Authors: Martin Gilbert
Two thousand Jews assembled at Kislovodsk railway station in the early hours of September 9. They boarded the train, and set off. Not to the distant Ukraine, however, but to the nearby spa of Mineralnye Vody, where they were taken out of the train, marched two and a half kilometres to an anti-tank ditch, and shot. Also brought to this spot, and killed, were Jews from the nearby towns of Essentuki and Piatigorsk.
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In the German-occupied Volhynia, the Jews of Krzemieniec awaited the moment when the SS would seek to destroy their ghetto, where an underground youth organisation had been able to procure arms and even German documents. These young men believed that by taking up arms outside the ghetto at the decisive moment, they would be able to prevent the SS entering the ghetto. They were mistaken: on September 9 the ghetto was unexpectedly surrounded by gendarmes and police, forestalling the youngsters’ plan to draw them into battle outside the ghetto walls.
A stubborn struggle began within the ghetto itself. On the first day of battle six German soldiers and policemen were killed, and ten on the second day. Still surrounded on the third day, the fighters set fire to the ghetto, which burnt for a full week, during which time the battle continued until the last defender was killed.
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On September 19, the three thousand Jews of the Volhynian town of Tuczyn were ordered into a ghetto, in which there were only sixty buildings. Three days later, Jews from several nearby villages, and young men who worked on peasants’ farms outside the ghetto, reported that Russian prisoners-of-war were digging pits in the nearby woods. That night, German and Ukrainian police surrounded the ghetto, and on the following morning the head of the Rowne Gestapo appeared and ordered the Chairman of the Jewish Council, now Getzel Schwartzman, and two of his assistants, Meir Himmelfarb and Tuwia Czuwak, to assemble all the Jews at the ghetto gate, ostensibly to select young workers for work elsewhere. Schwartzman, Himmelfarb and Czuwak at once gathered the Jews in the synagogue and urged them to set fire to the ghetto, rather than accept slaughter, unchallenged. Another Council member, Aharon Markish, distributed petrol and axes.
In the early hours of September 24, at 3.30 in the morning, German and Ukrainian policemen began shooting into the ghetto. Those Jews who possessed pistols shot back and, at the same time, set the ghetto on fire. As the German shooting intensified, some Jews threw themselves into the flames, or drowned themselves in wells. Others, armed with axes, ran towards the barbed-wire fences and escaped. Out of three thousand Jews in the ghetto, two thousand made their way to the forest. But in a three-day manhunt, German and Ukrainian police, helped by local Ukrainian peasants, rounded up a thousand of those who had escaped, brought them to the
Jewish cemetery, and shot them. Getzel Schwarztman, unable to break out of the German cordon, surrendered, asking to die in the Jewish cemetery. His request was granted; he was shot by the graves of his ancestors.
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On the fourth day after the escape from Tuczyn, three hundred woman and children came back to the ghetto. Lack of food and the cold nights had been too much for them to bear. To tempt them back, the Germans had promised to let them live. On their return all were shot. The remaining seven hundred escapees fended as best they could. But only fifteen survived the war. Six days later, on September 29, eight hundred and fifty Jews were killed during a similar break-out attempt at Serniki. Only one hundred and fifty reached the forest. Of these, only ten survived the war.
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The problem of survival in the woods was compounded by the frequent hostility of other partisan groups, and of bands of escaped Soviet prisoners-of-war. Shmuel Krakowski, the historian of the forest fugitives, has described how these hostile bands ‘quickly learned to rob the unarmed Jews of their meagre possessions’. The Jews prepared bunkers for themselves in the forest, but the assaults on them became more and more frequent. In addition to these assaults, acts of fraud often took place. The Russians, wrote Krakowski, ‘saw that what the Jews most wanted were arms, and promised to supply them. Deceptively, they took money from the Jews, and then disappeared.’ There was also ‘a plague of rape’: armed groups of former Soviet soldiers, escaped prisoners-of-war, ‘attacked Jewish bunkers in order to take defenceless Jewish women’. Zipora Koren, who survived in the Parczew forests near Lublin, ‘tells of how Russian partisans bound an old woman, tied her to a tree, and tortured her, because she refused to reveal the hiding place of her daughter whom they schemed to rape’.
This was not an isolated incident. When a Jewish woman, Sarah, from the town of Parczew, resisted an attempt by a Soviet partisan, Alyosha Vasilevich, to rape her, Vasilevich killed her. Her murder was avenged by a Jewish partisan, who killed Vasilevich. Such incidents, coming as they did on top of frequent German searches through the forest, gave added danger to those who sought to survive in hiding and had no other place of refuge.
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A new Jewish Year, 5,703, had come into being. A new Day of Atonement had passed. The slaughter was unabated. At Stolpce, on
September 23, the ghetto was surrounded by German soldiers. Pits had been prepared outside a nearby village. Hundreds of Jews hid in cellars. The Germans entered the ghetto, shooting and searching. Eliezer Melamed later recalled how he and his girl friend found a room in which to hide behind some sacks of flour. A mother and her three children followed them into the house. The mother hid in one corner of the room, the three children in another.
The Germans entered the room and discovered the children. One of the children, a young boy, began to scream, ‘Mama! Mama!’ as the Germans dragged the children away. But another of them, aged four, shouted to his brother in Yiddish, ‘Zog nit “Mameh”. Men vet ir oich zunemen.’ ‘Don’t say “Mama”, they’ll take her too.’
The boy stopped screaming. The mother remained silent. Her children were dragged away. The mother was saved. ‘I will always hear that,’ Melamed recalled, ‘especially at night: “Zog nit Mameh.” “Don’t say Mama.” And I will always remember the sight of the mother as she watched her children being dragged away by the Germans. She was hitting her head against the wall, as if to punish herself for remaining silent, for wanting to live.’
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By the end of September 1942 German troops stood victorious throughout Europe. The Soviet Union was still struggling to restrain the onward thrust of the German armies. Stalingrad was threatened, and with it Russia’s river lifeline, the Volga. In the Caucasus, German troops stood poised to strike at the oil wells of Baku, on the shores of the Caspian. Britain, still battling in North Africa, was as yet without the means to launch a major invasion of Europe. Germany was supreme. And with her supremacy came the thirst for Jewish blood; for the completion of the ‘final solution’.
The surviving Jews of Poland and western Russia had no means of escape. The Jews of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were likewise trapped within the iron ring of Nazi rule. But in Denmark, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary the Jews were as yet untouched, and on September 24 Martin Luther, of the German Foreign Ministry, passed on to those concerned von Ribbentrop’s instructions ‘to hurry as much as possible the evacuation of Jews from the various countries of Europe’. For a start, he wrote, negotiations should begin with the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary and Denmark ‘with the object of starting the evacuation of the Jews of these countries’.
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Negotiations were also begun by Germany with the Italian authorities in Croatia. But within three weeks Siegfried Kasche, Hitler’s envoy in Croatia, had reported that General Roatta, the Italian military commander, had ‘flatly refused’ to hand over Jews in his zone to the German army. Four days later Kasche reported that some of Mussolini’s subordinates have ‘apparently been influenced’ by opposition in the Vatican to German-style anti-Semitism.
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No Jews were deported from Italy to the death camps until after the fall of Mussolini and the German occupation of northern Italy in the autumn of 1943. But from France, Belgium and Holland the deportations to Birkenau continued, despite several local protests. On September 24, in Brussels, Cardinal Van Roey and Queen Elizabeth both intervened with the German occupation authorities after the arrest of six leading members of the Jewish community. As a result of their intervention, five were released. The sixth, Edward Rotbel, Secretary of the Belgian Jewish Community, was a Hungarian citizen, and thus a citizen of an ‘Allied country’. He was deported to Birkenau two days later.
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Among those gassed at Birkenau in the last week of September 1942 were several hundred from Slovakia and 806 from France on September 23; 481 from France on September 25, including René, the brother of Léon Blum, the former French Prime Minister; several hundred from Holland on September 26; 897 from France on September 27, several hundred from Belgium on September 28, among them Edward Rotbel; and a further 685 from France on September 29: at least four thousand in a single week.
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As the killing continued, resistance spread. On September 24, as pits were being dug outside the White Russian town of Korzec, Moshe Krasnostavski, a member of the Jewish Council, set himself and his house aflame. Other Jews helped to set the ghetto ablaze, and several dozen broke out of the German and Ukrainian cordon, among them Moshe Gildenmann, who then formed and led a Jewish partisan band. But in the break-out, two thousand Jews were killed. Such were the fearsome odds.
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Five days later, at nearby Serniki, three hundred Jews escaped during the round-up, the chairman of the Jewish Council, Shlomo Turfkenitz, having given his house to the escapees. His Chief Assistant on the Council, Shimon Rosenzweig, later died fighting with the partisans.
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On September 25, in Kaluszyn, near Warsaw, the Chairman of the Jewish Council, Abraham Gamzu, had refused a Gestapo demand to deliver Jews for ‘resettlement’. He was shot in his home.
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Two thousand Jews were then deported to Treblinka, and killed.
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The death camps were working at fever pitch: and piling up in huts and yards was a mountain of belongings. On September 26 a senior SS officer, Lieutenant-General August Frank, sent the Auschwitz camp administration, as well as the head of administration
in the Lublin region, a note of what was to be done with the ‘property of the evacuated Jews’. Foreign currency, jewellery, precious stones, pearls, and ‘gold from teeth’ were to go to the SS for ‘immediate delivery’ to the German Reichsbank. Watches, clocks, alarm clocks, fountain pens, electric and hand razors, pocket-knives, scissors, flashlights, wallets and purses were to be cleaned, ‘evaluated’ and ‘delivered quickly’ to front line troops.
The troops would be able to buy these items. No officer or soldier could buy more than one watch. The proceeds would go ‘to the Reich’. Gold watches would be distributed to the SS. Underwear and footwear would be sorted, valued, and given, in the main, to Ethnic Germans. Women’s clothing, including footwear, children’s clothing and children’s underwear was to be sold to Ethnic Germans. Underwear of pure silk was to be handed over to the Reich Ministry of Economics.
Quilts, woollen blankets, thermos flasks, earflaps, combs, table knives, forks, spoons and knapsacks; all were listed. So too were sheets, pillows, towels and table cloths. All were to go to Ethnic Germans. Spectacles and eye-glasses were to go to the Medical Office of the Army. Gold frames were to go to the SS. ‘Valuable furs’ were likewise to go to the SS. Prices were to be established for each item: ‘for instance, one pair of used men’s trousers, 3 Reichsmarks; one woollen blanket, 6 Reichsmarks etc.’ It was to be ‘strictly observed that the Jewish star is removed from all garments and outer garments which are to be delivered’. All items should be searched ‘for hidden valuables sewn in’.
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Within two weeks, fifty kilogrammes of the dental gold already accumulated were to be sent to the SS for its own dental needs, all additional amounts to be sent to the Reichsbank.
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From the first days of the war, the destruction of Jewish life in German-occupied Europe had been parallelled by the acquisition of Jewish property. Killing and looting had gone hand in hand. Nor was this the spontaneous looting of armies and soldiers, but the deliberate and systematic search for every type of wealth that could be seized or sequestered. Shops, businesses and factories had been taken first, transferred without recompense to local Ethnic Germans or to the German war machine. Furs, jewellery, radios, even pets had been taken next. Almost every week notices were posted up in cities and ghettos announcing some new confiscation.
At the end of the path of this deliberate impoverishment of a whole people came the looting of their last meagre possessions, their bundles, the clothes they were wearing, even their hair, at the edge of the death pit or on the final approach to the gas-chamber. Nor was that the very end: even from the corpses the last ounce of a gold tooth had to be extracted.
Under the Nazi system, murder had become as profitable as commerce; even more so, for there had been nothing to pay, no bargain to strike, only the point of a gun and the lash of a whip, and the wealth and possessions of many generations lay in the palm of the conqueror.
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For nearly six weeks, the Swiss frontier police had been sending back hundreds of Jews who had crossed over the border into Switzerland from France. ‘Under current practice’, explained a Swiss Police Instruction of September 25, ‘refugees on the grounds of race alone are not political refugees.’ Since 1938, more than twenty-eight thousand Jews had been allowed into Switzerland. Now, more than nine thousand were to be refused entry, and sent back across the border.
One witness of the fate of these Jews was a Swiss woman, Madame Francken, who lived at the Swiss border village of Novel, near the town of Saint-Gingolph. Recalling two Czech Jews, a brother and a sister, who had managed to cross over to Swiss soil, Madam Francken wrote: