Authors: Martin Gilbert
The Holocaust (109 page)
By the first week of September 1944, the Slovak uprising was in its most desperate days. For the remnants of the Jewish communities of Slovakia, particularly those which were far from the centre of the revolt, fear of reprisals cast a dark shadow on many towns, among them Topolcany. Hardly had the German forces reimposed their authority in Topolcany than the Einsatzkommando unit of 150 men, commanded by an SS captain, Dr Hauser, entered the town.
Slovak Fascists who had ‘disappeared’ during the rebellion now re-emerged and reported for duty with the Einsatzkommando: thirty-seven of them were to join in the attempt to achieve what the Einsatzkommando described as the ‘final solution of the Jewish question in Topolcany’. The first effort of the SS was to lull the Jews into a false sense of security. Their spiritual leader, Rabbi Haberfeld, was summoned by Captain Hauser and told that prayers could now be held in the Great Synagogue. Hauser gave the rabbi an assurance that nothing would happen to the Jewish community. Later that same day, Hauser summoned representatives of the community, telling them to go back to work and to normal life.
Even as these assurances were being given, the Germans arrested one of the leaders of the Jewish community, Karl Pollak, a former deputy mayor of the town, his wife, and one other Jewish family from a nearby village. After being held in the district prison for a few days, they were taken out and killed. On September 6, Moritz Hochberger was killed when he tried to escape the clutches of a number of SS men.
At noon on September 8 the ‘action’ began. Men of the Einsatzkommando, together with their Slovak auxiliaries, broke into the homes of all Jews and dragged them to the SS headquarters. Few families, at most forty persons, managed to flee their homes and go
into hiding. That afternoon the Jews of Topolcany were deported to the concentration camp at Sered.
Even as the deportation was in progress, Slovak peasants betrayed four Jews who were hiding in a farm outside the town. A detachment of the Einsatzkommando was sent down to the farm, where all four Jews were murdered.
For the next two days, peasants searched for Jews in hiding, and on September 10, fifty-two Jews who had been caught in hiding places were brought to an open field. There they were ordered to dig a deep pit, before being murdered by the Germans and their Slovak helpers. The corpses were then thrown into the pit. Among the dead were six children. The smallest was a three-month-old baby from the Linkenberg family.
1
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Rescue and slaughter marched hand in hand during the twilight days of the Reich. On September 3, as the result of a suggestion first put forward by Churchill’s son Randolph, the evacuation began, by air, of 650 German, Austrian and Czech Jews from the partisan-held areas of Yugoslavia, to Allied-occupied Italy.
2
Also in Italy, in the German-held port of Fiume, now under German control, the Germans arrested a senior Italian police officer, Giovanni Palatucci, who had helped more than five hundred Jewish refugees who had reached Italy from Croatia, by giving them ‘Aryan’ papers and sending them to safety in southern Italy.
3
Palatucci was sent to Dachau, where he died.
4
Jews were also active in their own defence: in Budapest, on September 7, the Hungarian authorities allowed Otto Komoly, a Jew who had been decorated for heroism in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, to rent a number of buildings in the capital for the protection of Jewish children, under the aegis of the International Red Cross. Helped by two Polish Jews, Dr Osterweil and Sholem Offenbach, both of them refugees in Hungary, Komoly gave protection to five thousand children in more than thirty-five protected buildings. Like Palatucci in Fiume, however, Komoly did not escape the penalty for courage. Within four months of his scheme being put into effect, he was seized and murdered by Hungarian Fascists.
5
Also in September 1944, shortly before the Red Army entered
Przemysl, Yosef Buzhminsky saw, in a courtyard, ‘a little girl about six years old playing there. Gestapo and SS men arrived, surrounded the courtyard. It was a Polish family consisting of eight people. They began whipping the girl, and then they executed all of them right there in the courtyard.’ The Polish family had hidden the Jewish girl. It was for that ‘crime’ that they, and the girl, were shot.
6
On September 9, a group of thirty-nine Dutchmen, one American and seven Englishmen, all of them active in the anti-Nazi underground, were brought to Mauthausen. After spending the night inside the bunker they were driven, barefoot and in their underclothes, to the quarry, ‘where’ as the historian of Mauthausen has written, ‘the 186 steps were lined on both sides by SS and Kapos swinging their cudgels and anticipating a spectacle.’ The forty-seven prisoners were ‘loaded with stone slabs of up to sixty pounds in weight, and then forced to run up the steps. The run was repeated again and again, and the blows fell faster and faster as the exhausted prisoners stumbled on the uneven steps.’ One of the prisoners was a British Jew, Marcus Bloom, who had operated a clandestine radio in Nazi-occupied Europe. He, the historian noted, ‘was the first to fall’.
Bloom was shot in the head at point-blank range.
7
On September 17, as the Red Army drove through eastern Hungary, the Germans began to evacuate the labour camp at Bor, where thousands of Jews had worked, and many died, in the copper mines.
When the ‘death march’ from Bor reached Cervenka, the marchers were driven into the kiln of a brick works. There, six hundred were shot. That same day, about sixty more were shot on the march itself.
8
At Gyor, on November 4, hundreds of the exhausted survivors were either beaten to death or shot, their bodies being thrown into a mass grave which they themselves had been forced to dig. Among those whose bodies were found in this grave when it was uncovered in 1946 was Miklos Radnoti, a thirty-five-year-old poet, whose poems during the war years had graphically portrayed the impending disaster in Hungary.
9
More than five thousand Jews had set off on this march to Belgrade, then to Austria, and finally to the concentration camps of Flossenburg and Buchenwald. Only nine survived the war.
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September 18 marked the eve of the Jewish New Year 5705. Three days earlier, at Birkenau, fourteen hundred Jewish boys in their early teens had been taken to the special Children’s Block. They were kept there for three days, until the Jewish New Year. One of those who witnessed the ‘action’ that day was the fourteen-year-old Josef Zalman Kleinman. The SS ‘began loading them into trucks’, he later recalled, ‘and the screams were terrible: “Hear! O Israel!” “Mother”, “Father”—this took several hours. I had never heard anything like it. In Auschwitz usually, during summer, the people were taken to the gas-chambers by the hundreds of thousands, those people did not know where they were being led. But we, who had already become veterans of the camp—we knew….’
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There were other ‘veterans’ in Birkenau who had no chance of survival. These were the ‘mussulmen’, Jews in the last stage of starvation. Dr Aharon Beilin, who had been sent to Birkenau from Bialystok in the autumn of 1943, has recalled their symptoms, and their fate:
They began speaking about food. Usually this was a taboo. Two things were taboo—crematoria and food. Food—that was a reflex, a conditioned reflex; because whenever people spoke about food the secretion of digestive acids would increase, and people tried not to speak about food. As soon as a person lost that self-control and began remembering the good food which he used to have at home in the good old times, such a talk was called a ‘mussulman conversation’.
That was the first stage, and we knew that within a day or two, he would enter the second stage. There was not such a rigorous division, but he would stop taking an interest in his surroundings and would also cease reacting to orders, and his motions would become very slow, his face frozen like a mask. He would no longer have control over his bowels. He would relieve himself where he was. He was not even turning over when he lay down.
And thus he entered the ‘mussulmanship’. It was a skeleton with bloated legs. And these people, because they wanted to drag them from the blocks to the roll call, they were placed forcibly next to the wall with their hands above their heads, their face to the wall for support, and it was a skeleton with grey face that would lean against the wall, swaying back and
forth. They had no sense of balance. That was the typical mussulman, who would be taken afterwards by the ‘skeleton’ Kommando with the real bodies.
12
On September 19, in the Baltic, Soviet troops approached Klooga camp, where more than three thousand Jews, Russians and Estonians were being used as forced labourers. The SS acted once more to prevent their victims, the witnesses of their crimes, from being rescued. Almost all the Klooga inmates were killed, among them fifteen hundred Jews who had been brought to the camp in 1943 from the Vilna ghetto, eight hundred Soviet prisoners-of-war, and seven hundred Estonian political prisoners. Only eighty-five survived. At nearby Lagedi camp, 426 Jews, among them many children and babies, were murdered only a few hours before the first Red Army soldiers entered the camp.
13
At Birkenau, following the gassing of four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews in the summer of 1944, there was a substantial reduction in the number of trains reaching the camp, so much so that during September the SS decided to reduce the number of Sonderkommando prisoners. On September 24, two hundred men of the Sonderkommando were forced into freight cars at the ramp in Birkenau under the pretence of being sent to work at some distant camp. They were in fact taken to Auschwitz Main Camp, where they were gassed. That night their bodies were brought back to Birkenau, and burned.
The Sonderkommando was now reduced to 661 men. A hundred were housed in each of the attics of Crematoria II and III. The remaining 461, who worked in Crematoria IV and V, and at the cremation pits, slept in the large unused ‘dressing room’ of crematorium IV.
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In the nightmare world that Nazism had created, one of the cruellest tasks of all was that imposed upon the Jews of the Sonderkommando.
The days between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement mark the ‘Days of Awe’ in the Jewish calendar. Some Jewish sentiment maintains that only the virtuous die on the Day of Atonement. At Birkenau, many were to die that day, between the opening hours of the fast on the evening of September 26, and its ending twenty-four hours later.
Even before the fast began, there was a ‘selection’ of a thousand
young boys, who had been told that, in preparation for the Day of Atonement, extra bread would be distributed: a third of a loaf instead of a fifth of a loaf, and also cheese. ‘There had never been anything like it at Auschwitz,’ Josef Kleinman later recalled. ‘We were very happy that we could eat and then fast properly on the next day.’ Then, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the boys were ordered back into Birkenau. Kleinman has recalled the sequel:
The preparations were very intensive. The chief clerk and other clerks were there. All the block seniors, they all gathered and arranged us in groups of a hundred. Somebody spread a rumour that we were to be taken to collect the potato harvest in the area so we were arranged in these groups of a hundred. There were two thousand of us altogether.
All of a sudden a tremble passed through the parade ground like an electric current. The angel of death appeared. Dr Mengele appeared on his bicycle. Somebody approached him, took his bicycle and leaned the bicycle near the barrack. I was in a group right near the road and I saw that. He put his hands behind his back, his lips as usual were tightly closed, he went to the centre of the parade ground, lifted his head so that he could survey the whole scene and then his eyes landed on a little boy about fifteen years old. Perhaps only fourteen years old or something like that. He was not far from me in the first row. He was a boy from the Lodz ghetto. I remember his face very well. He was blond, very thin and very sunburnt. His face had freckles. He was standing in the first line when Mengele approached him and asked him, ‘How old are you?’ The boy shook and said, ‘I am eighteen years old.’
I saw immediately that Dr Mengele was very furious and started shouting, ‘I’ll show you. Bring me a hammer and nails and a little plank.’ So somebody ran immediately and we were standing and looking at him completely silent. A deathly silence prevailed on the parade ground. He was standing in the middle and everyone was watching him. In the meantime, the man with the hammer and the nails arrived.
When the man with the tools was standing near Dr Mengele, Mengele approached another boy. He was a tall boy in the first row. His face was round and he looked quite well. Mengele approached him, grabbed him by the shoulder and led him to
the goal post which was on that field. It was a regular football field. There were two goal posts. He led this boy by the shoulder and the man with the plank and the tools and the hammer also followed them. He put the boy near the goal post and gave orders to nail the plank above the boy’s head so that it was like the letter L only in reverse. Then he ordered the first group to pass under the board. The first group of boys started going in single file.
We had no explanations. We understood that the little ones who did not reach the board, who were not tall enough, would be taken to their death.
It could have had no other meaning. It was one hundred per cent clear to everyone what the purpose of this game was. We all began stretching. Everyone wanted to get another half inch, another centimetre. I also stretched as much as I could but I despaired. I saw that even taller boys than myself did not attain the necessary height. Their heads did not touch the plank.
Single file they passed under the plank and whoever was too short would be set aside and taken with the little ones who were doomed to go to their death.
My brother was standing near me. I was so busy with myself that I didn’t even have time to think about him. He was tall. This was his sixteenth birthday.
I was standing there quite desperately. I thought this was the end of my life and all of a sudden my brother whispered to me, ‘You want to live. Do something.’ As if I had awoken from a dream, I started looking for a way of rescue. My brain worked quickly. All of a sudden my eyes saw some stones near me. Perhaps this could be my rescue. We were all standing at attention in these lines and I bent down without being noticed, I picked up a few small rocks, I opened my shoe laces and started stuffing my shoes with little stones. I had shoes which were a little too big for me. I stuffed them with stones under my heel and this added about an inch to my height.
I thought this might be enough. Then I saw that I could not stand at attention with these stones in my shoes and I told my brother that I was going to throw away the stones. But my brother said not to throw them away that he would give me something. He gave me a hat which I tore in two and stuffed into the shoes. This made it a little softer so that I could stand.
I stood there for about ten minutes with these shoes full of stones and rags and I thought maybe I could make it. Then after about ten minutes all the boys would be passing under the board. Two would make it and two wouldn’t. I stood there and finally my brother kept looking at me and said, ‘No, it’s not enough yet.’ I was afraid that maybe out of excitement it would be difficult and they would notice that I have something in my shoes. My brother asked another boy in the third row to estimate my height. They all looked at me and said that I had no chance of making the proper height.
I started looking for another device to escape and hide among those tall boys who had already gone under the board and had passed the selection.
They were in groups of a hundred on the other side of football ground. And the little ones who were too short, they were on the extreme other side. And the little ones always tried to break away.
I tried to infiltrate into the groups of the big boys. I thought maybe I was safe. But then another boy tried to infiltrate and Dr Mengele noticed that and he started shouting at the guardsmen and Kapos, ‘What are you doing? This is sabotage.’ And he ordered the entire group to be taken and again passed under the board. When I heard this, when we were taken again to the board, I again escaped on the way into my old place, in my old group. It was a narrow passage and I managed to infiltrate this old group.
I thought that maybe I would live for another half hour with that illusion. Then after fifteen minutes I again fled into the group of the big boys. Nobody noticed this. And this is how the selection was ended. One thousand boys did not make the grade.
Those who did not make the grade were taken to barracks 25 and 26 and then darkness fell. They were kept locked in these two barracks until about two days after the Day of Atonement.
They were led to the gas-chambers. They were destroyed in the gas-chambers. Only a thousand boys survived.