Holocaust Mosaic

By Helen Weber

Survivors, especially, will appreciate Weber's account of Hitler's war against the Jews; from killing Jews at the edge of the pit to Zyklon-B and the crematoria.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 29, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595857883

Helen Weber

Helen Weber was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin, attended Milwaukee public schools, including The University of Wisconsin Extension Division-Milwaukee. Her book SUMMER MOCKERY received an ?Award of Merit for Distinguished Service to History? from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The Writers Council of Wisconsin hailed her book as ?An outstanding creative achievement in the field of professional writing.? Summer Mockery was the number one non-fiction book of the year.

Book preview

PART I

1933

I remember the moment I became aware of Nazi Germany; I remember where I was, what I was doing; I remember the words which are as clear to me today as when spoken in 1933.

If I were a Jew in Germany, I would get out.

I looked at my uncle. My uncle looked straight ahead. He held the paper down at the side of his chair. What had my Uncle read that had made him utter those words? What? Why should Jews leave Germany? What would happen to them if they did not?

Could my uncle possibly have seen in that moment the orgies of death that were to come? See the horrors perpetrated in city after city, town after town, village after village? See the planes and fields of Europe soaked with blood? See the people, naked, crowding closer to the pit; blood spurting, gushing from the soil; hear the shooting, the earth exploding, flames crackling; hear the moans and prayers, the pleas for death, the calls for lime to cover the bodies? SCHNELL!

Whatever it was my uncle saw, that moment for me became a spur goading me on to tell the story of Hitler’s war against the Jews.

In 1933 Hitler gave Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler absolute power to quell all opposition to Nazism by the ‘terror method.’ Wilhelm Frick, Hitler’s Secretary of the Interior, was ordered to establish the legal base for Hitler’s War Against the Jews. In 1939 young men were recruited for Ein-satzgruppen military duty; lured to enlist by the higher pay offered, the promise of loot, the element of ‘safety.’ Expert marksmanship was demanded of the young soldiers and daily there were lectures: The Jew is sub-human. To kill the Jew is to achieve Aryan supremacy. "The Jew is the mortal enemy of the German people. Judaism is the source of Bolshevism. The words—destroy, annihilate, exterminate, execute, liquidate, wipe out; had one meaning, ‘kill until the last Jew was dead;’ Gypsies and political commissars were slated for extinction as well.

On June 22, 1941, 3000 graduating Einsatzgruppen soldiers paraded, demonstrated their marksmanship and pledged to ‘implement the final solution’ in accordance with the aims of de Fuhrer. Bands played as the soldiers divided themselves into four units of between 600 and 900 men and marched off to war. The area was vast: from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, divided into—A. The Baltic States, B. Russia, C. The Ukraine, D. The Crimea. The one hundred officers trained for duty at the Frontier Police school in Pretsch pledged ‘Unparalleled hardness; in the execution of OPERATION REINHARAD, the cryptonym for Hitler’s War Against the Jews.

There were maps and manuals for officers and men on military procedures; strategies were outlined, directions listed: A. Concentrate the Jews in one area; B. Designate Jewish homes, apartments, buildings, property; C. Compile precise lists of the Jewish population; D. Assemble Jews from outlying areas; E. Select the day and place of shooting. There were guides on procedure: TO ASSEMBLE THE JEWS place signs on public buildings, walls, windows, trees, posts. Have army vehicles traverse the area, loud speakers blaring: THE JEWS MUST GATHER! Specify time: at 6:00 a.m., at noon, at 1:30 a.m. Specify place: The town square, the market place, sports arena, the city park. Specify purpose: for the distribution of food coupons, a census, to harvest potatoes, resettlement, relocation to a work camp. THE JEWS MUST GATHER!

If execution of the Jewish population is to take place immediately after the Jews are assembled, the place of execution is to be prepared by Jewish labor: The pits for the dead to be sixty meters long, three meters wide. Jews from small towns or rural areas, if not liquidated immediately, are to be transported to a city ghetto to await special treatment.

Nothing in Hitler’s War Against the Jews was insignificant; every detail had to be considered. Examples: the distance to be traversed to the place of execution. Can the victims walk? How fast can they walk? Was transportation needed for the sick, the old, the handicapped. Was the terrain flat, rocky? How was the terrain affected by rain, snow, by heat? Were there avenues of escape for the enemy? How many guards were needed, where to place the guards; how much fusillade can the towns people be expected to tolerate. How to handle complaints about the shootings; the din, the cries, the blood from city residents, villagers, farmers. To build or not to build viewing benches for the local citizens. How much looting to allow onlookers. Every detail, every detail! Be precise! Accuracy is essential. Remember the Wehrmacht is available for assistance, if needed, in any operation required in Hitler’s War Against the Jews. To be alert, to remember: Jews are wily, tricky.

Einsatzgruppen officers were cautioned to keep the Jews as quiet as possible; not to arouse suspicion of what was to come; to talk relocation, a work camp; announce the distribution of bread; give a child a piece of candy; help an aging parent into line. To keep all weeping, wailing, cursing, praying at a minimum. Or, as the Fuhrer stated: ‘cruelty impresses!’ Any barbarity is fine. Hang six or eight men in the square, let the bodies dangle; stuff sand, dirt, gravel into the mouths of those who are wailing; gouge the eyes of a child, sever a tongue. Crack your whip. Force a pious Jew to pledge allegiance to Hitler; cut his beard, his skin. Take the warm socks from a child; have him dance on the ice. Force a couple to copulate. Shoot those who avert their eyes from the act of copulation. Inspire your men to greater acts of warfare.

There, The officer pointed toward the line of people moving. The officer was tall, erect; aware of his duty, his rank, the diamond on his sleeve sparkled, "That woman! The woman in the lavender dressing gown;

you see she is old, infirm. There! The officer turned, You see the child. The child who is ill; there! We cannot have laggards! The line must move! MOVE!

To demonstrate to his soldiers what must be done, the officer shot the woman in the lavender dressing gown, shot the sick child, the mother of the sick child as well. Shouted, NEIN! NEIN! Leave the bodies! There are wagons to pick up the dead! The dead must be counted, the count accurate; we have a daily quota!

Teletyped daily from every military outpost to war headquarters in Berlin: Number of men, women, children killed; number of Jewish possessions—umbrellas, hats, tools, gourmet food, shoes—counted and delivered to the Nazi Public Welfare Organization in Berlin for the needy.

Within five weeks of the Einsatzgruppen military advance into Russia, the number of Jews killed exceeded the total number killed in the previous eight years of Nazi rule. Soldiers in their letters home wrote:

WE KILL JEWS! All day long and day after day, from the tiniest child to the oldest man to the women who are new mothers—we kill Jews. We kill them when they are standing, kneeling, lying down. Yes, my dear wife, the Jews fall into the pit, one on top of the other; they are covered with blood, they squeal like pigs; some are buried half alive; we are too tired to kill them. Children, though, to save bullets, go into the pit alive; and babies we throw into the air and use for target practice." Soldiers enclosed photographs with their letters: proud, happy soldiers standing beside a mound of shoes, toys, of corpses and ended their letters with love and kisses.

As soldiers in their diaries wrote of broken limbs and bullet holes, of gouged out eyes and bodies writhing; of two heads that were shot off on a summer day outside of Vilna Early in the morning in August. Of the pillaging of the living, of the dead; of the money taken; watches, wedding rings; valuables collected; of clothing crammed into sacks and taken to town to be sold by the executioner. Of treatment and tortures and sights too horrible to describe, too impossible to grasp. Of eighty executioners, all drunk, who shot four thousand Jews; of ten thousand Jews in a mass grave. Wrote, Will the shooting go on forever? They gave us vinegar to smell.

As Engineer Hermann Graebe in his account wrote of Einsatzgruppen units advancing, of the shouts he heard—EVACUATE! EVACUATE! Of Ukrainian militiamen smashing, crashing walls and windows; of flares and machine guns and young people running, fleeing, some escaping across the river; others beaten, hounded, driven like cattle to be pushed, crammed, crowded into freight cars waiting at the station; of bystanders watching; children crying and corpses that littered the streets of Kovno on July 13, 1942. On October 4, 1942 Graebe wrote of Jews from the town of Dubno packed in wagons, arriving, descending, disrobing; placing their clothing on the appropriate mound; shoes—eight hundred to a thousand pairs, Engineer Graebe estimated. How many blouses? Caps? A thousand bodies in a tremendous grave. Graebe described the guard: seated at the edge of the grave, smoking a cigarette, his legs dangling, his gun on his lap, his whip nearby. Graebe saw in the pit a hand raised, a head turning, blood spurting from a wound; saw people descend into the pit: a father holding his son, talk to him and point to the sky; a grandmother cuddle a child, a slim dark haired woman point to herself and say I am 23; saw people comfort and caress those who were still alive, say farewell. Graebe heard no weeping, no pleas for mercy; heard shots and saw another wagon approaching packed with Jews and wondered why he had been allowed to be a witness to the deed.

As Maria Lutensko, caretaker of the cemetery at BABI YAR had been overlooked. The Nazis never suspected she had made her way quietly through the underbrush and seen everything they were doing. Over there, over there, and over there, she told Anatole, and how they screamed, Oh! Mother of God! The Nazis kept on hitting them with spades! Then, one hundred at a time, two hundred, five hundred, one thousand at a time, some kneeling, some standing; the shooting began." Old Masha never forgot what she had witnessed at Babi Yar as Anatole Kuznetsov who wrote BABI YAR had never stopped hearing the bursts of machine gun fire he had heard as a boy during the two days of shooting at the ravine called Babi Yar in Kiev.

For human memory remains, Anatole wrote, history cannot be deceived; there will always be one, two perhaps a dozen who were eye witness to the deed.

As a young woman escaped from the ‘schlachtfeld’ at the Ninth Fort outside of Kovno, a peasant woman helped her, washed the blood away, smudged her face, gave her clothes, flowers to carry, showed her how to walk, to talk; said Go, walk down that road, pretend you are a peasant woman.

At home, her neighbors questioned her, you say that you crawled from a pit; that a peasant woman helped you; you say there is no relocation, no resettlement, no work camp; that Hitler means to totally exterminate the Jews! How could something like that happen! The woman is deranged, the neighbors said. The doctor was called.

Hear me! Believe! The woman pleaded, Believe! Believe! Millions will die. There is only death ahead for all of us! Hitler means to totally exterminate the Jews! It is a war Hitler is waging! A war! Believe!

The doctor agreed the poor woman was deranged; how could such a thing be possible?"

It was possible because the Nazis bureaucracy was ready to employ every resource of a great and productive nation to attain THE FINAL SOLUTION. To use guns, artillery, gas; subterfuge, lies, trickery; the Wehrmacht, mercenaries, military patrols of conquered countries, the railroads, police, criminals. Anything, everything!

It was possible because in Lithuania, Colonel Karl Jaeger, Chief of Ein-satzgruppen-Kommando 3 of Einsatzgruppen A as of December 1, 1942 reported Kovno had been a paradise for soldiers of Einsatzgruppen A; cooperation from the local militiamen was excellent. The Jewish problem in Lithuania was solved! Heil Hitler!

Because in Poland Governor General Hans Frank predicted ‘the Jewish problem will be solved decisively, I make no bones about it; until there is no Jewish life remaining in Europe."

It was also possible because soldiers obeyed orders, boasted of the number of Jews killed; possessions acquired.

But in spite of the camaraderie, the good natured wrangling over a pretty red scarf someone wanted for his wife, a toy for a child, the stories passed from one to the other—the boy whimpering he was cold, the girl pleading with God to let her die, the man wandering among the dead calling Rochelle, Rochelle, my dearest Rochelle! Despite the story of the Jewess who was too beautiful to be buried in a pit and told to go—go! She was free, to be shot as she reached freedom; there were complaints.

Killing children wasn’t always easy; some of the men had children of their own. Face to face killing, wading through blood was a ‘grievous ordeal.’ The number of letters to the war office increased; ‘When would this Jewish business be over?’ ‘We are tired, tired, tired. Our arms are sore, our shoulders ache. We drink a lot, have trouble sleeping.’ Officers, too, complained: drinking was heavy; there were nightmares, hallucinations. Someone’s driver committed suicide; General Erich Vonde Bach-Zelewski was hospitalized: diagnosis-’psychic exhaustion.’ Psychic exhaustion, according to Chief SS medical officer Dr. Ernst-Robert Grawitz was worse for the Einsatzgruppen soldier than battle fatigue for the ordinary soldier, recovery time longer.

Himmler screamed, why weren’t the doctors taking better care of the officers! Why the emotional breakdowns. Morale had to be restored by psychological indoctrination: the Jew as a military threat, an economic threat, were no longer effective. Himmler toured a camp, called for a hundred men to be brought from prison to stand at the edge of the pit. He would demonstrate what was meant by unparalleled hardness; but swooned at the first volley of bullets and soon after the first experiments with carbon monoxide took place in an old castle in Chelmno, about forty miles from Lodz.

The kindly, elderly Einsatzgruppen soldier ordered the people to strip before entering the van; ‘their clothing would be steamed,’ he assured them, ‘their valuables safe. They were going to a work camp; there were schools for the children, nursing care for the elderly.’ After the last person was pushed into the van, the door was locked. The vans—there were two—were painted gray. The inner walls were of metal. There were no seats. The floor was a wooden grating covered with straw mats. Two tubes extended from under the grating; each tube had a small opening for the release of gas. Everyone knew, children pointed, There go the death machines."

Once at the clearing, the kindly, elderly ‘Death Head’ soldier pressed a button, stepped out of the van. Shouting, screaming, banging, kicking followed. Fifteen minutes later the driver reboarded the van, shone a light into the back, nodded; Gut! Gut! Shouted Jews, Jews! Open the doors! Jews, Jews! Turn everything! The corpses were still warm. Were they asleep? The stench was overpowering.

Two prisoners carried a corpse to the edge of the pit, two men swung the corpse into the pit where eight men packed the bodies: Head to foot, foot to head, with a child between if there was room.

Neatly, SS officer ‘Big Whip’ shouted, Schnell! Three men were shot; they weren’t working fast enough.

At noon the work stopped. The cold was bitter. The men wore shoes, underwear, shirts, trousers. They were given bread, cold coffee; were surrounded by armed guards. ‘Big Whip’ behind a tree, drank whiskey. At 5 p.m. the eight men in the pit were ordered to sprinkle sand over the corpses, to lie face down on the sand. The men were shot.

Yaakov Grojanowski, one of 29 grave diggers, kidnapped from the village Ixbica Kujawska in eastern Poland on January 6, 1942 escaped 14 days later. Yaakov mailed an account of his experience to a Rabbi in Lodz and begged the Rabbi, Do not think this is a mad man writing, it is the cruel and bitter truth.

Yaakov wrote—of beatings, floggings, whiskey for ‘Big Whip; of rings, earrings, necklaces torn from throats; of hands in the anus, the genitals, groping for jewels; of gold teeth hammered loose. Of four high ranking SS officers arriving in a big, black limousine one day to inquire how the work was going. Gut, gut! How proud and joyous ‘Big Whip’ was then, how savagely he beat the men; blood flowed, faces swelled, eyes remained shut. GUT, GUT," the officers were pleased. Heil Hitler! The big black limousine drove away.

Yaakov wrote of the batches of Gypsies that arrived, of victims from Lodz so badly mutilated, of victims buried with their clothes on and ‘big whip’ screaming TYPHOID! Of the cry of a baby heard when the van door was opened; followed by laughter, a shot. Of the scream when a man recognized his 14 year old son among the victims; of the fat German cook who had chased the man who had stolen a piece of bread into the van and seen too much to be allowed to live.

Yaakov described the nights of captivity as well: the thin kohlrabi soup, cold coffee, frozen bread; the men jumping and running for warmth; the tears shed for loved ones, for the Jews buried that day; of the kicks at the door and the shouts to swear allegiance to Hitler, to thank Hitler for the food you are given. Of the guard who allowed the prisoners to sing ‘Hatik-vah,’ of the man who put a rope around his neck, the man who stuffed a packet into his mouth; of the corpses that remained in the room—for how many nights? Of the questions the men asked one another: Was everything in the hands of God? Was it for a mortal to understand the way of God? Were they witnessing the extermination of European Jewry? Gladly, the men agreed, they would forfeit their lives if the Jewish nation survived. Asked one another were they cowards? Could they have over-powered the guards the day they were forced to remain in the pit during the noon break? Why had they not? They had sensed the guard was fearful; was it because sixteen men had been machine-gunned when Abraham Rois escaped? Had Rois’s escape benefited the Jews in any way? Was it cowardice on their part or was it the desire to live to tell the story? And every night the men asked who at the end of the following day would sprinkle sand on the bodies of the dead, then lie face down on the sand to be shot? Every night Yaakov tried to loosen the bricks with a small knife; the bricks were frozen.

On Monday, January 20, 1942 no SS car followed the van taking the men to work. When, Yaakov at the rear of the van opened the window, the driver seemed unaware of the cold air that rushed in. His comrades, though they knew his escape meant their death, encouraged him to jump. His thought as he jumped was ‘let me not break a leg.’

Jews were escaping. The Nazi strategy of collective guilt was ineffective; nor was killing Jews in vans the answer to the final solution. Rough roads made the vans rattle; caused faulty gas emission; death was delayed, faces became distorted, bodies covered with fecal matter; the men complained of headaches.

Himmler was concerned; killing had ‘taken on a patina unworthy of a great nation.’ The act of extermination ought to be less primitive, more humane. Also, photographs had gotten out! How to maintain secrecy? And, de Fuhrer called for speed, SPEED! The problem had to be faced; Einsatzgruppen military units were not capable of dealing with the major operations envisioned in Hitler’s War Against the Jews. The Jews were not dying fast enough; millions were still alive! Killing at the edge of a pit, in a van with poison gas was ineffective. Himmler ordered Operation Reinhard phased out as of December 1942 to be completed by October 1943. There had to be a better way.

Odilo Globocnik, Governor General of Poland in Lublin received thanks for the 1,901 truck loads of cash, valuables, textiles accrued to the Reich treasury (ministry of economics,) for the approximately 178,745,960,59 Reich Marks and for his ‘great and unique military achievement: As of November, 1942, 1,400,000 Jews had been murdered by Einsatzgruppen units in their killing sweeps through-out the Soviet Union. Iron Crosses, as Globocnik requested, were awarded to members of his staff for their ‘special achievement’ in the execution of OPERATION REINHARD."

Einsatzgruppen officer Paul Blobel, an architect, was appointed commandant of "Special Kommando 1005’ by Himmler and ordered to ‘get rid of the ashes in such a way that it will be practically impossible for anyone to calculate from the quantity of ashes how many corpses had been burned. ‘Destroy the evidence! Use any means to accomplish this. If dynamite doesn’t work, find something that will!’

Blobel traveled from area to area to demonstrate to the men of the brigades, there were 23, ‘the exhumation procedure.’ Burn Corpses on oil-soaked iron grids for 24 hours; pulverize remaining bones with a special bone mill. Throw remaining powder into the Vistula River. Blobel’s assignment, which included the exhumation of 100,000 bodies found in a mass grave at Auschwitz, was completed by the end of 1943. All evidence of Einsatzgruppen military action had been destroyed. Himmler’s orders had been obeyed; the sites of the empty mass graves were filled in, graded and planted with grass. No trace of the horrors remained. But, prisoners from the brigades, though shackled by hand, by foot, by means of a key found among the corpses survived to describe the work they had done; the amount of gold, about eight kilograms of gold