Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac - Globocnik's Experiments in Killing Methods Summary: Himmler's involvement in the planning of the camps, Globocnik's early development of killing methods at Belzec Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca Followup-To: soc.history Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Belzec,Globocnik,Wirth Archive/File: holocaust/poland/reinhard/belzec belzec.11 Last-modified: 1993/03/05 "Four independent pieces of evidence help to demonstrate the link forged in late August 1941 between Heydrich's plan [Ed. note: "...a continent-wide solution of the Jewish question..."] and Himmler's new extermination camps. First, on August 28, in a letter to the Jewish specialists in the Foreign Office, Adolf Eichmann referred to the 'coming Final Solution now in preparation.'<53> Second, in the late summer of 1941 the gassing specialist Christian Wirth told another Nazi official that he had just been transferred from the euthanasia killing center in Brandenburg to a new facility in the Lublin area. <53> Third, postwar testimony by Viktor Brack, who ran the euthanasia program for the Fu"hrer Chancellery, clarifies the reasons for Wirth's transfer. In order to retain the personnel that had been relieved of these duties and in order to be able to start a new euthanasia program after the war, Bouhler [head of the Fu"hrer Chancellery] asked me -- I think after a conference with Himmler -- to send this personnel to Lublin and place it at the disposal of SS-Brigadefu"hrer Globocnik.<54> Actually, Brack wrote even during 1942 that 'a long time ago' Bouhler had directed him to place a contingent of his men at Globocnik's disposal for implementation of Globocnik's special task, and that Himmler had directed him to proceed as rapidly as possible with the killings in order to disguise them.<55> On September 2 an official from the SS Main Office proposed a list of men with special rank to be given an assignment with Globocnik in Lublin. These were obviously Brack's men from the Fu"hrer Chancellery. Himmler approved the list two days later.<56> Himmler did not like to waste time or resources, and the euthansia institutions in Germany were still available. So he ordered the transfer of Jewish inmates from the concentration camps to the euthanasia sites, under cover of the more general program of ridding the camps of mentally and physically deficient people. At this time Buchenwald Commandant Kock sent a transport of three or four hundred Jews to the euthanasia facility at Bernburg, where they were gassed. <57> They were not killed because they represented a security threat to Germany; they were already prisoners in existing camps. They certainly did not fit the standard profile of the euthanasia victims. The big new project, however, was the construction of new killing facilities in the East. Himmler had to issue a specific order before any SS construction project could go forward. On the afternoon of September 10 -- the same day he approved the transfer of gassing specialists to Globocnik -- he held a discussion with several subordinates from the SS Economic Office concerning 'plans for construction.' These same men -- Oswald Pohl, Dr. Hans Kammler, and Sturmbannfu"hrer Heinrich Vogel -- were heavily involved in the planning, construction, and administration of concentration camps. They appear to have drawn up plans for at least three new camps: Maidanek, Belzec, and Birkenau.<58> Maidanek was a mixed-purpose camp, with a need for real workers. In the fall of 1941 Globocnik took over a sizable area on the outskirts of Lublin for the camp with workshops that Himmler had ordered in July. His first workers, who arrived that fall, were Russian POW's already in an exhausted condition. There was no housing or sanitary facilities for them, and they were given little food, so their number diminished as they carried out the task of building facilities at the camp. In December 1941 Maidanek received its first Jews, from the city of Lublin itself. They lasted no more than a few months; by the end of February all remaining Jews in the camp were shot. By March 1942 Maidanek was receiving Jews from elsewhere, with the fittest ones selected to work in an underwear factory and other plants, and the others sent directly to their death. By July 1942 Maidanek had a crematorium, about two months later a set of gas chambers.<59> Belzec was the first pure extermination camp to begin operations in the region. There were only a few hundred worker Jews there (at a time), most used in the killing facilities or in the recovery of clothing and items of value from the dead. The first SS men showed up at Belzec in October 1941 to recruit construction workers to build the facilities. Himmler's office had reported Globocnik's progress to Oswald Pohl, head of what soon became the SS Economic-Administrative Main Office (WVHA), preparing Pohl for cooperation with Globocnik. Pohl's office had reported to Himmler that it could no longer obtain sufficient clothing or textiles for the Waffen-SS and the concentration camps. Himmler replied that he could make available a large mass of raw materials for clothing, and he gave Globocnik responsibility for delivering them.<60> Their owners were not likely to object. The gassing at Belzec began in March 1942 under the supervision of its first commandant, Christian Wirth. Ninety-one others from the Fu"hrer Chancellery who had worked with him on euthanasia gassings ended up at Belzec, Sobibor, or Treblinka -- all of which were designed to gas Jews and were under Globocnik's supervision. The gassing experts lived separately from the other SS and police, and they were not carried on the list of Globocnik's regular troops.<61> Before gas chambers were constructed, there was plenty that Globocnik could do with more traditional methods of killing. In October 1941 Captain Kleinschmidt, the company leader of a transport unit, came to the barracks in Lublin and ordered fifteen men to go with him. Each of the fifteen was given a truck and had to drive it to the concentration camp nearby. There they loaded about thirty on each of the fifteen trucks -- a total of about 450 Jews -- and carried them to an abandoned airport located approximately twenty-five miles from Lublin. The prisoners had to dig ditches six cubic meters in size. After finishing the ditches, ten of the victims took off their clothes and were given corrugated-paper shirts reaching halfway down the thighs. The bottoms of the ditches were lined with straw. The victims were ordered, ten at a time, to lie in the ditches, alternately head to foot. Then Globocnik's men threw hand grenades into the ditches, and heads, arms, and legs quickly filled the air. The troops shot anyone still moving after the explosion. Then they spread lime over the remains, and a new layer of straw was spread on top of the lime. Three or four layers of bodies, ten in each layer, were placed in such a grave. During the executions the other victims had to watch and await their turn. Women were kicked in the stomach and breasts, children smashed against rocks. According to an eyewitness to this particular episode, Globocnik's men killed approximately seventy-five thousand Jews in this general manner.<62> Apart from the sadistic killings by hand, it was about as far as one could go in streamlining the process of mass murder without more advanced technology. Globocnik was not the only one experimenting with methods of execution. Arthur Nebe summoned the explosives-and-chemical experts from the RSHA's Criminal Technical Institute to Byelorussia. They locked a group of mental patients from Minsk into a bunker and blew it up, but the first explosion did not kill all the patients, so they had to try again. Afterward they had to retrieve the parts of bodies sprayed over the area, some hanging from trees. That experiment was not a spectacular success, but another one, using car-and-truck exhaust pumped through a hose into a sealed room in a mental asylum in Mogilev, extinguished five patients without difficulty. So the practice soon gained larger dimensions. After a German doctor visited the asylum in Mogilev, apparently to make a selection, as many as twelve hundred people were gassed.<63>" (Breitman, 198-201) Breitman's End notes: <52> Quoted by Browning, 'Faithful Months,' 26 <53> Gorgas affidavit, 23 Feb. 1947, NA RG 238, NO-205 <54> Quoted by Yitzhak Arad, 'Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, the Operation Reinhard Death Camps.' (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), 17 <55> Brack to Himmler, 2 Sept. 1941; NA RG 238, NO-3010 <56> Schmitt to Himmler, 2 Sept. 1941; Himmler to Schmitt, 4 Sept. 1941, NA RG 242, T-581/R 45A; summaries only, log of Himmler's correspondence; the originals were apparently destroyed. <57> Interrogation of Waldemar Hoven, 16 Oct. 1946, NA RG 238, M-1019 /R445-47,461. Hoven placed the transport of Jews in the summer or early fall of 1941. On the general transfer of concentration-camp prisoners to the euthanasia facilities (Aktion 14f13), Klee, "Euthanasia," 345-55. (Request euthanasia 14f13.01 through 14f13.04 for more detail. ed.) <58> Interrogation of Hubert Karl, 21 May 1947, NA RG 238, M-1019/R 33 /945. Brandt's log, NA RG 242, T-581/R 39A, 10 Sept. 1941. On Pohl, Kammler, and Vogel, see Hilberg, 'Destruction' (1985 edition), III, 865-69. Vogel had been involved in developing plans for Auschwitz even earlier. See Himmler's correspondence log, Pohl to Himmler, 25 July 1941: "betr. Planning Auschwitz. Bericht des Stubaf. Vogel mit Plan u"bers.," NA RG 242, T-581/45A. Wolfgang Scheffler has already pointed out that the plans for Maidanek and Birkenau were drawn up and implementation begun at the same time, Sept. 1941. Wolfgang Scheffler, "Chelmno, Belzec, und Maindanek," in Ja"ckel and Rohwere, eds., "Der Mord an den Juden," 147. The same is true of Belzec. On the plans for Birkenau, see Heerdt-Lingler to Friedrich Boos, 27 June 1941, and to SS Haushalt und Bauten, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, 1 July 1941, NA RG 238, NI-14159-60. Adam, "The Gas Chambers," in Furet, "Unanswered Questions," 149. <59> Czelaw Rajca and Anna Wisniewska, "Maidanek Concentration Camp," trans. Anna Zagorska (Lublin, 1983), esp. 11-13, 24, 81-82. Elizabeth B. White, "Majdanek: Cornerstone of Himmler's SS Empire in the East," paper presented at American Historical Association meeting, San Francisco, 30 Dec. 1989. <60> On Belzec, see Adalbert Ru"ckerl, ed., "NS Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse," (Munich, 1978), 132-45; Hilberg, "Destruction," III, 875-76. Brandt's daily log, with telephone calls 15 Oct., to Pohl, report on Globocnik; 17 Oct., to Pohl, report on Globocnik; 20 Oct., to Pohl, work with Globocnik, all NA RG 242, T-581/R 39A. On the nature of the cooperation and the textiles, interrogation of Georg Loener, 20 Sept. 1947, NA RG 238, M-1019/R 42/946. Loener dated these events "approximately 1941." Brandt's log notations (see above) pin this down to Oct. 1941. Arad, "Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka," 24-25. <61> Arad, "Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka," 24-25, 17. Interrogation of Johann Sporrenberg, 2 Sept. 1945, Globocnik file, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, obtained through Freedom of Information Act. <62> Commanding General, Eighth Service Command, ASF Dallas, to Provost Marshal, 21 May 1945, account of Willi Kempf, POW, NA RG 153, entry 143, box 571, folder 19-99. <63> Browning, "Fateful Months," 60. 'Nationalsozialistische Massento"tgen durch Giftgas,' ed. Eugen Kogen et al (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 81-83. Zentrale Stelle der Justizverwaltunger Ludwigsburg, 'Sammlung UdSSR,' no. 7, 19. Abbreviations Used in Citations The following abbreviations may be used throughout this document: NA..........United States National Archives RG 59.......NA Diplomatic Records RG 84.......Washington National Records Center, Diplomatic Post Records RG 153......Washington National Records Center, Records of the Office of the (Army) Judge Advocate RG 165......Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, Washington National Records Center RG 208......Office of War Information Records, Washington National Records Center RG 226......Office of Strategic Services Records RG 238......War Crimes EC Series NG........Microfilm T-1139 NI........Microfilm T-301 NO Series NOKW Series PS Series RG 242......NA Record Group 242 - Captured German Records T...........NA Microfilm Series Work Cited Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991
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