Tonight and tomorrow, we observe Holocaust Remembrance Day.
When Jacob Richman sent me his list of Holocaust educational sites I was stimulated to learn more about Treblinka, the extermination camp where my father’s mother, father, sister and brother were murdered.
Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were part of “Operation Reinhold,” designed solely to exterminate Jews of the German-occupied area of Soviet Russia (Poland until 1941). Only about 70 prisoners managed to escape from Treblinka and survive the war.
From the Jewish Virtual Library:
The procedure adopted upon the arrival of the trains was the same as that in Sobibor: two German railroad workers, classified as being reliable, took over the transport from the Treblinka station to the extermination camp, a distance of 4 km. The Pole Franciszek Zabecki described the arrival of the deportation train from the Warsaw ghetto:
A small locomotive stood ready in the railroad station to transport the first section of freight cars into the camp. Everything had been planned and prepared in advance. The train consisted of 60 closed freight cars fully loaded with people: young ones, old ones, men and women, children and babies. The car doors were locked from the outside and the air holes covered with barbed wire. On the running boards on both sides and on the roof about a dozen SS-soldiers stood or lay with machine guns at the ready. It was hot and most of the people in the freight cars were deadly exhausted… As the train came nearer it seemed as if an evil spirit had taken hold of the waiting SS-men. They drew their pistols, returned them to their holsters, pulled them out again, as if they wanted to shoot and kill. They approached the freight cars and tried to reduce the noise and the weeping; but then they screamed at the Jews and cursed them, all the while urging the railroad workers to hurry: “Quick, faster!” After that they returned to the camp in order to receive the deportees. (Franciszek Zabecki, ‘Wspomnienia dawne i nowe’, Warsaw, 1977 pp.39 f)
As the train approached the extermination camp, the engine blew a prolonged whistle which was the signal for the Ukrainians to man their position in the reception sector and on the roofs of the buildings. One group of SS-men and Ukrainians took up positions on the station platform. As soon as the train was moving along the tracks inside the camp, the gates behind it were closed. The deportees were taken out of the freight cars and conducted through a gate to a fenced-in square inside the camp. At the gate they were separated: men to the right, women and children to the left. A large placard announced in Polish and German:
Attention Warsaw Jews! You are in a transit camp from which the transport will continue to labor camps. To prevent epidemics, clothing as well as pieces of baggage are to be handed over for disinfection. Gold, money, foreign currency, and jewellery are to be deposited at the “Cash Office” against a receipt. They will be returned later on presentation of the receipt. For physical cleanliness, all arrivals must have a bath before travelling on.(Verdict of LG Dusseldorf AZ 81 Ks 2/64, p. 81.)
During this first phase, from the beginning to the middle of August, 5,000 – 7,000 Jews arrived every day in Treblinka. Then the pace of the transports increased; there were days on which 10,000 – 12,000 deportees reached the camp, together with thousands who were already dead and others who were utterly exhausted.
Abraham Goldfarb, who arrived there on August 25, described the scene:
When we arrived in Treblinka and the Germans opened the freight cars we beheld a horrible sight. The car was full of corpses. The bodies were partly decomposed by chlorine. The stench in the cars made those still alive choke. The Germans ordered everyone to get out; those still able to do so were half dead. Waiting SS and Ukrainians beat us and shot at us…
On the way to the gas chambers Germans with dogs stood along the fence on both sides. The dogs had been trained to attack people; they bit the men’s genitals and the women’s breasts, ripping off pieces of flesh. The Germans hit the people with whips and iron bars to spur them on so that they pressed forward into the “showers” as quickly as possible. The screams of the women could be heard far away, even in the other parts of the camp. The Germans drove the running victims on with shouts of: “Faster, faster, the water will get cold, others still have to go under the showers!” To escape from the blows, the victims ran to the gas chambers as quickly as they could, the stronger ones pushing the weaker aside. At the entrance to the gas chambers stood the two Ukrainians, Ivan Demaniuk and Nikolai, one of them armed with an iron bar, the other with a sword. They drove the people inside with blows… As soon as the gas chambers were full, the Ukrainians closed the doors and started the engine. Some 20-25 minutes later an SS-man or a Ukrainian looked through a window in the door. When they had ascertained that everyone had been asphyxiated, the Jewish prisoners had to open the doors and remove the corpses. Since the chambers were overcrowded and the victims held on to one another, they all stood upright and were like one single block of flesh. (Yad Vashem Archives 0-3/2140)
Breakdowns and interruptions occurred in the operation of the gas chambers. During the initial phase the personnel did not know how long it would take to asphyxiate the victims. On occasion the doors were opened too early and the victims were still alive, so that the doors had to be closed again. The engines which produced the gas occasionally failed. If such mishaps occurred when the victims were already inside the gas chambers, they were left standing there until the engines had been repaired. Some 268,000 Jews met their deaths in the first extermination wave in Treblinka, which lasted five weeks–from July 23 to August 28, 1942.
By April 1943, when the Nazis closed Treblinka and tried to erase evidence of its existence, more than 750,000 Jews had been gassed there.
We just heard the siren commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was observed last night and this morning.
Leora has a good roundup of posts on the subject. Many bloggers point out the irony of the Durban II taking place in Geneva at this time.
Previous posts on the Holocaust:
A reader of Ukrainian ancestry left a comment on my review of The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. He is seeking answers about the behavior of Ukrainians toward Jews during the Holocaust.
I have just read the book “The Lost” and look at it from a different perspective than some. I am Canadian born of Ukrainian ancestry; (mostly 2nd and 3rd generation except my step father and his family/friends). He came from Western Ukraine after the Second World War. His friends who I grew up around were all from Western Ukraine and escaped after the Second World War. They shared little of this time with us, like a dark secret. I am intensely interested in history and of central and western European history. The more I read and study the more I realize that there is some mixed history from those from the Western Ukraine or Eastern Poland at this time. I hope to better understand what happened in those horrible days. I know some Ukrainians were saviors and some were the opposite. For my own reasons, I want to understand some more of that reality. . . .
I have my perspective/bias but have always tried to look at mankind’s history both good and bad, with a questioning mind. I don’t think many of us thought of the colour or religion of our neighbours when we were 5 or 6 years old, we were play friends. The family stories of those from that time and world will show many things good and bad. If not shared now they are gone. We should not let that happen. As with Daniel Mendelsohn and his search, we know many others have followed a similar path. One more can’t hurt.
I suggest reading the rest of our discussion at the original post.
My maternal grandparents moved to Germany in the 1920′s in the wave of Eastern European migration. They made plans to emigrate to the US as soon as Hitler came into power. Many native German Jews, with closer ties to Germany, delayed and hoped that things would blow over.
Recently, a relative researching our ancestry came across the story of two sisters from my grandmother’s town in the Ukraine that shared the uncommon family name. They are almost certainly relatives, even though no one has yet placed them on the family tree.
Their parents and siblings were murdered. The sisters, about 9 and 12, escaped and survived by scrounging for food. When they returned to the town, their property had been taken over by neighbors. The problems of the sisters and their descendants have continued. The townspeople never forgot the family’s origin and treated them accordingly, referring to them by the grandfather’s Jewish name. They were never fully accepted and no one sought justice for them.
The silence of the Ukrainians that you mention stems not only from guilt but also concern about claims for restitution.
So while the many heroes deserve to be honored, I find it disturbing to describe the history of the Ukraine in WWII as “mixed,” and talk about the “good and bad.” To say “some were saviors and some were the opposite” implies that one might be likely to discover an equal amount of both.
John, I know that you mean well and I harbor no ill will. I respect your desire to learn the truth, and your optimism that many untold stories of good Ukrainians are still out there. I’m sure they exist. And I am responding to only one part of your thoughtful comments.
But I have my own bias and perspective. My father is from Poland and lost his entire family. I grew up with no paternal grandparents or first cousins, and no photographs or mementos from his family. There is currently one living person who knew my father as a child. My father was one of the “lucky” survivors who managed to have a career and raise a family. But the impact of the trauma is felt to this day. It is felt in my mother’s family as well.
I recognize the importance of searching out heroes. We can be inspired by the example of Witold Fomienko and Vladik Kuvoriki. Perhaps we can learn even more from their behavior than from that of the collaborators. But too much emphasis on the heroes we risk minimizing the horror of the atrocities. Articles like this one show that the Ukrainians’ treatment of Jews during WWII was far from “mixed.”
Readers with stories to share about their Ukrainian ancestors and the Holocaust please post them in the comments or use the contact form.
In honor of Holocaust Memorial Day, I’ll share with you a section from a book about daily life in my father’s shtetl. The book is called Memories of Ozarov, by Hillel Adler. Second-generation survivors owe a great debt to authors such as Adler, who died in 1996. In addition to this (possibly exaggerated) account, the book contains the only existing photograph of my father as a child.
My grandfather frequently served on the local rabbinic court. Here is what Adler writes about him:
Pinchas lived with his family at 21 Main Street. He was one of the most talented Talmudists. You could often see him at his table by a window immersed in the study of his holy books. His wife Faiga had a little milk and cheese business. Every morning she would make deliveries to her Jewish customers. And if one of those customers actually came to their house to fetch a liter of milk while Faiga was away, Reb Pinchas was displeased. He would have much preferred to avoid opening the door so as not to lose precious time away from his portion. Despite Pinchas’ entire days spent in prayer, the good Lord never seemed to send down enough from Heaven to feed his three [MiI: four] children, of whom the eldest was a girl named Hendel.
This daughter Hendel shone in her studies of Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew. She also learned Talmud with her father, very rare for a girl of that time, and took part in the settlement of disputes with her father.
With such Talmudic knowledge, Reb Pinchas regretted that she was not a boy, who might in that case have one day become a rabbi. Who would have thought at that time that by the end of the century there could be such a thing as a female rabbi! But in Ozarow Hendel had to be content with giving lessons to a few children whose parents were well-off. One of these children was Chana, the daughter of Rabbi Reuven Epsztein, a girl who had been allowed to forgo the public Polish school. Hendel taught her the required seven-year curriculum.
On September 6, 1939, the sixth day of the war, Hendel was shot by the first German patrol in Ozarow. (pp. 56-57)
In 1942, when Germans decided to liquidate the town, my father escaped with false papers. My grandfather was concerned about whether my father should take the tefillin made according to the opinion of Rashi, or Rabbenu Tam. My father realized that carrying tefillin (phylacteries) was out of the question. He cut off his peyot (sidelocks) and removed his thick glasses. Then he walked away as if he knew where he was going. No one stopped him (at that point).
After wandering around Poland, he worked in a German factory along with other foreigners brought to replace the dwindling German workforce. Only after the war did my father learn that his parents, younger sister, and brother, were murdered in the death camp of Treblinka.
I’ve been reading Daniel Mendelsohn’s book, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million.
Mendelsohn grew up in an assimilated family in New York. In the background of his visits to his older relatives in Florida lay a story about a great-uncle who remained in the family’s ancestral town of Bolechow, Ukraine, only to be murdered during the Holocaust along with his wife and four daughters. The writer’s grandfather and the other siblings had already emigrated to Israel and the US.
The author intersperses his story with an analysis of Rashi’s commentary on the Torah and that of the modern commentator Rabbi Richard Elliot Friedman. Mendelsohn continuously revisits the theme of sibling rivalry– in the Torah, within his grandfather’s family, and among his own siblings (he broke his own brother’s arm as a child). I’m only about a third of the way through, but we can already see that the relationship between the brother in Bolechow and his American siblings is central to the story.
When Mendelsohn travels to Bolechow, Ukraine with his family, a man named Alex serves as guide and translator. Is this the same garrulous Alex with the hysterically convoluted English that appears in Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Everything is Illuminated? Everything is Illuminated is a (semi-fictional?) book about an American Jew’s search for information about relatives from the Ukraine.
Mendelsohn gives Henry James a run for his money with his sentence structure:
And I might add that virtually all of the information provided by the same important source, the central database at Yad Vashem, for “Shmuel Yeger” (or “Ieger”) and “Ester Jeger” (and the three daughters the database attributes to them: “Lorka Jeiger,” “Frida Yeger,” and “Rachel Jejger”) is demonstrably wrong, from the spelling of their names to the names of their parents (“Shmuel Ieger was born in Bolechov, Poland in 1895 to Elkana and Yona,” an error which, I thought when I first read this, eradicates my great-grandmother Taube Mittelmark from history,* and with her the sibling tensions that may well have resulted in Shmiel’s decision to leave New York in 1914 and return to Bolechow, a decision to which his presence in this error-filled archive is attributable) to the years in which they were born and died.
*Presumably he figures out that Yona is a Hebraicized version of Taube (my own mother’s name), meaning dove.
Despite its length, the passage is readable, and is an example of the way the author maintains suspense by hinting at later-to-be-revealed surprises.
I’m looking forward to reading the rest.
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