by Paul Simpson
The Germans were ruthless: after a spate of escape attempts, not only were the perpetrators hanged, but so were ten of the other Jewish slave workers.
At the start of 1943, a proper resistance group started to coalesce, led by Dr Julian Chorazycki, a former Polish army officer, but when he was found in April with a large sum of money which was going to be used to get hold of weapons from outside the camp, Chorazycki chose to swallow a vial of poison rather than risk giving away the names of his comrades. Jankiel Wiernik, a carpenter, became key to the arrangements, as he was one of the few people who could move between the Sonderkommandos who were based in the main part of the camp, and the others whose accommodation was near their work area in the burial pits. The prisoners lived in constant fear that their plan would be discovered: survivor Samuel Willenberg remembered one man facing death who tried to betray the conspiracy, but the Ukrainian guard to whom he was talking didn’t speak German.
As the work removing the bodies neared its closure, the committee chose its date. As Willenberg later recalled, “At the Organizing Committee meeting, held late at night by the light of fires burning the bodies of hundreds of thousands of those dearest to us, we unanimously approved the decision to launch the uprising the next day, 2 August 1943.
“I will never forget white-haired Zvi Korland, the eldest amongst us, who with tears in his eyes, administered to us the oath to fight to our last drop of blood, for the honour of the Jewish people.”
Kalman Teigman, a Polish airport worker who was transported to Treblinka in September 1942, gave the most public account of the revolt at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in December 1961. Eichmann had been one of the key Nazis responsible for the holocaust. He fled to South America after the war and was captured by Israeli intelligence agents in Argentina on 11 May 1960. Returned to Israel for trial, he faced fourteen weeks of testimony from over ninety concentration camp survivors, and was sentenced to death.
According to Teigman’s testimony, the eventual plan for the revolt was based around access to weapons within the camp itself. Two Jewish children were employed to clean the German officers’ shoes, and were working in a hut which also contained weapons. An extra key was made for the storage lock, and the children were to bring out arms in sacks: guns, bullets, revolvers and hand grenades. Smaller items would be put in buckets which were secreted around the camp – in the motor workshop, near piles of potatoes – and then at the pre-arranged time, the prisoners would grab these weapons, find a pretext to get the SS guards into the workshops, and kill them.
Like most escape attempts, it didn’t go according to plan. The revolt was supposed to start at 4 p.m., with the children collecting the weapons between 2 p.m. and 2.30. One of the prisoners, Jakob Domb, shouted out to those working in the extermination area, “End of the world today, the day of judgement at four o’clock” as he went about his rubbish-collecting earlier in the day. However, a couple of the Jews broke the Nazis’ strictly enforced rules and returned to their accommodation around the same time as the children were distributing the arms. They were caught by guards, and made to undress, revealing that they were carrying sums of money in readiness for the breakout. Around 3.30, one of the camp commanders began beating them to interrogate them, which scared the other prisoners, who were sure that they would break under pressure and reveal the escape plan.
Even though it wasn’t quite time for the revolt to start, driver mechanic Rudek Lubrenitski took matters into his own hands, and shot at the SS guards who were administering the beating. At the same time, a grenade was thrown – the signal for the revolt to begin.
One particular prisoner’s role was to disinfect the guards’ huts and accommodation, for which he used a spray gun connected to a tank on his back. Instead of simply putting disinfectant in the tank, he had added petrol to the mix, and sprayed the huts with this highly flammable substance. When the huge petrol tank was set ablaze with a grenade, the fire quickly spread to the huts.
The prisoners ran for their lives, over the fence, through the minefields into the surrounding forests, with the Germans pursuing them in cars, on foot and on horseback. Many – including most of the escape committee – were killed before they could reach freedom. Rudolf Masarek manned a machine gun from the top of the camp’s pigeon house to cover the escape of the others, only to be shot. Some, like camp elder Bernard Galewski who realized that he didn’t have the strength to run far from the Germans, committed suicide rather than be recaptured, or asked their friends to administer a coup de grace. But, as Kalman Teigman told a BBC documentary shortly before his death in July 2012, for those who did manage to escape the feeling was “unbelievable”.
Estimates of the number of prisoners who tried to escape vary from 300 to 750 but fewer than 200 remained at large by nightfall, after Franz Stangl began a massive manhunt. Of these, 70 survived the war, spreading around the world. Stangl took retaliation against those who remained: many were killed, others made to obliterate any evidence of the existence of the camp.
After escaping through Italy and Syria after the war, Stangl moved to Brazil, where he was arrested by Nazi hunter Simon Weisenthal. He was tried in West Germany, where he maintained that his conscience was clear and was sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 October 1970. He died of heart failure the following June. Eleven members of the SS personnel stationed at the camp had been brought to trial in October 1964; one was acquitted, one died before the hearing. The most sadistic of the guards, Kurt Franz, was one of four sentenced to life imprisonment.
The last word on Treblinka should rest with Kalman Teigman, who reinforced the horror of the camps at Eichmann’s trial: “The way in which facts are being presented here, one might come to the conclusion that the 700,000 Treblinka deportees were not gassed by the SS men, but all simply committed suicide.” Those who escaped never forgot those they were not able to save.
Fact vs Fiction
The Treblinka breakout is one of the incidents related in Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer’s novel Frameshift, and also is fictionalized for Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s novel The Strain, although this includes a vampiric element.
Sources:
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team: Treblinka Death Camp: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/treblinka/treblinkarememberme.html
Yad Vashem: http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/resources/treblinka
Testimony of Kalman Teigman at the trial of Adolf Eichmann: quoted at http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/treblinka/revolt.html
Getting the Axe
Any escape from prison, particularly if it involves high-profile inmates, such as serial killers or terrorists, tends to lead to debate in the seats of government, whether it’s at a local level or national. Often these discussions can become quite hyperbolic, with each plot apparently the worst scenario that can possibly be imagined, and those who were negligent, or unfortunate enough to be responsible for the breach in security, are castigated – even if subsequent discoveries show that they weren’t at fault. The reign of terror of the Kray Twins and their henchmen in London was already an emotive topic when one of their friends, the so-called Mad Axeman, Frankie Mitchell, escaped from Dartmoor – and in a debate in the House of Lords two days later, Lord Derwent didn’t hold back. “This particular case of Mitchell is a quite scandalous example of an error of judgement combined with a complete disregard of the safety of the public,” he thundered. And when you bear in mind that Mitchell was eventually executed, apparently on the orders of the Kray Twins, because they were unable to keep him under control, you may think that, on this occasion, the noble lord had a point!
In 1958, Frank Samuel Mitchell had been sentenced to concurrent sentences of life imprisonment and ten years’ imprisonment on charges of robbery, some with violence, and since September 1962 had been held at Dartmoor Prison. Although physically very strong, he had the mental age and attitudes of a child. He had a long history of violent crime, including beating a p
rison officer senseless, for which he was flogged. At various stages, he had been declared insane and held at both Rampton and Broadmoor. He had escaped from the latter, and held an elderly couple hostage with an axe that he found in their garden shed, earning himself the nickname of The Mad Axeman. However, since he had been at Dartmoor, he had not become involved in any incidents of violence, and in line with prison policy at the time, in May 1965 he was allowed to be employed on an outside working party. As the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, explained to the House of Commons on 13 December 1966, the day after Mitchell’s escape, “The object of outside working parties is to test the trustworthiness and develop the responsibility of a prisoner in conditions of less than maximum supervision when his eventual return to the community is contemplated.” The prison authorities believed that Mitchell had matured and they didn’t anticipate that he would abuse the trust that was being shown.
Frankie Mitchell wanted to go home for Christmas. He made that clear when he was visited by friends of the Kray brothers in the spring of 1966; he repeated it after his escape when he was still effectively being held prisoner, this time by the Krays. If anything was the overriding motive for his escape, it was that. The former Governor of Dartmoor Prison had recommended that a date be set for his release, but the government refused to do so, and for someone of his restricted mental abilities, it must have seemed as if he was going to be stuck in prison for the rest of his life, exactly as the judge had apparently ordered.
Mitchell’s working party often consisted of himself and another prisoner, and they would be left to their own devices on the moor. From all accounts, the prison officers were wary of Mitchell, and as long as he came back to the prison, he was often left to his own devices. During the autumn of 1966, he was able to visit local public houses in Peter Tavey, half a dozen miles from the prison, and even go into local towns to buy budgerigars, which he had taken an interest in breeding during his time in Dartmoor. That gave ample opportunity for him to be given clear instructions.
The Krays, who at that time controlled much of the villainy in the East End of London, had got to know Mitchell when they were all locked up in Wandsworth jail, and they kept in touch with him when he was moved to Dartmoor. Around Easter 1966, two of their henchmen, “Fat Wally” Garelick and Patrick Connelly visited Mitchell, giving false names, along with a girl (known as Miss A in the court proceedings). The discussion turned to the Krays, and Mitchell made it clear he didn’t want to still be in Dartmoor at the end of the year. “You won’t be here for Christmas,” he was told, and, according to the evidence Miss A gave at the trial of the Kray brothers and their accomplices, the two men told her that “they” were going to get Mitchell out.
In June, Garelick returned to the prison, and when Mitchell asked about the timetable for his escape, he was told to be alert, as it would have to be arranged at short notice. Garelick, Connelly, Miss A and another girl also spent some time reconnoitring the area around the prison during this trip. The plan was then presented to Ronnie and Reggie Kray in London for their approval.
The third visit at the start of December saw an increasingly anxious Mitchell insistent that he wanted to go home. Garelick reassured him that he would be, and told him that he would need to “run further” now than they had originally told him. The day before the escape, Garelick and Connelly made a final trip to Dartmoor, a couple of days after hiring a car.
The weather wasn’t good on 12 December; it wasn’t sufficiently bad to prevent the working party from going out to work on a fence on the firing range at Bagga Tor, but it did mean that for the majority of the day, the prisoners stayed in the base hut. In the afternoon, Mitchell asked if he could take some bread to feed the horses, something that he had done regularly near the point where the prisoners were dropped off and picked up. Usually he would be waiting there for them when the rest of the prisoners arrived. This time, there was no sign of him and it was at least forty minutes before the alarm was raised.
By this time, Frankie Mitchell was sitting in the back of a Humber car on the way back to London in the company of three of the Kray gang: Albert Donoghue, ‘Mad’ Tommy Smith and Billy Exley. He was taken to a flat belonging to another member of the gang, Lennie Dunn, in Canning Town, and stayed there for the next twelve days – the rest of his life.
When they realized that he had gone, the prison authorities began a massive search. More than a hundred police using tracker dogs joined thirty prison officers combing the area during one of the worst hailstorms in recent memory. The next day, a hundred Royal Marines had been divided into three search parties, backed up by two Royal Navy helicopters, but all without success. It seemed as if he had vanished off the face of the earth.
The following weekend, warders at the prison even made a plea via the pages of the Daily Mirror, believing that he might want to give himself up. “If you let us know where to meet you, we will be quite willing to pick you up,” they said, believing that Mitchell might be frightened of going to the police, but would be willing to surrender to people he trusted. “If he does this,” a statement from the warders noted, “he will not only gain reasonable consideration for himself but will also vindicate those who trusted him and were proved wrong – and prove wrong, indeed, those who have condemned him.” By this stage, though, police investigations had started to centre on the East End of London.
The Krays claimed that they assisted Mitchell to escape from Dartmoor to help publicise his case. If he could be kept on the outside without causing trouble, then hopefully the authorities would reconsider his lack of release date. He therefore – with a great deal of assistance – wrote letters to four separate newspapers, which were authenticated by his thumbprint on the bottom. They weren’t quite identical, but it was clear that they had been written from a template, with all of them highlighting the indeterminate nature of his sentence, and asking for a release date. The letters were printed in The Times and the Daily Mirror. However, the government response was clear: he had to return to prison before any consideration would be given to his case.
All the time, Mitchell was kept under lock and key, with at least one member of the Kray Firm guarding him. When he became insistent on some female company, Lisa Prescott, a hostess from the Winston club, was provided on 19 December. Mitchell very quickly became attached to her, telling his guards that they were going to get married, and refusing to contemplate moving out of the flat without her. Prescott herself was kept cowed by the Kray henchmen and only allowed to leave the flat in the company of one of them.
Mitchell was getting annoyed with his situation. He didn’t feel that he was being treated seriously by the Krays and was threatening to leave the flat to visit them. He probably didn’t understand that this was designed as a temporary escape, and that the intention was that he return to Dartmoor but with a clear end to his sentence in sight. When the henchmen suggested that he should go back on 23 December, he refused, saying he wanted to stay out at least over Christmas.
That refusal probably sealed his fate. According to the court case, and the evidence of Freddie Foreman, Mitchell was persuaded to leave the flat, perhaps on the pretext that he was being taken to spend Christmas in Kent with Ronnie Kray. He was assured that Lisa Prescott would be following within the hour. When he got into the back of a waiting van, two of the Krays’ gunmen were waiting for him. At close range, a fusillade of bullets was pumped into the Mad Axeman. Certainly sounds of muffled bangs were heard from within the vehicle, and then the two men who had walked out with Mitchell returned to the flat, and made a phone call. “The dog is dead,” one of them said, before ordering the others to completely clean the flat. Prescott was then taken to another flat and threatened by Reggie Kray to keep her mouth shut. She was told that “they gave [Mitchell] four injections in the nut”. Mitchell’s body was disposed of at sea.
Ronnie Kray didn’t deny that Mitchell was dead, but blamed it on one of his men, Billy Exley, and three Greeks, who had offered to get Mitchell out of the cou
ntry. However, when they couldn’t cope with him, they shot him. (Equally, another member of the Kray firm said that Ronnie told him: “He’s f***ing dead. We had to get rid of him; he would have got us all nicked. We made a mistake getting the bastard out in the first place.”)
Either way, Frankie Mitchell achieved his aim of not being in Dartmoor at Christmas. Wally Garelick received an eighteen-month sentence for his part in the escape.
Sources:
Daily Mirror, 19 December 1966: “Dartmoor warders in plea to Mitchell”
Evening Argus, 29 October 2003: “Ex-Kray henchman spared jail”
Hansard, 13 December 1966: “House of Commons: Dartmoor (Prisoner’s Escape)”
Hansard, 14 December 1966: “House of Lords: Dartmoor Escape of Frank Mitchell”
TheKrays.co.uk
Foreman, Frankie with John Lisners: Respect (Arrow, 1997)
Glasgow Herald, 26 June 1968: “Crown story of Frank Mitchell’s murder after escape from Dartmoor”
Caught Because They Could
Cinema audiences in 2002 were treated to a fun romp starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a young criminal being pursued by a dogged FBI agent played by Tom Hanks. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Catch Me If You Can was a highly fictionalized version of the life of Frank Abagnale junior, a conman who had achieved great success before his twenty-first birthday. But while the film didn’t hesitate to conflate events and characters, Abagnale’s story was astounding enough without any additions. According to one report, there was even a plaque on the wall of Atlanta Federal Penitentiary commemorating Abagnale’s escape from the prison since apparently he was the first person to do so. (He wasn’t, but he was one of the very few who did.)
