Chapter VIII:
Indirect Transports of Jews
to the Eastern Territories

In September of 1939, directly after the military collapse of Poland, a project evolved to create a reservation for Jews on conquered Polish territory, into which all Jews living under German control were supposed to be deported. The idea of establishing "a Jewish state near Krakow under German administration" was already brought up by Heydrich on September 22 in a conversation with Walter von Brauchitsch, the Supreme Commander of the Army, and then taken up by Alfred Rosenberg at a meeting on September 28 and 29 with the Gauleiters in the east. Rosenberg mentioned the plan to settle "the whole of Jewry" together with all undesirable elements "between Weichsel and Bug."

In an official speech on September 29, Heydrich spoke of the establishment of a "Reichsghetto" in the region east of Warsaw and Lublin.[676] The Jewish reservation was supposed to be set up in the zone south of Lublin, lying between Weichsel and Bug. One of the most important railway junctions in that region was Nisko, and for that reason it was referred to as the Nisko Plan or Nisko Operation. The Jewish transports into that region began in October 1939 and went on until March 1940. On March 23, 1940, Göring ordered the cessation of all deportations into the General Gouvernement.

A total of approximately 34,520 Jews were deported from the Reich to the incorporated Polish territories,[677] and 6,615 Viennese Jews were deported into the 'Reservation.'[678] Mainly because of its competition with the Madagascar Plan, upon which all hopes of the Reich for the solution of the Jewish problem were focused at that time, the project came to a standstill soon after its beginnings. Nevertheless, further Polish Jews were resettled in the Lublin 'Reservation': 9,451 from the Radom district from August 14 to September 25, 1940,[679] 3,436 from the Krakow ghetto from November 29, 1940, to April 2, 1941.[680] In addition, in 1940, 1,200 Jews were deported into that area from Stettin, 5,570 from prison camps, 5,250 from the Warsaw district, and 1,020 from Krakow. In 1941, 6,280 Jews were sent into the 'Reservation' from the incorporated Polish territories, 1,530 Jews from prison camps, 2,200 from Warsaw district and 2,520 from Krakow.[681] Therefore, from 1939 to 1941, a total of approximately 79,600 Jews arrived in that zone. The transportation of western Jews into the Lublin district started again in March 1942, but this time within the framework of a new policy.

At the beginning of 1942, the Germans began to concentrate the Polish Jews in the district of Lublin and then subsequently to deport them farther to the east in order to make room for the Jews from the Altreich, from the Ostmark, from Slovenia, and from the Protectorate. These evacuations were arranged by an office of the government of the General Gouvernement, the "Hauptabteilung innere Verwaltung Abteilung Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge" (Main department internal administration, department of population and welfare), to which the sub-departmental manager Richard Türk as well as the local authorities delivered the corresponding reports.

One of the first of these reports dates from January 6, 1942, and concerns the "Evacuation of 2,000 Jews from Mielec." There it says:[682]

The next report dealing with this transfer warned the authorities:[683]

On January 21, 1942, the number of Jews being evacuated from Mielec was increased to 4,500.[684] The evacuation began on March 11, 1942. The 4,500 Jews were distributed as follows:[685]

On March 22, 1942, there was a resettlement of Jews from Bilgoraj to Tarnogrod, a village 20 km south of that city. The report that deals with this it reads:[688]

On March 17, 1942, Fritz Reuter, an employee of the Department of Population and Welfare of the Office of the General Gouvernement of the district of Lublin, wrote a note, in which he referred to a talk conducted on the previous day with the SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Höfle, the delegate for the resettlement of Jews in the Lublin district:[689]

A subdivision of the Jews into those able to work and those not able to work was planned.

The Jews able to work should be used for labor assignments.

This fact is fully and entirely confirmed by a report of April 7, 1942. Its author is SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Türk, Director of the Department for Population and Welfare in the Office of the Governor of the Lublin district. The report refers to the month of March and contains a paragraph with the heading "Jewish Resettlement Operation of the SS- and Police Chief," in which Türk reports:

The report later mentions the resettlement of Jews from Mielec and Bilgoraj, which have already been discussed, and makes clear that the majority of the evacuees was unfit for labor:[691]

The influx of western Jews into the Lublin district began in the middle of March 1942. The first transports routed there departed from the Protectorate on March 11, 1942, from the Altreich on March 13, from Slovakia on March 27, from the Ostmark on April 9. The transports included numerous people unfit for labor, who were lodged in the villages of the district together with those able to work.

On April 12, 1942, the Chairman of the Jewish Council in Lublin posted a letter to Jewish Social Self-Assistance in Krakow, in which the "numbers of those resettled in the individual towns" were named in regard to Mielec:[692]

The letter continues:

On April 16, 1942, the Landkommissar (coumty commissioner) Lubartów sent the following letter to the District Chief of the Lublin district:[694]

On May 9, 1942, the Landkommissar informed the District Chief:[695]

In another letter from May 13, 1942, it says:[696]

A similar complaint was also heard from the delegation of Rejowiec: [696]

In order to create room for the new arrivals, Polish Jews residing in the Lublin district were gradually deported farther east. These evacuations were initiated by the SS- and Police Chief of Lublin in collaboration with the "Sub-Department of Population and Welfare" of the Governor of the district of Lublin, and namely on the proposal of the local authorities. For example, a certain Lenk, a subordinate of the District Chief of Janów-Lubelsk, wrote to the SS- and Police Chief of Lublin:[697]

Lenk added:

On May 19, the District Chief of Lublin reported to the Subdepartment for Population and Welfare:[699]

In a letter of May 22, the District Chief of Hrubieszow stated:[700]

There is no doubt at all that these transfers were serving the purpose of creating room for the western Jews deported into the Lublin district. Later, the latter would then also be evacuated again in stages. A report of October 5, 1942, of the District Chief in Lublin to the Governor of the Lublin district sets out the following information regarding this:[701]

The 8,009 Jews mentioned were accommodated in the following locales according to this report:

The German policy of resettlement of the Jews was also echoed in the German press. On October 17, 1942, an article appeared in the Lemberger Zeitung with the headline "The first Jew-free city in the GG" (GG = General Gouvernement), in which the following was written:[702]

It is clear from this article that if an area was declared to be 'Jew-free,' this in no way needed to mean the extermination of the Jewish population concerned!

According to the Korherr Report, the following evacuations of Jews from the territory of the Reich were carried out up to January 1, 1943:

A total of 87,193 Jews, broken down as follows, arrived in the Altersghetto (old age ghetto) of Theresienstadt: 33,249 from the Altreich, 14,222 from the Ostmark and 39,722 from the Protectorate.[705]

9,431 Jews were deported into the ghetto of Litzmannstadt (Lodz) from the Altreich, 5,002 from the Ostmark, and 5,000 from the Protectorate (Prague), a total therefore of 19,433 between October 16 and November 4, 1941.[706]

9,194 Jews were sent into the Lublin district from the Altreich (March 13 to July 15, 1942), 6,000 from the Ostmark (April 9 to June 14, 1942), and 14,001 from the Protectorate (March 11 to June 13, 1942), thus a total of 29,195.

Finally, 6,615 Jews came to Nisko and other zones of the General Gouvernement from the Ostmark between October 20, 1939, and March 12, 1941.[707]

This results in the following picture:

Therefore, of the 217,748 Jews evacuated, 35,810 came to the Lublin district and 75,312 to the eastern territories. Nearly half of the total - 106,626 Jews - were lodged in the ghettos of Theresienstadt and Litzmannstadt.

What purpose could it really serve to let Jews destined for extermination travel for several hundred kilometers past two 'extermination camps'? And if these camps actually possessed the incredible killing capacity, which the official version of history attributes to them, why in the world, then, did dozens and dozens of transports take doomed Jews and have them settled in the district of Lublin instead of taking them directly into this camp?

The first transports of Jews to Auschwitz, which can be proved with documents, are seen within the framework of an extended program for the exploitation of the Jewish work force. The corresponding transports came from France and Slovakia.[708]

On September 16, 1942, Martin Luther, Director of the German Department in the Foreign Ministry, sent a telegram to the German embassy in Bratislava (Preßburg), in which he said that "in the process of taking the measures for the final solution of the European Jewish problem" the Reich government was prepared to immediately send to the east "20,000 young strong Slovakian Jews," where there existed "need for deployment of labor."[709] The Slovakian government accepted the German proposal "with eagerness,"[710] and the preparations for the deportations could begin. The program for deporting the Jews was decided upon on March 13, 1942, and provided for the dispatching of 10 trains each to Auschwitz and Lublin according to the following scheme:[711]

Each transport was supposed to consist of 1,000 persons.[712]

As we have seen in the preceding section, the Jews included in the direct deportations to Lublin were distributed throughout the surrounding towns.

On April 29, 1942, the German embassy in Bratislava (Pressburg) sent the Slovakian government a verbal note containing the following:

In order to cover these expenses, the Reich government required a sum of 500 Reichsmark per person of the Slovakian government.[713]

On May 11, 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann 's Deputy in Slovakia, informed the Slovakian Minister of the Interior that, according to information from the RSHA, there was a possibility of intensifying the transports of Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz, but he qualified this with:[714]

The proposal was not adopted, and for this reason all 19 Jewish transports from Slovakia in May 1942 went into the Lublin district.

A total of 57,752 Jews in 57 transports were deported from Slovakia in the year 1942. Of these, 38 transports, or a total of 39,006 persons, were brought to the Lublin district,[715] the 19 remaining transports comprising 18,746 persons were sent to Auschwitz.

The first transports of Jews from France are also to be viewed as being within the framework of this program for the exploitation of the Jewish work force, since the first transports were comprised exclusively of Jews able to work. Already in March 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, representative for Jewish affairs in France, reported that preparatory talks "with regard to the expulsion of approx. 5,000 Jews to the east" could be conducted with the French authorities. Dannecker made clear that those involved would have to be "male Jews able to work, not over 55 years of age."[716] The mass deportation of the Jews living in France, but also of those in Holland and Belgium, was decided in June of 1942. At that time, the Germans were conducting first and foremost a policy of the exploitation of the Jewish labor force in Auschwitz, so that the problem of those who were unfit for work was only a peripheral one. On June 15, 1942, Dannecker wrote a note, in which he summarized the results of a talk conducted on the 11th of that month in Department IV B 4 of the RSHA:[717]

On June 22, 1942, Eichmann wrote a letter to the embassy counselor Rademacher on the topic "Labor assignment of Jews from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands," in which he explained:[718]

The search for persons to deport, according to Eichmann 's instructions to Rademacher, should be restricted first of all "to Jews fit for labor."

On July 26, 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dannecker wrote a circular dealing with "Guidelines for the Evacuation of Jews." The deportations were supposed to be restricted to "Jews able to work of both sexes from 16 to 45 years of age." Under Point 21 the Guidelines prescribe the following:[719]

"The following must be taken along by each person:

1. 1 pair of sturdy work boots, 2 pairs of socks, 2 shirts, 2 pair of underpants, 1 work suit, 2 wool blankets, 2 sets of bedding (pillow cases and sheets), 1 bowl, 1 drinking cup, 1 spoon and 1 sweater, and also the toilet articles necessary.

2. Each Jew has to take a food supply with him for a 3-day march. Only 1 piece of baggage is allowed to be taken along (1 suitcase or backpack)."

Under Points 6 and 7 are the instructions:

In July, discussions started about the problem of the deportation of children. On July 10, Dannecker inquired at the RSHA as to

On July 21, 1942, Dannecker wrote in a note, which referred to a telephone discussion of the day before:[722]

These six transports could not have had Auschwitz as a destination, for first of all Auschwitz was not located within the General Gouvernement but in the territory of the Reich (from the German point of view at that time), and secondly because during that period deportations to Auschwitz ran along a mountain route. The sentence "as soon as transportation into the General Gouvernement is again possible" can therefore not have referred to Auschwitz.

On August 13, 1942, SS-Sturmbannführer Günther sent a telegram to the SS authorities in charge in Paris on the subject of "Transportation of Jews to Auschwitz. Deportation there of the Jewish Children," in which he informed them that the Jewish children could "gradually be deported to Auschwitz on the planned transports."[723] Transports purely of children, however, would not be permissible. (This was clearly to prevent the enemy from exploiting this in propaganda.)

On the day after this, in accordance with these orders, a transport with 1,000 persons departed from France for Auschwitz, "among them children for the first time."[724]

In conformity with the instructions cited above, the first trains to Auschwitz contained exclusively Jews fit to work, who were then normally included in the camp's inmate registry. The following table summarizes the data relating to the first 18 transports:[725]

On September 5, 1942, SS-Untersturmführer Horst Ahnert, member of the SIPO and of the SD in Paris, wrote a note on the "Evacuation of Jews," which begins as follows:[726]

On September 12, there was a meeting between Reich Minister Albert Speer, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, the Director of the SS-WVHA, and other functionaries. On the following day, Pohl handed a detailed report to Himmler. The discussion had concentrated on four points, the first of which was the "Enlargement of the barracks-camp of Auschwitz as a result of the eastern migration."

Pohl wrote on this point:[727]

With "migration to the east" the deportation of the Jews into the eastern territories was meant. In this context the last sentence clearly means that the Jews who were not fit to work did not interrupt their journey, thus did not stop in Auschwitz, but continued onward. Where at least a portion of these people was sent emerges from a report, which SS-Untersturmführer Ahnert wrote about a meeting held on August 28, 1942, at the Department IV B 4 of the RSHA. This meeting was called in for the purpose of discussing the Jewish problem and in particular the evacuation of Jews in foreign occupied territories as well as to address transportation problems. The evacuation of Jews to the east was supposed to take place via Auschwitz. In regard to the points discussed, it said under point c):[728]

Point e) related to the purchase of barracks:

In the draft of an agreement between the Jewish Council of Slovakia and the SS-Sonderstab SS Führungshauptamt (SS special staff, SS administrative main office) about the exchange of Jews for various goods, the following request of the Jewish Council is mentioned:[729]

What could the deportation from Auschwitz mean if not the continuation of the migration to the east?

In a letter composed on March 24, 1943, Gisi Fleischmann, a leading Zionist in Slovakia, wrote:[730]

The documents just cited prove that a considerable portion of the Jewish population of western Europe (namely of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) were deported to the east since the second half of 1942, and, in fact, via Auschwitz, which served as a transit camp. The direct place of destination of these Jews was the General Gouvernement or Riga, from which the transports traveled farther on to the east.

This policy was still is effect on May 5, 1943. On that day SS-Gruppenführer Wilhelm Harster, Commander of the Security Police and SD in Holland, wrote a note, in which he summarized the orders from the RSHA for the following months:[734]

A report produced at the beginning of 1944 and delivered to the Warsaw Delegation, thus to the representation of the government-in-exile residing in London, states with respect to the Jewish population of the General Gouvernement in December 1943:[735]

Who could these "foreign Jews" on Polish territory be, if not western Jews processed into the General Gouvernement via Auschwitz?

The deportations of Jews to the east therefore took place in two stages: the Jews were first temporarily settled or lodged in transit camps and then deported farther east. In view of the paucity of existing documentation, we cannot determine with certainty what the final destination of this deportation was, but there exist various pieces of evidence, which make it possible for us to draw plausible conclusions.

In the "Guidelines for handling of the Jewish question," which go back to the summer of 1941, the following paragraph appears:[736]

On August 14, 1942, SS-Brigadeführer Otto Rasch, Leader of Einsatzgruppe C, proposed to Berlin the following solution of the Jewish problem:[737]

As already mentioned,[738] in a letter to Gauleiter Arthur Greiser on September 18, 1941, Himmler wrote that, in accord with the wishes of the Führer, the Jews were supposed to be transported out of the Altreich and the Protectorate "into the eastern territories newly incorporated into the Reich two years ago," but merely "as a first stage," in expectation of a deportation "still farther to the east."

In a secret telegram of November 9, 1941, sent by Lohse to Rosenberg, it said with regard to Riga that the

On the same day, Dr. Leibbrandt reiterated in a telegram to the Reichskommissar for the Ostland, Heinrich Lohse, that "with regard to the transports of Jews into the Ostland":[739]

There is no reason of any kind to doubt that the indications of a program for renewed deportation of the Jews to the east correspond to the truth. This is incidentally confirmed by an article of October 16, 1942, in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt für die Schweiz (Israelite Weekly for Switzerland). The paper reported:[740]

On May 23, 1942, Karol Sidor, Representative of the Republic of Slovakia at the Holy See, handed a note to Secretary of State Luigi Maglione concerning the solution of the Jewish question. It was dated May 8th of the same year and was the answer to a letter of November 12, 1941, prepared by the Holy See, in which information on this subject was requested. After an explanation of the reasons for the delayed answer, the note continued:[741]

In a speech in Bad Tölz, before SS-Junkers[743] on November 23, 1942, Himmler said:[744]

On November 18, 1943, in a speech given in Krakow before SS leaders and officials of the General Gouvernement, Himmler spoke of:

On December 16, 1943, in a speech in Weimar given before the commanders of the Kriegsmarine (German navy), Himmler maintained that:[746]

On July 29, 1942, the Papal Nuncio in France, Monsignore Valerio Valeri, wrote from Vichy to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione:[747]

On September 7, 1942, the "Kommandeur no. 12" of the Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D in Kislowodsk, Ukraine, issued the following order:[749]

This decree dovetails very well with a general plan for the resettlement of the Jews and for the deportation of western Jews into the Ukraine.[750]

According to Radio Moscow, several thousand French Jews were resettled in the Ukraine. In its issue Number 71 of April 1944, the Jewish underground paper Notre Voix had the following news to report:[751]

After the evacuation of the Jewish Council of Mielec, health cost arrears in the amount of 2,260.80 Zlotys resulted. On June 22, 1942, the State Sanatorium and Nursing facility of Kobierzyn demanded this sum from the Chief of the district of Lublin. Inquiries were made, and on September 4, the SS- and Police Chief reported

The exact location, however, no one knew.[752]

If one considers the small number of deportees (69 persons), their place of origin (a location which was less than 80 km from Warsaw) as well as the fact that they had been mustered by a Special Service Unit, then this leads to the conclusion that they were skilled workers who were supposed to be employed in Sobibór as camp personnel.

Incidentally, it is known that on July 5, 1943, Himmler personally gave the following order:[755]

This instruction, directed to officials who could not have been unclear about the actual character of the Sobibór camp, was a secret matter of the Reich: for what reason should Himmler have used the expression "Durchgangslager" (transit camp)? In order to pull the wool over the eyes of his underlings - who knew all about it for a long time?

In that period, deportations of Dutch Jews to Sobibór took place: on July 2, a transport with 2,397 persons arrived, on July 9 another with 2,417.[756] That Sobibór had the function of a transit camp also emerges from the statements of several former Dutch-Jewish deportees:

Cato Polak, deported on March 10, 1943, remained in Sobibór one or two hours and was then transferred to Lublin with 30 women and 12 men. They returned home to Holland by way of Trawniki - Auschwitz - Bergen-Belsen - Theresienstadt.[757]

Bertha Jansen-Ensel and Judith Eliazar, who had arrived in Sobibór on March 10, 1943, were likewise transferred to Lublin. Both returned to their homeland via Auschwitz. Although they had alluded to gas chambers and cremations, they declared:[758]

Jules Schelvis, deported to Sobibór on June 1, 1943, was transferred to Trawniki three hours after his arrival there and returned to Holland via Auschwitz.[759]

Mirjam Penha-Blitz gave a statement that was summarized as follows:[760]

Four or five hours after arrival at the camp, the witness was deported to Lublin. Her return home occurred via Birkenau.

Sientje and Jetje Veterman, sent to Sobibór on April 6, 1943, were sorted out together with 28 other women for work and transferred to Trawniki with them. They returned to the Netherlands by way of Auschwitz-Birkenau.[761]

Elias Alex Cohen, deported to Sobibór on March 17, 1943, spent only a few hours in the camp and was sent to Lublin with 35 other Jews.[762] Sophie Verduin, deported on March 10, 1943, was transferred to Lublin after a few hours; her return home to Holland took place by way of Auschwitz-Birkenau.[763]

Jozef Wins de Heer, deported on May 11, 1943, went from Sobibór to Doruhucza. He returned home to the Netherlands by way of Lublin-Majdanek.[764]

In a well-documented book, which was published in Dutch in 1993 and was later translated into German, Jules Schelvis writes that "in Sobibor, after the arrival of transports, the fresh work forces for Dorohucza" were "selected."[765] At Dorohucza, 5 km from Trawniki, was a labor camp where peat was cut. According to Schelvis, at least 700 Dutch Jews were transferred there directly after their arrival in Sobibór, but according to him only two of them are supposed to have survived the war.[765] There is certain knowledge of 171 of these persons - 147 men and 24 women - since they sent postcards home from Dorohucza.[766]

It also happened that a portion of the Jews fit to work were sorted out from the rail cars before the train reached its final destination. This was the case for a transport that departed Vienna on June 14, 1942. After the train had arrived in Lublin, 51 Jews between 15 and 50 years of age had to get off; the remaining 949 continued their trip to the "labor camp" Sobibór, where it took an hour to unload the train. The original destination of the trip had been Izbica.[769]

It is characteristic that nearly all the Dutch Jews, who had been transferred from Sobibór to another camp, returned home by way of Auschwitz-Birkenau; instead of being liquidated as bearers of top-secret knowledge, they survived even this 'extermination camp.'

From what has been established here, it emerges that a portion of the Jews deported to the Lublin district were deported across the Bug into the Ukraine. Dutch, French, and Czech Jews reached Minsk.[770] The deportation of Polish Jews to White Russia were, according to C. Gerlach, "extremely extensive"[771] and they were "taken to Minsk by railway".[772]

A further portion of the Jews deported to the Lublin district were deported to Galicia.

A Dr. Guérin wrote:[775]

Jews from Belgium, Holland, Germany, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia arrived also in the camp of Janowski at Lemberg.[778] I. Hertz and Naftali Nacht report:[779]

On July 22, 1941, east Galicia was incorporated into the General Gouvernement; on August 1 of the same year, the district of Galicia was established.

The massacres of Jews committed by Ukrainians and SS men in July 1941 in Lemberg and other Galician towns were to a great extent retaliations for the mass murders committed by the Soviets against Ukrainians before the retreat of the Red Army between June 22 and July 2, 1941. In fact, in the eyes of the SS and the civilian population, the 'Soviet Jews' were regarded as responsible for the Communist acts of violence or at least considered to be accomplices of the perpetrators. The reports of the Einsatzgruppen furnish detailed examples regarding this. Here are some typical examples:[780]

After the discovery of Soviet torture chambers, other Jews were shot as retaliation measures. For example, after the discovery of the torture chamber in the courtroom of Tarnopol, the Germans reacted as follows:[781]

Even the massacre of (allegedly!) 33,771 Jews in Babi Yar at Kiev was represented as an act of punishment:[782]

In the entire district of Galicia in July 1941, approximately 10,000 and then up to December another 20,000 Jews are supposed to have been shot, but these figures are highly dubious. The claimed mass killings are in particular contradiction to the anti-Jewish measures of the civilian government of Galicia, which had replaced the military administration on August 1, 1941.

Barely two weeks after the convening of the civilian government on August 14, 1941, units of the security police in Lemberg, Tarnopol, and Stanislau received an order from Colonel Worm with respect to the "Jewish compulsory labor camps," which began as follows:[783]