Michael Mills wrote:If you believe that there is a complete set of preserved train schedules detailing all or even most of the transports of Jews to the three camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka during the whole period of their operation, then please post them, or at least tell us where they are.
I didn’t say there is a complete set of train records. I said that train schedules allow for a very detailed reconstruction of transports from many places to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka during 1942, which is not wrong even though train schedules are in fact incomplete and establishing the numbers requires complementary assessment of other data. What is wrong is the statement that
Michael Mills wrote:There are train schedules covering a short period at the beginning of 1943, showing trains taking Jews to the above camps, and to other destinations.
On page 468 of
Dimensionen des Völkermords, for instance, Frank Golczewski tells us that, for the “first phase” of the exterminations at Treblinka between July and December 1942, 135 transports can be traced. Golczewski points out that especially the transports from Czestochowa can be very well reconstructed on hand of special train schedules of the
Reichsbahn that were recovered after the war.
Regarding the size of transports and the resulting number of deportees, there are German documents that allow for a quantification where the transportation documents are silent or not available. Beside the mentioned Stroop Report, there is this letter transcribed in the judgment of the Düsseldorf County Court at the first Treblinka trial:
Geheim
Sehr geehrter Pg. Wolff!
Unter Bezugnahme auf unser Ferngespräch vom 16.7.1942 teile ich Ihnen folgende Meldung meiner Generaldirektion der Ostbahnen (Gedob) in Krakau zu Ihrer gefälligen Unterrichtung mit:
“Seit dem 22.7. fährt täglich ein Zug mit je 5 000 Juden von Warschau über Malkinia nach Treblinka, ausserdem zweimal wöchentlich ein Zug mit 5 000 Juden von Przemysl nach Belzec. Gedob steht in ständiger Fühlung mit dem Sicherheitsdienst in Krakau. Dieser ist damit einverstanden, dass die Transporte von Warschau über Lublin nach Sobibor (bei Lublin) so lange ruhen, wie die Umbauarbeiten auf dieser Strecke diese Transporte unmöglich machen (ungefähr Oktober 1942)”
Die Züge wurden mit dem Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei im Generalgouvernement vereinbart. SS- und Polizeiführer des Distrikts Lublin, SS-Brigadeführer Globocnik, ist verständigt.
Heil Hitler!
Ihr ergebener
gez. Ganzenmüller
My translation:
Secret
Dear Party Comrade Wolff!
With reference to our phone conversation on 16.7.1942 I hereby transcribe the following report of our Gerneral Direction of Eastern Railways (Gedob) in Cracow for your information:
“Since 22.7. a train with 5 000 Jews goes daily from Warsaw via Malkinia to Treblinka. Furthermore there is a train with 5 000 Jews going from Przemysl to Belzec twice a week. Gedob is constantly in touch with the security service in Cracow, who agrees that the transports from Warsaw via Lublin to Sobibor (near Lublin) rest as long as the conversion works on this line make transports impossible (until October 1942)”
The trains are agreed with the commander of the Security Police in the General Government. The Head of SS and Police for the Lublin district, SS-Brigadeführer Globocnik, has been informed.
Heil Hitler!
Your truly
signed Ganzenmüller
At the pace described in Ganzenmüller’s letter to Wolff, more than 800,000 Jews would have been transported to Treblinka until the end of 1942. This was not so because on the one hand there were also transports from other districts such as Radom and Czestochowa, which made for the arrival of up to three transports a day at Treblinka, while on the other hand there was an interruption or slowing down of the killing process for several weeks while new gas chambers were built. Hence the totals recorded by Höfle at the end of the year 1942 were somewhat different from what would have resulted from a steady flow of transports at the pace mentioned in Ganzenmüller’s letter to Wolff:
13/15. OLQ de OMQ 1005 83 234 250
State Secret!
To the Senior Commander of the Security Police [and the Security Service], for the attention of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer HEIM, CRACOW.
Subject: fortnightly report Einsatz REINHART.
Reference: radio telegram therefrom.
recorded arrivals until December 31, 42,
L [Lublin] 12,761,
B [Belzec] 0,
S [Sobibor] 515,
T [Treblinka] 10 335 [,]
together 23 611
sum total…[as per] December 31, 42,
L 24 733,
B 434 508,
S 101 370,
T 71 355, read: 713 555]
together 1 274 166
SS and Police Leader Lublin, HOFLE, Sturmbannfuhrer
Michael Mills wrote:The tables published by Arad in his book on the three camps were not the result of research into primary source by him. He derived the data from the work of other historians, in particular Tatiana Berenstein. The sources used by those authors are not made clear in every case.
This is what Arad himself tells us about his sources:
The exact number of Jews who were deported to the Operation Reinhard death camps is difficult to determine because of the prevailing conditions at the time and the method employed by the Nazi extermination machine in expelling the victims to BeIzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The number of Jews who lived in the towns and townships of Poland before the war is known from the population census carried out there in 1931. Some demographic changes took place during the years 1931-1939, but these did not basically alter the number of Jews living there on the eve of the German occupation.
Substantial demographic changes did occur during the war, during the years 1939-1942, until the onset of the deportations to the death camps. In these years, tens of thousands of Jews escaped from one place to seek refuge in another. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled and resettled, sent to labor camps, or concentrated in larger ghettos. Thousands of Jews were murdered in shooting Aktionen in the vicinity of their homes-before, during, and after the deportations to the death camps. Thus, on the eve of the expulsions, there were many small localities in which Jews no longer lived and other localities in which the number of Jews was much higher than before the war.
The deportation method, as carried out by the German authorities in the General Government, was en masse, without lists of names or even exact numbers. Usually ghettos were totally liquidated, and only the killing capacity of the camps and the volume of the trains dictated the number of people who were deported. In places where some Jews were temporarily left behind, the Germans counted the few who remained, while all the others were pushed into the trains.
Documents of the German railway authorities, which were found after the war, provided some data on the number of trains and freight cars. If we take into account that each fully packed freight car carried 100-150 people, we can arrive at an approximate indication of the number of Jews in each transport.
Another source of information was the census of the ghetto inhabitants carried out by the Judenrats in some of these places. A census of this type was usually undertaken by order of the German authorities for purposes of forced-labor requests or in preparation for the deportations. Sometimes the Judenrats also took a census for their own purposes, for example, for food rationing or housing problems.
Documents containing these data and sometimes even the number of Jews who were deported, as collected by the Judenrat, were found after the war. Sometimes they were mentioned in diaries written by ghetto inmates and left behind.
Numerous memoirs written by survivors, as well as the memorial books (Yizkor books), contain important data about the deportations, including, dates and the number of deported. Testimonies by survivors, statements by local people who witnessed the deportations, and evidence given by members of the German administration at the war-crimes trials serve as significant sources of information.
Together, all these documents and sources enable us to arrive at an estimation that comes very close to the actual figures and dates of the deportations to the Operation Reinhard death camps.
An extremely valuable research study undertaken to establish the timetable and number of deported Jews from the General Government and to which death camp they were sent was carried out by Tatiana Berenstein and published in Poland in the Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute), Warsaw, No. 3/1952, No. 21/1957, No. 3/1959, No. 59/1966, No. 61/1967. Another source is the "Luach Hashoa (Holocaust Calendar) of Polish Jewry" prepared by Rabbi Israel Schepansky and published by "Or Harnizrach," New York, 1974. A most important and more up-to-date source is the Pinkas Hakehillot (Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities), Poland, Vol. 11, Eastern Galicia, and Vol. III, Western Galicia, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, in 1980 and 1984. The following tables of the deportations are based on all the aforementioned primary sources and research studies.
Source of quote:
http://holocaust-info.dk/statistics/info.htm
It would be interesting to have a look at Tatiana Berenstein’s listing of her sources, which Michael Mills seems to have available.
Michael Mills wrote:The item of data most likely to be accurate is the dates of the deportations from the various localities listed. The source of that data is probably the recollection of survivors, and also reports by the Polish underground, which was observing what was going on, and also apparently got information from the Ukrainian guards.
Plus correspondence among Nazi officials such as cited above, plus train schedules and transportation documents where such could be recovered.
EXCERPTS FROM JUDGMENTS (URTEILSBEGRUNDUNG) Passed on September 3, 1965 in the trial of Kurt Franz and nine others at the court of Assizes in Dusseldorf (First Treblinka Trial) (AZ-LG Dusseldorf: II 931638, p. 49 ff.), and the trial of Franz Stangl at the court of Assizes at Dusseldorf (Second Treblinka Trial) on December 22, 1970 (pp. 111 ff.,AZ-LG Dusseldorf, XI-148/69 S.) Number of Persons Killed at the Treblinka Extermination Camp: ------------------------------------------------------------- At least 700,000 persons, predominantly Jews, but also a number of Gypsies, were killed at the Treblinka extermination camp. These findings are based on the expert opinion submitted to the Court of Assizes by Dr. Helmut Kraunsnick, director of the Institute for Contemporary History (Institute fur Zeitgeschichte) in Munich. in formulating his opinion, Dr. Kraunsnick consulted all the German and foreign archival material accessible to him and customarily studied in historical research. Among the documents he examined were the following: (1) The so-called Stroop report, a report by SS Brigadefuhrer [Brigadier] Jurgen Stroop, dealing with the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. This report consists of three parts: namely, an introduction, a compilation of daily reports and a collection of photographs. (2) The record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. (3) The official transportation documents (train schedules, telegrams, and train inventories) relevant to the transports to Treblinka. The latter documents, of which only a part were recovered after the war, were the subject of the trial and were made available to Dr. Krausnick by the Court of Assizes. Dr. Krausnick's report includes the following information: According to the Stroop report a total of approximately 310,000 Jews were transported in freight trains from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka during the period from July 22, 1942 to October 3, 1942. Approximately another 19,000 Jews made the same journey during the period from January, 1943 to the middle of May, 1943. During the period from August 21, 1942 to August 23, 1943, additional transports of Jews arrived at the Treblinka extermination camp, likewise by freight train, from other Polish cities, including Kielce, Miedzyrec, Lukow, Wloszczowa, Sedzizzow, Czestochowa, Szydlowiec, Lochow, Kozienice, Bialystok, Tomaszow, Grodno and Radom. Other Jews, who lived in the vicinity of Treblinka, arrived at Treblinka in horse-drawn wagons and in trucks, as did Gypsies, including some from countries other than Poland. In addition, Jews from Germany and from other European countries, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece were transported to Treblinka, predominantly is passenger trains. It has not been possible, of course, to establish the exact number of people transported to Treblinka in this fashion, because only a part of the transportation documents, particularly those relevant to the railroad transports, are available. Still, assuming that each of the trains consisted of an average of 60 cars, with each freight car holding an average total of 100 persons and each passenger car an average total of 50 (i.e., that each freight train might have carried an approximate total of 6,000, and each passenger train an approximate total of 3,000 Jews to Treblinka) the total number of people transported to Treblinka in freight trains and passenger trains might be estimated at approximately 271,000. This total would not include the 329,000 from Warsaw. Actually, however, these figures in many instances were much larger than the ones cited above. Besides, many additional thousands of Jews - and also Gypsies - arrived in Treblinka in horse-drawn wagons and on trucks. Accordingly, it must be assumed that that the total number of Jews from Warsaw, from other parts of Poland, from Germany and from other European countries, who were taken to Treblinka, plus the total of at least 1,000 Gypsies who shared the safe fate, amounted to far more than 700,000, even if one considers that several thousands of people were subsequently moved from Treblinka to other camps and that several hundred inmates succeeded in escaping from the camp, especially during the revolt of August 2, 1943. In view of the foregoing, it would be scientifically admissible to estimate the total number of persons killed in Treblinka at a minimum of 700,000. The court of Assizes sees no reason to question the opinion of this expert, who is known in the scholarly world for his studies on the National Socialist persecution of the Jews.
The expert opinion he has submitted is detailed, thorough, and therefore convincing.
In the fall of 1969 another expert, Dr. Scheffler, submitted for the second Treblinka trial an opinion which was based on more recent research, estimating the total number of victims at about 900,000.
Source of quote:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... eblinka.01
An accurate calculation of the number of victims is at present impossible. It will be remembered that Treblinka ceased its activities in the autumn of 1943, so that the German authorities had enough time to wipe out the traces of their crimes. The most reliable method of counting the number of victims is by counting the number of train-loads. The figures based on the dimensions of the gas chambers give no guarantee whatever of accuracy, as we do not know, firstly, how often the gas-chambers were used, and, secondly, the number of people who, on an average, were gassed at any one time. In establishing the number of train-loads, the commission based its findings on the evidence given by the witnesses, laying special stress on the statements of the railway workers and on the railway records from Treblinka station, which are in the possession of the commission of enquiry.
The most active period seems to have been from August to the middle of December, 1942. During that time we may assume one daily train-load as unquestionable according to the evidence of the railway-workers. Indeed four witnesses put the figure at two per day. After that, from the middle of January to the middle of May, 1943, the average was probably one a week. Some of the witnesses put the figure at three.
The average number of wagons in a transport was 50 through sometimes, as the railway records showed, it was as many as 58.
The total number of wagon-loads of victimls from August 1, 1942, to May 15, 1943, may be taken, with some certainty, to have been 7,550.
In the later period, from the railway records; the list of the wagons for August 17, 1943; a telegram of August 18, 1943; and a document entitled Fahrplanordnung Nr. 290 sent from Treblinka station by the Reichsbahndirektion Königsberg, the number of train-loads could be established quite accurately.
In the above-mentioned Fahrplanordnung we read among ather things: Zur Abbeförderung von Aussledlern verkehren folgende Sonderzüge von Bialystok nach Malkinia. Ziel Treblinka, from which it may be concluded that after the revolt the following train-loads, were brought in: on Aug. 27, 1943, 41 wagons; on Aug. 19, 35 wagons; on Aug. 21, two transports of 38 wagons each; on Aug. 22, two transports of 39 wagons each; and on Aug. 23, one transport of 38 wagons; i. e. a total of 266 wagons.
As an average number of persons per wagon we may take 100 (the majority of witnesses deposed that it was more than 150).
According to this calculation the number of victims murdered at Treblinka amounts to at least 731,600. Taking into consideration the great caution with which the investigators assessed the number of train-loads and the average number of persons per wagon, this must be accepted as probable, that in actual fact the number of victims was even larger1. (1It should be pointed out that from pertinent documents such as telegrams, time-tables and way-bills it appears absolutely certain that more than two thousand wagon-loads of Jews were brought to Treblinka; yet these documents constituted but a small part of all the railway documentary evidence, the greater part of which is lost.)
Source: German Crimes in Poland. Volume I. Published by the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Warsaw, 1946
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpoltreb1.htm
Michael Mills wrote:The numbers deported is less likely to be accurate, except in cases where a German record has survived, eg the Stroop Report giving the numbers deported from the Warsaw Ghetto. In most cases, the numbers given by the sources used by Arad must have been estimates, probably by observers such as the Polish underground. Some of the estimates may have been quite accurate, others less so. Experience shows that estimates made of large numbers of people, eg of participants in a street march, can vary enormously form one observer to another, unless they are counted one by one.
Where data are based on eyewitness evidence, the witnesses seem to have been rather good observers, judging by the coincidence of numbers computed on the basis of their observation and those resulting from the above cited documentary evidence and the mentioned assessments by Krausnick, Scheffler and the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, which were based solely on documentary evidence.
Michael Mills wrote:The data on the destinations of the transports is probably conjectural in many cases. Observers might see Jews being rounded up in a particular locality and despatched on a train, but they would not necessarily know where the train was going.
If the trains came back empty soon thereafter, as they did, the witnesses would at least have known that the destination was not some far-away place in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union but a place not too far away from the site of loading. Polish railway men and anyone who had contact with them would in any case know about the destinations. The existence of the murder factory at Belzec, for instance, was known in Cracow through the accounts of Polish railway workers since June 1942 (Golczewski, as above).
Michael Mills wrote:In some cases, agents of the Polish underground followed transports, especially those leaving Warsaw, and observed where they ended up. However, even then the agents sometimes got it wrong, as for example in the report of the "delayed-action gas" that is apparently a delousing procedure observed in a transit camp wrongly identified as Treblinka II, the extermination camp.
Hardly in a transit camp, for there is no evidence whatsoever to there having been such a transit camp. What those agents most probably saw was a delousing procedure at the nearby Treblinka I labor camp for non-Jewish Poles, where according to Golczewki a total of 10,000 people were interned at one or the other time since 1941.
Michael Mills wrote:It is entirely possible, even likely, that many of the transports observed leaving particular destinations on particular dates and presumed to have gone to one of the three camps did not in fact end up there but went to other destinations.
It is in fact highly unlikely, as all transportation documents that could be recovered as well as the above cited correspondence among Nazi officials mention Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka as
final destinations and there is no evidence to any transports bound in the direction of these camps having gone anywhere else.
Michael Mills wrote:An example is the 19 transports from the Netherlands in the first half of 1943 that are presumed to have gone to Sobibor. German records show the destination of those transports as Chelm, a town on the Bug river, on the eastern border of the Generalgouvernement with Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Now, a number of Dutch Jews did end up in Sobibor, and were among the surviving escapees. At the time they arrived at Sobibor, the camp was being converted into a centre for processing captured Soviet ammunition, and it is likely that they were required as a work-force, being preferred to Polish Jews as they could no so easily escape, not knowing the language or the country.
Golczewski speaks of 34,000 Jews from the Netherlands the transports of whom to Sobibor can be traced individually. In the chapter on the Netherlands of
Dimensionen des Völkermords, Gerhard Hirschfeld writes the following (page 153):
Am 5. März traf der erste Transport mit 1105 Menschen aus Westerbork nach dreitägiger Bahnfahrt in Sobibór ein. Es fand keine Selektion statt und die ankommenden wurden mit nur wenigen Ausnahmen noch am gleichen Tag ermordet. Bis zum Juli 1943 kamen noch weitere 18 Züge mit insgesamt 33 208 Juden dort an, von denen nur 19 die unbeschreibliche Realität des Lagers überlebten. Es sind vor allem die Zeugnisse dieser 19 Überlebenden, 16 Frauen und dreier Männer, die Auskunft über den Verbleib der Transporte nach Sobibór geben. Mit Ausnahme von zwei Deportationen (10. und 17. März) verließen die Züge Westerbork stets an einem Dienstag und erreichten Sobibór an dem darauffolgenden Freitag. Der Ankunftstag war für die überwiegende Mehrzahl der Deportierten auch ihr Sterbetag.
My translation:
On 5 March the first transport with 1 105 people arrived at Sobibór after a three day trip from Westerbork. There was no selection, and the arrivals were with a few exceptions murdered on the same day. Until July 1943 there arrived at this place another 18 trains with a total of 33 208 Jews, of whom only 19 survived the indescribable reality of the camp. The testimonies of these 19 survivors, 16 women and three men, are the main source of information about the fate of these transports to Sobibór. Except for two deportations (10 and 17 March) the trains always left Westerbork on a Tuesday and reached Sobibór the next Friday. The day of arrival was also the day of their death for the overwhelming majority of deportees.
Hirschfeld lists the following transports to Sobibór from the Netherlands in the attachment to his study:
Date of transport; transit camp; number of deportees; destination
2.3.1943; Westerbork; 1,105; Sobibór
10.3.1943; Westerbork; 1,105; Sobibór
17.3.1943; Westerbork; 964; Sobibór
23.3.1943; Westerbork; 1,250; Sobibór
30.3.1943; Westerbork; 1,255; Sobibór
6.4.1943; Westerbork; 2,020; Sobibór
13.4.1943; Westerbork; 1,204; Sobibór
20.4.1943; Westerbork; 1,166; Sobibór
27.4.1943; Westerbork; 1,204; Sobibór
4.5.1943; Westerbork; 1,187; Sobibór
11.5.1943; Westerbork; 1,446; Sobibór
18.5.1943; Westerbork; 2,511; Sobibór
25.5.1943; Westerbork; 2,862; Sobibór
1.6.1943; Westerbork; 3,006; Sobibór
8.6.1943; Westerbork; 3,017; Sobibór
29.6.1943; Westerbork; 2,397; Sobibór
6.7.1943; Westerbork; 2,417; Sobibór
13.7.1943; Westerbork; 1,988; Sobibór
20.7.1943; Westerbork; 2,209; Sobibór
In view of the above, I would like to see evidence that the trains were officially bound for Chelm and that any Dutch Jews on them ended up
anywhere else than at Sobibór. Were any survivors from those transports other than the 19 mentioned by Hirschfeld ever identified?
Michael Mills wrote:However, it is quite possible that part of the deportees from the Netherlands continued their journey into the Ukraine, and that their destination and fate remain unknown.
Theoretical possibilities are one thing, possibilities plausible under the circumstances and evidence are another.
Michael Mills wrote:Certainly contemporary reports tell of Jews from the West arriving in Ukraine.
What exactly do those contemporary reports tell? What data – if any – do they contain about the origin and number of the deportees?