Unimaginable Horror

A few weeks ago, I told one of my lifelong friends about my visit to Auschwitz last summer, and further, how beautiful I found Poland.  I was a little shocked when my friend said something like, “Poland?  I thought Auschwitz was in Germany. I thought the Holocaust took place in Germany.”  My friend is a very smart, well-educated person.  It made m realize that all of my study on The Holocaust may benefit my small audience of readers.  I know more than I want to know.

Warning, this is not pretty reading.  It isn’t intended to be.  But I think we need to know.

Auschwitz may be what comes to mind when people think of the Holocaust.  The reason you have likely heard of Auschwitz is likely because thousands of people survived Auschwitz and lived to tell about what happened there.  The Russians liberated it before the Nazis could destroy the evidence of their mass murder.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl HarborI.  President Roosevelt said that it was a date that will live in infamy.  There is another reason that date should live in infamy.  It was the day that Nazis began their planned mass murder of Jews in Poland in what they called Operation Reinhardt at a place called Chelmno.

Most people have never heard of these other murder camps.

Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka.  These were the other Death Camps in Poland.  There were few survivors.  In some, fewer than 10, others a hundred or so.  The Nazis completely obliterated their evil work at these camps.  Today there are only memorials left where those camps were.  These places were sites of the unimaginable.

Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka existed for two reasons:  (1) to steal the very last traces of wealth from their victims down to gold teeth and the hair of women and (2) to kill them. 

Auschwitz, on the other hand, existed for the same reasons but in addition it was also a source of slave labor for surrounding industries.  One would never say you were lucky to be sent to Auschwitz but compared to the other four death camps, if you did get sent there, you had at least a chance to be chosen for work to survive another day, as long as you weren’t too old, too young, too weak or a thousand other random whims that might get you selected for death upon arrival.  Thousands were chosen for work upon arrival at Auschwitz, giving them the slightest chance to survive for a few days or months and for some, even years.

In Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka, most were dead within hours of arriving.

These were tiny camps.  There was no need for many barracks.  Except for a few hundred selected to work in the camps, thousands arrived and within hours their remains were either dumped in a mass grave or, later as the killing machine became more advanced, burned.  In fact later, to attempt to cover up their crimes, all of the bodies were exhumed and burned.

Remains of human beings killed in Majdanek. There are no known photos from Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka except for pictures of perpetrators.

They were remarkably efficient. Almost all people were dead with in 90 minutes upon arrival.  These camps used exhaust fumes tank engines piped into the sealed chambers.  These death camps, except Auschwitz, were in operation for under two years.  In that time the killing was almost nonstop.

At Sobibor in fewer than 18 months as many as 250,000 human beings were gassed by exhaust fumes from tank engines.  On October 14, 1943, inmates revolted.  About 58 people survived.

In Belzec in about 15 months as many as 600,000 men, women and children were murdered.  Only two people are known to have survived Belzec.

Treblinka, the second most murderous place in the Nazi killing machine, in about 15 months, 600,000 - 900,000 people died.  On August 2, 1943 workers in the camp revolted, and set fire to much of the camp.  Two hundred people escaped half of them were killed in the next few hours.  Around 70 survived the war.

Chelmno worked a bit differently.  There was no camp.  Three gas vans were used.  Each van held about 50 people.  The people would be forced into the vans.  The exhaust of the van was piped into the compartment where the people were crammed.  The driver would drive to the graves which had efficiently been chosen because it took just the right amount of time for everyone to die of suffocation.  Then Jewish prisoners were chosen to empty the bodies from the vans, remove any valuables including gold in teeth, and then put them into the mass graves.  At the end of the day, a couple of the Jewish workers would be chosen and told to lie down on the graves.  They would be shot and replaced by new arrivals the next day.

At Chelmno, 320,000 people were gassed in mobile vans and buried in mass graves.  A handful of survivors lived to tell their stories of horror.

It is important to remember that it is difficult to take in these huge numbers.  Each one was a person with a story.

 “I look around and think: Good God, what kind of hell is this?” ― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka