Holocaust Heroes

by Felton, Mark;

  Ironically, it was also during the summer of 1943 that the Underground factions finally set aside their differences and united under Tenenbaum’s leadership. The events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were widely known in Bialystok, and Barasz realized that the Nazis had deceived both him and the Judenrat. The Germans had assured Barasz on several occasions that the ghetto was essential to their war effort. The German roundup in February had not targeted the Jews or their families who worked in the German factories, reinforcing this idea. Tenenbaum disagreed with Barasz and the two friends parted.11

  By July 1943, the rumour was abroad in Bialystok that the Germans would destroy the ghetto. The Judenrat continued to deny all such rumours – they told the people that large and urgent orders had just been placed with the factories. It was a reassuring sign. But then, on the evening of 15 August, Barasz was summoned to the office of the head of the ghetto Gestapo, 50-year-old SS-Obersturmführer Fritz Friedl. Also present at the meeting was Globocnik’s ‘clearing expert’ Georg Michalsen. Barasz was told that the next morning the workers and their families would be transferred to Lublin. The ghetto was to be closed. Barasz was stunned – too stunned in fact to pass on this vital piece of intelligence to Tenenbaum.12

  At 2.00am on 16 August 1943, Jewish Underground operatives, who kept a constant eye on the Germans, noticed that SS were progressively surrounding the ghetto. A meeting was hurriedly convened, at which around 200 Underground members attended. An inventory was swiftly taken of available weapons. It was a pitifully short list. The Underground possessed about twenty-five rifles, a few dozen pistols, a handful of sub-machine guns and one heavy machine gun. Ammunition was very limited and their only heavier weapons consisted of a few dozen hand grenades. The Germans, however, had absorbed the lessons of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, and they deployed 3,000 SS, Police and Latvian and Ukrainian SS auxiliaries (the dreaded ‘Trawnikis’), some units including armour and artillery. Additionally, Michalsen could call upon air support from local Luftwaffe units.

  The other main difference with Warsaw was the attitude of the majority of the Jewish population to the Underground fighters. They simply did not support them, preferring until it was too late to believe what the Judenrat told them. This meant that the fighters’ numbers were low, they were concentrated in only one area of the ghetto and had little in the way of prepared positions and defences compared with the extensive bunker system that caused the Germans so much trouble in Warsaw.

  The Germans rapidly took over the factory area of the ghetto, preventing the fighters from setting fire to the buildings, as Tenenbaum had indeed planned to do. By 6.00am, the Germans had put up announcements informing the inhabitants that the ghetto was being evacuated to Lublin on Gauleiter Koch’s express order. All residents were to report to Jurowiecka Street for immediate shipment out. Learning a valuable lesson from Warsaw, the SS decided to first empty the Jews from the large residential blocks, where a determined resistance by fighters would have been more effective. The fighters tried to prevent the ghetto inhabitants from assembling, but without success. Most still believed what the Judenrat had told them and trusted its leaders. This trust was reciprocated in kind by their leader Barasz, who led the line of people being evacuated, carrying a suitcase and wearing a backpack. The Jewish Underground could see that they did not have the support of the people – instead they would follow their own trusted leader to their deaths.13

  The Underground plan now was for the fighters to destroy parts of the ghetto fences so that some people could run away, while the fighters would follow and link up with the partisans in the forests. With this plan in mind, it was the Jewish fighters that attacked first, around 10.00am. They set fire to homes on Ciepla, Smolna and Nowogrodzka Streets and attacked the German cordon with their limited number of guns and grenades. The Germans beat back the Jews’ attempt to break down the fences, the fighters suffering heavy casualties. At this point Luftwaffe aircraft joined in the attack, swooping down and strafing the fighters’ positions with cannon and machine-gun fire.14 To this, the fighters had no way of responding.

  Soon Nowogrodzka and Smolna Streets were littered with the bodies of dead Jews. A unit of fighters at Green Gardens on Nowogrodzka Street held out against SS attacking from Ciepla and Poleska Streets. The first German assault was repelled, but then the Germans brought up tanks. The fighters detonated a large mine that they had placed beneath a sewer manhole cover on the corner of Kupiecka and Ciepla Streets. The German tanks pulled back, the commander unsure of how many mines the Jews may have concealed on the road. The seventy-two fighters withdrew to 7 Chmielna Street, where the SS concentrated machine-gun fire at the house from the corners of Kupiecka and Jurowiecka Streets. The Germans then stormed the building, tossing stick grenades in through doors and windows before shooting their way inside. All seventy-two fighters perished in the battle, their bodies later dumped in a mass grave in the ghetto cemetery on Zabia Street.

  After three hours of intense combat, the battle died down, but fighting flared up again at 5.00pm when fighters once more tried and failed to break down the ghetto perimeter fences and escape. By the evening of 16 August, the fighters were starting to run low on ammunition. One unit began feverishly digging a tunnel under the ghetto fence to create an avenue of escape. Fighting in the ghetto would continue spasmodically for several more days, particularly during the hours of darkness. Hastily-constructed Bunkers on Ciepla and Nowogrodzka Streets managed to resist until 27 August, when they were finally overrun – a few fighters managed to escape through the tunnel and joined the partisans in the forests.

  On 20 August, the SS committed one of the worst outrages in Bialystok when they forcibly emptied the ghetto hospital on Fabryczna Street. The hospital was crammed full of women and newly born babies, the sick and elderly and some wounded from the fighting. SS and Trawnikis drove the patients from their beds with the utmost brutality – they were herded outside the hospital and loaded aboard horse-drawn wagons for their final journey. Anyone who was slow to move was beaten and in many cases patients were executed on the spot. The patients on the surgery ward dressed slowly due to their wounds, but the SS still beat them with fists and clubs. On the obstetrical ward, the SS carried the babies out. ‘The Germans threw the babies as if they were inanimate dead things. Around them could be heard loud crude laughter. The babies did not scream. They were already half-dead. From the wagon, only one choked whimper was heard.’15 The wagons took the rest to the cemetery on Zabia Street, where the patients and medical staff were all shot.16

  Mordecai Tenenbaum, determined along with many of the Jewish Underground not to fall into the hands of the enemy, committed suicide just before his bunker was captured.17 An SS blockade of the ghetto remained in force until 15 September 1943 before the Germans were satisfied that resistance was finally over and all of the Jews had been accounted for.

  The Bialystok Ghetto was no more, with the vast majority of its inhabitants shipped off to their deaths in the extermination camps. Whether more might have survived if the fighters had been believed, we will never know. But the Bialystok resistance shows that each ghetto story was unique. In the case of Bialystok, the Germans had become so efficient in their liquidation procedure that only about 100 Jews managed to survive the clearances.

  SS-Sturmbannführer Georg Michalsen, the man who commanded the liquidation and crushed the resistance in Bialystok, joined most other Aktion Reinhard personnel in Italy fighting partisans. He served as SS and Police Commander in a succession of Italian cities throughout 1943 and 1944, first at Fiume, then Pola and finally Trieste. He was captured by the British Army whilst hiding out with Odilo Globocnik and several other Reinhard veterans in the mountains of Carinthia in late May 1945. Posing as an ordinary Waffen-SS man, Michalsen managed to fool his captors, who released him in 1947. Michalsen moved to Hamburg and worked as an accountant until rearrested in 1961. But it would take until 1974 before he was convicted of any crime. He was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonmen
t, a remarkably lenient term considering the gravity of his crimes.

  SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, Reinhard Heydrich’s deputy and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust.

  Mark Edelman, one of the leaders of Jewish resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, 1943.

  SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Stangl, Commandant of Treblinka II.

  Leon Feldhendler, co-leader of the Sonderkommando uprising at Sobibor Extermination Camp, 1943.

  SS-Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel, Commandant of Camp 1, Sobibor Extermination Camp.

  SS-Oberscharführer Erich Muhsfeldt, who was brought in to help organise the liquidation of Poniatowa Concentration Camp as part of Aktion Erntefest, 1943.

  Jews being loaded aboard trains in Warsaw for shipment to Treblinka Extermination Camp, 1942.

  SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop (centre in peaked cap), ordered by Heinrich Himmler to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto, 1943.

  Jews being rounded up during the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, 1943.

  The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw ablaze, 1943.

  SS-TV corporals at Treblinka II Extermination Camp in 1943. (left to right) SS-Unterscharführers Paul Bredow, Willi Mentz, Max Möller and Josef Hirtreiter.

  Treblinka II on fire during the prisoner uprising, 2 August 1943.

  Bialystok Ghetto in ruins following the Jewish uprising, 1943.

  An Aktion Erntefest mass grave.

  Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944.

  Hungarian Jews undergoing selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944.

  A clandestinely taken photograph of Jewish Sonderkommandos burning corpses at Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944.

  Another clandestinely taken photograph showing naked Jewish women being herded to their deaths, Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1 August 1944.

  US troops executing surrendered SS in the rail yard at Dachau Concentration Camp, 29 April 1945.

  Dead SS guards who were shot outside a guard tower by US troops, Dachau, 29 April 1945.

  Chapter 7

  Escape from Sobibor

  ‘We knew our fate. We knew that we were in an extermination camp and death was our destiny. We knew that even a sudden end to the war might spare the inmates of the “normal” concentration camps, but never us. Only desperate actions could shorten our suffering and maybe afford us a chance of escape. And the will to resist had grown and ripened.’

  Thomas Toivi Blatt

  Sonderkommando Sobibor

  The small group of Jewish prisoners inside the camp tailor’s shop exchanged fearful glances, as the sound of hooves grew louder outside. One of them quickly peeked out of one of the hut’s small windows.

  ‘He’s arrived,’ he muttered. ‘Get ready.’

  A few seconds later and the hut door opened, and in stepped SS-Untersturmführer Johann Niemann, the 30-year-old deputy commandant of the Sobibor Extermination Camp. Outside, another prisoner held the bridle of Niemann’s chestnut horse that he used to ride imperiously around the camp. Niemann tucked his riding crop under one armpit and began to slowly remove his gloves, his hard eyes moving around the room and settling momentarily on each of the Jewish faces before him. The prisoners took in Niemann’s uniform and shuddered. A devil walked among them, the SS death’s head badge grinning at them from Niemann’s cap band and from his right collar patch. As a concentration camp officer in the notorious SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), Niemann did not wear the twin lightning flash runes of the Waffen-SS on his collar. His rank was indicated by three silver pips arranged in a diagonal line on his left collar patch and army-style silver shoulder straps. The prisoners glanced at his waist, where his black belt with its silver SS buckle supported a leather holster. Inside sat Niemann’s Luger pistol, ready for instant use against any ‘problem’ prisoners.

  One of the tailors brought out an unfinished officer’s uniform ready for Niemann to try on. After removing his belt and tunic, the prisoners were helping him into the new jacket when Niemann sensed movement behind him. He turned his head to one side and managed to mutter ‘Was?’ before Soviet prisoner-of-war Alexander Shubayev buried a home-made hatchet in his skull. Niemann didn’t scream, just grunted at the impact, which killed him instantly. He collapsed onto the hut’s wooden floor, dark rivulets of blood running across its dusty surface from the gaping wound in his head. One prisoner picked up Niemann’s heavy gun belt and drew the Luger from its holster. It felt solid and cold in his grasp. He looked at his comrades and nodded slowly. The Sobibor Revolt had commenced.

  Beginning in 1940, the Nazis had established sixteen labour camps in the Lublin region near the village of Sobibor. It was intended that the Jews sent to these camps would work as agricultural labourers under German colonial overseers. Over 95,000 Jews expelled from Warsaw and Vienna were shipped in for this task and paid for their labour. They were housed in a network of sub-camps based on the concentration camp at Krychow.

  Sobibor Camp was constructed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla between March and April 1942, using Jewish Sonderkommando labour after German policy towards the Jews had dramatically changed. The location, marshy woodland with a sparse population, was chosen because it was close to the rail line that ran between Chelm and Wlodawa connecting the General Government with Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The garrison would consist of a German commandant, initially SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl, twenty-nine SS non-commissioned officers and between 90 and 120 Ukrainian SS auxiliaries.1 At the end of August 1942, a new commandant was appointed after Stangl was moved to take command at Treblinka; he was SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Reichleitner.

  An Austrian, Reichleitner had been born in 1906 and was another Aktion T4 veteran. At the Hartheim Institute, Reichleitner had worked alongside Stangl under the command of Christian Wirth. The prisoners at Sobibor regarded Reichleitner as an austere figure who was always immaculately turned out in his uniform, and always wore gloves. He had very little to do with the Jews, relying on his trusted second-in-command, Niemann, and a coterie of efficient SS-TV sergeants and corporals. But it was obvious that Reichleitner was feared and respected by the other SS.

  Sobibor was small compared with Auschwitz or Dachau, consisting of three camps surrounded by a barbed wire fence, into which tree branches had been woven. Trees had also been planted around the camp’s perimeter to further shield it from public view, and it was surrounded by a deep, water-filled moat. Camp I, under the command of SS-Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel, consisted of the main administration offices, housing for the German SS and Trawniki auxiliaries, and barracks for a large detachment of Jewish Sonderkommandos. Here also was the prisoners’ kitchen.

  Thirty-two-year-old Frenzel had been active with the Nazis since 1930, when he had enlisted in the SA. When war broke out in 1939, Frenzel had been drafted into the Reich Labour Service, but soon after released to help take care of his five children. Desperate to take part in the war effort, Frenzel volunteered through his SA connections, was recruited into the SS-TV and was assigned to the highly secret Aktion T4.

  The T4 euthanasia programme that was partly based at Schloss Hartheim in Austria was the bloody prelude to the industrialized murders that were to follow in places like Sobibor and Treblinka II. The mentally retarded and physically disabled were murdered on the recommendations of doctors as the Nazis attempted to remove all ‘defectives’ from their population.2 Over 70,000 ‘patients’ were to die during the course of the programme,3 which continued in operation until just after the war ended in 1945. Told that the killings were the responsibility of doctors, Frenzel, Stangl, Reichleitner and the other SS-TV men had set aside their moral reservations and done their duty, as they conceived of it. Frenzel’s primary job was removing bodies from the small gas chambers, wrenching out any gold teeth and then burning the bodies in the crematoria.

  On 20 April 1942, Frenzel was assigned to Sobibor, where he was widely detested and feared by the prisoners, and was known for using his whip on them frequently. In one notorious incident in spring
1943, two Jews from Chelm were caught trying to escape from Sobibor. Frenzel decided, in consultation with the other SS senior NCOs, that an example should be made. At roll call, every tenth Jew was taken out of the line to be shot, twenty being murdered in this way.4 Following this escape attempt, a minefield was laid around the outside of the camp’s perimeter as a further deterrent.

  Camp II, or the Vorlager, consisted of the railway platform where evacuation trains were off-loaded, a ramp, the undressing barracks and warehouses where 400 of the Jewish Sonderkommandos worked. They sorted and stored property confiscated from Jews who arrived by train at the camp platform. There was also a building where the newly arrived Jews had their heads shaved and their valuables taken from them before they proceeded into Camp III and the gas chambers.

  Camp III contained a further Sonderkommando unit’s barracks, these men tasked with the open-air cremation of the bodies of the dead and the disposal of these bones and ashes in large pits.5

  The evacuation trains that brought the Jews to Sobibor consisted of between forty and sixty freight cars. The platform in Camp II was large enough to permit the unloading of twenty cars at a time.6 On arrival, the SS told the Jews that the facility was a transit camp, where they would be disinfected for lice and processed through to working parties in labour camps elsewhere. ‘I helped Jews out of the trains with all their baggage,’ said Sonderkommando Philip Bialowitz. ‘My heart was bleeding knowing that in half an hour they would all be reduced to ashes. I couldn’t tell them. I wasn’t allowed to speak. Even if I told them, they wouldn’t believe they were going to die.’7