Warsaw Concentration Camp Part 2

THE PRISONER SOCIETY
The building complex on ul Gesia number 22 was since the spring of 1943 a Labour Re-education camp (Arbeitserziehungslager) under the command of the Security Police (KdS) in Warsaw. In the camp the Police kept mainly Polish citizens who had been  apprehended without papers or on suspicion of black market trade during street raids.  Staff from the Office of these detachments that operated  the camp held the rank of NCOs, the guards were the Polish "blue police" (Policja granatowa), which in turn was sub-ordinate to the commander of the German police administration. The detention period in the Labour Re-education camps was the same as in the Reich, for a period of eight weeks. After that the prisoners were released or deported as  forced labour into the Reich. The Warsaw concentration camp was built in the immediate neighbourhood, but separated geographically and organisationally, to the labour camps. In the Polish literature, both are called and bearing the term "Gesiowka", leading to frequent confusion. (66) In the fall of 1943, the labour camp, finally moved into the area outside of the ghetto police district on the ul-Litewska [road, sic].
The Warsaw concentration camp was not a "familiarization camp"(Einweisungslager)which means the inmates were not admitted through the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) or the local Gestapo (Division IV of the KdS), but transferred from other concentration camps. This meant that the WVHA would independently decide on the transports of prisoners that came to Warsaw. The camp admitted males only. The first 300 prisoners arrived on 19 July 1943 from Buchenwald in Warsaw. None of these were Jews and consisted mainly of German Inmates from the Reich, many of which were interned since the late thirties into concentration camps. (68) Under this transport were also some French and Dutch. By the end of November 1943 more than 3700 Jewish prisoners had been transferred from  Auschwitz. Nearly all of them came from countries occupied by the Wehrmacht. The largest group were Greek Jews who had been brought via Auschwitz into the camp in the Spring of 1943. For reason of security, transports to Warsaw had only a few Polish Jews, as the SS rightly feared that they would make contact with the local population who in turn would be helpful in any escape attempts. However, many Jews from Upper Silesia came after the closure of the local ghettos there, in the summer of 1943 again via Auschwitz. In the early summer of 1944, just months before the evacuation of the camp, several transports of Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz arrived in the city, who were admitted into the second camp section. An estimated  2500 Hungarian Jews were now the largest group of prisoners in the camp. (70)
The inequality within its camp society was extremely profound in a concentration camp like this. The prison functionaries  were extraordinarily privileged. They enjoyed better health care, wore civilian clothes, were armed as well [I did not find any reference to the type of weapons,sic] and could even leave the camp temporarily. The blurred line between Guards and Guarded in this "Gray area of the camp" (71) where the thin layer of "dignitaries" had adapted themselves to methods of the SS.  At the top of this society were the non-Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald . Due to the racial classification system, the SS gave them privileged access to the functions on storage sites and as block leaders, overseers of the demolition commandos as well as in the camp workshops. Among the Jewish prisoners, they were perceived less than fellow prisoners, but rather as a tool of the SS. (72) The first requirement in a camp environment for survival are the social practices such as barter trade and corruption with which the more experienced "Konzentrationären" were more familiar than the later deported inmates from Auschwitz in 1943, when they first came into contact with the concentration camp system. Another advantage in the struggle for hierarchy and the associated access to material resources were the knowledge of the German language. Without it, the prisoners were exposed to the terror of the camp SS in a special way. Of these, that did not and could not follow a command, particularly the Greek Jews were affected, who spoke Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish and could neither follow orders and barely communicate with the other prisoners. (74)
The functionary prisoners also used separate rooms away from their fellow prisoners. With the exception of the block elders, they were housed in a barrack of their own. Only in certain circumstances did Jewish prisoners obtain better positions  due to their professional qualifications, protection or support of gentile groups and thereby became Block Elders and or Work Overseers.
The number of prisoners interned in the Warsaw concentration camp can only approximately be determined, the same goes for the number of victims due to lack of sources. In the nearly twelve months, in which the camp existed, there where at least 7800 and up to 10,000 prisoners interned. Of these, more than 3,400 detainees did not survive the evacuation. Most of them died during the epidemics or became victims of violence and the excesses of the camp-SS during the evacuation march .
Ref :66-There are numerous reports of the Delegation of the Council of the Polish Republic in the country over the labour training camp, give the arrival date, the number of prisoners, their work and guards, in: AAN, Sygna. 202
Ref :68-BwA, HKW, F.I. Almost three quarters (224) of the 300 prisoners belonging to the category of temporary Verbeugungshäftlinge) (professional criminals), 41 were considered to be political, 35 as anti-social prisoners.
Ref: 70 - About transports of Hungarian Jews there are no firm or reliable sources.
Ref :71-Primo Levi, the Gray Area. Selected Writings, The Drowned and the Saved, Munich / Vienna, 1986, pages 33-68.
Ref :72- statements, Bernard R. 09/16/1975 17/09/1975 and Herszek R. in: BWrch Ludwigsburg, B 162/15316, pg. 1632-1637 and 1639-1641.
Ref: 74 - James K. statement 13.2.1975, in: BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/15314, pg 1112 ff Maurits Fränkles report, in: NIOD, 240d, Box 26, pg 15f.

SS troops and officers search the Jewish department heads of the Braur armaments factory during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. 

THE SS IN THE CAMP
The first two of the three commanders who led the Warsaw concentration camp, did not belong to the "Network of the SS concentration camps". During their careers in the SS and at their ages they differ from the administrative core of the permanently SS operating in these facilities. SS-Obergruppenführer (General) Oswald Pohl appointed as the first camp commander, SS Lieutenant Colonel William Goeke, who was a WW I volunteer and ascended to Leutnant (Lieutenant) during his time in service. After discharge from the Reichswehr in 1920 Goeke did not manage well to integrate into civilian careers. After the National Socialists regained power in 1933 he was hired as an instructor for SS troops. Repeated conflicts, decided him in 1936, to apply for the resumption of a position in the officers corps of the army. He was given command authority in 1940 over a Reserve Battalion of the Waffen-SS in Norway. After a booze-induced scandal, Goeke had insulted younger SS leaders as "communists" which resulted to a temporary suspension from the Waffen-SS in August 1941. [There is a grain of truth in his accusations, if one analyses the past of some members of the SS,sic] Even as a commander of a camp for Serb prisoners of war in Norway, Goeke could not "prove" himself.  Hans Loritz, the former commandant of Dachau and Sachsenhausen, wrote in an assessment that Goecke "is not suitable as a camp leader." The HSSPF Norway, then dismissed Gloeke from their staff.  After a "training" session in the Mauthausen concentration camp in March 1943 he was officially accepted into the Office Group D of the WVHA. However, during the construction of the Warsaw concentration camp, a former prisoner pointed out during testimony Gloeke made no specific commitment, nor showed very little interest. After a few weeks Gloeke was recalled from Warsaw and appointed commander of the newly established concentration camp at Kauen. Presumably, his experience in the Baltic's in the 1920's, he fought there as an officer of the volunteer corps(Freikorps) made this crucial promotion.
[After closure of the camp in August 1944 the WVHA waived to continue to employ Goeke in any concentration camps, confirmed in a letter from the staff at the main office of the SS Race and Settlement Office dated 29/10/1944.  Goeke,had been transferred at the end of August 1944 to the staff of the HSSPF-Adriatic Küstenland but  was already dead at that time, he was killed in action on the 22nd October 1944.sic]
Goekes successor, SS-Captain Nicholas Herbet was almost a generation older than the usual concentration camp commanders appointed by Pohl during the 1942's. Herbet was born in 1889, had completed his training in his profession  before the First World War, and started a family. Although he was among the first members of the SS, he reached as late as 1934 only the rank of SS-lieutenant. Working in a Dresden publishing company of the NSDAP (the Nazi Party), he remained until the outbreak of war an honorary member of the General SS (Allgemeine SS). In 1940 he was inducted into the Waffen-SS. Presumably owing to his age and his lack of military skills, Herbet was assigned to Mauthausen. From there he came with Goeke to Warsaw. With the exception of the camp elder Walter Wawrzyniak, with  whom he maintained a friendly relationship, Herbet had towards the prisoners or the running of the camp hardly any impact.
Unlike the main concentration camps  within Germany, at the Warsaw concentration camp, not all departments of the Commandants Staffs Offices had been fulfilled. Important positions in Administration remained vacant or were combined into one. There were for instance no "political department" and at times no camp doctor.(84) The compulsory division between internal and external security, between headquarters and guards did not exist. The protective custody camp leader, SS-First Lieutenant William Haertel, commanded the Protection Squad as well as the the Guard Company at the same time.
Among the members of the guard company, what they received or were allotted was the "dregs of the SS" (85) mostly older men, wounded in the war and "ethnic Germans"(Volksdeutsche), which in no way corresponded to the ideal of a disciplined and well-established ideological elite. The majority of the guard company consisted of SS members who were transferred in two contingents in August and September 1943 from Sachsenhausen. Of the nearly 150 men they were exclusively "Volksdeutsche" from Southeast Europe, which had been enlisted since 1942 in their home countries for the Waffen SS, and Eastern Europe as "auxiliary volunteers" (86) [They were considered as voluntaries and as such could not join the Wehrmacht,sic]   In Sachsenhausen or the SS training camp Trawniki in the district of Lublin they had completed a short training before they were moved to Warsaw . The relationship between "ethnic Germans" and the Reichsdeutsche did not meet the ideological concepts of a "blood relationship". In February 1944, Himmler ordered the SS to avoid the term "Volksdeutsche", because he felt it "is used with a certain derogatory tone" by the Rerichsdeutschen. (87) Former members of the Warsaw concentration camp guards reported after 1945 of Resentments and Group Formations. The communication and cohesion of the unit was complicated considerably by language barriers, so that the "Volksdeutsche" had to be given notice of the prohibition to acquire items from the ghetto, in their native language to be translated by an interpreter and read out to them (88) this is indicative of the fragile morale of the security forces and are the circumstances of two suicides of SS men due to the alleged  criminal offences as seen in entries for the troops guard muster rolls (Strafbucheinträge). (89) Lack of knowledge of the German language and an outward appearance that challenged the racial ideology of the SS was noticed by the inmates as well. In the German Federal Investigation after the war, ​​many former inmates gave information about an SS man, whom they called, because of his dark skin and hair colour simply "Zigeuner"(Gipsy).
Ref.;84- Orth, concentration camp SS, Page 47
Ref: 85 Hilberg, Destruction, Page 967
Ref: 86-AS, DIA 1143 (copies of the Special Archive Moscow) On 3 August, twenty-two men were transferred and  on the  29 September another 120 non-commissioned officers from Sachsenhausen went to Warsaw. In the spring of 1944 another three members from Sachenhausen  were added. Information on original and official channels in the SS troops muster roll of the SS Totenkopf shows in: BArch Berlin, Außsenstelle Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten, ZM: Data-bank in: AS.: About People in the German guards: Johannes Tuchel, the Wachmannschften of the concentration camps 1939-1945. Results and open research issues, in: Alfred Godfrey etc. (Eds), NS-Gewaltherrschaft, contributions to historical research and legal processing, Berlin 2005, pages 135-151.
Ref :87-Chief Order No. 3, dated 10 February 1944, in: BArch Berlin branch Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten, EG 6686, page 162
Ref, 88-facsimile in Domanska, Obozy, page 133 The guards apparently also included several illiterate enlisted men. John R. 08/03/1977 statement, in: BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/15316, pages 1895-1898.
Ref :89-AIPN, M-168. The court officer first examined whether the people were suspect of corruption concerning the likely deaths. Only after he diagnosed with the chief medical officer during the investigation, he determined  "mental depression" as a cause of suicide.


THE WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS OF PRISONERS
The majority of prisoners were employed during the demolition of the ghetto. From the ruins they retrieved initially wood, metals, windows and furniture The working conditions and treatment apparently did not correspond to the commands of Pohl's instructions to the camp commandant, that "the labour output of prisoners to be maintained and increased even further." Six days a week, the prisoners had to work, only the Sunday was a day off. The work was affected by the seasons of the year. From early morning up to six clock in the evening was standard during summer months. In winter, the onset of dusk limited these hours, which offered the prisoners a chance to escape. For the first months during the demolitions there were no machinery available, so that the prisoners had to break off masonry with simple tools, under the guidance of the professional craftsmen and foreman of the construction companies involved in removal of the the ruins. Often accidents occurred during these work details, some of which were aware to the foremen or the security guards who had instigated or "engineered" them. [There is no reason given, as to why they would do this,sic] Due to the heavy physical work, long working hours, inadequate nutrition and lack of medical care, the tabor output of these prisoners was exhausted within a few weeks.
Only when heavy construction equipment and a demolition squad(Sprengkommando) was used working conditions were improved. Now systematically ruins in lines were blown up. The main task of the prisoners was now to clean the reusable bricks and stack them. This was less exhausting work then manually dismantle still standing walls within the the ruins of the Ghetto. The processed bricks for transporting were uplifted by Polish civilian workers with horse-drawn carts or loaded directly into rail way wagons onto the Eastern Railway (Ostbahn).
When working in the ghetto prisoners kept coming across victims of the ghetto uprising. Often prisoners discovered  Jews who had been hiding after the crackdown of the uprising after the ghetto had been destroyed. Supplied with food, mostly against money they were provided for by the Poles. On the other hand, Polish workers who were employed during the ghetto demolition, as well as prisoners denounced those Jews who could not offer any valuables or money for food to secure their safety (92) The SS guards took them to the headquarters or into the Pawiak prison, where they were interrogated by the security police and later shot.


The work in the ghetto gave the inmates the opportunity to barter and proceed with their smuggling of certain items. The Polish workers, with whom they came into contact accepted and exchanged the valuables, which they found in the rubble like  tableware, jewellery, laundry, often money for food and clothing. Although the prisoners were strictly forbidden to acquire valuables from the ruins of the ghetto. For the inmates these valuables were a vital part of available resources, which, however, not all prisoners had equal access. Primarily the functionaries of the detainees benefited because of their prominent position among the prisoners, but even those prisoners who were able to communicate due to their linguistic competence with the Polish civilian workers benefited from these transactions. When it comes to the Poles to whom valuables were offered in exchange for consumer goods they also had the opportunity to improve their own supply situation. The availability of food in the cities of the General Government was very bad. The allocation rates for Poland were significantly lower than those of the German population. In the city of Warsaw, where the situation was even more evident than in rural areas, which relied heavily on a Black Market to which the ghetto was indirectly connected (93). Working for the German construction companies also protected the Poles from being deported as forced labour into the German Reich. Compared to the concentration camp prisoners, they were in an envious  situation, which some took advantage of, by denunciation and extortion (94) But other inmates reported the fact that Polish workers had helped them providing them with food.  One has to recognise also, that for the Poles the trade of valuables from the ghetto involved a considerable risk. The smuggling was punishable with a sentence to the security prison or a labour camp(Arbeitserziehungslager).[The German word in fact indicates that this is a punishment work detail,sic]
A prison work commando worked in the autumn of 1943 a few weeks for SS Captain Franz Konrad, who confiscated for the Eastern Industries in the ghetto the remaining machines. (96) Since the concentration camp inmates were too weak because of their physical condition for removing the iron-working machines, Konrad had in the end requested a  labour force of Soviet POWs.[This is a rather intriguing admission as it is usually claimed that Russian Prisoners of War were almost starving to death, sic]
To be employed in the workshops of the Administration, like carpentry, electrical workshop, blacksmith, locksmith, piggery, vegetable garden, the laundry, clothing room and kitchen as well as in the office, was one of the privileged activities. In the workshops there were almost exclusively German nationals and prisoners who possessed trade qualifications. Part of the inmates worked outside of the "residual ghettos": in a laundry at ul Leszno [street], who did this for the Wehrmacht, and support troops of the Waffen-SS stationed in Warsaw,  in the municipal water works and in a "sand retrieving  driver command", which obtained sand from the river bank of the Vistula (Weichsel) which was used for construction work in the camp. This work detail had been repeatedly used to try to escape (97) In early summer 1944, when the news spread in the camp of the liberation of the eastern Polish territories by the advancing Red Army, Polish Jews fled from the work details. The camp authorities ordered that Polish Jews were only to be used in internal commands from there on. (98)
In their records and testimonies, some of which were described during  large intervals of the events, the former prisoners are judging living and working conditions in the Warsaw concentration camp very differently. It was characterised by  Robert Savosnik, that the camp was a "hell without any plan," much worse than Auschwitz, from where he was deported to Warsaw Oktober1943. (99) The Dutchman Samuel Holswilder remembered, however the good food and the opportunity "to organize things "(100) The judgements are each dependent on the preceding and following camp experiences of prisoners and their position among the prison society and their personal attitude they had within a group.

Ref :92-Bernad Goldstein, The Stars and witnesses. The downfall of the Polish Jew, Munich 1965, page 188 Charles Goldstein, life without a star. A report, Munich 1964 page 227f
Ref :93-Tomasz Szarota Warsaw under the swastika. Everyday Life in Occupied Warschau.01.10.1939 to 31/07/1944, Paderborn 1985, pp. 118-130.
Ref: 94 - Rabbi Jacob report, in: NIOD, 250d/39 page 41 Report Roodveldedts Alexander, in: ibid, 250d/39, page 9 Nico Engelsman report, in: ibid, box 25, page 7.Zidovke Muzeum Praha (ZMP), interview by Anna Hyndrakova with Jiri Kral, 19/04/1991.
Ref :96-report by Franz Konrad 08.01.1946, in: AIPN, NTN 163/63, page 207
Ref :97-The failure to flee of the Greek Jew Saul Sorin is mentioned in numerous reports and testimonies of former prisoners. Sorin was publicly hanged in the camp. Mannheim's Diary, page 99
Ref:98- Report, Itzchak David Mehls, in: AZIH, sygn, rel. 301/3352.
Ref :99-Robert Savosnicks report, in: DaA, 25 381, page 144
Ref :100-Samuel Holswilders report, in: NIOD, 250d/30, page 6

                                                             continued under Part 3

Warsaw Concentration Camp Part 1

PRELUDE
The concentration camp in Warsaw was established on the initiative of SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, the "SS- and Police Leader for the Warsaw District" who finally liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto.
In his report of 16 May 1943, he wrote that the prisoners of this camp could be used to clear away the ruins and buildings on the territory of the ghetto, so as to re-use the bricks, iron and other materials needed by industry. Heinrich Himmler accepted this proposal, and by 19 July 1943 Oswald Pohl, who was responsible for the concentration camps in the "Third Reich", was able to report to Himmler that "KZ Warschau" was already established. The camp commandant was SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Goecke.
The Warsaw concentration camp was one of three main concentration camps of the General Government, the other two were Majdanek and Plaszow, but it never played a vital part within the Nazi terror and extermination policy. Neither a memorial nor a monument to commemorate the former camp can be found in central Warsaw. Even in Poland, the Warsaw concentration camp is largely unknown. Yet its story of the German occupation with the two most studied events, namely the Ghetto Uprising in spring 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of the following year, it is closely connected. [The Płaszów or Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp was a Nazi German labour and concentration camp built by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków (now part of Podgórze district), soon after the German invasion of Poland and the subsequent creation of the General Government. The Płaszów camp, originally intended as a forced labour camp, was constructed on the grounds of two former Jewish cemeteries in the summer of 1942 during Nazi German occupation of Poland, with deportations of the Jews from the Kraków Ghetto beginning October 28, 1942. In 1943 the camp was expanded and turned into one of many KL concentration camps.sic]

Jewish workers constructing the ghetto walls in 1940

FROM GHETTO TO CONCENTRATION CAMP
The plans to build a concentration camp in Warsaw , reached back to the autumn of 1941.They are connected with the closure of some ghettos and the establishment of other SS-owned enterprises within the General Government.. But the camp was not built until the summer of 1943 in the wake of a renewed spurt of growth of the concentration camp system. This camp founded in Warsaw and the Baltic states emerged from the previously closed ghettos and were connected with local key personnel of the SS and the civil administration. The entire structure that of the prisoner society, governance, and the guards of the camp in the East differed clearly and was vastly unlike from the main concentration camps that were still linked to the ones in the Reich..
Within Warsaw, there was the largest ghetto in German-occupied Europe . It was in October 1940, earlier than in other cities of the General Government, that the civil administration in the north of the town district of Muranov  established this one and walled it in, which completely closed this part of the city off from the outside world. In the "Jewish quarter", as the German occupiers of the ghetto called it officially, there lived in an area of 403 hectares,  during January of 1941 more than 410,000 people . The German Ghetto Administration as part of their policy did deliberately target a policy of starvation, hunger and disease that led to an extreme increase in the mortality of the Jewish population. The Governor General Hans Frank in the early 1941's in his decision to strengthen the economic power of the ghetto, to allow its self-sufficiency, improved the conditions slightly since the fall of 1941. The person responsible for the ghetto economy and the Labor input,  the "Commissioner for Jewish Residential District" Heinz Auerswald recruited specifically companies that processed in the ghetto on their own account with Jewish Labor for the German military command of the Wehrmacht, textile, fur and leather goods. When it seemed to have calmed the situation in the ghetto, slowly, and more and more Jews found work in factories and decreased the mortality rate, the Warsaw ghetto was disbanded.

A young Jew is interrogated by the SS in Warsaw- [note all members are Wehrmacht officers ,sic]  

Since March 1942, the SS liquidated the ghettos in the General Government gradually. The Jews were shot on location or deported into one of the extermination camp facilities of "Aktion Reinhardt". The Ghetto closure was managed by the staff of the SS and Police Leader (SSPF) [SS und Polizeiführer,sic] in Lublin, SS General Odilo Globocnik, who was commissioned by Himmler with the liquidation of the Jews in the General Government. Since it had led to conflicts from the closure by Managers who took advantage of the exploitation of Jewish workers interested in Armed Forces Contracts,  the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF), [Höherer SS-und Polizeiführer,sic] SS Obergruppenführer Friedfrich Wilhelm Krüger agreed, with the Arms inspection Department on July 17,1942 about the Jewish employees of firms whose production was seen as vital to the war effort, that they, with their families were initially exempted from deportation to extermination camps.

THE CLEARING OF THE GHETTO
In the months proceeding the mass deportations increasing unease was felt, under the impact of growing reports and rumours about the deportations from other ghettos and places of Jewish habitation in occupied Poland.
After the expulsion, unrest and panic were created and grave doubts were raised among the ghetto population by the night raids undertaken by the German police and security forces. These raids were carried out according to prepared lists. The persons on the lists were seized in their homes, taken out and shot at a nearby location. The most murderous raid took place on 18 April 1942, when 52 persons were killed that night. This night became known as the "Night of Blood" or the "Bartholomew’s Night".
v. Sammern [the "v." stands for "von" and in German in most cases it means, "He" or "She" of aristocratic descent, sic] Immediately after completion of Treblinka the Große Umsiedlungsaktion ("Great Resettlement Action") started on 22 July 1942.
Responsible leaders of the "Great Action" were SS- und Polizeiführer Warschau Ferdinand v. Sammern-Frankenegg, Commandeer der Sicherheitspolizei und des Sicherheitsdienstes in Warschau, Dr Ludwig Hahn and SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle who acted as representative of Odilo Globocnik (SS- und Polizeiführer Lublin).
Executive bodies: The Warsaw Order Police, a small unit of the Warsaw Security Police, a special unit of Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) and the Jewish Order Service. Later SS-men from the forced labour camp in Trawniki played the main part in the ghetto liquidation.
The Jewish Order Service (Police) played an important role during the early stages of the "Great Action". The Jewish Police commander Josef Szerynski had been arrested by the Germans on 1 May 1942, on charges of smuggling furs from the ghetto to the Aryan side of the city. Jakob Lejkin, his deputy, took over the command and exactly carried out the German orders, saying that it is better not to leave it to the cruel Germans.
The 2,000 - 2,500 Jewish policemen and their families were promised immunity by the Germans for their co-operation. As the "action" progressed they began to understand that they were not more than a tool of the Germans and their future like ordinary Jews was clouded in doubt. Therefore they began to desert in droves. The German's response: each policeman was personally ordered to bring in five heads per day for deportation. Those who did not fulfil this order were threatened with having their relatives transported to make up the difference.
The SS directed the deportations from two centres in the ghetto. The Aktion Reinhard command, which consisted of a dozen SS officers, sergeants and soldiers set up its headquarters at 103 Zelazna Street (ul. Zelazna), after having evicted the Jews from the building.
Ber Warman, a Jewish policeman, who guarded 103 Zelazna Street, wrote at the end of August / early September 1942 that SS men started to live there. Before the end of August 1942 the Befehlsstelle ( Central order HQ) was on 17 Ogrodowa Street, at the Jewish police headquarters. At the door to one of the rooms was a plaque that read Gastzimmer des SS-Sonderkommandos Treblinka ("Guestroom of the SS Special Command Treblinka").
The HQ on Ogrodowa Street was mainly manned with SS and Gestapo-men who had been stationed in Warsaw for some time. The most prominent members of this group were Hohmann, Witosek, Jesuiter and Stabenow. The tempo and character of the "resettlement" actions were dominated by Karl-Georg Brandt and Gerhard Mende.
Announcement #1 At 10 a.m. on 22 July 1942 Höfle, Michalsen, Worthoff and other officers of Aktion Reinhard visited the Judenrat. Höfle dictated to the Judenrat the German conditions for the "resettlement to the east".
In this way the Judenrat was forced to help "cleaning" the ghetto. The main orders were:
All Jews will be resettled to the east, regardless of age and sex.
With the exception of:
Jews working for German institutions or companies
Jews working for the Judenrat
Jewish hospitals' staff
Members of the Jewish Order Service
Wifes and children of above-mentioned persons
Patients of a Jewish hospital on the day of resettlement.
Each person which will be resettled is allowed taking along 15 kg luggage and all valuables: Gold, jewellery, money etc.
Provisions for three days is necessary.
The resettlement will start on 22 July 1942, 11 o'clock (11 a.m.).
The Judenrat is responsible for delivery of 6,000 persons daily until 4 p.m.. Assembly point is the Jewish hospital at Stawki Street.
On 22 July 1942, the Jewish hospital at Stawki Street has to be emptied so that the building can be used for the people being resettled.
The Judenrat has to announce the German orders. ["Judenrat" is the German expression for the committe of Jewish representatives of the Ghetto population, sic]

German soldiers search the Judenrat building

PUNISHMENTS:
Each Jew who is leaving the ghetto during the resettlement action will be shot.
Each Jew who is acting against the resettlement will be shot.
Each Jew who doesn't belong to the above-mentioned persons and who will be discovered in Warsaw after the resettlement action will be shot.
The first contingents put together by the Judenrat consisted of refugee assembly institutions, prisons and old people's homes.
If these orders will not be carried out, a corresponding number of hostages will be shot.
Announcement #2: When SS-Hauptsturmführer Worthoff ordered to provide 10,000 Jews for the 24 July 1942, including children of a children's transport, the Judenrat leader Adam Czerniakow committed suicide.
His successor became Marek Lichtenbaum.
The Jewish order service took over the control. It was responsible for hanging up posters on 29 July, announcing that each person who will volunteer for resettlement will get 3 kg bread and 1 kg marmalade.(i,e. Jam)
Because of starvation many Jews followed that announcement. The Germans provided 180,000 kg bread and 36,000 kg marmalade.
On 23 July 1942, the Jewish underground organisations met. Its leaders refused organising resistance. Only the organisation of the young Zionists, Hashomer Hatzair, organised a propaganda action in the ghetto, informing on handbills that the deportees will be sent to a death camp and not to work. The Jews in the ghetto supposed that it was just a German provocation.
The assembly point (Umschlagplatz) was formerly used by the Transferstelle [point of transfer, sic] as a corridor for transports to and from the ghetto. In the adjoining yard, which was surrounded by a high fence, was the abandoned Jewish hospital, into which the victims were crowded until the freight trains arrived. The Germans organised a Dulag (Durchgangslager - [transit camp, sic] on Leszno Street. From there after a selection on the Umschlagplatz Jews being able to work were sent to different work camps, including the KZ Majdanek.
In July 1942, 64,606 Jews were deported to Treblinka. This number doesn't include the people who were shot on the streets and in the houses in the course of "cleaning" the buildings. Until 29 July 1942, the round ups were organised only by the Jewish police in the ghetto. Afterwards the "actions" were carried out by members of Aktion Reinhard.
In August 1942, the deportations continued with the same relentless efficiency. During the first week in August the Janusz Korczak orphanage was closed. 200 children marched through the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz, accompanied by the old doctor and his long-time assistant Stefania Wilczynska. This incident became a legend.
Janusz Korczak, between 19 and 21 August 1942, the Warsaw Ghetto saw a break in the Aktion: During these days the Jews from the towns near Warsaw were deported to Treblinka: Otwock, Falenica, Miedzeszyn, Minsk and Mazowiecki. In fact the number of deportees to Treblinka in August could be estimated at around 135,000 people.
On 23 August 1942, Jankiel Wiernik was deported to Treblinka. He was one of a few Treblinka survivors, who participated in the Treblinka revolt. Read his story about his deportation!
From 28 August until 3 September 1942, there was another break in the deportations.This fact could be connected with the backlog at Treblinka, where Eberl (the commandant) had allowed more transports to arrive than the camp could manage. The inadequate gassing facilities at Treblinka led to a complete breakdown of the camp's operation. Irmfried Eberl was relieved of his command and Christian Wirth was ordered by Odilo Globocnik to dispose of the mass of corpses. All transports were suspended whilst order was restored.
In August 1942, the underground organisation of "Bund" in the Warsaw Ghetto sent their activist Zalman Friedrich to discover what had happened to the transports from the ghetto. In Sokolów Podlaski near Treblinka he was informed by Polish railway workers that every day a freight trains (with people on board) passed the town to Treblinka. After several hours these trains returned empty. There were no food supplies to the camp...
On Sokolów Podlaski market Friedrich met two naked Jews who had escaped from Treblinka. They described what had happened to the deportees. The information about Treblinka and the fate of the transports from Warsaw Ghetto were confirmed by Dawid Nowodworski who could escape from Treblinka. He returned to the Warsaw Ghetto in late August 1942.
On 14 August 1942, from the Warsaw Ghetto Dulag 1,260 Jews were sent to Lublin. About 1,000 of them were sent to the concentration camp Majdanek, others to the work camp on Lipowa Street 7 in Lublin.
The last phase of the "Great Action" opened on 6 September 1942. Its main feature was a comprehensive selection that went on until 10 September 1942.
The Jews having  permission for work (35,000 permissions have been handed out by the Germans) were concentrated in a "cauldron" in the David quarters ("Cauldron" means "Kesl" in Yiddish, "Kociol" in Polish). During this selection 35,885 Jews were deported, according to the Judenrat lists (published in 1988, Warsaw State Archive). 2,648 were shot on the spot and 60 committed suicide.
After this selection approximately 60,000 Jews remained in the ghetto.
On 15 September 1942, 2,100 Jews from Warsaw (among them 150 Jewish policeman) were sent to Lublin. 600 of them were sent to the work camp on 7 Lipowa Street, 60 to the Flugplatz Camp, and others to KZ Majdanek. Their names are partially available at the archive of the State Museum Majdanek in Lublin.
On 24 September 1942, SS-Untersturmführer Karl Brandt proclaimed the end of the resettlement action in the Warsaw Ghetto.
According to German sources 253,742 Jews were deported. According to Jewish sources 270,120 were sent to Treblinka, 10,300 died in the ghetto, 11,580 were sent to Dulag (among them more than 3,500 were deported to Lublin) and 8,000 escaped from the ghetto.
Exact figures about the Warsaw Ghetto drama are partially available but they differ. Jews were deported to the ghetto, escaped from it, were sent to forced labour camps, died by starvation and epidemics, perished somewhere in hidden places or lost their life's in the struggle against the Germans. Last but not least too many notes got lost and witnesses died before they could tell about their observations.

THE STROOP REPORT
Stroop joined both the SS and the NSDAP in 1932. During the German election campaign of 1932 Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Göring became aware of him. In 1933, he was appointed leader of the state Hilfspolizei (auxiliary police) in the German state of Lippe. One year later, he was promoted from the rank of SS-Oberscharführer to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer. Subsequently he worked for the SS-administration in Münster and Hamburg. In autumn 1938, he was promoted to SS-Standartenführer.
After the invasion of Poland, he served as commander of the SS-section in Gniezno (today Poland). In May 1941, he changed his name from Josef to Jürgen for ideological reasons and in remembrence of his late son.
In April 1943, Himmler replaced the chief of the SS and police in the Warsaw district, SS-Obergruppenführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, with Stroop (as SSPF Warschau). A veteran of WW 1, Stroop had more recently been involved in operations against Soviet partisans in the Ukraine and was familiar with the latest techniques in counterguerrilla warfare.
Stroop was responsible for crushing the rebellion in the Warsaw Ghetto (19 April - 16 May 1943). The operation commenced at 06:00 hrs on 19 April; Stroop assumed command at 08:00 hrs on the same day. As the German forces were forced back by heavy Jewish resistance, he ordered the entire ghetto burned down. Afterwards, in his famous report to his superior, SS-Obergruppenführer F.W. Krüger, and Himmler, Stroop boasted that "the Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more".
For leading the German troops in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Stroop was decorated with the Iron Cross 1st class. His report was done in triplicate: one for Himmler, one for Krüger, and one for himself. It contained a summary about the Aktion, the sent telexes, and a collection of photos which have been taken in the ghetto during the fights.
After the war one report was confiscated by U.S. troops. Later it played a major role in the Nürnberg Trials. Stroop never denied the authenticity of the found version.
From September - November 1943, Stroop was SS- and Police Chief in Greece, then served in the Rhein (Rhine) area until end of war. U.S. troops captured him on 8 May 1945. A U.S. military tribunal in Dachau sentenced him to death on 21 March 1947. The sentence was not executed and Stroop was extradited to Poland. There he was sentenced to death again on 23 July 1951. Stroop was hanged on 6 March 1952 in Warsaw.

Sources:
T. Berenstein: Zydzi warszawscy w hitlerowskich obozach pracy przymusowej. Biuletyn ZIH, No.67 (1968)
B. Engelking, J. Leociak: Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejacym miescie. Warszawa 2001
Tak bylo... Sprawozdania z warszawskiego getta 1939-1943. (Wybór). Oprac. J. Adamska, J. Kazmierska, R. Sakowska. Warszawa 1988
Archive of the State Museum Majdanek
Encylopedia of the Holocaust
Yisrael Gutman: The Jews of Warsaw,1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
The Diary of Adam Czneriakow
Stanislaw Adler: In the Warsaw Ghetto

Jewish police at a barricaded entrance to the Warsaw ghetto. Poland, February 1941 

Jewish policeman & German guard

On 22 July 1942, three days after Krüger received the order from Himmler, to complete the extermination of the Jews in the General Government of the Warsaw Ghetto by the end of the year, the SS took over the civil administration and the rule of the "Jewish quarter". The Jews were rounded up and taken into the  recently completed facility at Treblinka extermination camp, north-east of Warsaw.  At the same time the SSPF SS-Oberführer Dr. Ferdinand von Sammern Frankenegg tried to regain the control over the ghetto factories.[Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg was an SS-Oberführer (senior Colonel) and the SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw area from 1941. He was in charge of the first offensive operation in the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, 1943. After the failed offensive, von Sammern-Frankenegg was replaced by Jürgen Stroop, court-martialed on April 24, 1943, and found guilty of "defending Jews". He was subsequently transferred to Croatia where in September he was killed in a Yugoslav partisan ambush near the city of Klasznic,, sic].

Jews during a deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto 

Contrary to the agreements between the SS and Wehrmacht,  Globocnik's staff, which was supported by members of the Warsaw Security Police, the Jewish Order Service and auxiliary police units, the so-called Trawniki-men, in the compilation of the transports, did this, with no regard to economic interests. The work managers intervened then, because of the deportation of their workforce, to the military command of the Wehrmacht in Warsaw, urging von  Sammern-Frankenegg to comply with the arrangements for the continuance of employment for their workers and not to jeopardise the output nor the closure of factories.(6) The HSSPF reiterated to the Arms Inspection Department in reconsidering the competence in using the Jewish workers. The remaining plants in Warsaw should be "combined in a special armaments Ghetto" (7). On this basis, at the beginning of September 1942 von Sammern-Frankenegg  with plant managers signed contracts with the SSPF in which the number of its workers, whose hours and wages, which had now to be at a uniform rate and made commitments  in consultation with the Judenrat(committe of Jews). In addition, the companies had to undertake to accommodate their Jewish employees in closed residential blocks in the workplace. The ghetto was now receiving the character of a labour camp. On 14 September1942 Globocnik's staff rescinded the deportations temporarily. Up to then, approximately 241 000 Jews had been deported from Warsaw to Treblinka and most likely exterminated.
Nearly a week later, General Curt Ludwig v. Gienanth the Military District Commander of the General Government, complained to the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) over the "immediate removal of the Jews." (9) The deportations had led to a loss of production in the war factories. Basically, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the General Government had no objection to the killing of Jews. However, Jews should be spared from deportations and should be employed in the war economy, until such time that corresponding Polish and Ukrainians had been trained as skilled workers and could be used as replacements. This intervention of the Armed Forces, made Himmler very angry, that he pushed for the replacement and removal of Gienanth. In his reply the Reich Leader SS  urged early October 1942, that the Warsaw ghetto factories shall immediately merge(an Ort und Stelle) to a "spot" into a concentration camp. (10) The control of the companies would then be directed by the local SSPF,  the Office Group D in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA ), the central administrative authority of the concentration camps. With the resources and manpower of the ghetto, the SS were planning to move the entire enterprises further east towards Lublin as soon as possible and build a "Closed Manufacturing Concentration Camp" and to run on their own account Armed Forces Orders to their bidding. The plants should be grouped in an SS-owned company, which was founded in early 1943 as Ostindutrie GmbH (OSTI) (11) The Warsaw Ghetto played in the plans of OSTI in their plans as far as resources and manpower were concerned a central role. (12)
Ref: 6-BARC / MArch, RW 23/19. The conflicts between the companies, the Armed Forces of the SS in Warsaw and documented in the war diary of the armament command of the Wehrmacht in Warsaw.
Ref :7-Protocol armament HSSPF and inspection, 08.15.1942, in BArch / MArch, RH 53-23/87, page 47-50
Ref :8-One of these contracts as a facsimile in: Helga Grabitz, last traces Ghetto Warsaw, the SS Labor Camp Trawniki, harvest festival, photos and documents about the victims of the Final Solution, Berlin 1993, pages 172f
Ref :9-Letter v. Gienanth to the OKW, 09/18/1942, in BArch / MArch, RH 53-23/87, page 116ff.
Ref :10 -Letter Himmler, 09.10.1942, in: Nbg. Doc No-1611. Because of its lack of cooperation with the SS offices, General v. Gienanth was retired from the Army.
Ref: 11 - Jan Erik Schulte, forced labor for Jews in Eastern Industries GmbH, Munich 2000, pages 43-74.
Ref: 12 -Himmler and Pohl gad reached an understanding "Regarding to materials and Equipment" from the Warsaw Ghetto during December 1942. Published by: Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Berlin 1961, page 408.

Despite Himmler's instructions, the ghetto factories first continued to work as before on their own, furthermore v. Sammern Frankenegg undertook no further steps towards its relocation. It was the surprise visit of the Reichsführer SS to Warsaw on January 9, 1943 that  sparked new Initiatives. Himmler appeared angry, and furious that his instructions were not followed dated October 1942, and demanded the "immediate elimination of the private companies." For the relocation of businesses and their workers to Lublin he sat v. Sammern-Frankenegg a period of six weeks. All Jews that were not employed with Defence Contractors were to be brought to Treblinka.

KZ warsaw

With the resumption of deportations, the SS met on January 18, 1943 for the first time an armed resistance, and also outside the ghetto, the security of the occupying forces deteriorated due to Himmlers arranged mass arrests,  (15) The timely relocation of the eight ghetto factories with a total of 20,000 workers was under these conditions impossible to achieve.
Himmler had, meanwhile, on February 16, 1943, issued orders to set up a concentration camp in the Warsaw Ghetto. Its inmates were after re-location of the factories to tear down the residential area, and with the associated tasks provide sufficient building materials for other projects and then create a park on the site. The arguments Himmler put forward for the demolition were of "political-security" reasons within the ghetto and the planned reduction in size of the city of Warsaw.

For the SS, the shifting of the ghetto factories were more difficult than expected. The staff did not trust the assurances of the managers, that production facilities in the district of Lublin would be rebuilt. They agitated openly against  the re-location during  the summer of 1942 and formed the Jewish resistance movement against the resettlement plans. Trying  as he may, v. Sammern-Frankeneggs plans to clear the ghetto by force, had the effect that violence broke out unexpectedly  on 19 April 1943 with fierce resistance that could only be struck down with the use of SS, Police and Wehrmacht units after several weeks. In the Warsaw ghetto uprising, thousands of Jews were killed and a number of machines were destroyed together with raw material, by systematically  setting them on fire. The SS destroyed, so that even a large part of the proposed equipment for the Eastern Industries did no longer exist (19)
Ref :19-This led to conflicts between Stroop and Globocnik, who came to Warsaw to inspect the relocation of the businesses and workers, in BStU ZUV 15, Vol 19, Vol. 88 Franz Konrad's report, 01/08/1946, Globocnik's report on the conclusion of "Operation Reinhardt", 18/01/1944, in: Nbg. Doc. No-057.

SS - men search Jews for weapons. Warsaw

In his report addressed to Himmler and Krüger of 16 May 1943 on the suppression of the insurrection SS Brigadefüfrer Jurgen Stroop proposed, that the police prison, which was on the ghetto area and during the fighting had remained intact to develop it into a concentration camp and use prisoners to remove usable building material out of the rubble of the Ghetto. Picking up on Stroops proposal, Himmler ordered on 11 June 1943 the Chief of Administrative Main Office, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, to secure the prison at ul Dzielna[street] and convert it into a concentration camp. Prisoners were to be used with the removal of usable building material of the destroyed parts in the  ghetto, while ensuring all recyclable materials are kept for further use. After that a park will be created on the premises.
But not in the prison of the security police at the Dzielna-[Street] known in Poland under the name of the Pawiak, but in the former military prison at ul Gesia (then known as Gänse-Strasse today ul Anielewicza) was the Warsaw concentration camp established in July 1943. The building complex on the east-west axis of Muranow held up to 1939 storage facilities and a prison for the Polish Army. From June 1941 to January 1943 arrest cells for the Central Jewish Order Service were housed there and since January 1942, the Jewish Council' (Judenraat) had its office in the building aswell..

THE DEMOLITION OF THE GHETTO
For the demolition of the Warsaw ghetto and the development of the concentration camp was the responsibility of the Central Building Inspection WVHA (Official C-5). As an intermediary authority served the Central Construction Office (ZBL) of the Waffen SS in Warsaw, which in turn was subordinate to the SS economist at HSSPF and coordinated the construction site. The Central Building Office was responsible for all construction projects for the SS in the Warsaw district. Head of Service was an architect, SS lieutenant William Lübeck. For the demolition of the ghetto and the construction of the camp was that of the Zentralbauleitumg (Central Building Department), which had  about ten to twelve qualified staff such as architects, civil engineers, draughtsman and auditors employed,  and increased its personnel from time to time and formed a special Unit of the Special Task Force. Demanded by Himmler as "The Master Plan",  the Chief of the Office Group C in the WVHA, SS Brigadier General Dr. Ing Hans Kammler, submitted on 29 October 1943 his assessment . The area of the ghetto, he estimated at 320 hectares, of which 120 hectares had already been released back into the civil administration.

Aerial photography of the Warschau Ghetto, probably taken Novemnber 1944. The yellow line indicates the location of the Concentration Camp on the ul Gesia-[street]

The entering of the ghetto centre remained even after the suppression of the rebellion closed to the public. It was controlled by the Third Police Battalion of the SS of the 23rd Police Regiment that was from May 1943 to July 1944 stationed in Warsaw. The tasks of the unit was to patrol part of the ghetto wall, but also looking for Jews who had hidden after the end of the rebellion in the ruins of the ghetto. The police battalion was also used for the executions of Poles. Since the fall of 1943 the German occupation forces exacerbated the terror against the Polish population. The commander of the security police or the SSPF arranged executions which were often held in the immediate vicinity of the concentration camp in the ghetto area and therefore out of the public eye. The III-SS and Police Regiment shot and killed an estimated 3,000 people in Warsaw. The Polish underground were fully aware of the events in the Ghetto. In their reports of the underground government, the executions, but also the demolition work is regularly mentioned.

Jewish resistance women, among them Malka Zdrojewicz (right), who survived Majdanek extermination camp. Stroop Report original caption: "Hehalutz women captured with weapons".

The value of the salvaged material, several hundreds of millions of tons of brick and metals such as iron and copper, Kammler estimated at five million Reichsmarks, the cost of demolition and the construction of the camp to 150 million Reichsmarks. The value of the materials used was again less than four percent of the demolition costs. But even taking this amount into consideration the WVHA could not count on it. The materials needed for "consideration due to the particular conditions in the Warsaw area", and the Wehrmacht had to provide several companies material and services free of charge.

THE BUILDING OF THE CAMP
The concentration camp was built in Warsaw out of and from the ruins of the ghetto. The lack of the necessary infrastructure for a  camp suitable to house thousands of prisoners were missing at first. Neither accommodation nor water connections for sanitary facilities were available. The prisoners were forced to salvage out of the ruins of the ghetto,  building materials such as wood and bricks needed for the construction of a camp. Initially some wooden barracks at ul. Gesia, between ul. Lubeckiego and ul. Smocza were built. The wall of the central ghetto, which was at ul. Gesia limited the expansion of the camp to the south. The Headquarters moved into the Quarters of the former Polish military prison. The guard detachment  was placed outside the camp grounds.

When the first transport of prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp arrived in Warsaw during September 1943, the camp was far from being completed. Still, there was a lack of sanitary facilities, and even a hospital, called a Revier, was not available. Kammler already changed the plans to extend the camp in early February 1944. Instead of the originally planned 10,000 prisoners the camp could have accepted, only 5,000 were now projected. The construction of the third portion of the facilities were to be omitted. The first section which the prisoners called the "altes Lager"(the old camp) and the SS designated as "Camp I", at that time it was fully completed and the new part to 60 percent. This one was located almost next to "Camp I" and stretched from the ul. Smocza to the ul. Okopowa on the western edge of the former ghetto. With a thorough fare both camps were thereby connected. In "camp II" no wooden barracks were erected but basic, primitive single-storey accommodation blocks from reclaimed bricks had been built. On the  10th June 1944, seven weeks before the scheduled end of the ghetto demolition , Kammler reported, the Warsaw concentration camp was now "ready" and could be "occupied to its full capacity." Based on this information additional prisoners arrived from Auschwitz and were accommodated in the new camp. Gradually further Transports were directed by the SS-Administration to Warsaw.

 "Watchtower of KZ Warschau on the corner of ul. Gesia and ul. Okopowa. Picture taken, during Spring of 1945, by Juliusz Bogdan Deczkowski, member of the Battalion "Zoska" of the Polish Home Army.

Until the final closure of the camp, building work was carried out. They related mainly to accommodations, workshops, as well as a crematorium. When working in the ruins of the ghetto, inmates kept coming up against dead bodies of Jews who were murdered during the ghetto uprising. They were burned in the camp as well as the deceased prisoners on a temporary pyre in the ghetto area. The Police Regiment 23 of the III.SS maintained a work detail of their own for the disposal of the dead. It consisted of Jews kept interned in the basement of the property of the III SS and Police Regiment 23 at ul. Zelazna (then Eisenstrasse). In order to eliminate the numerous corpses, the Camp Administration built a Crematorium on the ul Gesia between the first Camp Section and the Main Administration Building in autumn 1943,  but it was never completed before the closure of the Camp.  A Polish Local Commission of inquiry found in 1946 charred human remains in the courtyards of the headquarters building at ul Gesia, although cans of Zyklon B were present, but there are no statements of former prisoners of the camp, indicating that in the camp area, a gas chamber was ever present.. Probably the Zyklon B was used for the disinfection of colthing to combat the spread of diseases.

Warsaw KZ crematorium

APPENDIX
Plaszow Concentration Camp
Commanding the camp was Amon Göth, an SS commandant from Vienna who was known for being uncommonly sadistic in his treatment and killing of prisoners; "Witnesses say he would never start his breakfast without shooting at least one person."On March 13, 1943, he personally oversaw the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto nearby, forcing its Jewish inhabitants deemed capable of work into the KL Plaszow camp. Those who were declared unfit for work were either sent to Auschwitz or shot on the spot. Under him were his staff of Ukrainian SS personnel, followed by 600 Germans of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (1943–1944),  and a few SS women, including Gertrud Heise, Luise Danz, Alice Orlowski and Anna Gerwing.
The camp was a slave Arbeitslager (English: Labor Camp), supplying manpower to several armament factories and a stone quarry. The death rate in the camp was very high. Many prisoners, including many children and women, died of typhus, starvation and executions. Plaszów camp became particularly infamous for both individual and mass shootings carried out there. Using Hujowa Górka, a large hill close to the camp commonly used for executions, some 8,000 deaths took place outside the camp’s fences with prisoners trucked in 3 to 4 times weekly. The covered lorries from Kraków used to arrive in the morning. The condemned were walked into a trench of the Hujowa Górka hillside and shot, bodies then covered with dirt, layer upon layer. In early 1944 all corpses were exhumed and burnt in a heap to hide the evidence. Witnesses later attested that 17 truckloads of human ashes were removed from the burning site, and scattered over the area.
All documents pertaining to the mass killings and executions were entrusted by commandant Göth to a high ranking female member of the SS, Kommandoführerin Alice Orlowski. She held these documents in her possession until the end of the war, then allegedly destroyed them. Alice Orlowski, a picture-perfect SS-woman, was known for her whippings especially of young women across their eyes. At roll call she would walk through the lines of women, and personally whip them.
During July and August 1944 a number of transports of prisoners left KL Plaszow for Auschwitz, Stutthof, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen and other camps. In January 1945, the last of the remaining inmates and camp staff, left the camp on a death march to Auschwitz, including several female SS guards. Many of those who survived the march were killed upon arrival. When the Nazis realized that the Soviets were already approaching Kraków, they completely dismantled the camp, leaving an empty field in its place. The bodies that were buried there earlier in various mass graves were all exhumed and burned on site. On January 20, 1945 the Red Army had reached only a tract of barren land.
Alice Orlowski:
In early January 1945, Orlowski was one of the SS women posted on the death march to Auschwitz-Birkenau and it was during this time that her behaviour, previously noted as being brutal and sadistic, became more humane. On the death march in mid-January 1945 from Auschwitz to Loslau, Orlowski gave comfort to the inmates, and even slept alongside them on the ground outside. She also brought water to those who were thirsty. It is unknown why her attitude changed, but some speculate that she sensed the war was almost over and she would soon be tried as a war criminal. Orlowski eventually ended up back at Ravensbrück as a guard.
After the war ended in May 1945, Orlowski was captured by Soviet forces and extradited to Poland to stand trial for war crimes. The "picture book SS woman" stood accused at the Auschwitz Trial in 1947. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in 1957 after serving only 10 years. In 1975, West Germany tracked Orlowski down, and placed her on trial in the Third Majdanek Trial. She died during the trial in 1976 at the age of 73.



                                                                         Continued under Part 2

BELZEC Extermination Camp part 7

STATEMENTS OF SURVIVORS

Only three people testified after the war of their stay in Belzic: Rudolf Reder from Lemberg, Chaim Hirszman from Janow- Lubelsk and later a Hasidic Rabbi Izrael Szapiro, who was also deported from Lemberg to Belzec.

The most detailed reports came from Rudolf Reder about his experience during his two month internment at Belzec. The first time he testified at a Soviet Investigation Commission since the liberation of Lemberg in 1944 concerning the activities within the camp. After his repatriation to Poland in 1945 in Krakau, he elaborated in more detail of his captivity in the camp and wrote a book[ghost writer Nella Rost, sic] called "Belzec". In 1959 he was again asked and testified during the general framework of investigations by the Federal Republic of Germany during 1965 against former SS-men from Belzec. [by that time he had changed his name to Roman Robak, more about him later.sic]

Chaim Hirszman fled from the transport, which would have brought the last Jewish Prisoners to Sobibor. After the escape, he joined a guerrilla organisation that was active in the Janowski-woods. After the war he became a member of the Polish Secret Service in Lublin. For this reason he was in 1946 shot by its Polish neighbors, on the very day on which he had begun to write down his experiences in the camp at Belzec. His second wife Pola Hirszman finished his work he had started.

The Rabbi Israel Szapiro spent only three days in the camp at Belzec. He was deported in autumn 1942 together with his wife from Lemberg to Belzec. On the ramp, he was selected to work,  his wife was driven into the gas chamber. Part of Szapiro's job was, to collect the luggage at the ramp of the deportees. After three days he took advantage of the carelessness of the guards and hid in a pile of clothes, which was loaded into wagons. In this way he arrived by train in the Janowska-Straße concentration camp at Lemberg, where the prisoners hid him. From there he was deported to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated. After the war he moved to the United States. About his experience at Belzec, he spoke in the 70 years only with Professor Jaffa Eliach.

Rudolf Reders claims about his experiences in Belzec are dismissed by some Historians and Researchers as false, plagiarised or outright fabrications, he claims that he spent a significant portion of his nearly four months long stay in Belzec dragging corpses to mass graves in proximity of the gas chamber building – a strange case of work assignment when one recalls Reder’s advanced age at the time: 61. In any case, Reder asserts familiarity with the grave pits, their location and appearance:…"the commando(to which he was assigned) was also employed in emptying the gas chambers, piling the bodies on a ramp, and dragging them all the way to the pits. "The ground was sandy. Two workers dragged one body. We had leather straps with metal braces, which we put round the hands of a corpse. Then we pulled, while the head of the dead man often dug deep into the sand... As regards small children, we were ordered to carry them in pairs on our backs. [...] This 'work' was done only in full daylight". You have to ask yourself the question how long can an over 60 year old man do this, we know, he was a soap maker and most likely a chemist, who was not used to physical work.

Reder stated in the interrogation protocol that the victims displayed no “unnatural discolorations” and that they looked “like live persons.” No statements regarding the appearance of the victims are to be found in Belzec. As has been most forcefully pointed out by revisionist F.P. Berg, discolorations of the victim’s skin is in fact a tell-tale sign of carbon monoxide poisoning. Photographs in specialist literature on forensic medicine reveal that large cherry-pink or bruise-red discolorations are prevalent and easily visible on the bodies of victims. It is thus highly suspicious that Reder denies having seen such discolorations among the gas chamber victims. If he had indeed as claimed spent months dragging corpses from the gas chambers to the mass graves, he would beyond any certainty have witnessed numerous cases of discolorations

Mr. Berg has posted a number of pictures of CO poisoning victims in a thread at the CODOH online debate

forum: http://forum.yourforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=4520. 

also http://www.nazigassings.com/TheEyewitnessesLied.html

Thomas Klues comes to the following conclusion:

Rudolf Reder is the only former inmate of Belzec to have left substantial accounts of his alleged experiences in this camp. His text "Belzec", originally published in Polish in1946, should reasonably be the most important and most trustworthy account of the supposed mass murder of Jews at that camp, considering that the witness spent nearly four months in close proximity to the alleged gas chambers and mass graves, and that the account itself was written down merely four years after the events. Instead we find a tale riddled with patently ludicrous elements, as well as numerous statements that at closer examination blatantly contradicts the testimonies of other witnesses as well as orthodox historiography and what we in fact know about the Belzec camp. Thus we have Reder presenting for us a Belzec vastly larger than the actual camp site; thirty mass graves, each of them as large as nearly all of the 33 grave pits detected by Andrzej Kola put together; a large inscription on the front of the “gas chamber” building which reads completely different than reported by Kurt Gerstein; French, Greek and Norwegian Jews that never set their feet in the camp; a strangely confused description of the killing agent; gassings with exhaust fumes leaving no smell; victims of said gassings displaying no symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning; and finally, an absurd escape story worthy the pen of an elementary school student.  

The cover of the original Polish edition of Belzec.

In the light of the above listed contradictions and absurdities it should not surprise that, as reported by Carlo Mattogno, some exterminationist scholars have decided to throw Reder’s  testimony overboard, or at least refrain from quoting it, in favour of minor witnesses, of whom the majority testified about the Belzec “gas chambers” in the 1960’s or even later. [...]Detailed and absurd early testimonies may thus directly have given rise to the vague and more tempered later accounts through a process of selection and coordination. That the first and most detailed accounts of the alleged gas chambers at Belzec are filled with absurdities and contradictions should in any case give rise to suspicion regarding the origins of the officially sanctioned Belzec historiography.

By translating and presenting "Belzec" M.M. Rubel has done us all a favor. That it was published in a rather obscure scholarly journal with few readers outside academia should not be blamed on him. It is however significant that the public are fed innumerable accounts of minor witnesses to the “death camps”, witnesses who at the very most describes a few flaming chimneys, dark smoke and Dr. Mengele. The actual words of the most crucial “Holocaust” witnesses, such as Reder, Gerstein, Wiernik, Tauber et al. are apparently, for some inexplicable reason, not suitable for the minds of the general public.[...]

THE CHAIM HIRSZMAN REPORT

It is often stated that Rudolf Reder (who later took the name Roman Robak) was the only Jew to have survived the “pure extermination camp” at Belzec. This, however, is incorrect even from an exterminationist viewpoint, since according to orthodox historiography there were in all seven survivors: Reder, Chaim Hirszman, Sara Beer, Hirsz Birder, Mordechai Bracht, Samuel Velser and “Szpilke”. The last person appears only within Reader’s account. Although Reder claims to have met “Szpilke” in Lemberg after the war, and states that he later lived in Hungary, yet this mysterious witness to the last days of the camp has left no historical trace whatsoever. As for Sara Beer, Belzec expert Michael Tregenza informs us (“Belzec – Das vergessene Lager des Holocaust”, in I. Wojak, P. Hayes (eds.), “Arisierung” im Nationalsozialismus, Volksgemeinschaft, Raub und Gedächtnis, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2000, p. 260) that she was transferred from the “death camp” to Trawniki together with 20-25 unnamed other Jewesses, and that she survived also Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen to be liberated by British troops in April 1945; she appears to have left no testimony on her stay in Belzec. Birder, Bracht and Velser are basically unknowns. Further, two women named Mina Astman and Malka Talenfeld are reported to have escaped after spending only some hours in the camp, and their brief impressions seems to have been recorded only second-hand (see Y. Arad,Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.., p. 264). Only two of the survivors, Reder and Hirszman, left witness accounts. The former published the 74-page pamphlet Belzec in collaboration with Nella Rost in 1946, and also testified before a Polish investigative commission and in connection with the 1965 Munich Belzec trial. As for the latter, Carlo Mattogno informs us (Belzec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History, p. 51):

“On March 19, 1946, Chaim Hirszman appeared before the regional historical commission of Lublin, but he was murdered the same day after his interrogation had been adjourned. Therefore, we have only a very laconic testimony from his side (Zydowski Instytut Historiczny (Jewish Historical Institute), Warsaw, Report No. 1476). As far as its content is concerned, it is so irrelevant that it does not even appear in the extract of testimonies on Belzec presented by Marian Muszkat in the official report of the Polish government on the German crimes against Poland.”

Yet, despite its extreme brevity, it is obviously of a certain importance as the only witness account left by a former Belzec prisoner besides those of Reder’s. The fact that it has gone virtually unmentioned and unquoted by Holocaust historians is likely foremost due to the aforementioned brevity and obscurity, but it cannot be wholly excluded that it also has to do with its contents, i.e. Hirszman’s statements about the alleged mass killings at Belzec.

Yitzhak Arad informs us that Hirszman and two other, unnamed prisoners escaped from the train which was taking them from the liquidated Belzec camp to Sobibor in July 1943, supposedly to be killed there (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka…, p. 265). The orthodox claim that the remaining Belzec inmates were taken to Sobibor to be executed there does not square well with the above mentioned fact that Sara Beer and other female detainees were sent to the Trawniki labor camp.

As for the ultimate fate of Hirszman, historian Martin Gilbert writes (The Holocaust. The Jewish Tragedy, Fontana Press, London 1987, p. 817) that:

“on March 9, one of only two survivors of the death camp at Belzec, Chaim Hirszman, gave evidence in Lublin of what he had witnessed in the death camp. He was asked to return on the following day to complete his evidence. But on his way home he was murdered, because he was a Jew.”

The Polish Historian Henryk Pajak states, however, that Hirszman was killed not because he was a Jew, but because he was an “active and dangerous functionary” of the new Communist regime (Konspiracja mlodziezy szkolnej 1945-1955, Lublin 1994, pp. 130-31, quoted in Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust, McFarland 1998, p. 341, note 306).

CHAIM HRISZMAN'S TESTOMONY

According to his own testimony, Hirszman was deported from Zaklikow, which was in the District of Lublin, Janow county (Gilbert, The Holocaust, p. 304). Arad informs us that a transport of 2,000 Jewish deportees departed from Zaklikow on November 3, 1942 (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka…, p. 383). Gilbert reproduces the apparently most relevant part of Hirszman’s testimony as follows:

“We were entrained and taken to Belzec. The train entered a small forest. Then, the entire crew of the train was changed. SS men from the death camp replaced the rail road employees. We were not aware of this at that time.

The train entered the camp. Other SS men took us off the train. They led us all together – women, men, children – to a barrack. We were told to undress before we go to the bath. I understood immediately what that meant. After undressing we were told to form two groups, one of men and the other of women with children. An SS man, with the strike of a horsewhip, sent the men to the right or to the left, to death – to work.

I was selected to death, I didn’t know it then. Anyway, I believed that both sides meant the same – death. But, when I jumped in the indicated direction, an SS man called me and said: ‘Du bist ein Militarmensch, dich können wir brauchen’ ['You have a military bearing, we could use you.']

We, who were selected for work, were told to dress.

I and some other men were appointed to take the people to the kiln. I was sent with the women. The Ukrainian Schmidt, an Ethnic German, was standing at the entrance to the gas-chamber and hitting with a knout [a knotted whip] every entering woman. Before the door was closed, he fired a few shots from his revolver[the SS usually had the Walther pistol, not a revolver,sic] and then the door closed automatically and forty minutes later we went in and carried the bodies out to a special ramp. We shaved the hair off the bodies, which were afterwards packed into sacks and taken away by Germans.

The children were thrown into the chamber simply on the women’s heads. In one of the ‘transports’ taken out of the gas chamber, I found the body of my wife and I had to shave her hair.

The bodies were not buried on the spot, the Germans waited until more bodies were gathered. So, that day we did not bury…” (Gilbert, The Holocaust, p. 304)

We note here first and foremost that Hirszman speaks of “gas chamber” in singularis. In many eyewitness accounts, “gas chamber” is confusingly taken to mean a building containing one or more gas chambers, but judging from Hirszman’s very brief description we are in fact dealing with only one chamber: children are thrown into “the chamber” and “the door” closes automatically once the victims are inside. According to orthodox historiography, the gas chamber building used at Belzec during this period of time consisted of six chambers arranged three and three on either side of a central corridor. There is no reason why the entrance door to the building, a opposed to the doors of the individual chambers, would be “closed automatically” before the gassing. It is also noteworthy that Hirszman for some inexplicable reason uses “kiln” as synonymous with “the gas chamber”, while at the same time he implies that the building was disguised as a bath.

The claim that the hair of the victims being shaved off after their death goes completely against all other available eyewitness testimony. We may compare here with Kurt Gerstein’s statement that the women had their hair cut off and stuffed inside potato sacks before entering the gas chambers (cf. H. Roques, he ‘Confessions’ of Kurt Gerstein, IHR, Costa Mesa 1989, p. 30) or Rudolf Reder’s claim to the same effect (cf. Rudolf Reder, “Belzec” in: Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, volume 13 (2000), p. 274).

The assertion that at the day of Hirszman’s arrival “the bodies were not buried at the spot” but instead left lying on the ground and only buried once “more bodies were gathered” is spurious for two reasons. First, no other witness has attested to this procedure; rather most witnesses imply or state that the corpses were interred right after the gassing in the burial pit open for the moment, and then covered with a sand layer. Second, the archeological evidence furnished by Andrzej Kola contradicts it. Given a theoretical maximum of 8 corpses per cubic meter, the approximately 2,000 victims (if we are to trust Arad’s figure) would have occupied 250 cubic meters. Of the 33 grave pits identified by Kola at Belzec, 10 (in their present state) have a volume of 250 cubic meters or less. There is thus no reason to believe that the SS would wait for more corpses to accumulate before burying them. Besides, the idea of letting 2,000 corpses lie around in the open for a day or more seems odd. On the other hand, the procedure described by Rajchman might be realistic if the only victims from the transport were a small number of en route deaths.

THE SECOND-HAND TESTIMONY OF POLA HIRSZMAN

The day after Chaim was shot, on March 20, 1946, Chaim’s wife Pola testified about what her husband had allegedly witnessed at Belzec. Her testimony is likewise kept in the archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Gilbert writes that “Chaim Hirszman’s experiences at Belzec were also set down in 1946 by his second wife, Pola, to whom he often retold them after the war” (ibid., p. 305). Needless to say, second-hand accounts are more or less worthless as evidence, but we will anyway take a look at some of her statements.

Mrs. Hirszman’s testimony starts out with a typical atrocity story about a transport consisting of small children – babies to three year olds – being murdered in a most unseemly manner:

“The workers were told to dig one big hole into which the children were thrown and buried alive.” (ibid., p. 305)

There is not really much to comment on here. The same goes for the next story, about a prisoner being hanged for a failed escape attempt; on the scaffold, the condemned man prophesized the fall of Hitler and his Reich. We are also told that typhus was prevailing in the camp, and that Chaim also contracted the disease but avoided being “murdered on the spot” by concealing his condition from the Germans. Pola also relates a story that is found with variations also in the Treblinka and Sobibor lore, about an Aryan (in this case a Ukrainian woman) arriving by mistake at the camp who is then gassed with the Jews, despite showing the SS men proper identification. Next we learn about the camp that:

“Once you crossed the gate to the camp, there was no chance to get out of there alive. Not even any Germans, except for the camp staff, had access to the camp.” (ibid., p. 305)

This claim is contradicted by several eyewitness statements. The former camp staff member Heinrich Gley declared in 1961 that a Jewish work detail had been carrying tasks far outside the camp and Polish witness Maria D. affirmed in October 1945 that some Jews in the camp “had the right to leave the camp perimeter” (Mattogno, Belzec…, p. 44). According to orthodox Belzec expert Michael Tregenza, four Polish villagers were employed in the camp proper, while, most astoundingly, other villagers were allowed inside the camp to take photographs (ibid., p. 43).

One of the stories related by Pola concerns Jews employed outside of the camp:

“Two Czechoslovak Jewesses were working in the camp office [which was located outside of the camp]. They, too, had never entered the camp. They even enjoyed a certain freedom of movement. They often went with the SS men to town to arrange different matters. One day they were told that they would visit the camp. The SS men showed them around the camp and in a certain moment they led the women to the gas-chamber and when they were inside, the door closed behind them. They finished with them in spite of the promise that they would live.” (Gilbert, The Holocaust, pp. 305-306)

This story clearly does not make much sense. On one hand, we are told that the two Jewesses had been promised that they would live, and thus they must have known that the Jews were being exterminated at Belzec – and working at the camp office, they could hardly have escaped figuring out the “true nature” of the camp (especially since this was supposedly well-known in the Belzec community from the start; cf. Mattogno, Belzec…, p. 43). But why then would the women walk gullibly into the “gas chamber”? Furthermore, we again note the singular of “door” being used in the description of the “gas chamber”.

When not carrying out a wholesale mass murder, burying small children alive or tricking Jewish secretaries into gas chambers, the SS men in the camp spent time relaxing with their victims:

“The Germans ordered the prisoners to set up a football team and on Sundays games were being played. Jews played with SS men, the same ones who tortured and murdered them. The SS men treated this as a matter of sport, and when they lost a game, they had no complaints.” (Gilbert, The Holocaust, p. 306).

On this point, at least, there is reason to believe that Pola is relating the truth. The SS man Werner Dubois mentioned during an interrogation in 1961: “It also happened that I organised a soccer match with 22 Jews on the sports ground” (quoted in Mattogno, Belzec…, p. 66). The soccer games are also confirmed by the Polish witness Tadeusz M., who further noted that the Germans had organised a string orchestra among the inmates (ibid., p.

CONCLUSION

Chaim Hirszman’s Belzec testimony is indeed largely irrelevant due to its brevity and lack of detail, but is nonetheless illuminating. Within the space of only some paragraph our witness manages to include several statements contradicting the orthodox picture of the “death camp”. Further, the second-hand recollections of his wife do not exactly help his reliability. It is a shame that Hirszman did not survive to leave a more complete testimony, as it would undoubtedly have constituted another bullet in the foot of the Belzec story. However, the stuck splinter that is Hirszman’s Belzec statement should be enough to make the defenders of the pure Shoah faith cringe with embarassment.

PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES

Immediately after the war, the "District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Lublin" determined as to what crimes had been committed at Belzec. That it was a purely Polish Commission and acted alone, was a special feature. In Sobibor and Majdanek exclusively Polish-Soviet commissions determined the German crimes in these places.

The first and only trial of German perpetrators of Belzec took place in Munich in 1964 and lasted only one day. After many years of investigations (since 1959) the proceedings took place. In the dock at that time were eight SS-offenders from Belzec with Josef Oberhauser at the top. The latter was sentenced to only four and a half years. As mitigating circumstances, the Court took into consideration that Oberhauser was sentenced in 1948 in Magdeburg to a 14-year prison sentence for involvement in the euthanasia killings. The remaining defendants were acquitted because the court came to the opinion that they had acted in a coercive situation and had been intimidated by the camp commanders Wirth and Hering. This judgement became possible in part because no surviving prisoners were present as a witness. Rudolf Reder was for reasons of age not travelling to the trial.

On the territory of the Soviet Union after the war there were some individual and collective actions against former Trawniki men from Belzec. These processes are not yet adequately researched. It is striking that the former Trawniki men there were much more open about the crimes reported than the Belzec the SS-men in German courts. [this is not surprising to me, as the SS had a code of honour "together we stand, together we fall". They would hardly ever deviate from that,and you would rarely find a "Judas" among them.sic] Some Trawniki men were aware of their own responsibility on human crimes. They described the camp and the gas chambers very accurately and pointed out that within  the camp at every step and turn they acted brutally against the deportees and the Jewish working prisoners.

In the 1946/47 Trawniki men were sentenced to 25 years into Gulags in the Soviet Union. They were released as part of an amnesty after Stalin's death. In a second wave of lawsuits against guards of Belzec and other death camps were held in the 60 years during  trials in Krasnodarsk, Kiev and other cities. Several dozen death sentences were pronounced, including for guard duties and crimes at Belzec. The investigations against former Trawniki men have been extended to the  Federal Republic of Germany and the United States, as many had emigrated or fled in 1945 to these countries. Due to the lack of thorough  scientific investigation and studies of these proceedings there is to date no exact number of Trawniki men known who stood before the courts in the Soviet Union or in other countries. [We are all aware of the Demjanjuk fiasco,sic] 

EPILOGUE

Since there are few survivors, the Belzec extermination camp got into oblivion within a short time. Nobody bothered about the site, which was plundered by the "graveyard hyenas" who dug for gold and valuables. Later it was used as a forest. The first memorial was built in 1963, but which did not convey the scale of the crimes committed here. In 2004, a memorial and a museum on the history of the camp was opened then. This was made possible by the cooperation between the "American Jewish Committee" and the "Council for the Protection of the Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom" in Warsaw.

APPENDIX

Aktion Erntefest

Action Erntefest (German for "Operation Harvest Festival") was a code phrase used by the German occupation forces to kill all Jews remaining in the Lublin District and the Lublin Ghetto of the General Government in two days on November 3-4, 1943. Approximately 42,000 Jews were killed during the Aktion Erntefest

The timing of the operation was apparently in response to several efforts by surviving Jews to resist the Germans (for example, the uprisings at the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, and armed resistance in the Warsaw, Bialystok, and Vilna ghettos). The SS feared additional Jewish-led revolts in the General Government. To prevent further resistance the SS decided to kill most of the remaining Jews, who were employed in forced-labor projects and were concentrated in the Trawniki, Poniatowa, and Majdanek camps.

"Erntefest" began at dawn on November 3, 1943. The Trawniki and Poniatowa labor camps were surrounded by SS and police units. Jews were then taken out of the camps in groups and shot in nearby pits dug for this purpose. At Majdanek, Jews were first separated from the other prisoners. They were then taken in groups to nearby trenches and shot. Jews from other labor camps in the Lublin area were also taken to Majdanek and shot. Music was played through loudspeakers at both Majdanek and Trawniki to drown out the noise of the mass shooting. The killing operation was completed in a single day at Majdanek and Trawniki. At Poniatowa the shootings took two days.

NOTES

The preclude any misunderstanding, the material for this narrative as well as all previous ones were original written by independent researches. Belzec was first published in Polish by Robert Kuwalek and translated into German by Andrea Rudorff, and provided by the Cultural Department of the Federal Republic of Germany in "The Place of Terror" pages 331-371 which I have used. The translations into English are my own, without aProof Reader. Literature references used were: Yitzak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Bloomington, Indianapolis 1987.  Robert Kuwalek, Oboz zaglady w Belscu [The Extermination Camp in Belzec],Lublin 2005. Robert Reder, Belzec, Krakau 1999 (in Polish and English languages.)  "Rudolf Reder’s Belzec" – A critical reading, and others, by Thomas Kues.

Although I receive threats and hate mail, exclusively from the USA, that are abusive and bordering close to obscenity which I read with dignity, >odi profanum vulgus et arceo<, however, I would like to make it abundantly clear, that I am not a Jew nor am I associated or affiliated with any Zionist Groups, as it is claimed, and will continue writing without malice or hate, rather record historical events, no matter how graphic they may have  been.

THE END