Acts of Resistance and the Organization of the Revolt
in Treblinka
The organization of the underground was preceded by some successful
and some unsuccessful acts of resistance and escape attempts. These
actions were followed by cruel reprisals and punishment by the camp
authorities. The lessons learned from these actions influenced the
modes of operation of the underground and its plans.
Acts of Individual Resistance
The first act of resistance, which is mentioned in many testimonies,
was the killing of SS Unterscharführer Max Bialas by the Jew Meir
Berliner on September 10 or 11, 1942. Meir Berliner had arrived in
Treblinka from Warsaw a few days before in one of the transports of
the "big Aktion." At that time it was the practice to take out
several hundred people from each transport to work arranging the
belongings of the murdered; the same day or a few days later, the
group was liquidated and was replaced by other people selected from
new shipments. At the evening roll-call of the prisoners, Max Bialas
instructed those who had arrived that same day to line up on the
side. It was not clear who was to be liquidated -- the new arrivals
or those who had arrived earlier. At that moment Berliner jumped out
from the ranks of the prisoners, lurched toward Bialas and stabbed
him with a knife. A great commotion followed. The Ukranian guards
opened fire. Berliner was killed on the spot. and in the course of
the shooting more than ten other prisoners were killed and others
were wounded. When the tumult subsided the prisoners were lined up
again for roll-call. Christian Wirth, who was in Treblinka at the
time, arrived on the scene accompanied by Kurt Franz, the second in
command of the camp. Ten men were removed from the ranks and shot on
the spot in full view of all the others. On the following day,
during the morning roll-call, another 150 men were taken out, brought
to the Lazarett and shot there. Max Bialas died en route to the
military hospital in Ostrow. (Ibid., 231-232; Testimony of Eliyahu
Rosehberg, Yad Vashem Archives, hereafter, YVA, 0-3/4039.)
Following this event a new practice was introduced; a permanent group
of Jewish prisoners was now retained in the camp to carry out all
physical labor. The daily executions of Jewish prisoners was now of
limited scope and encompassed mainly the infirm and weak who were no
longer able to work and those who had committed violations even of
the most minor sorts. The place of those who were killed was taken
by new men selected from the transports slated for annihilation,
which continued to stream into the camp.
The lesson learned by the Jewish prisoners who worked in the camp was
that the cost of a courageous act like that performed by Berliner was
very high -- more than 160 Jews were executed in reprisal for the
killing of one SS man. In light of the fact that the Germans had
also changed their methods, instances of this sort did not recur. It
became clear that individual, spontaneous acts. Iike that of
Berliner, however admirable, were not the way to rescue, nor could
they even slow down the annihilation activities in the camp.
In his book 'A Year in Treblinka', Jacob Wiernik tells of another act
of individual resistance. One of the girls being herded into the gas
chambers grabbed a rifle from the hands of a Ukrainian guard, shot
and killed one Ukrainian and wounded two others. The girl was
caught, tortured and murdered. (The testimony of Jacob Wiernik was
taken down in Warsaw during the war and in 1944 was published in
Poland by the Polish underground. His testimony also appeared in
Yiddish in New York; see Jacob Wiemili, 'A Yor in Treblinke', New
York, 1944, 30.)
Group Resistance by Jews who Arrived in the Transports
In December 1942 a transport of about 2,000 Jews arrived in Treblinka
from Kiellbasin camp in the Grodno district. Jews from Grodno and
the towns of the region had been concentrated in this camp. Unlike
other transports, most of which arrived during the daylight hours,
this one arrived in the evening. The people were taken off the train
and brought into the camp surrounded by SS and Ukrainian guards. The
handling of this transport, like the others, was accompanied by
shouts, blows and firing into the air. The people were ordered to
undress, and some of them had already begun to run on the
Himmelstrasse toward the gas chambers. At this point it became clear
to the people where they were and what awaited them. Shouts were
heard: Don't obey the Germans! Don't undress! Scores of people from
the transport grabbed sticks, pulled out knives and fell on the
Germans and Ukrainians who surrounded them. According to one
testimony, one of the Jews pulled out a grenade and hurled it at the
Germans and Ukrainians, who opened fire on the crowd with rifles and
machine guns. A great tumult began as people ran in all directions.
But the barbed-wire fences preventedddd escape from the camp. It was
not long before the square was covered with the corpses of the
prisoners. In the end the Germans and Ukrainians quelled this act of
resistance, and the people were shoved into the gas chambers, some of
them still in their clothing. In this struggle it seems that three
SS men and Ukrainians were injured.
It should be noted that underground activity, the idea of resistance
and of going into the forests was very widespread among the Jews of
Grodno and its surroundings. Their psychological readiness for
resistance, the rumors that had reached them about the meaning of
Treblinka, the situation they encountered after getting off the train
and the cries of some of them to resist all led to the spontaneous
outburst. After that transports to Treblinka were brought in only
during daylight hours. (lbid., pp. 40-411; Shmuel Wilenberg,
"Treblinka -- ha-Mahane ve-ha-Mered," Yalkut Moreshet, No. 5, April
1966, pp. 30-31; testimony of Oskar Strawczynski, YVA, 0-3/3131; pp.
17-18.)
Escapes from the Camps
In the first months of the camp's existence scores of people escaped
from Treblinka. Some of them were caught, others managed to get
away. They reached the nearby ghettos and told what was going on in
Treblinka. Some of the escapees reached the Warsaw ghetto. One of
the first of these was Simcha Binem Laski, who was sent to Treblinka
from Warsaw at the end of July 1942. Four days after he arrived in
the camp, Simcha managed to escape. He got back to the Warsaw ghetto
in the beginning of August -- on the day that the "Children's Aktion"
was being carried out there. ("In Treblinke--Gviyat Edut," 'Fun
Lefstn Khurbn' , No. 3, October-November 1946, pp. 47-48.)
On September 13, 1942, Avraham (Jacob) Krzepicki escaped from
Treblinka after having been in the camp for eighteen days. He, too,
managed to reach the Warsaw ghetto and there provided testimony as to
what was occurring in Treblinka. (Krzepicki was a member of the
Jewish Fighting Organization and took part in the fighting in "the
brush makers" area in the Warsaw ghetto. (His testimony in Ringelblum
Archives, YVA, M-10; see also Rachel Auerbach, Varshever
Tsevuos--Bagegenishn Aktivinein, Gorules 1933-1943, Tel Aviv, 1974,
p. 278.) Several of the escapees from Treblinka participated in the
Warsaw ghetto uprising, among them David Nowodworski, member of the
Jewish Fighting Organization and commander of a group of fighters,
and Lazar Szerszein, who was also the commander of a group of
fighters. (On David Nowodworski see Ysrael Gutman, Mered ha-Nazurim.
1963, p. 239; Avraham Levin, "Mi-Pinkaso Shel ha-More mi-Yehudiya."
Beit Lohamei ha-Geta'ot, 1969, p. 215; on Szerszein see Aryeh
Neiberg, Ha-Aharonim--be-Kez ha-Mered shel Getto Varsha, Tel Aviv,
1958, p. 98; Dokumenty i materialy do dziejow okupacji niemieckiej w
Polscc (hereafter, Dokumenty), Vol. lI, "Akcje' i wysicdlenia,
Warsaw, Lodz. Cracow, 1946, p. 343.)
At the time of the deportation of the Jews of Czestochowa, on January
4, 1943, a Jew by the name of Richter, who had also escaped from
Treblinka, attacked and wounded Lieutenant Rohn, the commander of the
gendarmerie that carried out the deportation. (Ibid., p. 290.)
At the end of October or beginning of November, two Treblinka
prisoners, assisted by others, managed to escape on the freight train
carrying the personal belongings of the murdered out of the camp. At
the end of November or beginning of December, seven people from the
group that worked on the station platform were caught trying to
escape by train. They were taken to the lazarett and shot there hy
Kurt Franz. The camp prisoners were called to a special roll-call
which Franz informed them that for each escapee ten Jews working in
the camp would be shot. (Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness -- From
Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, London, 1974, p. 196.)
At the beginning of winter, under cover of darkness, another four
prisoners escaped. They slipped out of the barrack, cut the
barbed-wire fence and got away. As an immediate reprisal twenty sick
people were taken out and shot on the spot. (Wilenberg,, op. cit.,
pp. 36-37)
The escape attempts continued, the threats notwithstanding. Two
youths from Czestochowa caught trying to escape were hung naked by
their feet. All the Jews in the camp were forced to witness their
torture, and only after they were kept hanging from their feet for
several hours were they shot to death. (Testimony of Strawczynski,
op. cit., p. 29; testimony of Kalman Tajgman, WA, (0-3/1586.)
There were escape attempts also from the camp's extermination area.
A group of seven people succeeded in digging a tunnel from the
barracks near the camp's southern fence. In the course of digging,
they had to deal with the serious problem of what to do with the
dug-up earth. They found a solution to this problem and completed a
tunnel 5 meters long, from the barracks to the outside of the first
fence. The digging was done at night, during the month of December
1942, and despite the secrecy of the work many of the men in the
barracks -- there were then about 250 of them -- knew about it. They
kept the secret, even though they knew that the group's escape was
liable to endanger the others. The escape was carried out on the
night of December 31, 1942. Five men succeeded in getting through
the tunnel and out beyond the fences, but then the Ukrainian sentry
noticed them and opened fire. The entire camp was called into
action. The prisoners were removed from the barracks and inspected.
Five were missing. It was snowing that night, but the Germans and
Ukrainian guards went in pursuit of the escapees. The escapees had
reached a nearby village, but were caught while trying to rent a
cart. One succeeded in escaping, but the other four were caught
after a struggle. One was shot on the spot, and the other three were
brought back to the camp. After they were tortured, they were hanged
in full view of all the prisoners, who had been lined up in roll-call
formation. The last prisoner to be hanged shouted from the gallows
"Down with the nation of Hitler, long live the Jewish people."
(Wiernik, op. cit., pp. 41-42; testimony of Rosenberg, op. cit.,
pp. 9-10.)
During the existence of the Treblinka camp scores of people did
succecd in escaping, but scores of others were caught, tortured and
executed. The possibilities for escape were greater in the early
months, and it was then that most of the successful escapes were
carried out. As time passed escape became more difficult and more
complicated. Security measures were improved, and the system of
barbed-wire fencing around the camp was reinforced and improved.
There were three fences: an inner barbed-wire fence 3-4 meters high
and camouflaged by tree boughs; a second network of tank obstacles
laid with barbed-wire fencing; and a third, outer barbed-wire fence.
In addition, parts within the camp itself were also fenced, including
the prisoners' quarters. Six guard towers were erected, one of them
in the center of the extermination area, and, as a result, there was
constant observation of what was going on in the camp during the day.
[
Previous |
Index |
Next ]
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.
(1 of 2)