Holocaust Heroes

by Felton, Mark;

  The man who managed to transform Jewish resistance into a cohesive and organized force at Treblinka II was a medical doctor and former captain in the Polish Army. Dr Julian Chorazycki had been hauled off one of the transports in 1942 and forced to work in the SS medical centre, providing his tormentors with first-class medical care. As fellow plotter Samuel Rajzman would say of Chorazycki, he was ‘a noble man, essential to taking action’. Chorazycki gathered together men and women from the different Sonderkommandos and formulated a plan of escape.

  The ‘Organising Committee’ comprised Chorazycki, Zeev Kurland – the Kapo or prisoner supervisor in the Lazarret – Lieutenant Zelo Bloch, a Czech Army officer who had recently been transferred to Treblinka from Theresienstadt, leader of the tailors’ group Salzberg, and an agronomist named Sadowicz. Chorazycki believed that the easiest way to obtain arms would be through bribing certain Ukrainian SS guards with gold and money that the Goldjuden managed to hide through their job of gathering valuables from incoming transports. One of the conspirators, Kapo Moshe from the carpentry shop, gave a Ukrainian guard a large bribe in return for a pistol, but the Ukrainian never produced the weapon. Whilst further efforts were being made to bribe guards, the escape organization decided that stealing weapons from the camp armoury might have to be attempted. Fortunately, at the very time that the prisoners were getting interested in the camp armoury, the SS ordered a Jewish locksmith to repair the lock on the door. Whilst doing this, the locksmith secretly made a duplicate key for the lock.

  In March 1943, Lieutenant Bloch, the leader who was providing military expertise to the planning of the revolt, was suddenly transferred to Camp III, where the killing apparatus was located. In a desperate effort to get some arms, Dr Chorazycki procured a large stack of banknotes taken from arriving transports with a view to bribing an SS-Trawniki guard whose trust he believed he had gained. But this plot to escape was discovered by SS-Untersturmführer Franz. When the deputy commandant arrived to arrest Chorazycki, the doctor attacked him with a surgical knife, and during the resultant struggle managed to swallow poison to avoid being tortured and giving away his fellow accomplices’ names.10

  In the light of the currency that was discovered in Chorazycki’s possession, Treblinka was carefully searched. The Goldjuden were severely beaten and questioned, but without result for the SS. Camp Elder Rakowski was brought in to head the Committee with Chorazycki’s demise, and more Jews joined the organization, including Rudek Lubernicki, who was in charge of the camp garage. The first attempt was made to smuggle arms and ammunition out of the camp armoury, part of a fresh revolt plan codenamed ‘The Hour’. The Sonderkommando were to simultaneously rise up and attack the SS and Trawniki guards with whatever weapons they could find, steal their weapons and then launch an attack on the Kommandatur. The aim was to seize control of the camp and hopefully kill the new commandant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Stangl. But though the young boys who worked in the SS quarters adjacent to the armoury hut managed to steal two boxes of stick grenades, on examination it was found that the detonators were missing. The Germans kept the grenade detonators in a separate box, ready to prime the weapons if they needed them.

  Typhus struck the camp, killing many of those who planned to rise and leaving many others too sick and weak to do anything but attempt to cling on to life. The putative revolt was postponed indefinitely.

  In early May, Deputy Commandant Franz had Camp Elder Rakowski shot after he was discovered to be in possession of gold and currency. The Treblinka Underground once again was without a leader. But at the same time that Rakowski was executed, another ex-Polish Army officer, Dr Berek Lajcher, arrived at the camp. A Jew from Czestochowa, Lajcher felt that he had nothing to lose since his wife and 13-year-old son had been killed during the liquidation of the Wegrow Ghetto. The SS put him in charge of their clinic, and soon he was secretly asked to head the Treblinka Underground. Kapo Moishe, leader of the skilled workers, also joined in the fresh conspiracy.

  A new plan was formulated after a series of secret meetings in the tailors’ hut, with the date for the rising set for 15 June 1943, but this was subsequently postponed until Monday, 2 August. In the interim period, the killing of Jews from the transports had reached a fever pitch, but then started to slow down towards the end of July. It was clear that the Sonderkommandos would soon have outlived their usefulness to the Germans and would be liquidated by the SS. This prompted the Underground to select a new date in early August before it was too late.

  There were about sixty Jews in Camp I that were part of the conspiracy. Based upon their work huts, each group was divided into subunits of five to ten people under a commander. The smaller organization in Camp III was growing particularly nervous. The disposal of corpses was coming to an end, and they knew that once this grisly job was finished, they would be the first ones to be liquidated by the SS. Acting as a courier between the two groups was master carpenter Yankel Wiernik, whose job enabled him to move between the two parts of the camp without arousing suspicion. The date of 2 August was eventually settled upon when the group in Camp III threatened to launch their own rising without reference to Camp I if no date could be agreed upon. They were armed only with the tools of their jobs – shovels, pitchforks and axes.

  The final plan was in two parts. Stage A would involve removing arms from the German armoury and transferring them to the combat groups in Camp I. The combat groups would then quietly deploy to their targets – the camp headquarters, the SS and Ukrainian barracks and the camp’s watch towers. The final part of Stage A would involve the quiet elimination of as many of the SS NCOs as possible. This part of the plan would be strikingly similar to that successfully carried out at another Aktion Reinhard Camp, Sobibor. The SS NCOs would be lured singly into various workshops on certain pretexts, and there murdered by the Sonderkommandos. Removing the SS NCOs was deemed of prime importance because they were the brains behind the whole operation, controlled the camp, ordered executions and commanded the Ukrainian auxiliaries. Removing them should lead to confusion inside the camp and a less than organized response by the remaining SS. Once enough SS had been killed, it was planned that a general uprising would commence and the Jews would attempt to break out of the camp and escape into the surrounding forest.11

  A Monday was sensibly chosen because it was rest day at Treblinka II, and Dr Lajcher and his conspirators knew that some of the guards would probably leave the camp for rest and relaxation. In fact, several SS-TV plus about forty Trawnikis left in trucks for the Bug River for swimming. With the much-reduced guard component and no transport trains due, Lajcher judged this to be the most opportune moment to strike.

  The day dawned sizzling hot and remained so all day. For the prisoners who were involved in the revolt, the previous night had passed very slowly, with hardly any sleep. Carpenter Yankel Wiernik had lain in his bunk thinking about the massive difficulties that the escapers would have to overcome if they were ever to reach freedom, particularly the wooden guard towers that were mounted with machine guns. But Wiernik, like many of the other Jews involved in the revolt, wanted to bear witness to what the Germans had done. ‘I, for one, was determined to live to present to the world a description of the inferno and a sketch of the layout of the accursed hellhole,’ he recounted. ‘This resolve had given me the strength to struggle against the hangmen and the endurance to bear the misery. Somehow I felt that I would survive our break for freedom.’12

  The morning passed normally in the camp. ‘The Germans and the Ukrainians noticed nothing unusual … they did not feel they had to fear a paltry handful of men such as we,’ recalled Wiernik. ‘They barked orders which we obeyed as usual.’13 But a worry had started to develop among the resisters. Wiernik was in Camp III, and the leadership had no way of knowing the exact time of the revolt when the initial assault occurred in Camp I. Wiernik, because of his privileged position of being able to travel between the two camps without too much difficulty, decided to find out the information. ‘My superior,
Loeffler, was no longer there; he had been replaced by a new man whose name I did not know,’ said Wiernik. ‘We nicknamed him “Brown Shirt”. He was very kind to me. I walked up to him and asked him for some boards [to be used to get over the fences]. Boards were stored in Camp No. 1 and he, not wanting to interrupt our work, went with some workers to get them. The boards were brought. I inspected them and measured them, and then said they weren’t right for the job.’ Wiernik volunteered to take a few men and go and select the boards he needed himself. The Kapo gave him permission and accompanied the working party. ‘And so I went to the storage shed with my superior, all the while shaking with excitement. I felt that unless I made the most of this opportunity all would be lost.’14

  The revolt had to be launched during daylight, as the combat teams could move around the camp under cover of their normal duties. It was also timed that the main assault on the fences would be launched towards dusk, giving those who managed to get over the wire the cover of fading light. Wiernik needed to pass the precise time to the team in Camp III: ‘Presently I found myself in Camp No. 1 and nervously looked around, appraising our chances. Three other men were with me. The storage shed was guarded by a Jew about 50 years of age, wearing spectacles. Because he was an inmate of Camp No. 1, I knew nothing about him, but he was a participant in the conspiracy. My three helpers engaged the German superior in a conversation to divert his attention, while I pretended to be selecting boards. I deliberately went away from the others, continuing to select boards. Suddenly, someone whispered in my ear: “Today, at 5.30pm.” I turned around casually and saw the Jewish guard of the storage shed before me. He repeated these words and added: “There will be a signal.”’15 Wiernik was ecstatic at this news. ‘In feverish haste I collected whatever boards were nearest to me, told my comrades to pick them up and started to walk, trembling with fear lest I betray my emotions.’16

  Back in Camp III, Wiernik attended an emergency meeting of the resistance committee. ‘Again our committee met furtively and the word was passed around,’ wrote Wiernik. ‘I asked everyone to keep cool and remember their individual assignments. The younger ones among us were greatly agitated. As I looked at our group, I began to believe that we would really win.’17

  In total, there were 850 Jews inside Treblinka II on the afternoon of 2 August 1943. ‘The revolt was to start at 4 o’clock in the afternoon,’18 recalled one of its participants, Kalman Teigman, reporting a completely different time from that told to Wiernik. This is likely confusion in retrospect, as the revolt was triggered earlier than planned by an unforeseen event.

  In Camp III, the usual daily routine continued, though with some subtle changes made by the prisoners. ‘Volunteers for the afternoon work shift were then selected,’ said Wiernik. ‘We assigned the weaker and less capable men to the first shift because it had no task to perform. The first afternoon shift returned from work at 3.00pm. The men we had picked then went to work, thirty in number. They were the bravest, the pluckiest and the strongest in the lot. Their task was to pave the way for the others to escape.’19 The Sonderkommando in Camp III always wore striped concentration camp uniforms so they could be identified as those Jews who worked with the dead. ‘A penalty of twenty-five lashes was meted out for wearing any other clothing while doing this particular job,’ wrote Wiernik. ‘On that day, however, the men wore their clothes under their overalls. Before escaping, they would have to get rid of the overalls, which would have given them away at once.’20 Wiernik and his comrades spent the rest of the afternoon sitting inside their barracks, nervous tension pervading the air like some noxious gas. ‘Every few minutes someone would remark that the time was drawing near. Our emotions at that point defied description. We silently bade farewell to the spot where the ashes of our brethren were buried. Sorrow and suffering had bound us to Treblinka, but we were still alive and wanted to escape from this place where so many innocent victims had perished.’21

  The Germans kept some teenaged Jews around for doing odd jobs, such as polishing their jackboots. They actually worked inside the wooden hut in Camp I that housed the camp armoury, located between the SS and Ukrainian quarters. The plan was for the teenagers to go into the store and remove some arms in sacks and then place these sacks on refuse carts outside and take them away. ‘They were to place the smaller items [hand grenades and pistols] in buckets, items which could be carried by hand. The arms were to be distributed in various places in the camp, such as the motor workshop, or in the heap of potatoes, and similar places.’22

  The NCO in charge of the armoury was the tall and massively built SS-Unterscharführer Max Moller. A former Hamburg policeman, he was pathologically suspicious and greatly feared by the prisoners. Because of his large build, the prisoners had nicknamed Moller ‘The Amerikaner’. On the day of the revolt, a prisoner named Sadovits told Moller that he was needed in the potato workers’ team due to labour problems. Sadovits left the barracks with Moller, who locked the door firmly behind him. Once the coast was clear, a small group of prisoners crept up to the armoury and, using their duplicate key, quickly disappeared inside. Outside, several other Sonderkommandos stood waiting with a handcart, giving the impression that they were on an assigned work detail. Inside the armoury, the Jews managed to break the chains that secured the weapons, grabbing twenty to twenty-five Mauser 98K rifles, twenty stick grenades and twelve Walther P38 pistols. Others speedily broke open large wooden ammunition crates and helped themselves to cardboard boxes full of bullets. Once their comrades had given the all clear, the weapons were passed through the window and the sacks hidden under genuine rubbish in the handcart before being taken off to a barracks where their fellow resisters were nervously waiting. The weapons were distributed among the Sonderkommandos, and magazines filled. The time for action had arrived. There were insufficient firearms for everyone involved in the revolt, so the rest armed themselves with knives and hatchets, hoping to grab rifles and pistols off the guards that they killed during the attack.

  But then tragedy struck. SS-Oberscharführer Kurt Kuttner halted two men who were not where they were supposed to be. Immediately suspicious, Kuttner ordered the men to strip naked. A search of their clothing revealed hidden banknotes that the potential escapers planned to use once they were out of the camp. Kuttner’s response to the discovery of this contraband was to begin savagely beating the prisoners in the hope that they would reveal where the money came from and for what purpose. ‘A great commotion broke out,’ recalled Kalman Teigman. ‘All the time people kept coming back and reporting that they were beating them, and they would certainly reveal information – perhaps they had already done so – and if that was the case, there was nothing to lose, we should start right away.’23

  One of the revolt leaders, now armed with a pistol, ran towards Kuttner and opened fire. It was 3.45pm and the Treblinka revolt had begun. With no chance of luring SS men to their deaths, the Jews instead opened fire on any that they could see and also set about causing as much damage to the camp as possible. Moving fast, two Jews managed to set fire to a large tank where the SS stored thousands of litres of petrol. The tank exploded, setting fire to part of the camp fence that was interlaced with dry tree branches and foliage. Commandant Stangl came to his office window, drawn by the sounds of firing. ‘Looking out of my window I could see Jews on the other side of the inner fence – they must have jumped down from the roof of the SS billets and they were shooting.’24 Stangl immediately responded to the emergency by placing a telephone call to the local SS security police, the Jews not yet having had time to cut the telephone wires. ‘By the time I’d done that, our petrol station blew up,’ said Stangl. ‘That too had been built just like a real service station, with flower beds around it.’25

  A tall column of black smoke rose into the air above the camp, accompanied by the crump of exploding grenades and the rattle of small arms. Fire spread quickly as the Jews torched the hated camp. ‘Next thing the whole ghetto camp was burning and then Matthes, the German in ch
arge of the Totenlager, arrived at a run and said that everything was burning up there too.’26

  Camp III, the death camp, was in an uproar. Due to Franz taking a party of SS to the Bug River for rest and relaxation, the number of guards inside Camp III amounted to only one German NCO and half a dozen Ukrainians. When the first gunshots had rung out in Camp I, the Totenjuden were inside their barracks under guard. There could be no doubt that the revolt had begun when loud grenade detonations followed the pistol shots, but it began much earlier than Yankel Wiernik had been told it would. Grabbing their weapons, the Camp III combat groups immediately swung into action. One Ukrainian Trawniki was killed within seconds, while another died outside the prisoner barracks, their Mauser rifles being turned on other SS by the prisoners. Lieutenant Bloch opened fire on the Camp III wooden guard tower in an attempt to suppress its machine gun. While the combat groups fought the SS, many others managed to climb over the fences behind the prisoners’ barracks and run for the nearby forest. Bloch was killed attempting to hit the machine gunner who was picking off dozens of escapers who were caught in the open.