The Holocaust

by Martin Gilbert

  7 Report of 3 August 1942: Hilberg, Documents of Destruction, op. cit., pages 57–8.

  8 Smoliar, Resistance in Minsk, op. cit.

  9 Cholawski, ‘The Judenrat in Minsk’, Patterns of Jewish Leadership, op. cit., page 126.

  10 In 1967 Kalenczuk planted a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem archive. Arieh L. Bauminger, Roll of Honour, Tel Aviv 1971, pages 82–3.

  11 Zosa Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish Gazetteer, 1939–1945, New York 1966, pages 213–14.

  12 Eye-witness account in Eisenberg, Witness to the Holocaust, op. cit., page 267.

  13 Tatiana Berenstein, Biuletyn, op. cit., number 61, Warsaw 1967.

  14 ‘Polish Couple Honoured’: Jerusalem Post International Edition, week ending 26 January 1985. In January 1985 Horbacki’s daughter Ludmila Waluszewska planted a tree in her parents’ honour in the Avenue of Righteous, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. Among those present at the ceremony was Rosenbusz’s daughter, Mrs Zvia Shumert.

  15 Lodz Chronicle, 29 July 1942: Dobroszycki, op. cit., page 231.

  16 Lodz Chronicle, 31 July 1942: ibid., page 232.

  17 Lodz Chronicle, 2 August 1942: ibid., page 235.

  18 ‘Tableau recapitulatif des Israelites ed Tziganes Deportes du Camp de Malines vers Les Camps d’Extermination de Haute Silesie’, Brussels, 28 November 1978, sheets 1 and 2.

  19 Emmanuel Bulz, ‘Luxembourg’: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, volume 11, column 591.

  20 Dos Yiddische Radom in Khorves, ‘Liquidation of the Glinice Ghetto’, pages 218–42.

  21 Kaplan diary, 4 August 1942: Katsch, op. cit., pages 398–400.

  22 ‘Transport A Az’, 4 August 1942: Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, op. cit., pages 217–18.

  23 ‘Transport Bc’, 25 August 1942: ibid., page 219.

  24 Levin, ‘The Small Communities’, op. cit., pages 142–4.

  25 Aharon Weiss, ‘Mir’: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, volume 12, columns 71–2.

  26 Aharon Weiss, ‘Novogrudok’ (‘Nowogrodek’, ‘Novaredok’): Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, volume 12, columns 1237–8.

  27 Jack (Idel) Kagan, in conversation with the author, London, 21 May 1984.

  28 Zabecki, Wspomnienia, op. cit., pages 67–8.

  29 Klukowski diary, 8 August 1942: Dziennik, op. cit.

  30 Klukowski diary, 10 August 1942: ibid.

  31 ‘Testimony of Stanislaw Bohdanowicz of Zwierzyniec’: Tregenza Collection.

  32 Spector, ‘The Jews of Volhynia’, op. cit., pages 173–4.

  33 Friedman, Roads to Extinction, op. cit., pages 276–7.

  34 Falstein, op. cit., page 334.

  35 Ibid., pages 190–2.

  36 Tatiana Berenstein, Biuletyn, Warsaw, op. cit., number 21, 1957 (Lublin region) and number 61, 1967 (Galicia), 139–41.

  37 Zonka Berkowicz (Pollak), ‘The First “Action” in Czortkow’: Yeshayahu Austri-Dunn (editor), Memorial Book of Czortkow, Haifa and Tel Aviv, 1967.

  38 Rudolf Reder, ‘Belzec’ (typescript), pages 4–6: Tregenza Collection; translated by Maria Rozak from the Polish original, published in Cracow in 1946.

  39 Ibid., pages 11–12.

  40 T. Brustin-Berenstein, Biuletyn, Warsaw, op. cit., number 3, 1952 (Warsaw region), and A. Rutkowski, Biuletyn, Warsaw, op. cit., number 15, 1955 (Radom and Kielce region).

  41 Letter from SS General Karl Wolff to Dr Albert Ganzenmuller, 13 August 1942: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NO-2207(2). Quoted in Konnilyn G. Feig, Hitler’s Death Camps: the Sanity of Madness, New York 1981, page 36.

  42 Czech, ‘Kalendarium’, op. cit., entries for August 1942.

  43 ‘Convoy 20, August 17, 1942’: Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, op. cit., pages 172–81.

  24. ‘THE MOST HORRIBLE OF ALL HORRORS’

  1 Reder, ‘Belzec’, op. cit., page 16.

  2 Testimony of Rivka Yosselevska: Eichmann Trial, 8 May 1961, session 30.

  3 Hans Frank Diary, op. cit., 15 August 1942.

  4 Artur Szarfer, ‘Lekcja zycia’ (‘A Lesson of Life’), Folksshtime, Warsaw, 24 October 1970: Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance, op. cit., page 599.

  5 Police officer’s diary, Yad Vashem archive, 0–6/102, page 181: Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, op. cit., page 239. Szerynski went into hiding. In January 1943, when the ghetto uprising began, he committed suicide.

  6 Donat, Holocaust Kingdom, op. cit., pages 84–5.

  7 Lubetkin, In the Days of Destruction and Revolt, op. cit., page 115. Among those who organized this first action was the twenty-two-year-old Shmuel Braslaw. He was killed two weeks later and buried by his colleagues in the sportsfield next to the Jewish cemetery on Gesia Street.

  8 ‘Arbeitslager Jawischowitz’, Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemlach polskich, op. cit., Camp Listing number 3295, page 371.

  9 ‘Arbeitslager Golleschau’, Obozy, op. cit., Camp Listing number 3292, page 370.

  10 ‘Aussenkommando Chelmek’, Obozy, op. cit., Camp Listing number 3284, page 370.

  11 Kurt Gerstein, statement of 6 May 1945, Tubingen: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document PS-2170. Held by the French, and interrogated in Paris by sceptical interrogators, Gerstein committed suicide on 23 July 1945.

  12 Interview between Baron Guran von Otter and Gitta Sereny: Sunday Times, 7 June 1981.

  13 Jakub Rabinowicz, Report of 25 October 1942: Sakowska, Archiwum Ringelbluma, op. cit., document no. 62, pages 122–3.

  14 Wiktor Kulerski, Krytyka no. 15, Warsaw 1983; Szlak Rembertow-Falenica, Marsz Pamieci 19.08.1984, Warsaw 1984.

  15 Jankiel (Yankel) Wiernik, ‘One Year in Treblinka’: Alexander Donat (editor), The Death Camp Treblinka, a Documentary, New York 1979, pages 152–3.

  16 Poland, the Communities of Lodz and its Region, op. cit., entry for ‘Lask’.

  17 Testimony of Dora Rosenboim, op. cit.

  18 Letter of 13 August 1942: Hoffer, I Did Not Survive, op. cit., page 26.

  19 Testimony of Izak Helfing: Yad Vashem archive, M-1/518/460.

  20 Lodz Chronicle, 25 August 1942: Dobroszycki, op. cit., page 244.

  21 Lodz Chronicle, 28 August 1942: ibid., page 245.

  22 Spector, ‘The Jews of Volhynia…’, op. cit.

  23 International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NG-4578(1) of 28 August 1942.

  24 International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NG-5127 of 2 September 1942.

  25 ‘Convoy 24, August 26, 1942’: Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, op. cit., pages 209–17.

  26 ‘Convoy 25, August 28, 1942’: ibid., pages 218–25.

  27 ‘Diary of Johann Paul Kremer’, entry for 31 August 1942: Kazimierz Smolen (editor), KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, 2nd edition, Oswiecim 1978, pages 211–12.

  28 Kremer diary, 2 September 1942: ibid., page 212.

  29 ‘Convoy 26, August 31, 1942’, Klarsfeld, op. cit., pages 226–35.

  30 Smolen, op. cit., page 212, note 50. Kremer was tried before the Supreme National Tribunal in Cracow from 24 November to 22 December 1947. He was sentenced to death, but subsequently released and returned to Germany.

  31 Zabecki, Wspomnienia, op. cit., entry for 1 September 1942.

  32 Trunk, Judenrat, op. cit., page 445.

  33 Ibid., page 441.

  34 Note of 1 September 1942: Mendel Grossman, With a Camera in the Ghetto, Tel Aviv 1970, page 84.

  35 Ausrotung fun Lodzer Yiden, Tel Aviv 1950.

  36 Ben Edelbaum, Growing Up in the Holocaust, Kansas City 1980, pages 90–3.

  37 Falstein, The Martyrdom of Jewish Physicians in Poland, op. cit., page 211.

  38 Lodz Chronicle, 1 September 1942: Dobroszycki, op. cit., page 249.

  39 Lodz Chronicle, 2 September 1942: ibid., pages 249–50.

  40 Martin Rosenblum, ‘Holocaust Memorial Address’, Toronto, 24 April 1983: enclosed in letter to the author, 25 February 1985.

  41 Bauminger, Roll of Honour
, op. cit., page 65.

  42 Tuvia Friedman (editor), Dokumentensammlung über ‘Die Deportierung der Juden aus Norwegen nach Auschwitz’, Ramat Gan 1963; Katznelson, Vittel Diary, op. cit., page 263.

  43 Trunk, op. cit., pages 471–2.

  44 Levin, ‘The Small Communities’, op. cit., pages 138–40 and 146.

  45 Iosif Bregman, ‘The Lakhva Ghetto’: Sovetish Geimland, number 4, Moscow 1968, pages 51–52.

  46 Trunk, op. cit., pages 471–2. Lopatyn was killed by a mine on 1 April 1944.

  47 Speech of 4 September 1942: Trunk, op. cit., page 423.

  48 Oscar Singer, Destruction of Lodz Jewry, Tel Aviv 1950, page 31. Quoted in Joseph Tenenbaum, Underground: the Story of a People, New York 1956, pages 173–4.

  49 Josef Zelkowicz, ‘Days of Nightmare’: Dawidowicz, Holocaust Reader, op. cit., pages 298–316.

  50 Lodz Chronicle, 14 September 1942: Dobroszycki, op. cit., pages 250–5.

  51 ‘Caring for Orphans’: Lodz Chronicle, 7 December 1942: ibid., page 297.

  52 Lodz Chronicle, 22 October 1942: ibid., page 274.

  53 Lodz Chronicle, 1 November 1942: ibid., page 281.

  54 ‘Population Changes in the Month of November, 1942’: Lodz Chronicle, 27 November 1942: ibid., page 294.

  55 Lodz Chronicle, 31 October 1942: ibid., page 280.

  56 Lichtheim letter, 3 September 1942: Jewish Agency archives.

  57 Lichtheim letter, 8 September 1942: Jewish Agency archives.

  58 The Times, 7 September 1942.

  59 Winston S. Churchill, speech of 8 September 1942: Hansard (Parliamentary Debates), 8 September 1942.

  60 The Times, 9 September 1942.

  61 The Times, 11 September 1942.

  62 Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, op. cit., pages 243–9.

  63 Kremer diary, 5 September 1942: Smolen, op. cit., page 214.

  64 Kremer interrogation, 18 July 1947: ibid., page 214, note 51.

  65 Kremer diary, 5 September 1942: ibid., page 214.

  66 Ringelblum notes, 6 September 1942: Sloan, op. cit., page 312.

  67 Vladka Meed, On Both Sides of the Wall, op. cit., page 88.

  68 Ibid., page 85.

  69 Ibid., page 92.

  70 Sakowska, op. cit., document number 86, page 162.

  71 Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom, op. cit., page 91.

  72 Samuel Rajzman, ‘Punishment of War Criminals’, op. cit., page 121.

  73 Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, op. cit., page 212.

  74 Hillel Seidman’s diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, published in 1947 in Buenos Aires (Yiddish) and Tel Aviv (Hebrew): Philip Friedman, Martyrs and Fighters: the Epic of the Warsaw Ghetto, New York 1954, pages 174–5.

  75 Donat, The Death Camp Treblinka, op. cit., pages 129–31.

  76 Testimony of Samuel Rajzman: ‘Punishment of War Criminals’, op. cit.

  77 Testimony of Abraham Krzepicki (first published in the original Yiddish in Bleter far Geshikhte, Warsaw 1956, volume XI, number 1–2): Donat, The Death Camp Treblinka, op. cit.

  78 Oyf der vakh (‘On Guard’), Warsaw, 20 September 1942: Lucy Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews 1933–45, London 1975, pages 374–5.

  79 Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, op. cit., pages 212–13. A further 11,580 Jews had been sent from Warsaw to forced labour camps, after a ‘selection’ at the Umschlagplatz. More than ten thousand had been killed during the course of the deportations, and had died of hunger and disease during those seven weeks.

  80 ‘Swastika over Jaworow’, op. cit., page 23.

  81 Poster, 7 September 1942: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document USSR-434.

  82 Report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Stavropol Region: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document USSR-1.

  83 Iosif Bregman, ‘The Kremenets Ghetto’: Sovetish Geimland, number 4, Moscow 1968, page 52.

  84 Trunk, op. cit., page 473; Levin, The Small Communities’, op. cit., pages 140–2; Spector, ‘The Jews of Volhynia’, op. cit., pages 169–71; Iosif Bregman, ‘The Tuczyn Ghetto’, Sovetish Geimland, number 4, Moscow 1968, page 58.

  85 Information provided by Dr Shmuel Spector.

  86 Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, op. cit., page 28.

  87 Eliezer Melamed’s recollections: Cholawski, Soldiers from the Ghetto, op. cit., pages 119–20.

  25. SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 1942: THE SPREAD OF RESISTANCE

  1 Letter of 24 September 1942: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NG-1517.

  2 Reports of 16 October 1942 and 20 October 1942: Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, op. cit., pages 304–5.

  3 Maxime Steinberg, ‘The Trap of Legality: the Association of the Jews of Belgium’: Patterns of Jewish Leadership, op. cit., page 369.

  4 Czech, ‘Kalendarium’, op. cit., entries from 23 to 30 September 1942.

  5 Levin, ‘The Small Communities’, op. cit., page 136.

  6 Ibid., pages 135–6.

  7 Trunk, Judenrat, op. cit., page 440.

  8 T. Brustin-Berenstein, Biuletyn, Warsaw, op. cit., number 3, 1952.

  9 ‘Top Secret’, 26 September 1942, ‘Utilization of property on the occasion of settlement and evacuation of Jews’: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NO-724.

  10 Directive of 8 October 1942: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NO-2305.

  11 Madam Francken, ‘Novel-Memories, Reminiscences (1973)’, ‘A nightmare stay. From September 27 to October 6, 1941’: Saul Friedländer, When Memory Comes, New York 1979, page 89.

  12 Ibid., page 90.

  13 ‘Convoy 40, November 4, 1941’: Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, op. cit., pages 328–35.

  14 ‘Transport Bq’, 23 September 1942: Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, op. cit., page 222.

  15 ‘Transport Br’, 26 September 1942: ibid., page 222.

  16 ‘Transport Bs’, 29 September 1942: ibid., page 222.

  17 Huttenbach, The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Worms, op. cit., page 172.

  18 Document submitted to the Eichmann Trial, 1 June 1961, session 63.

  19 ‘Transport Bt’, 5 October 1942: Lederer, op. cit., pages 222.

  20 ‘Transport Bu’, 8 October 1942: ibid., pages 222–3.

  21 ‘Transport Bv’, 15 October 1942, ‘Transport Bw’, 19 October 1942 and ‘Transport Bx’, 22 October 1942: ibid., page 223.

  22 Maladie de Famine, Warsaw, 1946.

  23 Falstein, The Martyrdom of Jewish Physicians in Poland, op. cit., page 419.

  24 Kremer diary, 3 October 1942: Smolen, op. cit., pages 219–20.

  25 Kremer cross-examination, 30 July 1947: ibid., page 219, note 71.

  26 Kremer diary, 10 October 1942: ibid., page 221.

  27 Kremer diary, 15 October 1942: ibid., page 222.

  28 ‘Reminiscences of Pery Broad’: Smolen, KL Auschwitz, op. cit., pages 163–5. The son of a Brazilian merchant and a German woman, Broad was born in Rio de Janeiro but went to school in Germany. He was employed at Auschwitz from 1941 to 1945.

  29 Trunk, op. cit., page 443.

  30 Stefan Krakowski, ‘Lukow’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, volume 11, column 561.

  31 Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, op. cit., page 721.

  32 Celia Hurst, archivist, Sigmund Freud Copyrights Ltd, letter to the author, 13 March 1985.

  33 Tatiana Berenstein, ‘Eksterminacja Zydow w Galicji, 1941–1943’, Biuletyn, op. cit., number 61, March 1967.

  34 Tregenza Collection.

  35 Testimony of ‘T’, Bulletin, London, April 1945: Foreign Office papers, 371/51117.

  36 ‘Bruno Shultz, 1892–1940’: Dr Konstantin Bazarov, letter to the author, 7 October 1978.

  37 Hermann Graebe, testimony of 10 November and 13 November 1945: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document PS-2992: Eisenberg, Witness to the Holocaust, op. cit., pages 269–70.

  38 Kremer diary, 18 October 1942: Smolen, op
. cit., page 223.

  39 Kremer interrogation, 18 July 1947: ibid., page 223, note 82.

  40 Getzel Kressel, ‘Beda, Fritz Loehner, 1883–1942’: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, volume 4, column 368.

  41 Klukowski diary, 21 October 1942: Dziennik, op. cit.

  42 Recollections of Stanislaw Bohdanowicz: Tregenza Collection.

  43 Klukowski diary, 22 October 1942: Dziennik, op. cit.

  44 Klukowski diary, 23 October 1942: ibid.

  45 Gurdus, The Death Train, op. cit., page 108.

  46 Ibid., page 163.

  47 Ainsztein, op. cit., page 265.

  48 Kermish, The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Piotrkow, op. cit., columns 36–8.

  49 Abitbol, Les Juifs, op. cit., pages 113–14.

  50 Jerusalem Post, 14 March 1980.

  51 Abitbol, op. cit., page 131.

  52 Documents dated 17 February 1942 and 24 October 1942; Eichmann Trial, 9 May 1961, session 33, documents 1188 and 509.

  53 ‘Protocol of the Meeting on the “Aktion” in Oszmiana’, 27 October 1942: Arad, Gutman and Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, op. cit., pages 440–4, document 199.

  54 Diary of Zelig Kalmanovitch, November 1942, first published in English in the Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, volume 3, New York 1953, page 34.

  55 ‘Transport By’, 26 October 1942: Lederer, op. cit., page 223.

  56 Totenbuch Theresienstadt, Vienna 1971, volume 1 (‘Deportierte Aus Osterreich’).

  57 A. Rutkowski, Zaglada Zydow w dystrykcie radomskim, Biuletyn, op. cit., number 16, Warsaw 1955, page 154.

  58 Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, op. cit., pages 106–8. (Ajzenman’s name can also be spelt Eisenman.)

  59 Arthur Cygielman, ‘Piotrkow’: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972, volume 13, column 557. See also, Rutkowski, op. cit., page 141.

  60 Testimony of Aizik Rottenberg: Novitch, Sobibor, Martyrdom and Revolt, op. cit., page 104.

  61 Falstein, op. cit., page 365.

  62 ‘Top secret’ directive of 28 October 1942: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document NO-2558.

  63 Tennenbaum, Underground, op. cit., pages 437–8.

  64 Message of 29 October 1942: Jewish Chronicle, 6 November 1942.

  65 Ringelblum, ‘Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War’, Ktovim fun geto, Warsaw 1961, volume 2, page 332: quoted in Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, op. cit., page 302.