Holocaust Heroes

by Felton, Mark;

  The ZOB organised itself for the defence of the Warsaw Ghetto. The problem for the fighters was that the ghetto was not contiguous; rather, since the mass deportations of 1942, large areas were empty of people and businesses. The ghetto was now divided into three separate parts, separated by depopulated zones. The ZOB split into three regiments, one for each sector, with the regiments subdivided into squadrons of varying sizes. Nine squadrons under the command of Anielewicz garrisoned the large centre ghetto, eight under Zuckerman the area of the Tobbens and Schulz armaments factories, and five under Mark Edelman in the smaller Brushmaker’s District on the western edge of the centre ghetto. In total, the ZOB fielded about 500 fighters.6

  During the daytime, the fighters joined the other ghetto Jews in labouring in the big German armaments factories that had been established inside the ghetto, while at night they practised fighting techniques and gathered supplies. Such was the dire shortage of weapons that at this stage only one-in-ten of the fighters actually had a firearm. Messages were sent again to the Polish Home Army asking for more weapons, whilst teams went around the ghetto collecting old bottles and burned-out light bulbs to be converted into Molotov cocktails. Drainpipes were cut up and converted into rudimentary grenades and a trickle of guns were bought off the Polish black market and smuggled into the ghetto.

  The ZOB and ZZW had also conducted some house-cleaning. They had executed those members of the quisling Jewish Ghetto police that remained, and also any Gestapo or Abwehr intelligence agents that had infiltrated the ghetto, a number that sadly also included a member of the Judenrat.

  The Jewish resistance leaders knew that the Germans would return and avenge their loss of face, as well as try to round up the workers they demanded. So it was essential that the fighters construct bunkers from which to mount a prolonged defence of the ghetto. Anielewicz criticized the bunker mentality of many of his co-leaders, and instead pressed that the Jews use the upper storeys and roofs of tall residential buildings to dominate the Germans. His argument prevailed and ZOB units took post high up over the streets, as well as helping to construct bunkers and tunnels down below.

  Von Sammern-Frankenegg was under considerable pressure from his superiors to get on with clearing the ghetto. Perhaps overconfident of his troops’ ability to complete the task, and with little combat experience of his own, von Sammern-Frankenegg decided to break into the ghetto on 19 April and complete the task that he had been set. On the morning of 19 April, the ZOB and other Jewish resistance groups were on high alert after word had reached them of German troops massing near the ghetto entrances. This time the Jews would not be taken by surprise. From their posts on the edge of the Brushmakers’ District, Jewish lookouts reported an awe-inspiring and terrifying sight. Hundreds of SS troops were forming up into companies, the ring of their jackboots on the streets was loud and portentous, while behind them came a fleet of army trucks, a couple of tanks, some armoured half-tracks, light artillery pieces and motorcyclists. The Germans clearly meant business. Even further back, the lookouts reported SS ambulances and field kitchens setting up. Communications trucks with tall radio masts were also observed. For the handful of Jewish fighters it was a terrible moment – these poorly armed civilians, with only the most rudimentary training, were about to face highly disciplined and motivated SS troops who outnumbered them many times over and had an awesome array of support weapons available. As the lookouts watched and listened to the crunch of marching boots, the growl of diesel and petrol engines and the squeal of tank tracks on city roads, the SS started singing. The Nazi Party anthem, the Horst Wessel song, carried into the ghetto – the sound of death approaching.

  The SS assault commenced at precisely 6.00am – though perhaps the word ‘assault’ is a little misleading. Maybe von Sammern-Frankenegg thought that a show of force would cow the Jews into submission, for the 1,000-man SS column came on in parade ground formation, marching six abreast. What the SS didn’t realize was that they were marching straight into a trap. The walling in of the ghetto actually created problems for the Germans when it came to storming the place, for it meant any attacking force would have to be funnelled through one of the gates into the ghetto. The Jewish resistance leaders realized that they could turn this to their advantage, and they stationed most of their fighters and weapons to cover these gates. They had also buried in the roads home-made Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that could be set off electrically. Once the SS had been permitted to advance through the gate and down the main street, lined on each side by tall buildings, the IEDs were detonated with devastating results. Several SS men were literally blown to pieces and the explosions and flying shrapnel wounded many. From the tall buildings, the Jews unleashed heavy fire. The Germans were stuck inside a man-made canyon, and any movement forwards or backwards attracted fire. About 500 yards away, near the north end of Cordial Street, an identical battle was soon raging. The SS also attempted to breach the ghetto wall on Muranow Street, while yet more SS tried to get onto Zamenhof Street, the main route to the railway terminus where the Jews would be loaded onto trains and shipped east. Four Jewish units defended Zamenhof Street, determined to prevent any more of their people from being sent out of the ghetto by train.7

  Cordial Street was swept by Jewish fire, and grenades were hurled down at the SS. In desperation, von Sammern-Frankenegg only made things worse by ordering forward reinforcements, which simply increased the number of targets for the Jewish fighters. German casualties mounted. Fighters on Zamenhof Street even managed to knock out a German tank with firebombs and explosive charges.

  Von Sammern-Frankenegg watched his force being poleaxed by the Jews from the safety of a nearby hotel balcony. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to the SS. Moving inside, he walked up to the tall, lean officer whom Himmler had sent to find out what was going on.

  ‘We can’t get into the Ghetto,’8 said von Sammern-Frankenegg, shaking his head with disbelief as he spoke. SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop curled his lip in disgust at his colleague’s defeatist attitude. ‘What are your casualties?’ Stroop enquired.

  ‘Twelve dead at the last report. The Jews have also wrecked a panzer and burned out two half-tracks,’9 replied von Sammern-Frankenegg in a low voice.

  A few minutes earlier, Stroop had been on the phone with von Sammern-Frankenegg’s superior in Krakow, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger. Kruger was furious with the aristocratic von Sammern-Frankenegg’s desultory performance and talked of having him arrested for impugning the honour of the SS.

  ‘I’m assuming command,’ snapped Stroop coldly to von Sammern-Frankenegg. ‘Mobilize all forces at once.’10 Stroop was cut from very different cloth to von Sammern-Frankenegg, and had the personal confidence of not just Kruger but Heinrich Himmler himself.

  Born into a strict, even fanatical, Catholic family in 1895, Stroop had served as a combat soldier during the First World War. He received the Iron Cross 2nd Class for bravery in 1915, and after the war took a job in a land registry.11 He joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and was soon commissioned in the SS, working in Münster and Hamburg. During the German occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938, Stroop, by now an SS-Standartenführer, continued to impress his superiors. In Poland in 1939–40, Stroop commanded the notorious Selbstschütz in Poznan, where the unit committed numerous atrocities. Between July and September 1941, Stroop commanded an infantry regiment of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf on the Eastern Front, being awarded the Clasp to his Iron Cross 2nd Class and the Infantry Assault Badge. Promoted to SS-Brigadeführer on 16 September 1942, Stroop commanded the SiPo and SD of the Higher SS and was Police Leader in Russia South, later becoming SS and Police Leader in Lvov in February 1943. It was from this post that Himmler selected the 48-year-old Stroop, who remained a virulent and extremely vocal anti-Semite until his death, to suppress the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt.

  Although Jewish fighters had successfully beaten off von Sammern-Frankenegg’s ill-coordinated assaults, they remained extremely
short of arms and ammunition. Further appeals were made to the Polish Home Army, but they only offered to help evacuate Jewish fighters from the ghetto and have them join up with Home Army units in the forests around Warsaw. This was something that the fighters had no intention of doing at this stage of the battle.

  Stroop reorganized the units that he inherited from von Sammern-Frankenegg and put together a fresh assault during the afternoon of 19 April. To liquidate the ghetto, Stroop had at his disposal 36 officers and 2,054 men from several parts of the Third Reich’s armed services. The main assault forces consisted of Waffen-SS troops from two training units. These men had received about a month’s training, though their NCOs and officers were all seasoned combat veterans. SS Panzer Grenadier Training Battalion III Warschau numbered 444 men and supplied replacements to the 3rd SS Panzer Grenadier Division Totenkopf. The 386-man SS Cavalry Training Battalion Warschau (part of the 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer) was well armed and ideologically conditioned for the task at hand. The Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) provided two small units for the operation: 1st Battalion, SS Police Regiment 22 (97 men) and 3rd Battalion, SS Police Regiment 23 (137 men). The regular German Army was also involved in the battle, providing a light flak battery and two combat engineer units. Perhaps the most feared of the units that Stroop deployed were the 337 men of the Trawniki 1st Battalion, an auxiliary SS unit composed mostly of Latvians, many former Soviet prisoners-of-war noted for their barbarity towards the Jews. Trawnikis staffed concentration camps under regular SS officers and NCOs and had a well-deserved reputation for violence and murder. Stroop was particularly pleased with his Trawnikis, noting that they couldn’t speak Polish, so they could not communicate with the Jews.

  Stroop’s men assaulted the gate area at the intersection of Zamenhof and Goose Streets. This time, instead of blindly marching into the ghetto, Stroop ordered a careful advance, with units covering each other as they moved forward by rushes. The idea was to deal with one strongpoint at a time, then move on to the next, street fighting as they went. Before the troops went in, Stroop ordered a short artillery barrage, causing a serious distraction that allowed his forward units to move into position unmolested. The Germans then erected a temporary barricade out of hundreds of mattresses taken from a warehouse on the corner of Goose and Cordial Streets. By now the Jewish fighters had opened up a heavy fire, and grenades and Molotov cocktails soon set the barricade on fire, the SS retreating with one man wounded.12 In their fury, some SS entered the ghetto hospital and began shooting the patients in their beds.

  It was during that first day that two Jewish boys climbed up on to a tall building in Muranowski Square and hoisted the Polish national flag and the Star of David banner of the ZZW. The flags managed to fly for four days, despite repeated German efforts to capture the building upon which they flew, the flags clearly visible to the rest of the Polish population in Warsaw. It was a call to arms to all Poles, regardless of their religion. The last thing Himmler wanted was the non-Jewish Poles joining in the revolt against the harsh German occupation of their country.

  Stroop had discovered, much to his shock and disgust, that the Germans who were supposed to have managed and overseen the armaments factories inside the ghetto had actually allowed the Jewish workers a great deal of autonomy in running the concerns. This meant that in the months leading up to the uprising, Jews had access to chemicals for manufacturing explosives, and even army clothing and equipment. Large amounts had been stolen and cached ready for use when the rebellion broke out. ‘The managers knew so little of their own enterprises that the Jews were able to produce arms of every kind,’ wrote an amazed Stroop to Himmler, ‘especially hand grenades, Molotov cocktails, etc., inside these shops.’13

  The factories and enterprises became strongpoints during the uprising, the Jews setting up resistance bases and continuing to manufacture weapons and explosives during the course of the struggle.

  Stroop changed his tactics, deploying units separately through previously defined fighting zones. In this manner, the Germans ‘combed out’14 each sector of the ghetto, killing or rounding up Jewish fighters as they went. The fighters were forced from their positions on the rooftops to the basements, bunkers and sewers. The fighters, largely composed of young Jews aged between 18 and 25, kept popping up to fight. Some decided to fight their way out of the ghetto. The SS recorded one incident where a group climbed from a sewer basin in Prosta on to a truck and escaped with the vehicle. The group, which numbered thirty to thirty-five people, was well armed. One fighter threw two hand grenades while the rest, armed with carbines, pistols and one light machine gun, climbed on to the truck and drove off. The Germans never recovered the truck or apprehended the fighters.15

  The SS closed off the sewer system to try and prevent Jews from escaping into the rest of Warsaw, and then attempted to flood the system. But the Jews managed to blow up the turn-off valves, defeating Stroop’s attempt to drown them beneath the city.

  During 20 and 21 April, following bitter fighting, the SS gained control of most of the residual ghetto. The basement and sewer bunkers that the Jews had constructed were large and well-equipped, with enough space for entire families to shelter. Some had washing and bathing facilities, toilets, arms and munitions storage bins and food stocks for several months. SS and army troops stormed one bunker after another, using maximum force and causing maximum destruction and casualties.16

  Resistance in the factory complexes was also fanatical. One particularly difficult strongpoint was located inside the Army Quartermaster’s Office. SS troops tackled it on 18 April by bringing forward Wehrmacht combat engineers armed with flamethrowers. Artillery was also used against the building. But the Jewish fighters inside wouldn’t give up, the whole edifice eventually being burned to the ground on 19 April with the fighters still inside.17

  After five days of fighting, the ghetto was badly damaged, many buildings were on fire or already gutted shells, the rattle of small arms echoing down the ruined streets, the occasional thump of a grenade or IED booming across the city. The Germans discovered that flamethrowers were particularly effective at dealing with Jewish positions. Stroop was under considerable pressure from above to contain the revolt and crush all resistance as quickly as possible. The whole episode was becoming an embarrassment for the SS, and particularly for Himmler. They all knew that only a few hundred poorly armed Jews were running rings around the much-vaunted SS. Even the regular army was starting to make disparaging comments about the fighting abilities and leadership of the SS. More than one was comparing what was occurring inside the Warsaw Ghetto to the monumental battle for Stalingrad, coining the name ‘Ghettograd’.

  Although the Germans managed to overrun Cordials Street, they were met by heavy resistance off Muranowski Square on the ghetto’s northern edge. The building where the flags flew became a ‘fort’ to Stroop. Trying to take it cost Stroop one officer killed and fifty-two men wounded. Stroop changed tactics and decided to concentrate his efforts on capturing the smallest part of the ghetto, the Brushmaker’s District. When the SS tried to storm through the main gate, the Jews detonated a huge IED that they had buried there, killing and wounding many SS. The Germans pulled back in some disarray.

  On 22 April, following days of bitter fighting, Stroop offered the Jewish fighters surrender terms, which they disdainfully rejected by opening fire on the two SS officers who came forward under a white flag to offer them.18 They remained under no illusions about what would happen to them if they fell into German hands, regardless of Stroop’s attempts to trick them into giving up. Stroop, with Himmler breathing down his neck, and aware of how his predecessor von Sammern-Frankenegg had fallen from grace, urged on his troops to complete the destruction of the ghetto with renewed brutality. The fate of von Sammern-Frankenegg would stand as a stark warning of the consequences of failure before Himmler. Just two days after Stroop’s surrender offer to the ghetto defenders, von Sammern-Frankenegg was court martialled for ineptitude and accuse
d of ‘defending Jews’, an interesting charge considering that he had been responsible for shipping over 250,000 of them east from Warsaw for ‘resettlement’. Found guilty, von Sammern-Frankenegg was transferred to a frontline anti-partisan unit and later killed in an ambush in Croatia in September 1944.

  On 22 April, after reorganizing his men, Stroop launched another attack on the Brushmaker’s District, but the defending Jewish units concentrated all of their firepower on the SS force. Stroop was rapidly becoming disillusioned with combat operations. It was clear that the Jews were using the kinds of tactics that the Soviets had utilized so successfully at Stalingrad against the overwhelming manpower and firepower of the German Sixth Army. The Soviets called it ‘hugging the enemy’, conducting very close-quarters street fighting where the Germans could not use their support weapons or aerial superiority without fear of hitting their own men, and simultaneously draining away the Germans’ numerical strength and morale. Stroop quickly determined that to continue to launch conventional attacks on the various sectors of the ghetto would only result in ‘Ghettograd’ and his probable removal from command.

  Himmler was also growing increasingly nervous about the revolt. On 23 April, he ordered Stroop to clear the ghetto with ‘the greatest severity and ruthless tenacity’.19 This was good news for Stroop as it freed him from any concerns about causing damage to the city and its infrastructure. He quickly formulated a fresh plan and telephoned Kruger in Krakow. ‘I have therefore decided,’ said Stroop, ‘to embark on the total destruction of the Jewish quarter by burning down every residential block, including the housing blocks belonging to the armament enterprises.’20 Kruger approved.