The surviving Jews of Poland and western Russia had no means of escape. The Jews of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were likewise trapped within the iron ring of Nazi rule. But in Denmark, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary the Jews were as yet untouched, and on September 24 Martin Luther, of the German Foreign Ministry, passed on to those concerned von Ribbentrop’s instructions ‘to hurry as much as possible the evacuation of Jews from the various countries of Europe’. For a start, he wrote, negotiations should begin with the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary and Denmark ‘with the object of starting the evacuation of the Jews of these countries’.1
Negotiations were also begun by Germany with the Italian authorities in Croatia. But within three weeks Siegfried Kasche, Hitler’s envoy in Croatia, had reported that General Roatta, the Italian military commander, had ‘flatly refused’ to hand over Jews in his zone to the German army. Four days later Kasche reported that some of Mussolini’s subordinates have ‘apparently been influenced’ by opposition in the Vatican to German-style anti-Semitism.2
No Jews were deported from Italy to the death camps until after the fall of Mussolini and the German occupation of northern Italy in the autumn of 1943. But from France, Belgium and Holland the deportations to Birkenau continued, despite several local protests. On September 24, in Brussels, Cardinal Van Roey and Queen Elizabeth both intervened with the German occupation authorities after the arrest of six leading members of the Jewish community. As a result of their intervention, five were released. The sixth, Edward Rotbel, Secretary of the Belgian Jewish Community, was a Hungarian citizen, and thus a citizen of an ‘Allied country’. He was deported to Birkenau two days later.3
Among those gassed at Birkenau in the last week of September 1942 were several hundred from Slovakia and 806 from France on September 23; 481 from France on September 25, including René, the brother of Léon Blum, the former French Prime Minister; several hundred from Holland on September 26; 897 from France on September 27, several hundred from Belgium on September 28, among them Edward Rotbel; and a further 685 from France on September 29: at least four thousand in a single week.4
As the killing continued, resistance spread. On September 24, as pits were being dug outside the White Russian town of Korzec, Moshe Krasnostavski, a member of the Jewish Council, set himself and his house aflame. Other Jews helped to set the ghetto ablaze, and several dozen broke out of the German and Ukrainian cordon, among them Moshe Gildenmann, who then formed and led a Jewish partisan band. But in the break-out, two thousand Jews were killed. Such were the fearsome odds.5 Five days later, at nearby Serniki, three hundred Jews escaped during the round-up, the chairman of the Jewish Council, Shlomo Turfkenitz, having given his house to the escapees. His Chief Assistant on the Council, Shimon Rosenzweig, later died fighting with the partisans.6
On September 25, in Kaluszyn, near Warsaw, the Chairman of the Jewish Council, Abraham Gamzu, had refused a Gestapo demand to deliver Jews for ‘resettlement’. He was shot in his home.7 Two thousand Jews were then deported to Treblinka, and killed.8
The death camps were working at fever pitch: and piling up in huts and yards was a mountain of belongings. On September 26 a senior SS officer, Lieutenant-General August Frank, sent the Auschwitz camp administration, as well as the head of administration in the Lublin region, a note of what was to be done with the ‘property of the evacuated Jews’. Foreign currency, jewellery, precious stones, pearls, and ‘gold from teeth’ were to go to the SS for ‘immediate delivery’ to the German Reichsbank. Watches, clocks, alarm clocks, fountain pens, electric and hand razors, pocket-knives, scissors, flashlights, wallets and purses were to be cleaned, ‘evaluated’ and ‘delivered quickly’ to front line troops.
The troops would be able to buy these items. No officer or soldier could buy more than one watch. The proceeds would go ‘to the Reich’. Gold watches would be distributed to the SS. Underwear and footwear would be sorted, valued, and given, in the main, to Ethnic Germans. Women’s clothing, including footwear, children’s clothing and children’s underwear was to be sold to Ethnic Germans. Underwear of pure silk was to be handed over to the Reich Ministry of Economics.
Quilts, woollen blankets, thermos flasks, earflaps, combs, table knives, forks, spoons and knapsacks; all were listed. So too were sheets, pillows, towels and table cloths. All were to go to Ethnic Germans. Spectacles and eye-glasses were to go to the Medical Office of the Army. Gold frames were to go to the SS. ‘Valuable furs’ were likewise to go to the SS. Prices were to be established for each item: ‘for instance, one pair of used men’s trousers, 3 Reichsmarks; one woollen blanket, 6 Reichsmarks etc.’ It was to be ‘strictly observed that the Jewish star is removed from all garments and outer garments which are to be delivered’. All items should be searched ‘for hidden valuables sewn in’.9 Within two weeks, fifty kilogrammes of the dental gold already accumulated were to be sent to the SS for its own dental needs, all additional amounts to be sent to the Reichsbank.10
From the first days of the war, the destruction of Jewish life in German-occupied Europe had been parallelled by the acquisition of Jewish property. Killing and looting had gone hand in hand. Nor was this the spontaneous looting of armies and soldiers, but the deliberate and systematic search for every type of wealth that could be seized or sequestered. Shops, businesses and factories had been taken first, transferred without recompense to local Ethnic Germans or to the German war machine. Furs, jewellery, radios, even pets had been taken next. Almost every week notices were posted up in cities and ghettos announcing some new confiscation. At the end of the path of this deliberate impoverishment of a whole people came the looting of their last meagre possessions, their bundles, the clothes they were wearing, even their hair, at the edge of the death pit or on the final approach to the gas-chamber. Nor was that the very end: even from the corpses the last ounce of a gold tooth had to be extracted.
Under the Nazi system, murder had become as profitable as commerce; even more so, for there had been nothing to pay, no bargain to strike, only the point of a gun and the lash of a whip, and the wealth and possessions of many generations lay in the palm of the conqueror.
***
For nearly six weeks, the Swiss frontier police had been sending back hundreds of Jews who had crossed over the border into Switzerland from France. ‘Under current practice’, explained a Swiss Police Instruction of September 25, ‘refugees on the grounds of race alone are not political refugees.’ Since 1938, more than twenty-eight thousand Jews had been allowed into Switzerland. Now, more than nine thousand were to be refused entry, and sent back across the border.
One witness of the fate of these Jews was a Swiss woman, Madame Francken, who lived at the Swiss border village of Novel, near the town of Saint-Gingolph. Recalling two Czech Jews, a brother and a sister, who had managed to cross over to Swiss soil, Madam Francken wrote:
We never found out what became of those two! The notorious Sergeant Arretaz of Saint-Gingolph turned people back like a sadist, whereas his confrere, the customs officer, ran and hid so as not to see the agonizing cortege of those sent back to the border, straight into the hands of the French militia.
Two of these poor wretched creatures slit their wrists on the bridge on the same day, while a woman (whom we had seen being hunted down in l’Haut de Morge) threw herself from the fourth story of the hotel in Saint-Gingolph where she was staying.11
Another Jewish couple who had succeeded in crossing into Switzerland at Novel were Elli and Jan Friedländer, Czech Jews who had managed, while still in France, to find their son Saul a safe haven with Catholic nuns. Their son, who survived the war brought up as a Catholic, later received the copy of two letters and a telegram written by his parents. The first letter was dated September 30:
We reached Switzerland after a very tiring journey and were turned back. We were misinformed. We are now awaiting our transfer to the camp at Rivesaltes, where our fate will be decided in the way that is already quite familiar to you.
; There are no words to describe our unhappiness and our despair. Moreover, we don’t have our baggage. Can you imagine our physical and mental state?
Perhaps if you could intervene at Vichy we would be spared the worst. It is not the camp that we are afraid of. You know that. If there is the slightest possibility of helping us, do not hesitate, we beg you. Act quickly. There must be a solution at Vichy that would be less catastrophic for us. Don’t forget the little one!
On October 3, Elli and Jan Friedlander sent a telegram from the camp at Rivesaltes. It read: ‘Without intervention Minister Interior, our imminent departure inevitable. Regards, Jan Friedlander, 3548 Rivesaltes, Block K.’
Two days later, the Friedländers were deported from Rivesaltes to Drancy. They believed that they were on their way to Germany. From the train, they threw out their second letter, the first few lines written in ink, the rest in pencil. The letter was addressed to the Director of the Catholic Boarding School to whom they had entrusted their son for baptism and for survival:
Madame, I am writing you this in the train that is taking us to Germany. At the last moment, I sent you, through a representative of the Quakers, 6,000 francs, a charm bracelet, and, through a lady, a folder with stamps in it. Keep all of this for the little one, and accept, for the last time, our infinite thanks and our warmest wishes for you and your whole family. Don’t abandon the little one! May God repay you and bless you and your whole family. Elli and Jan Friedländer.
Publishing this letter thirty-four years later, their son asked bitterly, ‘What God was meant?’12
Jan and Ella Friedlander were taken to Drancy. From there, with a thousand other Jews, they were deported to Auschwitz. Of those thousand, only four men, and no women, survived. The Friedländers were among those who perished. Were they able to derive any comfort from the fact that their son had been spared, by their efforts, that terrible journey? Among those deported with them, and gassed on arrival at Auschwitz, were more than two hundred children, among them the three-year-old Solange Zajdenwerger and her four-year-old brother David.13
On September 23, 2,004 Jews were deported from Theresienstadt to Maly Trostenets, near Minsk. There were no survivors.14 Three days later a further two thousand were deported from Theresienstadt, also to Maly Trostenets.15 Three days after that, a further two thousand were deported from Theresienstadt, ‘probably to Maly Trostenets’.16 Once more, there were no survivors. Among the dead were Albert Lob from Worms, his wife Katherine, and their twenty-four-year-old son Ernst. Also killed was Sussel Spatz, born in the Austro-Hungarian town of Nowy Sacz in 1864, whose husband Peter, sent first to Buchenwald after the Kristallnacht in 1938, had died in Dachau two years later.17
A meeting of railway officials in Berlin on September 26, resumed on September 28, reflected the new pace and comprehensiveness of the deportation plans. It was decided that one train a day would go from the Radom district to Treblinka, one train a day from the Cracow area to Belzec, and one train a day from the Lvov district to Belzec. Each train was to consist of fifty freight cars and one passenger-car escort; and each train was to carry two thousand people. A new rail track was to be ready in November 1942 to link Lublin and Chelm with Sobibor.18
In October, deportees from Theresienstadt were sent by the improved railway services, not to the small gas-vans of distant Maly Trostinec, but to the gas-chambers of Treblinka. Of one thousand deportees on October 5, none survived.19 Of a further thousand on October 8, about twenty-eight escaped. The rest were gassed. Of the twenty-eight escapees, only two survived the war.20 The three remaining deportations from Theresienstadt to Treblinka in October were more crowded: six thousand Jews in all. Not one survived.21
In Warsaw, following the devastating deportations of August and September, the doctors in the ghetto who had been studying the medical effects of starvation realized that the time had come to end their work. ‘Never have I experienced a feeling with such force’, wrote Dr Izrael Milejkowski, ‘as right now, writing a preface to this work. I hold my pen in my hand and into my room peers the spectacle of death from beneath black empty windows of abandoned, sullen buildings, standing on deserted streets that are strewn with the remains of plunder.’ Milejkowski ended his preface with a tribute to his fellow physicians in the ghetto: ‘You, my associates in misery, were part of the community. Slavery, famine, evacuation, you shared them all. Death hung constantly over your heads. But by your work you gave the assassins your reply. And this ringing answer will resound forever. “Non omnis moriar!”, “Not all of me shall die!”’22
Dr Milejkowski organized the final meetings, to hasten the typing of the accumulated material. Three months later, when the deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka were renewed, he was caught and deported. On the short journey to Treblinka, he committed suicide.23
Medical experiments on defenceless prisoners had continued at Auschwitz without respite. ‘Today I preserved fresh material from the human liver, spleen and pancreas,’ Dr Kremer noted in his diary on October 3, ‘also lice from persons infected with typhus, in pure alcohol.’24 Five years later he explained how:
It was like this: I had been for an extensive period of time interested in investigating the changes developing in the human organism as a result of starvation. At Auschwitz I mentioned this to Wirth who said that I would be able to get completely fresh material for my researches from those prisoners who were killed by phenol injections. To choose suitable specimens I used to visit the last block on the right (Block 8), where sick prisoners from the camp came for medical examination.
During the examination the prisoners who acted as doctors presented the patients to the SS physician and described the illness of the patient. The SS physician decided then—taking into consideration the prisoner’s chances of recovery—whether he should be treated in the hospital, perhaps as an out-patient, or be liquidated.
Those attributed by the SS physician to the latter group were led away by the SS orderlies. The SS physician set aside for liquidation above all those prisoners whose diagnosis was Allgemeine Korperschwache, ‘general bodily exhaustion’.
I used to observe such prisoners and if one of them aroused my interest, owing to his advanced state of starvation, I asked the orderly to reserve the given patient for me and let me know when he would be killed with an injection. At the time fixed by the orderly the patients selected by me were again brought to the last block, were put into a room on the other side of the corridor opposite the room where the examinations, during which the patient had been selected, had taken place.
The patient was put upon the dissecting table while he was still alive. I then approached the table and put several questions to the man as to such details which pertained to my researches. For instance I asked what his weight had been before the arrest, how much weight he had lost since then, whether he took any medicines, etc.
When I had collected my information the orderly approached the patient and killed him with an injection in the vicinity of the heart. As far as I knew only phenol injections were used. Death was instantaneous after the injection. I myself never made any lethal injections.25
On October 10, Dr Kremer noted in his diary two items of interest to him: ‘Fresh material from liver, spleen and pancreas taken and preserved. Had a stamp with facsimile of my signature made for me by prisoners….’26 Five days later he noted: ‘First frost this night, the afternoon again sunny and warm. Fresh material of liver, spleen and pancreas taken from an abnormal individual.’27
Four kilometres from Birkenau, in the village of Budy, Jewish women were brought to the schoolhouse which, circled by barbed wire, served as the centre of a small labour camp whose prisoners worked in the surrounding fields. There, in the first days of October, an incident took place of unusual savagery even for that savage and tormented region. An account of it was set down after the war by an employee of the Political Section at Auschwitz, SS Corporal Pery Broad, who learned of it from his superior, SS Lieutenant Maximilian Grabner. Summoned urgently t
o Budy by the camp guards, Grabner, his assistant, an investigator and two clerks entered Budy with what Grabner described as ‘a feeling of curiosity’. His account continued:
The guard saluted them. They heard a peculiar buzzing and humming in the air. Then they saw a sight so horrible that some minutes passed before they could take it in properly. The square behind and beside the school was covered with dozens of female corpses, mutilated and bloody, lying in complete chaos. All were covered only with threadbare prisoners’ undergarments. Half-dead women were writhing among the corpses. Their groaning mixed with the buzzing of immense swarms of flies, which circled round the sticky pools of blood and the smashed skulls. That was the origin of the strange humming sound which the newcomers had found so peculiar on their arrival. Some corpses hung in a twisted position on the barbed-wire fence. Others had evidently been thrown out from an attic window which was still open.
Grabner at once sought from the few survivors an account of the incident which had led to this gruesome scene. He was told, as Pery Broad later recalled, that:
The SS men, who acted as guards in the camp, used to get the German women prisoners to maltreat the Jewish women. If the former did not comply, they were threatened with being driven through the chain of sentries and ‘shot while escaping’. The bestial SS men regarded it as a pleasant pastime to look at the sufferings of the maltreated Jewesses. The result of this unbearable situation was that the German women always were in a state of fear lest the tormented Jewish women take vengeance on them for their terrible lot. But the Jewish women, who mostly belonged to intellectual circles (e.g. some had formerly been students of the Sorbonne, or artists), never even thought of stooping to the level of the vulgar German prostitutes and of planning revenge, though it would have been understandable if they had done.
The Holocaust Page 53
