation and overwork. That is to say, even the most detailed and comprehensive accounts of the Holocaust of late have but scratched at the surface ofBelzec’shorrors.
An important exception to the limited Anglophone scholarship onBelzecis provided byYitzakArad’s groundbreaking work on theOperationReinhard(t)camps. Published in 1987,his scholarlyBelzec,Sobibor, Treblinkaadded new insight into the day-to-day running of the camps. Like the other two mainReinhard(t)death camps atSobiborand Treblinka,Belzeccomprised four groups of people: Jewish victims; a contingent of around 120 mass murderers (SS and police guards, Ukrainian auxiliaries andauxiliaryadministrative staff on site); Jews taken from transports to help with the extermination process, who only lived a day or two; and so-calledHofjuden(court Jews), who were tailors, carpenters and other skilled workers serving the camp personnel for a period ofmonths before being murdered.RudolfRederwas only able to escape because he was in the latter category. For the murderers, in turn, deceit and speed were central to the process, in order to blunt resistance and the chances of escape; this also “increased the killing capacity of the camp.”
Finally, one particularly chilling feature shared by all three death campsBelzec,Sobibor,and Treblinka: songs by orchestralmusicians, often playing to drown out the screams of those murdered by gas or shooting. InBelzecthere was a small orchestra, Arad writes, which was used primarily during the transports and to entertain the SS men during their nights of drunkenness and debauchery. The orchestra was made up of six musicianswhousually played in the area between the gas chamber and the burial pits. The transfer of corpses from the gas chambers to the graves was done to the accompaniment of the orchestra.[9]
The Holocaust in the Soviet Unionis Arad’s most recent and ambitious account, which also sheds new light on theOperationReinhard(t)camps. He devotes a chapter toBelzechere,emphasizingthat deportations took place largely from the Polish region of Galicia in theGeneralgouvernement—an area first occupied by the USSR between September 1939 and June 1941—lasting over a period of seven months. Although theBelzecdeath camp existed between mid-March and mid-December 1942, a six-week pause was undertaken toexpand the killing facilities: Six concrete gassing chambers were installed to murder as many as 2,000 Jews ata time. Thereafter, inthe six months comprising the “big deportations”toBelzec, more than 100,000 transported Jews could be murdered in the course of a single month.[10]
Yet in spite of Arad’s exceptional contribution to understandingBelzecand the history ofOperationReinhard(t)more generally, Dieter Pohlrightlymaintained in a pivotal 2004 collection on historical interpretations of the Holocaust that the “three camps of theAktionReinhardt,Belzec,Sobiborand Treblinka, became fromthe spring of 1942, the murder sites of almost half of Polish Jewry, but noscholarlycamp monograph has yetbeen published.”[11]
This has beenrecently remedied with English-language studies in the cases ofSobiborand Treblinka,[12]but not for the earliest of theAktionReinhardtcamps,Belzec.
In this sense alone, the following contribution to Holocaust Studies is worthy of recognition. Over his years of independent research, moreover, Chris Webbhas also collected a number of contemporaneous photographs fromBelzec,some of which are included in this edition. Relevant transcriptions from a wartime publication called thePolish Fortnightly Review; wartimediaries and subsequent memoirs, excerpts from postwar testimony and trials; as well as sketches and reproductions ofBelzecare also included in this book. Intended for a general audience, both the selection and narrative here are intended to give an overview, an impression ofBelzec’sdevelopment and function. Images of the perpetrators are given prominent place: these few orchestrated the murder of hundreds of thousands of men, women,andchildren. While thesepreviously-unseen images are helpfully included in the pages to follow, several unexpected details are also provided: a brief history of thearea; information on the small “Gypsy Camp”atBelzec; and insight into the exhumation and incineration of thousands of corpses after the camp ceased to be operational.
Drawing upon his personal archive and his work on anumberof Holocaust educational websites, Webb’s book provides details of Austro-German SS and police personnel atBelzec, in addition to many of the Ukrainians and so-calledVolksdeutscheauxiliariesalso serving in the exterminationcenter. These and other findings are part of a lifetime’s dedication to making the Holocaust—and specifically the part played by the death camp atBelzecin this process of genocide—better known to a wider audience.
Chris Webb’s private undertakings therefore have a very publicly-spirited effect; reminding his readers that, atBelzec, the worst was perpetrated againstdefenselessJewish victims, again and again. Taken together, the patchwork of quotations, pictures and testimony comprising this book serves to reinforce the impression that human depravity passed a certain threshold there. TheBelzecdeath camp offers a glimpse of this abyss,when genocide was streamlined—administered and employed against enemies of the Third Reich for no other reason than that they were Jewish.
York, England
November 2014
Author’s Introduction
BelzecDeath Camp—History, Biographies, Remembranceis an updated and revised edition ofmy bookBelzec—The Death Camp Laboratory,which was first published in 2012. This new version has provided a more comprehensive coverage of both the Jewish victims as part of the Roll of Remembrance and the perpetrators. Extensive use has been made of theBundesarchivMemorial database to include those German Jews who were deported toBelzecfrom the Reich, notincluded in the earlier version.
This work should be viewed as a companion edition to my book on the Treblinka death camp, published in 2014byibidem-VerlagStuttgart. This book has been re-written to match the style of the book on Treblinka and to include new information on the victims and the perpetrators and to further increase our understanding of the role thatBelzecplayed in the destruction of Polish and European Jewry. Firstly,I must thank Professor Matthew Feldmanfrom Teesside Universityfor not only writing the foreword to this book, but also for his long-standing friendship and support. It is thanks to Matthew that I was introduced to AnnaPivovarchuk, who has diligently andskillfullyproof-read the manuscriptin such a professional manner, for which I must thank her profusely.I must thank ClareSpyrakis, for her work on the cover design.
I must thank both Dr.Robin O’Neiland MichaelTregenzafor their groundbreaking research into the grisly world that wasBelzecdeath camp.I am grateful to thecurrentBelzecmuseum director,TomaszHanejko,for all his help and support.I must also mention Tomasz's father EugeniuszHanejko,at the Regional Museum TomaszowLubelskifor allowing the use of a number of photographs from their archives inthis book.Also I am indebted toShaulFerrerofromYadVashemandZviOren from the Ghetto Fighters House. I must pay special tribute to RobertKuwalekwho sadly passed away in June 2014, in Lvov. I met him in 2000, when I first went to Lublin. His knowledge onBelzecin particular and the Holocaust in general was second to none, and his tragic early death, has robbed the world of a great talent. Sadly continuing this theme, I must also record my thanks to another Polish researcher, the lateArturHojan, from the Tiergartenstrasse-4 Association, who helped me with this project, along with co-founder Cameron Munro, who shared some of his research material.
Finally, I must also express my gratitude to the late Sir Martin Gilbert,the well-respected British historian who has allowed me to show his brilliant map ofBelzec, and has allowed me to use some of his other maps in my wider research.
Belzecis often referred to as the “Forgotten Camp of the Holocaust”—this book attempts to ensure that the victims of this charnel house are not forgotten.
Chris Webb
February 2015
Abbrevationsusedin the Footnotes
BA
Bundesarchiv(Federal Archive), Germany
GFH
Ghetto Fighters House, Israel
HHS
Holocaust Historical Society UK
NA
National Archives Kew, UK
NARA
National Archives Washington DC, United States of America
USHMM
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, USA
YVA
YadVashemArchives, Israel
Part ITheHellCalled Belzec
ChapterIAktion Reinhardt:An Overview
AktionReinhardt—also known asEinsatzReinhardt—was the codename for the extermination ofprimarilyPolish Jewryfromthe formerGeneralgouvernementand the Białystok area. The term was used in remembrance ofSS-ObergruppenführerReinhard Heydrich, the co-ordinator of the“Final Solution tothe Jewish Question”(Endlösung der Judenfrage)—the extermination of the Jews living in the European countries occupied by German troops during the Second World War.
On May27,1942, in a suburb of Prague,Jozef Gabčíkand Jan Kubiš, members of the Czech resistance,ambushed Heydrichin his carwhile he wasenroute to his office in Prague, from his home at Panenské Březany. Heydrichdied from his wounds at Bulovka Hospital on June4,1942.[13]
Four days after his death,approximately1,000 Jews left Prague in a single train which was designated“AaH”(Attentat aufHeydrich). This transport was officially destined for Ujazdów, in the Lublin district, Poland, butthe deportees weregassed at the Bełżec death campin the far southeastern corner of the Lublindistrict. The members of Odilo Globocnik’s resettlement staff henceforward dedicated the murder program to Heydrich’s memory, under thecodenameEinsatz Reinhardt.[14]
The head ofAktion ReinhardtwasSS-BrigadeführerOdilo Globocnik,the SS and Police Chief of the Lublindistrict,appointed to this task byReichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler. At the Führer’sHeadQuarters in Rastenburg (a town in present Poland known as Kętrzyn), Heinrich Himmler, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger,andOdilo Globocnikmetat a conferenceonOctober13,1941,during whichGlobocnikwas authorized to build a death camp at Bełżec.Belzecwas the first death camp built using static gas chambers, the first mass exterminationcamp in theeast, was Kulmhof (a town in present day Poland known as Chełmno)and theyused gas vanshere from early December 1941.[15]
On January20,1942,at a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, Heydrichorganized a conference on the“Final Solution to the Jewish Questionin Europe.”The conferencehad beenpostponed from December8,1941,asHeydrichwrote to one of theparticipantsOtto Hoffmann, that it had been necessary to postpone the conference“on account of events in which some of the invited gentlemen were concerned.”[16]This referred to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day and the entry of the United States of America into the war.Thosewho attendedthe Wannsee Conference included theleading officialsof the relevant ministries, senior representatives of the German authorities in the occupied countries, and senior members of the SS, including Heinrich Müller, head of theGestapo, and Adolf Eichmann, headof Department IV B4,thesub-section of the Gestapo dealing with Jewish affairs.
*
OdiloLotharioGlobocnikwas born on April21,1904,in Trieste, theson of an Austro-Slovene family,anda construction enginner by trade.In 1930 hejoined the Nazi party in Carinthia, Austria and after the banning of the Nazi Party in Austria in 1934, earnedareputation as one of the most radical leaders of its underground cells. In 1933 Globocnikjoined the SS, which also became a prohibited organization in Austria in 1934, and was appointedStellvertretender Gauleiter(Deputy Party District Leader).[17]
After serving several short terms of imprisonment, for illegal activities on behalf of the Nazis, he emerged as a key figure in the pre-Anschlußplans for Austria, serving as a key liaison figure between Adolf Hitlerand the leading pro-Nazi Austrians.[18]
After theAnschlußof March 1938Globocnik’s starcontinued to rise,and on May24he was appointed to thecoveted key position ofPartyDistrictLeader (Gauleiter)of Vienna.
His tenure was short-lived, however,and on January30,1939,he was dismissed from this lofty position for corruption, illegal speculation in foreign exchange and tax evasion—all on a grand scale.[19]
After demotion to a lowly SS rank and undergoing basic military training with anSS-Standarte, he took part with his unit in the invasion of Poland. Eventually pardoned by Himmler, whoneeded such unscrupulous characters for future“unsavoury plans,”Globocnikwas appointed to the post ofSS-und Polizeiführer(SS and Police Leader)ofLublin on November9,1939. Globocnikhad been chosen by theReichsführer-SSas the central figure inAktion Reinhardt, not only because of his ruthlessness, but also because of his virulent anti-Semitism.
In Lublin, Globocniksurrounded himself with a number of his fellow Austrians, SSofficers like Herman Julius Höfle, born in Salzburg on June19,1911. Höflebecame Gobocnik’s deputy inAktion Reinhardt, responsible for personnel and the organization of Jewish deportations, the extermination camps and the re-utilisation of the victim’s possessions and valuables. Höflewas later to play a significant role in mass deportationAktionenin Warsaw and Białystok. Ernst Lerch,from Klagenfurt,became Globocnik’s closest confidante and adjutant. Georg Michalsen, a Silesianfrom Oppeln,was another adjutant,and he, too, participated with Höflein the deportation of Jews from the ghettos in Warsaw and Białystok. Another, earlymember of this group was Amon Göth, who cleared the Tarnów,Krakow,and Zamoscghettos,and later became the notorious commander of PłaszówArbeitslagerin Krakow.[20]
The headquarters ofAktion Reinhardtwas located in the Julius SchreckBarracks(Julius SchreckKaserne)at Litauer Straße 11,in a former Polish schoolclose to the city centre in Lublin,whereHöflenot only worked but lived ina small apartmenton the second floor.Alsolocatedin Lublin werethe buildingsin whichthe belongings and valuablesseized from the Jewswere stored:the former Catholic Action (Katolische Aktion) building onChopinStraßeand in pre-war aircraft hangers on the Old Airfield (Alter Flugplatz) on the southeastern outskirts of Lublin.[21]
The mostnotoriousand fearsomemember ofAktion ReinhardtwasSS-Obersturmführer/KriminalinspektorChristian Wirth, the first commandant of Bełżecdeath campand later Inspector oftheSS-SonderkommandosofAktion Reinhardt. Before his transfer to Poland, Wirthhad been a leading figure inAktion T4—the extermination of the mentally and physically disabled insix so-called“euthanasia”killing centers in theThirdReich.
Therole of the T4 euthanasiaprogramwas fundamental to the execution ofAktion Reinhardt, the great majority of the staff in the death camps served their“apprenticeships”in mass murder at the euthanasia institutes of Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim,andPirna-Sonnenstein,where thevictims had been murdered in gas chambersusing CO gas from steel cylinders. The senior officers in bothAktion T4andAktion Reinhardtwere all police officers withequivalentSS ranks,and,with Himmler’s approval,SSNCOshad emptied the gas chambers and cremated the bodies of the victimsin portable furnaces. TheSS-menperformed this work wearing civilian clothes because Himmlerdid not want the possibility to arise of the public becoming aware of the participation of the SS in the killing.DuringAktion Reinhardt,theSS authorities also supplemented the forces guarding the death campsby employingformer Red Armytroops who had been captured or had surrendered to the Germans,mostlyethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche)from the Ukraine, the Balticstates and the Volga region of Russia,who were trainedin an SS camp in the village ofTrawniki, 25 kilometerssoutheast of Lublin. The majority were already anti-Semitic—equating Bolsheviks with Jews—and were ideally suited to the persecution and extermination of Jews.
OnNovember1,1941, construction of the firstAktion Reinhardtdeath camp began near the village of Bełżec, 125 kilometerssoutheastof Lublin, and became operational in mid-March 1942. Construction of the second camp, atSobibor, between the cities of Włodawa and Chełm on the River Bug, northeast of Lublin, came into operation at the end of April 1942. The third and last of these camps was located near the train station Treblinka,[22]about 100kilometersnortheast of Warsaw. All three campssharedsome common vital facts:They were all situated on or close to main railway lines for the speedy delivery of the victims to their deaths and they were located in sparsely-populated regions. The true fate of the Jews was initially hidden from them by announcing that they were being“transportedto theeast for resettlement and work.”TheAktion Reinhardtdeath camps were very similar in layout, each camp being an improvement on its predecessor, and the“conveyor-belt”extermination process developed at Belzec by Christian Wirthwas implemented, improved,and refinedat the other two camps.
The personnel assigned toAktion Reinhardtcame from a number of sources, SS and policemen who served under Globocnik’s command in the Lublin district, otherSS-menandcivilians drafted into theAktionandmembers of the T4euthanasia program.[23]Yitzhak Aradquotes in his bookBelzec, Sobibor, Treblinkathat a total of 450 men were assigned toAktion Reinhardtincluded 92 men from the T4euthanasia program.However, more recent research by another author has identified a slightly higher total of 103 men, of whom 38 are known to have served at Belzec at one time or another.[24]
TheOld Lublin Airfieldwas also used throughoutAktion Reinhardtas a mustering centerfor personnel transferred from theT4euthanasia institutions in the Reich,to the extermination of the Jews in theGeneralgouvernement. TheSS-men, police,and civilians thus transferred were usually met at the airfield by Wirthpersonally,on occasions accompanied bythe death camp commandantsReichleitner,from Sobibor,and Stangl,from Treblinka.According to witnesses, at these selections of personnel, all three woreSchutzpolizeiuniforms and none of them mentioned anything abouttheir future employment or where they would be based.At theairfielddepot the newcomersreceivedWaffen-SSuniforms, provided by the SSgarrisonadministration (SS-Standortverwaltung) in Lublin, but withouttheSS runes on theright-handcollar patches. Thecivilian employees from T4, especially themalepsychiatricnurses among them,were sentfirstto the SS training camp at Trawniki,for atwo week basic military training course.[25]
The men selected in Lublin and distributed to the threeAktion Reinhardtdeath camps were augmented by a company-sized unitof about 120 black-uniformed auxiliary guards who had also been trained at the SS training camp in Trawniki—the so-called Trawniki-men(Trawnikimänner)—usually referred to as“Ukrainians”because they were the majority.
Those who spoke fluent German were appointed platoon or senior platoon leaders—ZugführersorOberzugführers.The rest were known asWachmänner.A select few of theTrawnikimännerwere given other, special duties, including the maintenance and operation of the engines that pumped their poisonous exhaust fumes into the gas chambers. Among them were the infamous Ivan Marchenko (Ivan the Terrible) and Nikolay Shalayev,at the Treblinka death camp.[26]
In the course ofAktion Reinhardt,approximately 1.6 million Jewswere murderedin thedeath campsat Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.Jewish property to the value of 178,045,960Reichsmark(RM)wasseized by the SS, which represents the minimum known amount. Through the theft of large amounts of cash and valuables by Globocnik,SS-men, policemen and guards, the true total will never be known.
TheAktion Reinhardtextermination operationended officially in November 1943,and Himmlerordered Globocnik, who wasby then theHigher SS andPoliceLeader for the Adriaticcoastalregion basedin Trieste, to produce a detailed“balancesheet”for themurder program. Globocnikproduced the requsted financial accounts and suggested that certain SS officers should be suitably rewarded for their“invaluablecontribution”toAktionReinhardt.Globocnikreceived Himmler’s thanksfor his“services to the German people,”but made no mention of medals for any of Globocnik’s subordinates.[27]
Aftercompletion of the extermination work in theGeneralgouvernement, most of the menwho had served inAktion Reinhardtweretransferredto northern Italy,where their headquarters was in a disused rice mill in the San Sabba suburb of the Adriatic port of Trieste (Risiera di San Sabba). Divided into three SSunits—RI, R-II and R-III—they operated under the code designationEinsatz R(Operation R),still under the command of Christian Wirth. Their primary task was the round-up and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau of the surviving Italian Jews, and confiscation of their property and valuables.Einsatz Rwas simply a smaller version ofAktion Reinhardt.Additionally, Italian-Jewish mental patients were removed from their hospitals and sent to the T4 euthanasiainstitution at Schloss Hartheim in Austria for gassing. The unitsnot engaged in these operations were assigned to security and anti-partisan patrols on the Istrian peninsula.
Wirthturned San Sabba into an interrogation and execution center where not only Jews,but also Italian and Yugoslav partisans were tortured, beaten to death, or simply shot and their bodies cremated in a specially installed furnace in the courtyard.[28]The human ashes were dumped in the Adriatic Sea.There is also evidence that a gasvan was used in San Sabba.
The key members ofAktion Reinhardtmostly escaped justice, Globocnikand Höfle both committed suicide, whilst Wirthand Reichleitner(the second commandant ofSobibordeath camp) were killed by partisansin northern Italy in 1944. Amon Göthwas tried and sentenced to death for crimes committed in the Płaszów concentration camp (today a suburb of Krakow) in September 1946. Dr. Irmfried Eberl, the firstcommandantof Treblinka death camp,committed suicide in a West German prison in 1948 while awaiting trial.OnlyFranzStangl[29](the firstcommandant ofSobiborand secondcommandant ofTreblinka) and Kurt Franz (thelastcommandant of Treblinka) were brought to trial. Both were found guilty of crimes against humanityand sentenced to life imprisonment.Gottlieb Hering,the secondcommandant of Belzec death camp,andcommandant of Poniatowa Jewish labor campdied on October9,1945,in unknown circumstances in the waiting roomat the Katherinenhospital in Stetten im Remstal,Württemberg,Germany.
As for members of the SSgarrisons at the three death camps,a number of major figures likeKarlFrenzel,from Sobibor,andHeinrich ArthurMatthes,AugustMiete,andWillyMentzreceived life sentences, whist many others received prison terms of less than10years, but the vast majority of theSS-menand Ukrainians who served within the framework ofAktion Reinhardtwere never brought to justice.Only Josef Oberhauserwas found guilty of war crimes at theBelzec trialin Munich during the 1960s.
ChapterIIThe Labor CampsIn the Belzec Area
The village of Belzec, insoutheasternPoland, first appeared in records during the Middle Ages, and show the village as a settlement of animal breeders. At the beginning of the 17thcentury, the Lipski family—proprietors of Belzec—endeavoured to acquire a municipal charter, but this attempt failedbecause of the proximity of major towns such as Tomaszow Lubelski and Florianow, now re-named Narol.[30]
Two hundred years later,in the 19thcentury, Belzec lay on the border between Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland, with a railway border crossing to that part of Poland under the Tsarist Russian occupation.The location ensured business flourished and this attracted an influx of Jewish settlers,and,just prior to the First World War,over one hundred Jewish families made a living here on cross-border trade. Most of the Jewish settlers came from Rawa Ruska and Jaroslaw. Jewish culture flourished in Belzec,and it had its own house of prayer and a traditional elementary school—a cheder.[31]
During the First World War Belzec was occupied by Austrian troops and a part of the village was burnt down by Russian soldiers as a reprisal for the murder of a Russian officer by locals. During 1915,Belzec was liberated from Austrian occupation and six years later the village was incorporated into the new Republic of Poland.[32]
The Jewish population declined during the interwar years,and on September13,1939,the German Army occupied the village.Anumber of the Poles and Ukrainians registered asVolksdeutsche—ethnic Germans—and some volunteered for war work in the Reich. History repeated itself when Belzec once again became a border post, this time between theGeneralgouvernementand the Soviet Union.[33]
From the end of May 1940 until August 1940,the Germansestablished a number of labor camps in and around the village of Belzec. These housed workers building the so-called“Otto Line”—a series of fortifications along the border with the Soviet Union. The Germans forced Jewsfrom Lublin, Radom,and Warsaw districts to slave on this project, and Gypsies from the Reich and other parts of Poland were also used.The Jews were housed at three sites in Belzec:the Manor,which housed 1,000 people; Kessler’s Mill,which housed 500 people;andLocomotive Sheds,which housed 1,500 people.
Outside Belzec village other workers were housed in Cieszanowin two barracksand Plaszow—not to be confused with the notorious PlaszowArbeitslagerin Krakow—in two houses and in Lipsko near Narol.[34]
The labor camps were established in abandoned synagogues, warehouses or barns, a total of some35camps were created with over 10,000 workers employed on building fortifications, roads and regulating rivers.
The commander of the labor camps complex wasSS-SturmbannführerHermann Dolp,who had also been the commandant of the Lipowa Street Camp in Lublin and during 1941—after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union—had served in the“SS Strongpoints in the East”construction program based in Minsk.[35]His deputy wasSS-HauptscharführerFranz Bartetzko,who later went on tomanagethe Jewishforcedlabor camp at Trawniki,from the spring of1942.[36]Another more famous SS officer, Oskar Dirlewanger, who was the commander of the notoriousSS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, which was made up of petty criminals and cut-throats. They were resoponsible for the orgy of killing of the population during the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Prior to this, Dirlewangerwas the commander of a Jewishlabor camp at Dzikow, one of the camps in the Belzec area.[37]
The working conditions in the labor camps were truly awful,withworkers beaten and tortured,andforced to perform heavy labor on starvation rations. Adam Czerniakow, thechairman of theJudenrat(Jewish Council) in the Warsaw ghetto,wrote about the Belzec labor camp conditions several times in his diary. His entry on August29,1940,isas follows:
Word from the Belzec camp, poor food etc. I arranged for two conferences, one with participation of Neustadt. I authorised theObmann(Chairman) from Zamosc to engage doctors at our expense for Belzec. Tomorrow I will try to obtain a loan for the camp.[38]
Another entry in his diary,recorded onSeptember3,1940,stated that“Zabludowski, Faustand Furstenburg left for Lublin with the gifts for the workers including 10,000 zloty for the camp. Lambrechtmade a demand for twenty doctors for the camp.”[39]
Though the labor camps were controlled by the SS, the supply of food,clothes,and the administration was managed by the LublinJudenrat. In Belzec,the Germans established a so-called JewishGremium,whichwas responsible for the camp’sorganization. All costs connected with the existence of the prisoners were paid by theJudenratof the towns from where the prisoners came. It was theGremiumwho decided the allocation of food to the workers. After August 1940,theGremiumwas re-named the Central Camps Council and was led by Leon Zylberajchfrom Lublin.
The labor camps in Belzec and those located in the area were closed down in October 1940,and this“Eastern Rampart”was only some 40 kilometers in length, 2.5 meters deep and 7.5 meters wide,between Belzec and Dzikow Stary village. Some of the Jewish workers were released prior to the final liquidation of the labor camps, because they were unfit for work;the last transport of workers released went to Hrubieszow in late October 1940.
No account of these terrible working conditions in the Belzec labor camps is complete without mentioning the fate of the Gypsies who were deported from the Reich and were incarcerated on a farm at Belzec Manor. As with the Jews, the Gypsies were also employed in digging fortifications on starvation rations and many succumbed to illnesses such as typhus and dysentery.
One of these Gypsies,Martha W.—a Sinti woman, born in Kiel, Germany,in 1921—was deported to Belzec together with her two children, her mother,and her brother. After the war she recounted her story in an interview with Karin Guth, which is incredibly moving and heart-rending:
In May, I think it was 16 May 1940, they came for us and brought us to theFruchtschuppen(Fruit Warehouse) in the harbour of Hamburg. My memory is not that good anymore. I only know that a lot of people were in the warehouse. It was like being in an ant-hill, so many people were running around.
We were registered and those above the age of fourteen received a number on the arm, this was not tattooed, as was later the case in Auschwitz, but stamped in ink. The number faded after a few days. I cannot remember how many days we were in the warehouse. Not many perhaps three days. Quite nearby, only some steps away, we were ordered to enter goods wagons at theHannoverscherStation.
There was an awful confusion, there being hundreds of people. We were told we were being transported to Poland, where we would receive a nice little house. And they told me that my father was already there, but we were deceived.
When we arrived at our destination SS surrounded the train. They were there at our arrival and drove us out of the wagons. Policeman had accompanied us, two to a wagon (probably within the brakers cabin at the rear of some wagons).
We naturally did not travel without a guard. They knew we would have otherwise simply left the train and escaped. We would have done this had we had the chance. The policemen, who had escorted us, appeared thoroughly sheepish, when they saw the SS and heard the SS commandant, a small man standing there with a whip in his hand; immediately shouting, ‘if you don’t obey the orders!’ Oh dear and the rest he said. He called us dogs and we were treated as such. That was so awful. The policemen from Hamburgstood there speechless. I presume they hadn’t known what we were to experience in Belzec.
Then we had to walk to a large barn, that was more a very large shed. There was only old straw on the floor. We had to enter this shed , SS guards were posted outside. Today I no longer remember how long we were in that Belzec camp. It was summer when we arrived. I think we were there for some weeks . It was awful there. One could not wash oneself, there were no toilets. We were all crammed together.
We were immediately set to work in a work column. We had to dig tank ditches. There were many Jews in Belzec too. They were housed in the same shed as us and also worked in the column. They usually only remained for some weeks, then they were transported from Belzec to somewhere else.
The food was awful. A Roma was detailed to cook for us all. The SS shot crows and ravens and simply threw them into the large pot. The man didn’t want to cook the birds without first plucking the feathers. They beat him so badly that the blood ran out the bottom of his trousers.
One day those of us with children had to line up because the children were to receive something special to eat. I had two children. My daughter was two and my son was one-year old. Eachwas given a bowl containing milk with bread crumbled in it. Or so it appeared.
This was especially for the children. Well, one child after the other died over the following days. There was such lamenting, lamenting and crying. Shortly after having eaten the children were unable to breathe anymore, they asphyxiated.My little boy died first. Someone woke me in the morning. I was woken because the chid had kicked and the person wanted to cover him again. So I awoke and went to pick him up. He was already quite stiff.
I was devastated with grief and I didn’t know what to do. My cousin, the sister of Mrs B. lifted him and a big clot of pus came out of his throat. All the children experienced this. My two year old daughter died in the same way the next day. They had been poisoned.
One day we had to enter cattle wagons again, in Belzec. There was just a bare floor. There were no windows, only air slits, high up. There were no toilet facilities. We had to enter that train, not knowing what to expect. Nobody told us anything.
We were taken to Krychow. We travelled through the night in this cattle wagon. When we arrived at the station, horse-drawn vehicles awaited us that took us to the camp. It was a former Polish prison, far away from the station. We were guarded by men wearing a black uniform. They wereVolksdeutsche. TheseVolksdeutscheand SS were everywhere.[40]
