Authors: Martin Gilbert
The Holocaust (55 page)
At Khmelnik, in the Ukraine, June 12 saw the third ‘action’ against the Jews. This time it was babies, children and old people who were ordered to assemble. Children were taken from their mothers. Mothers who begged to go with their babies were not allowed to do so. ‘The children were taken to the forest,’ the eighteen-year-old Maria Rubinstein later recalled. ‘Nobody knew what really was there. There were rumours that the wives of the Ukrainian policemen were putting poison on their lips with their fingers.’
Among the children taken away was Maria Rubinstein’s youngest sister Dina. She was not yet two years old. Following the murder of her mother six months earlier, Dina had been hidden with a peasant woman in a village some way from Khmelnik. But two days before this third ‘action’ she had been brought back to the ghetto because the Christian woman who was hiding her had ‘had some family troubles with her husband’.
Dina was taken away, and, with hundreds of other babies and young children, was murdered in the nearby forest.
39
On June 10 the Jews of Biala Podlaska had been deported to Sobibor. A week later, Ringelblum spoke in Warsaw to the head of the Jewish Social Relief Organization in Biala Podlaska, who asked in anger, ‘How much longer will we go “as sheep to the slaughter”? Why do we keep quiet? Why is there no call to escape to the forests. No call to resist?’ Ringelblum noted:
This question torments all of us, but there is no answer to it because everyone knows that resistance, and particularly if even one single German is killed, its outcome may lead to a slaughter of a whole community, or even of many communities.
The first who are sent to slaughter are the old, the sick, the children, those who are not able to resist. The strong ones, the workers, are left meanwhile to be, because they are needed for the time being.
The evacuations are carried out in such a way that it is not always and not to everyone clear that a massacre is taking place. So strong is the instinct of life of workers, of the fortunate owners of work permits, that it overcomes the will to fight, the urge to defend the whole community, with no thought of consequences. And we are left to be led as sheep to a slaughterhouse. This is partly due to the complete spiritual breakdown and disintegration, caused by unheard-of terror which has been inflicted upon the Jews for three years and which comes to its climax in times of such evacuations.
The effect of all this taken together is that when a moment for some resistance arrives, we are completely powerless and the enemy does to us whatever he pleases.
Ringelblum was critical of particular communities which had not done enough, he thought, to challenge their tormentors. ‘One gendarme is sufficient to butcher a whole town,’ he wrote bitterly, adding, of earlier reports of resistance which had been spread in Warsaw:
Of no use will be the lies that are being fabricated about Nowogrodek or the recent ones about Kowel; in no place did Jews resist the slaughter. They went passively to death and they did it, so that the remnants of the people would be left to live, because every Jew knew that lifting a hand against a German would endanger his brothers from a different town or maybe from a different country. That is the reason why three hundred prisoners of war let the Germans kill them on the way from Lublin to Biala; and these soldiers were known to have distinguished themselves in the fight for Poland’s freedom.
Not to act, not to lift a hand against Germans, has since then become the quiet, passive heroism of the common Jew. This
was perhaps the mute life instinct of the masses, which dictated to everybody, as if agreed upon, to behave thus and not otherwise. And it seems to me that no incitement, no persuasion, will be of any use here; it is impossible to fight a mass-instinct—you must submit to it.
40
There were in fact many acts of resistance, even in Warsaw. But the subsequent reprisals were, as Ringelblum had written, a fierce deterrent. In Warsaw that June, the conflict between the will to resist and the horror of reprisals was seen when two Jewish porters, suspected of smuggling, were taken to be shot. A friend of theirs, a tailor named Izraelit, who had come by chance to spend the night with them, was taken with them to the execution site. These three ‘candidates for death’, Chaim Kaplan noted in his diary on July 6, ‘were virile men with strength in their loins, and they did not want to die in spite of the Nazis’. Kaplan’s account continued:
Thus in the dark of the night a terrible wrestling match began between those who were defending their lives and the killers. The porters fought with the strength of their bodies, without weapons; the killers were armed and confident of their superiority.
At such times there is no rational thought. Instinct comes in its stead. In time of danger the latent, hidden powers of a man burst out and are exposed; and in particular when one finds oneself in a condition of ‘in any case we will die’. And therefore, before the killers had time to act, the condemned men pounced on them and tried to seize the pistols.
One of the pistols went off and wounded the tailor in the leg. Then the porters grabbed the Nazis by the throat and tried to strangle them. The two sides wrestled until their strength waned, and in the end the killers, who still had their weapons, were victorious. Izraelit the tailor saved himself by presenting the killers with a document showing that he was working in a factory for the German army. With the dawn, he was taken to the hospital.
On the morrow, the Nazis avenged the mutiny of the two porters with no Jews. They were put to death for the sins of men who had never laid eyes on them.
41
At Mielnica, near Kowel, one of the two towns mentioned by Ringelblum in connection with ‘lies’ about resistance, an act of resistance had been recorded during the Einsatzkommando killings of July 1941, when Abraham Weintraub ‘dashed out of a group drawn up for the massacre, pounced upon a German officer who was standing nearby, hit him and broke his teeth’. Weintraub was shot dead on the spot.
42
But in some of the larger ghettos, submission seemed a way to survival. Moses Merin in the Zaglebia region, Chaim Rumkowski in Lodz, Ephraim Barasz in Bialystok, each believed in the possibility of protecting tens of thousands of Jews by turning their respective ghettos into increasingly productive work centres for German needs.
In the Lodz ghetto, Rumkowski had always insisted that the ghetto’s chances of survival lay in productive work. But on June 4 the Ghetto Chronicle had noted that ‘fear of the possible resettlement of the unemployed, which would mean the break-up of families, runs deep in the ghetto dwellers’ minds, weighs on them, and prevents them from working.’ Were it not for that worry, the Chronicle added, ‘it could all somehow be endured, for, on the whole, our people are greatly inclined to optimism and to believe in the power of the spirit in spite of physical exhaustion.’
43
Work in the Lodz ghetto was, indeed, on the increase, particularly, as the Chronicle noted on June 10, in providing material for the German army. This increase in orders, it commented, had been observable ‘since the time when the ghettos in the neighbouring small towns were eliminated’.
44
Between the end of May and mid-July 1942, the Lodz ghetto workshops received nearly 800,000 kilogrammes of old clothing, nearly 70,000 kilogrammes of used shoes, and even 12 kilogrammes of old ties.
45
During the sorting of the old clothing, one woman worker found a gold necklace weighing 26 grammes.
46
In his public address to the people of the ghetto on May 31, Rumkowski had stressed that work, and working papers, were the principal authorization ‘for remaining in the ghetto’. Of the hundred thousand Jews in the ghetto, seventy thousand were employed. He would try to find employment for ten thousand more ‘in the very near future’, including ‘easy work for children and old people’.
47
Nor was work lacking: German army representatives who inspected the ghetto in July expressed themselves ‘entirely satisfied’ by
what they saw: including tailor workshops producing ten thousand pairs of pants and trousers in camouflage cloth, and jumpsuits for paratroops.
48
During his speech on May 31, Rumkowski had told the Jews of the Lodz ghetto that ‘considerable blame’ for the ‘resettlement’ of fifty-five thousand Jews from Lodz in the previous six months was to be borne in Lodz itself by those Jews who had been ‘reluctant to work’. He wished therefore to warn them again ‘of the potential consequences of idleness’.
49
Three weeks later, on June 21, Ephraim Barasz explained, at a mass meeting of Bialystok Jews:
We have transformed all our inhabitants into useful elements. Our security is in direct proportion to our labour productivity. We already have twenty factories in operation. Any day now, there will be opened a weaving factory, a factory making wooden lasts, a woodwork and a wheel factory….
You are all aware of the visits we have recently had. It is hard to enumerate them all, and I shall only mention those most important ones, on which the fate of the ghetto depended….
All delegations have expressed their satisfaction with our work, and we received massive orders after the last visits. The visits brought about a continuously improving attitude toward us. The very person who, from the start, was totally against us, now has become friendly.
Instead of contributions, evacuations etc., we are now given subsidies for our institutions, for the kitchens, training courses, hospitals, and also for industry. But the financial aspect is not as important as is the friendly attitude toward us.
Steps had to be taken, Barasz explained, so that the existence of thirty-five thousand Jews in the Bialystok ghetto would ‘achieve justification, so that we may be tolerated’.
50
Ringelblum had no illusions as to the Jewish fate under Nazi rule. ‘The extermination’, he wrote on June 25, ‘is being executed according to a plan and schedule prepared in advance. Only a miracle can save us: the sudden end of the war. Otherwise, we are lost.’
51
On June 26, using information collected by the ‘Joy of Sabbath’ circle and smuggled out of Poland, the British government broadcast
details of the fate of Polish Jewry. ‘Today,’ Ringelblum noted, ‘there was a broadcast summarizing the situation: seven hundred thousand, the number of Jews killed in Poland, was mentioned. At the same time, the broadcast vowed revenge, a final accounting for all these deeds of violence.’ Ringelblum added, of his own circle’s efforts:
Our toils and tribulations, our devotion and constant terror, have not been in vain. We have struck the enemy a hard blow. It is not important whether or not the revelation of the incredible slaughter of Jews will have the desired effect—whether or not the methodical liquidation of entire Jewish communities will stop. One thing we know—we have fulfilled our duty. We have overcome every obstacle to achieve our end. Nor will our deaths be meaningless, like the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews. We have struck the enemy a hard blow. We have revealed his Satanic plan to annihilate Polish Jewry, a plan he wished to complete in silence. We have run a line through his calculations and have exposed his cards. And if England keeps its word and turns to the formidable massive attacks that it has threatened—then perhaps we shall be saved.
There were some people, Ringelblum noted, who believed that as a result of the broadcasts from London, the Germans would be afraid to perpetrate any new massacres. Some people cited ‘evidence’ of Jews ‘supposed to have been deported from Ostrowiec being set free’. If this were confirmed, Ringelblum added, ‘it is really the beginning of a new era’. But, he added, the ‘more sober among us’ warned against having any illusions: ‘No compassion can be expected from the Germans. Whether we live or die depends on how much time they have. If they have enough time we are lost. If salvation comes soon, we are saved.’
52
‘Avenge our tormented people’
On 7 July 1942 a meeting took place in Berlin, presided over by Himmler. Three other men were also present: the head of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate, SS General Richard Glueks; the hospital chief, SS Major-General, and also Professor, Gebhardt; and a leading German gynaecologist, Professor Clauberg. As a result of their discussion, it was decided to start medical experiments in ‘major dimensions’ on Jewish women at Auschwitz. The experiments would be done in such a way, the notes of the meeting recorded, that a woman would not become aware of what was being done to her. It was also decided to ask a leading X-ray specialist, Professor Hohlfelder, to find out if it were possible to castrate men by means of X-rays.
Himmler warned those present that these were ‘most secret matters’. All who became involved in them, he said, would have to be pledged to secrecy.
1
Three days later, at Auschwitz, the first hundred Jewish women were taken from the barracks to the hospital block for sterilization and other experiments. One of those who survived such an experiment travelled, after the war, by ship to the Far East. She was then aged thirty-five years, but the ship’s medical officer, Peter Mackay, reported that she ‘looked at least twenty years older’.
During the voyage, Mackay also spoke to two Dutch doctors who had been prisoners in Auschwitz, and who described four experiments:
Experiment No. 1
These were performed by a Professor Samuel who was forced to do them. Three to four operations per day. The abdomen was opened and an incision made in the uterus, whereupon
neoplastic cells were implanted. The origin of these neoplastic cells is unknown.
Three to six operations were performed after this at three to four weekly intervals and pieces of tissue from the uterus were taken and frozen sections made. The discharge which occurred through the cervix was clear and gave no indication of any change occurring. The women were unaffected by the actual operations.
Experiment No. 2
Fifteen girls aged seventeen to eighteen years old. The girls who survived the following operations are in German hands and little is known about them. The subjects were placed in an ultra-short-wave field. One electrode was placed on the abdomen and another on the vulva. The rays were focused on the ovaries. The ovaries were consequently burnt up.
Owing to faulty doses several had serious burns of the abdomen and vulva. One died as a result of these burns alone. The others were sent to another concentration camp where some were put in hospital and others made to work. After a month they returned to Auschwitz where control operations were performed. Sagittal and transverse sections of the ovaries were made.
The girls altered entirely owing to hormonal changes. They looked just like old women. Often they were laid up for months owing to the wounds of the operations becoming septic. Several died as a result of sepsis.