Holocaust Heroes Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  List of Plates

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Road to Auschwitz

  Chapter 2: Ghettograd

  Chapter 3: Blobel’s Revenge

  Chapter 4: Death Train

  Chapter 5: The Hour

  Chapter 6: The Choiceless Choice

  Chapter 7: Escape from Sobibor

  Chapter 8: Harvest Festival

  Chapter 9: ‘Bearers of Secrets’

  Chapter 10: The Rabbit Hunt

  Chapter 11: A Call to Arms

  Chapter 12: A Measure of Justice

  Appendix: SS Ranks

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Guide

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  List of Plates

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Road to Auschwitz

  Chapter 2: Ghettograd

  Chapter 3: Blobel’s Revenge

  Chapter 4: Death Train

  Chapter 5: The Hour

  Chapter 6: The Choiceless Choice

  Chapter 7: Escape from Sobibor

  Chapter 8: Harvest Festival

  Chapter 9: ‘Bearers of Secrets’

  Chapter 10: The Rabbit Hunt

  Chapter 11: A Call to Arms

  Chapter 12: A Measure of Justice

  Appendix: SS Ranks

  Notes

  Bibliography

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  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

  PEN & SWORD MILITARY

  an imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire

  S70 2AS

  Copyright © Mark Felton, 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-78340-057-7

  PDF ISBN: 978-1-47388-185-3

  EPUB ISBN: 978-1-47388-184-6

  PRC ISBN: 978-1-47388-183-9

  The right of Mark Felton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

  Typeset by Concept, Huddersfield HD4 5JL.

  Printed and bound in England by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY.

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, and Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

  For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

  PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

  47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

  E-mail: [email protected]

  Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

  To Fang Fang,

  with love as always

  Contents

  List of Plates

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  1.

  The Road to Auschwitz

  2.

  Ghettograd

  3.

  Blobel’s Revenge

  4.

  Death Train

  5.

  The Hour

  6.

  The Choiceless Choice

 
7.

  Escape from Sobibor

  8.

  Harvest Festival

  9.

  ‘Bearers of Secrets’

  10.

  The Rabbit Hunt

  11.

  A Call to Arms

  12.

  A Measure of Justice

  Appendix: SS Ranks

  Notes

  Bibliography

  List of Plates

  SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, Reinhard Heydrich’s deputy and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust.

  Mark Edelman, one of the leaders of Jewish resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, 1943.

  SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Stangl, Commandant of Treblinka II.

  Leon Feldhendler, co-leader of the Sonderkommando uprising at Sobibor Extermination Camp, 1943.

  SS-Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel, Commandant of Camp 1, Sobibor Extermination Camp.

  SS-Oberscharführer Erich Muhsfeldt, who was brought in to help organise the liquidation of Poniatowa Concentration Camp as part of Aktion Erntefest, 1943.

  Jews being loaded aboard trains in Warsaw for shipment to Treblinka Extermination Camp, 1942.

  SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, ordered by Heinrich Himmler to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto, 1943.

  Jews being rounded up during the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, 1943.

  The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw ablaze, 1943.

  SS-TV corporals at Treblinka II Extermination Camp in 1943. SS-Unterscharführers Paul Bredow, Willi Mentz, Max Möller and Josef Hirtreiter.

  Treblinka II on fire during the prisoner uprising, 2 August 1943.

  Bialystok Ghetto in ruins following the Jewish uprising, 1943.

  An Aktion Erntefest mass grave.

  Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944.

  Hungarian Jews undergoing selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944.

  A clandestinely taken photograph of Jewish Sonderkommandos burning corpses at Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944.

  Another clandestinely taken photograph showing naked Jewish women being herded to their deaths, Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1 August 1944.

  US troops executing surrendered SS in the rail yard at Dachau Concentration Camp, 29 April 1945.

  Dead SS guards who were shot outside a guard tower by US troops, Dachau, 29 April 1945.

  Acknowledgements

  The author would like to acknowledge the very kind assistance of staff at the following institutions: The National Archives (Public Record Office), Kew; Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem; New Jersey Jewish News; Imperial War Museum, London; The Times of Israel; Jewish Virtual Library; The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC; The British Library, London; Cambridge University Library; and The University of Essex Library. Many thanks as always to my wonderfully talented wife Fang Fang for her advice and practical assistance during the research and writing of this book.

  Prologue

  ‘The force that has overcome Europe and destroyed entire states within days could cope with us, a handful of youngsters. It was an act of desperation … We aspired to only one thing: to sell our lives for the highest possible price.’

  Mordechai Tenenbaum

  Ghetto Resistance Fighter

  ‘Hände hoch!’ yelled angry-looking SS troopers at the bedraggled Jewish fighters who slowly and awkwardly emerged from a hole beneath the shattered remains of a tall apartment block in Warsaw. ‘Schnell!’ screamed the Germans, as MP40 machine pistols and Mauser rifles were levelled menacingly at the men and women who stumbled into the dirty, smoke-obscured sunlight on the shattered street. The Jews’ lean faces were blackened from the smoky fires that ravaged the streets, their clothes torn and dishevelled. Many threw down their pitifully small number of weapons at the feet of the SS; a few old pistols, the occasional bolt-action rifle, as well as knives and other home-made devices. The SS corralled the Jews against the wall of the apartment block. All around could be heard the rough clunk of pistol or rifle shots as resistance continued elsewhere in the ghetto, and often the reply of German automatic weapons. Fires burned everywhere, columns of black smoke rising high into the sky. The SS troopers were almost as dirty as the Jews they hunted, their haggard expressions and sweat-stained uniforms evidence of the terrific level of resistance that they had unexpectedly encountered. They were also in no mood to take prisoners, particularly ‘sub-human’ Jews.

  ‘Line up!’ demanded an SS sergeant, MP40 machine pistol in his hands. The Jews were pushed roughly back against the wall. Their eyes betrayed no emotion, except perhaps a grim recognition of what was to follow. They had never been under any illusions – it had always been a fight to the death. Either resist the planned deportations to the terrible camps that everyone in the Ghetto had heard about, or fight back and take a few of the Nazi bastards with them. Exhausted, malnourished, half-deaf from constant combat and with many among them wounded, the Jewish ghetto fighters showed no fear. The SS sergeant took a few paces back from the line of Jews and turned to his squad. He said nothing, just nodded curtly. The German weapons barked out, the Jews falling back against the wall under a hail of bullets. Then the sergeant went among them, checking for anyone still alive. Spotting movement, he quickly drew his Luger pistol and fired a single shot into the man’s head. ‘Right, move out,’ the sergeant said to his men, wearily. Another Jewish position had been eliminated. But to many in the SS, it seemed as though the job of rooting out the Jewish ‘terrorists’ would last forever. Didn’t these people realize that they were already dead?

  Jewish resistance to the Nazi’s Final Solution occurred throughout Europe many times and it was to take many different forms. As the Jews were progressively relieved of their human rights and property, and herded into walled sections of cities, resistance organizations began to be created from among the imprisoned ghetto populations. Mostly young idealists, they were in the main not trained soldiers but ordinary citizens who were outraged by what was being done to their communities by the German invaders, and who felt that they had to prepare to defend themselves and their loved ones from an increasingly homicidal Nazi racial policy. Some managed to leave the towns and cities and take to the forests to form Jewish partisan groups, striking at the Germans whenever they could and trying to save as many of their own people from destruction as possible. The Germans encountered the most well-organised and ferocious resistance when they began to liquidate the many ghettos that they had created to house the Jews. Most famous is the Warsaw Uprising in 1943, but what occurred in the Polish capital was repeated on a smaller, but no less vicious and lethal scale in ghettos throughout Poland and the occupied Soviet Union, as Jews, weakened by hunger, disease and privation, decided to fight rather than submit themselves to transportation to the death camps. It was not a decision that was entered into lightly. Resistance was almost guaranteed to earn a death sentence from the Germans, but what were the alternatives?

  It is now clear that many thousands of primarily young Jews, both men and women, decided that the only course of action was to stand up to the Nazis. In doing so, the resisters faced almost insuperable obstacles. They lacked proper weapons, and were forced to engage in combat with extremely well-armed German units. The Jews were armed only with a few pistols and rifles, home-made Molotov cocktails and whatever weapons they could take from German dead. The Nazis also had tanks, artillery and aircraft, and had no hesitation in deploying these weapons against civilians. Tens of thousands perished as the Nazis ruthlessly crushed Jewish rebellions with the utmost ferocity and violence, but the desperate ghetto fighters also killed many Germans.

  Judged against what happened to Jewish ghetto populations after they were transported to the camps, it is clear that though this resistance may appear unwise, even foolish, it was not entered into with any hope of victory, rather of showing the Germans that they couldn’t kill Jews with impunity.

  Later, in the concentration camps, many Jews still refused to submit to the Nazis, and in several famous incidents the
y rose up and attempted to escape in large numbers or to destroy the apparatus that was responsible for eliminating them as a people. The German response was predictably barbaric and coldly ruthless.

  The story of Jewish resistance is of a people driven to the very edge of destruction, but who somehow managed to find the will to fight back, even though they knew that they could make only symbolic acts in the face of German military might. As Jewish partisan leader Tuvia Bielski said: ‘We may be hunted like animals, but we will not become animals … Every day of freedom is an act of faith.’ When the Jews rose up in ghettos and camps across Nazi-occupied Europe, they were, for a few days at least, free. But not only the Jews fought back during the Final Solution. Other ‘out’ groups whom the Nazis imprisoned made their own bids for freedom, some in company with Jewish prisoners, others on their own. The story of Soviet prisoner-of-war uprisings and gypsy resistance has its place in the wider story of the Holocaust. All who rose and resisted were free to choose the manner of their deaths rather than submit to one chosen for them by the Nazis. The hope was always present that some would survive the firestorm to bear witness, and without such acts of defiance we might never have known the full story of the Holocaust.

  Chapter 1

  The Road to Auschwitz

  ‘There can be no compromise – there are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.’

  Adolf Hitler, 1922

  Nazi anti-Semitism had deep roots that by the mid-nineteenth century had become well entrenched throughout Germany and in many other parts of Europe. The Jews had suffered varying levels of violence and persecution for centuries. The great German philosopher Martin Luther had desired that the Jews be driven from Europe, and expulsion or confinement to ghettos had been the fate of many Jewish communities down the centuries. But by the nineteenth century the Jews were beginning to be assimilated into a handful of Western nations, Britain and the United States in particular, whilst remaining outcasts in Poland and the Russian Empire.

  Anti-Semitism in Germany had emerged hand-in-hand with the growing popularity of German nationalism. One of its first proponents was the Völkisch movement, developed from the books of popular anti-Semites like the English writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain, which presented the theory that the Jews were locked in a mortal battle with the Aryans for world domination. As the Jews further assimilated into German and other Western cultures, the idea emerged that the Jew was assimilating only to secretly control the levers of political and economic power. Such ideas found a receptive audience among the membership of such organizations as the Völkisch Movement and other extreme nationalist groups.