by the Germans from Jewish houses. ‘We collected mattresses and furniture,’ she recalled, ‘anything inflammable, piled them together and set them on fire. Success! the flames swept into a great blaze and crackled in the night, dancing and twisting in the air. We rejoiced as we saw the reflection of the revenge that was burning inside us, the symbol of the Jewish armed resistance that we had yearned for, for so long.’ 7
***
Near Auschwitz, a new slave labour camp was opened on August 15 at Jawiszowice. 8 In it, one hundred and fifty Jews, sent from the barracks at Birkenau, were used in the underground coal mines of the Hermann Goering Works. Later their number rose to two thousand five hundred. A month earlier, three hundred Jews had been sent from Birkenau to Goleszow, to work in the Portland Cement Factory. 9 Here, too, the numbers were to rise, to one thousand. On October 1, a third camp was opened at Chelmek, in which Jews from the barracks at Birkenau spent over two months clearing ponds needed to provide water to the Bata Shoe Factory in the town. 10 In these three camps, and eventually in more than twenty others in the Auschwitz region, tens of thousands of Jews died of the harsh conditions. Those who became too weak to work were often returned to Birkenau, and gassed.
At Auschwitz, gassing was carried out by a commercial pesticide, Cyclon B. At Belzec, Chelmno, Treblinka and Sobibor, the four death camps, Jews were killed by the exhaust from diesel engines: carbon monoxide poisoning. At Treblinka, it was the engines of captured Russian tanks and trucks which provided the exhaust. At his headquarters in Lublin, however, SS General Globocnik wasanxious to find ‘a more toxic and faster working gas’, as he explained to the thirty-seven-year-old chief of the Waffen SS Technical Disinfection Services, Kurt Gerstein, who visited him in Lublin on August 17. Globocnik also sought Gerstein’s help in disinfecting ‘large piles of clothing coming from Jews, Poles, Czechs etc.’.
On August 18 Globocnik took Gerstein to Belzec. With them was SS Lieutenant-Colonel Dr Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, Professor of Hygiene at the University of Marburg. Two and a half years later Gerstein recalled:
We saw no dead bodies that day, but a pestilential odour hung over the whole area. Alongside the station there was a ‘dressing’ hut with a window for ‘valuables’. Farther on, a room designated as ‘the barber’. Then a corridor 150 metres long in the open air, barbed wire on both sides, with signs: ‘To the baths and inhalants.’ In front of us a building like a bath-house; to the left and right, large concrete pots of geraniums or other flowers. On the roof, the Star of David. On the building, a sign: ‘Heckenholt Foundation’.
Gerstein and Professor Pfannenstiel stayed at Belzec village overnight, the guests of the camp commandant, Christian Wirth. As Gerstein recalled:
The following morning, a little before seven, there was an announcement: ‘The first train will arrive in ten minutes!’ A few minutes later a train arrives from Lemberg: forty-five cars arrive with more than six thousand people; two hundred Ukrainians assigned to this work flung open the doors and drove the Jews out of the cars with leather whips.
A loudspeaker gave instructions: ‘Strip, even artificial limbs and glasses. Hand all money and valuables in at the “valuables” window. Women and young girls are to have their hair cut in the “barber’s hut”.’ (An SS Sergeant told me: ‘From that they make something special for submarine crews.’)
Then the march began. Barbed wire on both sides, in the rear two dozen Ukrainians with rifles. They drew near. Wirth and I found ourselves in front of the death-chambers. Stark naked men, women, children and cripples passed by. A tall SS man in the corner called to the unfortunates in a loud minister’s voice: ‘Nothing is going to hurt you! Just breathe deep and it willstrengthen your lungs.
***
Near Auschwitz, a new slave labour camp was opened on August 15 at Jawiszowice. 8 In it, one hundred and fifty Jews, sent from the barracks at Birkenau, were used in the underground coal mines of the Hermann Goering Works. Later their number rose to two thousand five hundred. A month earlier, three hundred Jews had been sent from Birkenau to Goleszow, to work in the Portland Cement Factory. 9 Here, too, the numbers were to rise, to one thousand. On October 1, a third camp was opened at Chelmek, in which Jews from the barracks at Birkenau spent over two months clearing ponds needed to provide water to the Bata Shoe Factory in the town. 10 In these three camps, and eventually in more than twenty others in the Auschwitz region, tens of thousands of Jews died of the harsh conditions. Those who became too weak to work were often returned to Birkenau, and gassed.
At Auschwitz, gassing was carried out by a commercial pesticide, Cyclon B. At Belzec, Chelmno, Treblinka and Sobibor, the four death camps, Jews were killed by the exhaust from diesel engines: carbon monoxide poisoning. At Treblinka, it was the engines of captured Russian tanks and trucks which provided the exhaust. At his headquarters in Lublin, however, SS General Globocnik wasanxious to find ‘a more toxic and faster working gas’, as he explained to the thirty-seven-year-old chief of the Waffen SS Technical Disinfection Services, Kurt Gerstein, who visited him in Lublin on August 17. Globocnik also sought Gerstein’s help in disinfecting ‘large piles of clothing coming from Jews, Poles, Czechs etc.’.
On August 18 Globocnik took Gerstein to Belzec. With them was SS Lieutenant-Colonel Dr Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, Professor of Hygiene at the University of Marburg. Two and a half years later Gerstein recalled:
We saw no dead bodies that day, but a pestilential odour hung over the whole area. Alongside the station there was a ‘dressing’ hut with a window for ‘valuables’. Farther on, a room designated as ‘the barber’. Then a corridor 150 metres long in the open air, barbed wire on both sides, with signs: ‘To the baths and inhalants.’ In front of us a building like a bath-house; to the left and right, large concrete pots of geraniums or other flowers. On the roof, the Star of David. On the building, a sign: ‘Heckenholt Foundation’.
Gerstein and Professor Pfannenstiel stayed at Belzec village overnight, the guests of the camp commandant, Christian Wirth. As Gerstein recalled:
The following morning, a little before seven, there was an announcement: ‘The first train will arrive in ten minutes!’ A few minutes later a train arrives from Lemberg: forty-five cars arrive with more than six thousand people; two hundred Ukrainians assigned to this work flung open the doors and drove the Jews out of the cars with leather whips.
A loudspeaker gave instructions: ‘Strip, even artificial limbs and glasses. Hand all money and valuables in at the “valuables” window. Women and young girls are to have their hair cut in the “barber’s hut”.’ (An SS Sergeant told me: ‘From that they make something special for submarine crews.’)
Then the march began. Barbed wire on both sides, in the rear two dozen Ukrainians with rifles. They drew near. Wirth and I found ourselves in front of the death-chambers. Stark naked men, women, children and cripples passed by. A tall SS man in the corner called to the unfortunates in a loud minister’s voice: ‘Nothing is going to hurt you! Just breathe deep and it willstrengthen your lungs.
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