The Holocaust (41 page)

I remained lonely as a piece of stone. Out of my entire family, which comprised sixty people, I am the only one who survived. Towards evening, as we helped to cover the corpses, I put my shovel down. Michael Podklebnik followed my example and we said the prayer of the mourners together. Before leaving the ditch five of the ‘eight’ were shot. At seven in the evening we were taken back home. All those who hailed from Izbica were in absolute despair. We had realised that we should never see our relatives again. I was quite beside myself and indifferent to everything.

After the evening prayer all those from Izbica said the prayer of mourning together. In the next room, we had learnt, were eighteen grave-diggers from Lodz.

We heard through the wall that Rumkowski (the elder of the Jewish Council at Lodz) had ordered the deportation of 750 families from Lodz.

We spent a night filled with nightmares and images of horror. The strongest among us tried again to open the bricked-in window.

Friday, 16 January 1942

On Friday, 16 January, we woke at five in the morning. We once again debated our hopeless position. What was the use of living without relatives, friends or saviour—without anyone to talk to. At work the new grave-diggers from Lodz were beaten terribly by ‘Big Whip’, for it was he who gave the orders how they had to work.

At 10 a.m. the first gas vans arrived. By one o’clock we had already buried four transports. The victims came from Lodz. Some of them looked starved and showed signs of having been beaten and injured; one could gauge the degree of famine in Lodz. We felt great pity when we saw how they had hungered for a long time merely to perish in such a cruel manner. The corpses hardly weighed anything. Where previously three transports were put in layers one on top of the other now there was room for four.

In the afternoon ‘Big Whip’ again drank a bottle of schnapps; afterwards he began to deal murderous blows with his whip. In the afternoon we buried another four transports, and when we were near the end, seven of the ‘eight’ were shot. On Friday they started to pour chloride on the graves because of the stench caused by the many corpses.

In our room there were also three men from Lodz who told us more details about the fate of the 750 families from the Lodz ghetto. On Thursday they had arrived by train at Kolo. They were lodged in a synagogue. Eighteen healthy men from among them were selected and sent away as grave-diggers. The three in our room were so famished that they consumed our entire supper.

Saturday, 17 January 1942

On Sabbath, the 17th January, we again said the penitential prayer before leaving. On that day we buried seven overloaded transports. That afternoon five SS officers appeared to watch the goings-on. We had finished the work at five o’clock when a car suddenly appeared with the order to shoot sixteen men. This was obviously punishment for the escape of Abraham Rois. (He had run away at 10 o’clock on Friday night.)

Sixteen men were selected. They had to lie down in groups of eight, face downwards, on top of the corpses, and were shot
through the head with machine guns. When we returned to the cellar we thought we wouldn’t work on Sunday, as in the previous week. The men from Lodz told us that the price for a newspaper in that town was 10 marks. After supper we lapsed into a deep sleep.

Sunday, 18 January 1942

Sunday, the 18th January, we learnt at breakfast that we would have to go to work. At eight o’clock we were already at the place of work. Twenty new pick-axes and shovels were taken down from the lorry. We now realised that ‘production’, far from coming to an end, was on the increase.

We assumed it would soon be the turn of the Jews of Warsaw to be gassed. The turn of the Lodz Jews had already come.

Because it was Sunday not all the gendarmes were on duty. Because there were too many of us our things were thrown into the ditch. We consumed our lunch in the grave. They probably wanted to make sure that we didn’t attack any of them. We didn’t even attempt to hurl ourselves upon our executioners. The guns levelled at us filled us with too much fear. In the course of our night-time conversations we always reproached each other with cowardice.

I actually cannot understand till this day why strong healthy men who had nothing to lose didn’t do anything. It could be that we didn’t want to be mere heroes, but wanted to save ourselves so we could alert the Jewish population.

I would like to say a few more words about the gendarmes who guarded us; as a rule they were either hostile or indifferent. There was only one among them who always looked sad and never screamed at us. Nor did he ever slave-drive us at work. We told each other: ‘Look, that’s a human German; he himself cannot bear to watch how we are being murdered.’

In the afternoon we buried a further four transports. On this day no one was shot at the end of work. After the evening prayer we decided to run away, no matter what the cost.

I asked Kalman Radzewski to give me a few marks because I didn’t have a single pfennig. He gave me 50 marks which he had sewn into his clothing. The escape by Rois was an example that had made a deep impression on me because he had got out
through a cellar window. I had tried the day before, once again without success, to prise the brick loose.

Monday, 19 January 1942

On Monday the 19th January we again boarded the bus in the morning. I let all the others get on in front of me and was the last one aboard. The gendarme sat in front. On this day no SS men rode behind us. To my right was a window which could be opened easily. During the ride I opened the window. When fresh cold air streamed in I caught fright and quickly shut the window again. My comrades, among them Monik Halter in particular, encouraged me, however.

After I made a decision I softly asked my comrades to stand up so the draught of cold air shouldn’t reach the gendarmes. I quickly pulled the window pane out of its frame, pushed my legs out and turned round. I held on to the door with my hand and pressed my feet against the hinges. I told my colleagues they should put the window pane back immediately after I had jumped. I then jumped at once.

When I hit the ground I rolled for a bit and scraped the skin off my hands. The only thing that mattered to me was not to break a leg. I would hardly have minded breaking an arm. The main thing was that I could walk in order to get to the next Jewish settlement. I turned round to see if they had noticed anything on the bus but it continued its journey.

I lost no time but ran as fast as I could across fields and woods. After an hour I stood before the farm of a Polish peasant. I went inside and greeted him in the Polish manner: ‘Blessed be Jesus Christ.’ While I warmed myself I asked cautiously about the distance to Chelmno. It was only 3 kilometres. I also received a piece of bread which I put in my pocket. As I was about to go the peasant asked me if I was a Jew—which I absolutely denied. I asked him why he suspected me, and he told me they were gassing Jews and Gypsies at Chelmno. I took my leave with the Polish greeting and went away.

An hour later I came to another Polish farm, where they gave me sweet white coffee and a piece of bread. The people there told me: they are gassing Jews and Gypsies at Chelmno, and when they have finished with them it will be our turn. I laughed about that. They explained to me what route I should take. I
carried on walking till I reached a German village. (The German houses could be easily recognised because they were richly ornamented and had radio antennae on their roofs.)

I decided to walk on bravely through the whole village. Only at the end of the village did I find a house that belonged to a Pole. It transpired that I was 10 kilometres away from Grabow, which had a Jewish community. I introduced myself as a Polish miner on the way to Grabow in search of work. The householder sent me to the neighbouring town, where I was to ask for a certain Grabowski. Grabowski had a horse and cart and would surely take me to Grabow.

This time I could not make detours but had to walk along the open road part of the way. When I suddenly saw military vehicles my heart nearly stopped. I already had visions of being captured. At the last moment I took a peasant woman’s arm and turned off into a footpath with her. I asked her if she had furs to sell. The vehicle drove past and I was saved. I appealed to God and my deceased parents they should help me to save the Jewish people.

At Grabowski’s I introduced myself as a certain Witjowski who was looking for work in Grabow. It turned out that he, Grabowski, had gone to the market at Dabie. His neighbour to whom I was sent had likewise gone to the market at Dabie. I wandered a bit further and pondered my ill-luck. Now and then I asked passers-by for directions. All the time I was on the alert for gendarmes because I didn’t have any documents on me. I finally reached a village seven kilometres away from Grabow. There I arranged with a Polish farmer he would drive me to Grabow for 15 marks. I put on his fur coat and cap.

On Monday at two o’clock we arrived at Grabow. The Jews took me for an Ethnic German because I didn’t wear a star. I asked for the rabbi. I looked rough; in Chelmno we had had no opportunity to wash and shave.

I asked where the rabbi lived. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Rabbi, I am a Jew from the nether world!’ He looked at me as if I was mad. I told him: ‘Rabbi, don’t think I am crazed and have lost my reason. I am a Jew from the nether world. They are killing the whole nation Israel. I myself have buried a whole town of Jews, my parents, brothers and the entire family. I have remained lonely as a piece of stone.’

I cried during this conversation. The rabbi asked: ‘Where are they being killed?’ I said: ‘Rabbi, in Chelmno. They are gassed in the forest, and buried in mass graves.’ His domestic (the rabbi was a widower) brought me a bowl of water for my swollen eyes. I washed my hands. The injury on my right hand began to hurt. When my story made the rounds many Jews came, to whom I told all the details. They all wept.

We ate bread and butter; I was given tea to drink and said the blessing.
²

***

The rabbi to whom Grojanowski told his story, Jakub Szulman, realized that Grojanowski was telling the truth. ‘The place where everyone is being put to death is called Chelmno,’ he wrote to relations in Lodz, adding some of the details which he had just heard. ‘People are killed in one of two ways,’ he reported, ‘either by shooting or by poison gas,’ and he then listed some of the communities that had been destroyed. ‘Do not think that a madman’s writing,’ Rabbi Szulman added. ‘It is the cruel and tragic truth (Good God!).’

The rabbi’s letter ended: ‘O Man, throw off your rags, sprinkle your head with ashes, or run through the streets and dance in madness. I am so wearied by the sufferings of Israel, my pen can write no more. My heart is breaking. But perhaps the Almighty will take pity and save the “last remnants of our People”. Help us, O Creator of the World!’
³

Rabbi Szulman sent his letter to the Lodz ghetto; but it did not arrive there, so it seems, until the summer, and even then, as Lucjan Dobroszycki has written, ‘one cannot be sure who in the ghetto had read the letter or even knew of it, much less what influence that letter might have had on the attitudes of ghetto dwellers’.
⁴

***

On Tuesday, 20 January 1942, having told his story to the Rabbi of Grabow, Yakov Grojanowski set off on a slow and dangerous journey to Warsaw, hoping to alert the half million Jews there to what was happening at Chelmno. That same day, at a villa on the shore of the Wannsee, near Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich held his high-level conference, postponed for nearly three weeks because of America’s entry into the war.

The Wannsee Conference took place on 20 January 1942. The notes which were taken of its deliberations make no reference to the gassings which had taken place at Chelmno throughout the previous forty-four days; a period during which more than forty thousand Jews and Gypsies had been murdered. According to the notes of the Conference, Heydrich began telling the assembled senior civil servants of his appointment ‘as Plenipotentiary for the Preparation of the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question’. As a result of this appointment, he told them, it was his aim ‘to achieve clarity in essential matters’. Heydrich went on to tell the Conference that Goering had asked to see ‘a draft project’ of organizational, factual and material ‘essentials’ in consideration of this ‘final solution’. Such a draft, he added, would require ‘prior joint consultation’ of all the ministries involved ‘in view of the need for parallel procedure’.

The struggle waged against the Jews ‘so far’, said Heydrich, had first involved the expulsion of the Jews ‘from various spheres of life of the German people’ and then the expulsion of the Jews ‘from the living space of the German people’. Now, following ‘pertinent prior approval of the Führer’, the ‘evacuation of the Jews to the East’ had emerged ‘in place of emigration’ as a ‘further possible solution’. But both emigration and evacuation, he pointed out, were to be considered ‘merely as a measure of expediency’, from which experience could be gained which would be of importance ‘in view of the approaching final solution of the Jewish question’.

Heydrich then explained that this ‘final solution’ concerned, not only those Jews who were already under German rule, but ‘some eleven million Jews’ throughout Europe. He then gave the meeting a
list of the numbers involved, including 330,000 Jews in as yet unconquered Britain. All the Jews in the neutral countries of Europe were also listed: 55,500 in European Turkey, 18,000 in Switzerland, 10,000 Jews in Spain, 8,000 Jews in Sweden, 4,000 Jews in the Irish Republic and 3,000 in Portugal.

The figures presented by Heydrich included 34,000 for Lithuania. The other 200,000 Jews of pre-war Lithuania had, though he did not say so, been murdered between July and November 1941 by Einsatzgruppe A, their numbers meticulously listed town by town and village by village in Colonel Jaeger’s report of 1 December 1941.

The largest number of Jews listed by Heydrich were those in the Ukraine: his figure was 2,994,684. The second largest was for the General Government, 2,284,000. The third largest was for Germany’s ally, Hungary, 742,800, a figure which included the Jews in Ruthenia, Transylvania and those areas of Czechoslovakia annexed by Hungary in 1938 and 1939. The fourth highest figure was for unoccupied France, 700,000, a figure which included the Sephardi Jews in France’s North African possessions, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Next largest in the list was White Russia, 446,484, followed by the 400,000 Jews of the Bialystok region.