Excavators at Treblinka

[Earldor]

"In the immediate vicinity of the camp" obviously does not mean "inside the camp".

It indicates that the gigantic ditches were being dug next to the camp, not in it.

Not necessarily, as I said in my previous reply, the quote can refer to the Lager II or the extermination camp in general (as you seem to interpret it). As you can see from the link I provided in the previous message, the largest of the identified mass graves in Belzec is a monstrous one (65-70m x 30m x - 8m x 4m deep) and there are several smaller but still large ones in the area as well...

Perhaps Earldor and/or Xcalibur can tell us the date of the testimony that they are quoting.

I would think that the date is the one mentioned in the source in Shermer's book, ZSL Ludwigsburg 1945. I expect that it is originally from Reder's testimony 1945.

I would give greater credence to a document published by the historian Longerich than to something briefly mentioned by the publicist Sherman.

No surprise there. The onus to prove this, however, is on you.
So far, I haven't seen proof, just bickering on the wording of this particular snippet, which is vital to your theory and nothing on the rest of Reder's story which clashes radically with your view.

Somehow you keep on hammering this linguistic and semantic point in and keep avoiding the other evidence pointing to the fact that Reder was in Belzec extermination camp.

Can you tell us if Longerich speaks Polish? I know for a fact that Tregenza does.

It seems to me that Reder, in his original testimony, simply said that he was employed as a mechanic to service the engine of an excavator that was digging ditches next to the camp.

Personally, I see only an attempt to discredit a witness based on the meaning of a single sentence which hasn't been clarified yet.

I note that Earldor asks me for a bit more context for the extract that I have quoted from Reder's testimony of 29 December 1945, but does not make the same demand in respect of the very brief snippet from Sherman's book quoted by Xcalibur.

Well, would you believe that after Xcalibur reminded me that Shermer's book has this quote, I could simply check my copy.

Why am I not surprised that you won't give us the full context of Reder's sentence?

[Earldor]

Thanks Earldor, that is the source.

You're quite welcome.

[giles120]

Please see attached diagram of Belzec camp. This was drawn following the most recent excavations and archaeological digs undertaken by ARC holocaust historians at the site of the former death camp in 2002.

Note number 15(experimental graves, February/March 1942) and number 16(mass graves, post March 1942). Both are clearly within the camp perimeter(camouflaged barbed wire fence). According to Yad Vashem.....

"Anti-tank trenches on the camp premises were given a new function: mass graves for the Jews who would be murdered there."

Could number 15 in the diagram be the anti tank ditches?

Like Sobibor and Treblinka, only a very select few could move between upper and lower camps(presumably in an attempt to try and keep the secret!!!), and the upper camp could not be seen from the lower camp because of the camouflaged barbed wire fence.

Reder has provided a number of descriptions of Belzec's gas chambers.
He lived with 500 Jewish workers in one of the two barracks reserved for the Sonderkommando. Please note location of barracks(number 12 and 13), and their close proximity to the gas chambers and burial pits. In order to provide a description of the gas chambers, would Reder not have had to work in the upper camp?

One may like to argue that he heard about the gas chambers second hand, and his testimony cannot be relied on. Why? How many survived to tell the story of Belzec death camp(two confirmed. There were a small number of escapes during the early days of the death camp's operation when security was very weak, but I don't think that any of these other survivors lived to the end of the war). Reder was able to provide ample evidence of the machinery of death and the operation of the camp post war. He may have only repaired and serviced the excavator's engine(seems very feasible as he was selected for life because of his skill as a mechanic), or he may have operated the excavator. Conflicting evidence only confirms that he was in some way connected to the excavator/s operating in the camp.

Is there any question as to Reder's arrival time at the camp on 17th August 1942? The Belzec labour camp was liquidated in October 1940. As mentioned by another contributor, the labour camp and the death camp did not co-exist. Although conditions were apparently awful at Belzec and its labour subcamps, there was not mass extermination by gassing. I doubt a survivor would/could forget the day that they arrived at a death camp. Reder cannot have mistaken the year 1940 for 1942!

Therefore if we accept Reder's arrival time(and why should we doubt it), he was an inmate at Belzec death camp. As Earldor has noted, there was an Irmann on the Belzec death camp staff(Fritz), and he was mentioned in Reder's testimony as serving in the reception area(lower camp) and in the Lazarett. Reder gives quite an depth description of this man. So, was Reder one of the select few who were permitted limited movement between lower and upper camp, or did Irmann spend time in the upper camp. Either way, Reder must have been exposed to this man to know so much about him.

Irmann was shot and killed by Heinrich Gley also on the death camp staff. Was there a different Irmann serving at Belzec labour camp or one of its subcamps in 1940?

I cannot see evidence pointing any other way than to support the fact that Reder was at the Belzec death camp.

Thanks.

[michael mills]

Giles,

I consider maps such as the one appended to your post to have a spurious exactitude, in that they are in reality inexact reconstructions based on imprecise descriptions. They are not based on actual German plans or aerial photographs of the camp during its operative period.

Archeological investigations have been able to locate graves with human remains, but they have not been able to locate any remains of the gas chambers or other key buildings for example.

For that reason it is not really possible to say for sure which building was near what other building, or what could be seen from where.

The whole discussion has been about whether Reder was ivolved in the digging of mass graves. In his testimony which I cited (it was an official German translation of a Polish interrogation in December 1945, made for use by German courts), he stated that he worked for two months servicing an excavator that was digging gigantic ditches; but the crucial point is that he stated that the ditches were being dug in the immediate vicinity of the camp (ie not inside it), and he does not say that the ditches were for burying bodies, which he would hardly have neglected to point out if that were the case.

The anti-tank ditches were excavated in 1940 and early 1941. Therefore, they were already there when the Belzec camp was transformed into a killing centre. It may well be that the existing ditches were used for burying the bodies, as Eichmann claimed and Yad Vashem confirms; that would make sense.

But if that was the case, then at the time the ditches were being dug, they were not being used for burying bodies, which may be the reason why Reder does not mention burials.

In the testimony quoted by me, Reder says that he was employed for two months servicing the excavator, and then for a further two months working as a bricklayer on the camp kitchen, ie four months in total. Perhaps he changed occupations after the excavation work had been completed.

In that same testimony, he also claimed to have been many times at the gas-chambers when they were opened. For that to have been the case, he would have had to have been a member of the Sonderkommando, and to have been kept a prisoner under guard in the Totenlager.

However, that conflicts with his claim that for four months he was doing other things, servicing the excavator and helping to build the camp kitchen.

Furthermore, if he was servicing the excavator that was in operation near the camp, it means that he was working outside the camp, something that would not have been permitted to a member of the Sonderkommando working on corpse disposal near the gas chambers.

Accordingly, I tend to the view that his claim of having witnessed the operation of the gas chambers, not once but several times, is untrue, and based on accounts obtained from other sources.

[simsalabim]

Mr Mills wrote:

I consider maps such as the one appended to your post to have a spurious exactitude, in that they are in reality inexact reconstructions based on imprecise descriptions. They are not based on actual German plans or aerial photographs of the camp during its operative period.

Archeological investigations have been able to locate graves with human remains, but they have not been able to locate any remains of the gas chambers or other key buildings for example.

For that reason it is not really possible to say for sure which building was near what other building, or what could be seen from where.

Perhaps this link might clarify matters:

http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/maps.html

[giles120]

As regards the map posted, agreed. The location of certain buildings/structures cannot be confimed even to this day. So little is known/written about Belzec when compared with Sobibor and Treblinka.
I have heard it described as the most secret of the secret camps(ie of the three listed above).

I assume the map was designed after research was undertaken at the site and consultation was made with previous drawings by survivors, SS and aerial photography by the Luftwaffe. Once again a problem as there does not seem to be any reconnaissance photos taken at the time of operation of the camp, only a couple of years after and a couple of years before. Furthermore, very little was revealed about the camp prior to the Belzec trials in August 1963, twenty years after the closure of the camp. Little wonder that testimonies were challenged, and questions as to their accuracy asked.

Rudolf Reder may have forgotten the exact day he arrived at Belzec, maybe even the month, but surely not the year!!! He said he arrived in August 1942 and spent 4 months in the camp. He did not say that he arrived in 1940 and spent 4 months in the camp.

The statement from Reder's testimony citing Jirman in some detail. Can we determine that there was a Jirman at Belzec labour camp? If no then either Reder confuded Jirman with another man(possible but doubtful) or Reder must have been at Belzec death camp. How else would he be able to provide such a description of this man? Reder placed Jirman at the Lazarett. How did Reder know that Jirman worked at the Lazarett? Do we know the location of the Lazarett, was it in the upper camp? If yes, then Reder may well have seen this man. If no then was Reder one of the very select few allowed out of the upper camp? He worked as a mechanic, but was his job limited to the excavators, or did he also maintain the SS transport(trucks, cars)?

The issues as to whether Reder operated/did not operate the excavator inside/outside the camp permimeter. If Reder worked in some capacity with the excavator for two months(August-September 1942) was it not possible for the boundaries of the camp to move either after Reder has ceased any work with the excavator or after he had escaped? If he was working outside the perimeter fence during August-September 1942, was it not possible for fences to be moved to allow the anti tank ditches to move within the perimeter of the camp grounds? The peak period of "Jewish resettlement" was from July-October 1942, and presumably at this time the camp was expanding to accomodate the need for burials(corpse burning did not commence until November 1942). Reder escaped the camp(I agree that the circumsatnces of his escape are very questionable). in November 1942.

The SS garrison left the death camp just days after its final liquidation on June 30th 1943. Yad Vashem support the view that anti tank ditches were transformed into mass graves for burial. Was the original purpose of the anti tank ditches made redundant, and a decision made to use these prepared ditches for burial grounds? Were there anti tank ditches at Sobibor and Treblinka? There was certainly a minefield surronding Sobibor.

As to the idea of corroboration of Reder's testimony that he was at Belzec death camp.....who can corroborate it? How many survived to tell the tale? I am sure that even Auschwitz survivors could not corroborate the fact that certain individuals were at the camp. As you know, many more survived Auschwitz than all the survivors of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka put together. If there is difficulty corroborating whereabouts of individuals, one cannot automatically conclude that they were not where they said they were at a given time. I have doubts about the circumstances of Reder's escape, but what alternatives can we offer? We simply do not know the answer.

Xcalibur quotes from his source;"I operated a machine which dug the earth out of pits which served as graves for those gassed."

So, Reder firstly admits operating the excavator and also provides detail of what the excavator was used for. Evidence can only be deemed reliable if we have multiple examples of primary evidence which can be compared against each other to establish common ground. We do not have that here. We have examples of evidence provided by Reder many years after the event. Can we prove beyond any doubt that his evidence is primary? No. What we are left with is historical information which is the absence of anything else is the best we have. I can understand the 'honoury SS' staff wishing to muddy the historical detail in order to put the blame on their superiors or/and limit their own involvement in the extermination process, but what benefit would Reder derive from saying that he saw the gas chambers when he did not? I am sure an examination of testimony provided by Lorenz Hackenholt, Karl Schluch who worked in the gas chambers may help our analysis of Reder's statements regarding the gas chambers, but did they give testimony?

If Reder worked with the burial detail(either servicing or operating) then he would be a member of the Sonderkommando, and sleep in one of the two barracks in the upper camp. I agree that if he worked in this capacity it is highly unlikely if not impossible that he would be allowed into the lower camp. He would have been shot/gassed when the SS selected new Sonerkommando members. When you say the camp kitchen, was this the SS/Ukrainian kitchen or the kitchen that served the inmates? As the Sonderkommando were isolated from the lower camp, they slept and ate seperately. Was there a kitchen in the upper camp(extermination area)? There were apparently 500 Sonderkommando in the upper camp. Would it be practical to fetch food from the lower camp and deliver it to the upper camp?

Thanks.

[michael mills]

Giles,

Reder's account can be checked against information from other sources.

For example, in regard to Irrmann, is there information from any source other than Reder himself?

This is the information given about Irrmann in the page linked by Earldor.

JIRMANN, Fritz SS-Oberscharführer
?/?/? - ?/09/1942

BACKGROUND:
Unknown.

SERVICE AT BELZEC:
According to Franciszek Piper (member of the editorial staff of 2nd edition of Reder's testimony) Jirmann served at the reception area and in the Lazarett. Apart from this he was responsible for training and discipline among the Ukrainian crew (Trawnikis).

Rudolf Reder stated:
...The sick, the old and the small children, all the ones who could not walk on their own, were placed on stretchers and set down at the edge of enormous dug graves. Gestapo-man Irrman shot them there, and then pushed them into the grave with the rifle butt. This same Irrman, a specialist in finishing off old people and small children, a tall Gestapo-man, a handsome dark-haired man with a normal facial expression, lived, like the others, in Belzec next to the station, in a little house, all by himself and, like the others, with no family or woman.
He appeared in the camp early in the morning, spent the whole day there, and took delivery of the death transports. As soon as the victims were unloaded, they were assembled in the yard, surrounded by armed askars, and here Irrman gave a speech. There was a deathly silence. He stood close to the crowd. Everyone wanted to hear; hope dawned suddenly in us: If they are speaking to us, perhaps we're going to live, perhaps there will be some sort of work, perhaps after all. ... Irrman spoke very loudly and distinctly: "lhr gehts jetzt baden, nachher werdet ihr zur Arbeit geschickt" (Now you are going for a bath, and afterwards you will be sent to work). That was all. Everybody cheered up and was happy that they were going to work after all. They applauded. I remember his words repeated day in and day out, usually three times a day, repeated for the four months I was there. It was a moment of hope and delusion. For an instant, the people breathed easy. There was total calm. The whole crowd moved on in silence, the men straight through the yard to a building on which it was written in large letters: "Bade und lnhalationsräume" (Baths and Inhalation Rooms). The women went some twenty meters further to a large barrack, thirty meters by fifteen. The women and girls had their hair shaved off in that barracks. They entered, not knowing why they had been led there. The calm and silence lasted a moment longer. Later on I saw that only a few minutes later, when they were given wooden stools and lined up across the barracks, when they were ordered to sit, and eight Jewish barbers, robots silent as the grave, approached them to shave their hair down to the scalp with clippers, the awareness of the whole truth hit them at that instant, and none of them and none of the man on the way to the chambers could have doubts any longer. ... The SS-men ordered the orchestra to play the tune "Es geht alles voriiber, es geht alles verbei" and "Drei Lilien, kommt ein Reiter gefahren, bricht der Lilien". They played on violins, flutes and an accordion. This went on for some time. Afterwards they stood the president of the Zamosc Judenrat against a wall and beat him with lead-tipped canes, mostly about the head and face, until the blood flowed. Irrman, the fat Gestapo-man Schwarz, Schmidt, and several askars carried out the torture. They ordered their victim to dance and jump to their blows and the music. After several hours, they brought him a quarter-loaf of bread and forced him with beatings to eat it. He stood there with the blood trickling down, indifferent, serious, and I didn't hear a single moan. This man's tribulations continued for seven hours. The SS-men stood laughing: "Das ist eine höhere Person, Präsident des Judenrates" (This is a dignitary, the head of the Judenrat), they called out with loud, cruel bravado. Not until 6 p.m. did the Gestapo-man Schmidt push him along to the edge of the grave, shoot him in the head, and kick him onto the heap of gassed corpses. ... Aside from him, Gestapo-men - four other bandits - ran things; they supervised and directed the whole slaughterhouse. It is hard to imagine worse thugs. One of them was Fritz Irrman, a man of about thirty, a Stabscharführer, the camp quarter­master and a specialist at shooting children and old people. He committed every cruelty with stony calm, he behaved inscrutably and silently, every day he told the doomed ones they were going to the baths and then to work. ...

FATE:
Shot and killed by Gley in an accident in September 1942 or March 1943. An incident with two Ukrainian guards in the dark.

As can be seen, not all that much is known about Irrmann, apart from Reder's rather lurid and over-dramatised description, which repeats itself in a rather curious way.

What is Piper's source for the statements that Irrmann served in the reception area and Lazarett, and was responsible for training and discipline of the Ukrainian crew? Is it a source independent of Reder? Without access to the second edition of Reder's memoirs, apparently edited by Piper, I have no way of knowing what Piper's source is.

What is the source for the claim that Irrmann was shot by Gley? Did Gley (who was one of those put on trial) confirm that during interrogation? If so, why did Gley not know whether the shooting, which surely would have remained in his mind (shooting lots of Jews is one thing, shooting a comrade quite another) occurred in September 1942 or March 1943?

In the absence of any other information about Irrmann, it seems to me entirely possible that he was stationed at the Belzec camp during the period when it operated as a labour camp, as the headquarters for the gigantic anti-tank ditch that was being constructed just outside Belzec village, and that that is where Reder came across him.

Reder's lurid description of Irrmann's activities could be something he borrowed from the testimony of other survivors. For example, the speech that Irrmann supposedly gave to the arriving Jews sounds to me exactly like an account given by a survivor of one of the other camps (either Sobibor or Treblinka) about a German staff-member who dressed up in a white coat and gave a similar speech.

What is the date of the text by Reder quoted above? Does it come from his earliest testimony about Belzec, or does it come from a later version of his account? If the latter, then he would have had time to read accounts by genuine survivors of Sobibor and Treblinka and incorporate details from them into his own account.

In the section on Reinhold Feix, a description by Reder is also quoted. From the testimony of other German camp staff members, Feix is known to have served at Belzec camp during the extermination period in 1942. However, there seems to me no reason why he could not have been serving there earlier, during the period when it was a labour camp. No details of his background are given, except the description by Reder.

[David Thompson]

There's some more information out on the internet about Fritz Irrmann or Jirmann, but not much. According to pp. 2-3 of Michael Tregenza's essay The ‘Disappearance’ of SS-Hauptscharfuhrer Lorenz Hackenholt: A Report on the 1959-63 West German Police Search for Lorenz Hackenholt, the Gas Chamber Expert of the Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps, available on-line at:

http://www.mazal.org/archive/documents/ ... enza02.htm

Fritz Irmann had served at KL Buchenwald and was one of 10 SS NCOs interviewed by Viktor Brack, the head of Hauptamt II (Main Office II) of the Fuhrer's Chancellery, in Nov 1939 in connection with Brack's recruiting efforts for Aktion T-4.

There is also an essay, in what I took to be Norwegian, by Torben Jørgensen, titled "Aktion Reinhardt" at:

http://historie-nu.dk/aktion%20reinhardt.pdf

Jørgensen cites to the "Afhøring af Heinrich Gley, den 7. januar 1963: ZSL, AR-Z 252/59, bd. IX, p. 1699" for this statement:

Såle-des siger Heinrich Gley, der efter at have dræbt Fritz Jirmann ved et vådeskud fik til opgave at medvirke ved kremeringerne i Belzéc gennem fem måneder:

[...] det handlede ved forbrændingen af de genopgravede lig om et menneskeligt, æstetisk og lugtmæssigt så af-skyeligt forehavende, at fantasien hos de mennesker, der i dag er vant til at leve under borgerlige forhold, næppe rækker til at fatte denne gru.

He also says:

Om aftenen rejste Fritz Jirmann sig pludselig, og befalede den relativt nytilkomne Heinrich Gley, uden nærmere forklaring, atkomme med:

Det var bælgmørkt derude, og kun jeg havde en lomme-lygte. Skråt over for kommandanturen, i en lille skov, lå en bunker, som blev brugt som arrest for Hiwi’erne [ukrai-nerne, TJ]. Vi gik begge til arresten. Omkring 5 til 6 meter fra arresten udbad Jirmann sig min lommelygte. På vejen
til arresten udvekslede vi ikke et ord. Jeg havde ikke spurgt ham, hvorhen vi gik, og hvad, der skulle ske. [...]

Efter jeg havde givet Jirmann lommelygten, beordrede han mig til at blive stående. [...] Jirmann åbnede døren til bunkeren, og gik ind med den lysende lommelygte i hån-den. Jeg kunne se, at en skygge sprang på ham bagfra, og rev ham til jorden. Derved tabte han lygten, der gik i
ud. Da jeg så dette overfald, trak jeg pistolen fra hylsteret og ladede og afsikrede den. Alt dette skete på få sekun-der. Så så jeg, at en skygge sprang ud af bunkeren, og forsøgte at flygte. Uden at kunne skelne den flygtende, skød jeg på ham. Kun brøkdele af sekunder senere kom en anden skygge styrtende ud fra bunkeren. Også mod denne afgav jeg et skud, uden at kunne skelne, hvem det var. Ramt styrtede manden stønnende til jorden. Næsten i samme øjeblik kom en tredie skygge ud fra bunkeren, og i dag kan jeg ikke længere med sikkerhed sige, om jeg
også skød mod den.

This passage has the footnote:

Fritz Jirmann blev skudt af Heinrich Gley i Belzéc, og Anton Getzinger blev dræbt, da han fejlbetjente en russisk håndgranat i Sobibór

Perhaps one of our Scandanavian readers can help us out with a translation.

[Kal_El]

There is also an essay, in what I took to be Norwegian, by Torben Jørgensen, titled "Aktion Reinhardt" at:

http://historie-nu.dk/aktion%20reinhardt.pdf

its a danish site and Torben Jørgensen is an employe at http://www.dchf.dk/ wich is the danish center for holocaust and genocide studies. His profil can be found at http://www.dchf.dk/staff/torben_jorgensen.html

Let me try a translation:

Såle-des siger Heinrich Gley, der efter at have dræbt Fritz Jirmann ved et vådeskud fik til opgave at medvirke ved kremeringerne i Belzéc gennem fem måneder:

[...] det handlede ved forbrændingen af de genopgravede lig om et menneskeligt, æstetisk og lugtmæssigt så af-skyeligt forehavende, at fantasien hos de mennesker, der i dag er vant til at leve under borgerlige forhold, næppe rækker til at fatte denne gru.

That is what Heinrich Gley says, after having killed Fritz Jirmann by a misfire of his weapoon, got the task to work at the cremation process in Belzéc through five months.

[...] it was about the burning af the dug up bodies, the sights, smells and the inhumanity of such a horrible task was such, that the imagination of ordinary people to day, living under civilised conditions, cant cope with it.


Next:

Om aftenen rejste Fritz Jirmann sig pludselig, og befalede den relativt nytilkomne Heinrich Gley, uden nærmere forklaring, atkomme med:

Det var bælgmørkt derude, og kun jeg havde en lomme-lygte. Skråt over for kommandanturen, i en lille skov, lå en bunker, som blev brugt som arrest for Hiwi’erne [ukrai-nerne, TJ]. Vi gik begge til arresten. Omkring 5 til 6 meter fra arresten udbad Jirmann sig min lommelygte. På vejen
til arresten udvekslede vi ikke et ord. Jeg havde ikke spurgt ham, hvorhen vi gik, og hvad, der skulle ske. [...]

Efter jeg havde givet Jirmann lommelygten, beordrede han mig til at blive stående. [...] Jirmann åbnede døren til bunkeren, og gik ind med den lysende lommelygte i hån-den. Jeg kunne se, at en skygge sprang på ham bagfra, og rev ham til jorden. Derved tabte han lygten, der gik i
ud. Da jeg så dette overfald, trak jeg pistolen fra hylsteret og ladede og afsikrede den. Alt dette skete på få sekun-der. Så så jeg, at en skygge sprang ud af bunkeren, og forsøgte at flygte. Uden at kunne skelne den flygtende, skød jeg på ham. Kun brøkdele af sekunder senere kom en anden skygge styrtende ud fra bunkeren. Også mod denne afgav jeg et skud, uden at kunne skelne, hvem det var. Ramt styrtede manden stønnende til jorden. Næsten i samme øjeblik kom en tredie skygge ud fra bunkeren, og i dag kan jeg ikke længere med sikkerhed sige, om jeg
også skød mod den.

It was pitch black out there, and I was the only one with a flashlight. Diagonally from the kommandaturen (i dont know the english word for kommandaturen. But it should be the building where the leadership of the camp resided.) and in a small forest, was a bunker, that was used as a jail for the Hiwis [ukraines]. Vi both went to that bunker. About 5 to 6 meters from it, Jirmann asked for my flashlight.
On our way we didnt talk, I didnt ask him where we were going and what should happen. [...]

After i handed Jirman the flashlight, he ordered me to dont move. [...] Jirmann opened the door to the bunker and went in with the flashlight in his hand. I could see that a shadow jumped him from behind and tore him to the ground. He dropped the flashlight, wich then turned off. When I saw that, i pulled my pistol from its holster and loaded it. All this happend in seconds. Then I saw a shadow jumped out of the bunker and tried to escape. Without having a clear look at the fugitive, i shoot at him. Fractions of seconds later another shadow ran from the bunker. Also against this one did i fire, without knowing who it was. Hit by the shoot the man fall to the ground, moarning. Almost at the same time a thrid shadow came out of the bunker, and today i can no longer say with certainty withe r i also fired at that.

Fritz Jirmann blev skudt af Heinrich Gley i Belzéc, og Anton Getzinger blev dræbt, da han fejlbetjente en russisk håndgranat i Sobibór

Fritz Jirmann was shoot by Heinrich Gley in Belzéc and Anton Getzinger was killed when he misjudge a russian handgrenade at Sobibór.


Regards

Morten

[michael mills]

Thanks for this information.

So it appears that Gley did admit, in a roundabout way, to shooting Irrmann.

We also have Irrmann being transferred from duty at the Buchenwald concentration camp to the T-4 euthanasia, along with Kurt Franz, in November 1939, according to a post-war statement by Dubois.

There seems to be no information about what Irrmann was up to after that date; presumably he served in the Euthanasia program for a while.

The Tregenza article indicates that Hackenholt was transferred to Belzec in the autumn of 1941, but no month is given. Whether Irrmann was transferred there at the same time is unknown.

The camp beside the railway near Blezec station had been existence as a transit camp since late 1939; Karski describes it in his first 1940 report as holding Jews waiting to cross the nearby border into the Soviet Zone of Occupation.

The camp appears to have been closed for a period, and then reactivated some time in the late summer-early autumn of 1941. Eichmann in his 1957 interviews with Sassen describes a visit he made to a camp in Poland shortly after the start of the war with the Soviet Union, and meeting there a police captain (most probably Christian Wirth) who was working outside in shirt-sleeves; Eichmann noted that the captain was not wearing his uniform jacket. Eichmann's visit was therefore made between early July and early September; at any later time it would have been too cold to be outside in shirt-sleeves.

We may presume that work on the reactivation of the camp at Belzec before Eichmann's visit. Accordingly it is likely that a staff of SS-men was stationed there from about late August 1941 onward. Irrmann may have been one of them.

Exactly when the decision to turn the camp beside the railway at Belzec into a killing centre was made is uncertain. It seems to me unlikely that that decision can have been made before selecting Belzec as a location, since the camp is not well-sited as a killing centre; it is too exposed to view, being right next to the Lublin-Lwow mainline from where curious passengers on the many trains passing through could look right into it, and it was also very close to the Belzec village.

The location of the camp is however well-suited for the function of a transit camp, which was its original purpoae back in December 1939, when Karski visited it.

The entire sequence of events suggests that a decision was made to reactivate Belzec in its function as a transit camp, and then a second decision made to turn it into a killing centre by installing a very primitive gas-chamber. That second decision may have come as late as March 1942, just before the start of the deportation of Jews from Lublin District.

It seems to me highly unlikely that the decision to turn Belzec camp into a killing centre can have been made in the summer of 1941, before the first SS-men turned up at the site to begin the recommissioning of the camp. The elapse of time until the arrival of the first Jews from Lublin in March 1942 was seven months, plenty of time to build a really good state-of-the-art gas-chamber, using the experience gained in the euthanasia program which had been under way for 18 months. However, such a gas-chamber was not built; instead it was a very flimsy affair, seemingly thrown together just before the arrival of the first Jews from Lublin.

The most likely sequence of events would appear to be;

1. A decision made soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union to deport the Jews of the Generalgouvernement into the territory expected to be conquered from the Soviet Union, with the camp at Belzec being reactivated as a transit camp to facilitate the deportation.

2. A second decision to kill off those of the deportees assessed as unable to be used for forced labour at the places of destination, most probably due to complaints from the German occupation authorities in Reichskommissariat Ukraine about having large numbers of Jews dumped on them. That is most probably the decision referred to by Goebbels in his diary entry of 27 March 1942. As a result, the Belzec camp was hastily turned into a homicidal facility through the construction of a flimsy gas-chamber.

If we assume that Belzec camp did not have a homicidal purpose during the period when it was being re-commissioned in the autumn of 1941, then it is understandable that local labour would have been drafted to work on the recommissioning and then released when the work was completed. That could explain how a mechanic like Rudolf Reder could be brought in to service machinery like excavators during a four-month period, and also work as a bricklayer, and then be released when he was no longer required. Under that scenario, the extremely unlikely escape described by him would not be necessary.

[David Thompson]

Kal_El -- Thank you very much for the translation!

[Earldor]

Giles,
I consider maps such as the one appended to your post to have a spurious exactitude, in that they are in reality inexact reconstructions based on imprecise descriptions. They are not based on actual German plans or aerial photographs of the camp during its operative period.

How intellectually dishonest can you get, Michael? You are ready to dismiss all the evidence that is presented to you if it conflicts with your biased view, yet you are basing your entire premise on a single sentence taken out of context and extrapolating from that...

Archeological investigations have been able to locate graves with human remains, but they have not been able to locate any remains of the gas chambers or other key buildings for example.

Archeological digs do not reveal buildings with tags as to their purpose. Your demands are ludicrous.

For that reason it is not really possible to say for sure which building was near what other building, or what could be seen from where.

You seem to forget evidence from victims and perpetrators. They all seem to agree that there were gas chambers in the Belzec death camp. They also give us a fair view of the layout of the camp.

but the crucial point is that he stated that the ditches were being dug in the immediate vicinity of the camp (ie not inside it), and he does not say that the ditches were for burying bodies, which he would hardly have neglected to point out if that were the case.

Remember, you still haven't produced any evidence to that effect. Xcalibur's quote seems to be in conflict with your deduction. You have repeatedly ignored my alternative interpretations. Your bias is showing, Mills.

The anti-tank ditches were excavated in 1940 and early 1941. Therefore, they were already there when the Belzec camp was transformed into a killing centre.

Please provide proof that the Belzec death camp was a converted camp. The conventional view is that it was constructed in the same general area as the Otto -line labor camps, but it was an entirely new camp. An extermination camp. Not a transit camp.

"In early 1940 the Germans set up a number of labour camps in Belzec, housing workers building the "Otto Line", a border fortification against the Soviets. These Jewish labour camps were disbanded in October 1940. Belzec death camp was not part of, or converted from any other recognised camp facility. It was separately built following the tree clearing on the northern half of the hill, for one specific purpose only, to murder the Jews." http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/belzec.html

In the testimony quoted by me, Reder says that he was employed for two months servicing the excavator, and then for a further two months working as a bricklayer on the camp kitchen, ie four months in total. Perhaps he changed occupations after the excavation work had been completed.

Yes, about four months. From mid-August 1942 to November 1942. That would be the Belzec extermination camp, Mills.

In that same testimony, he also claimed to have been many times at the gas-chambers when they were opened. For that to have been the case, he would have had to have been a member of the Sonderkommando, and to have been kept a prisoner under guard in the Totenlager.

Yes?

However, that conflicts with his claim that for four months he was doing other things, servicing the excavator and helping to build the camp kitchen.

Ah, you conveniently forget that a) there was a kitchen for the sonderkommando in the camp II b) there were several "special case" prisoners in the AR deathcamps, i.e. J. Wiernik in Treblinka. These prisoners were able to move around in the camp because of their special status as a craftsman.

Accordingly, I tend to the view that his claim of having witnessed the operation of the gas chambers, not once but several times, is untrue, and based on accounts obtained from other sources.

Again, no surprise there. Accounts obtained from other sources? You are basically claiming that the Reder testimony is a forgery. That is a very serious accusation. You should be ready to lay out your proof, which has been seriously lacking in your replies.

[Earldor]

What is Piper's source for the statements that Irrmann served in the reception area and Lazarett, and was responsible for training and discipline of the Ukrainian crew?

Don't you think that it may be possible that the Belzec trial (Oberhauser) and the other trials relating to Operation Reinhardt, might also be sources of information?

In the absence of any other information about Irrmann, it seems to me entirely possible that he was stationed at the Belzec camp during the period when it operated as a labour camp, as the headquarters for the gigantic anti-tank ditch that was being constructed just outside Belzec village, and that that is where Reder came across him.

And again, you were proven wrong, as per David's and Kal_El's messages.

Reder's lurid description of Irrmann's activities could be something he borrowed from the testimony of other survivors.

What other survivors? Reder gave his testimony in 1945, Belzec and the other Operation Reinhardt camps were almost ignored by most people until the 1960's. Proof is again lacking, Michael. Leading assertions are not proof, especially when they are so blatantly biased.

For example, the speech that Irrmann supposedly gave to the arriving Jews sounds to me exactly like an account given by a survivor of one of the other camps (either Sobibor or Treblinka) about a German staff-member who dressed up in a white coat and gave a similar speech.

And suits the perpetrator testimonies as well. Not to mention the known T4-practice, and the personnel of the Operation Reinhardt camps were mostly recruited from the T4-program.

Are you claiming that the Nazis testifying to this are also part of a conspiracy?

What is the date of the text by Reder quoted above? Does it come from his earliest testimony about Belzec, or does it come from a later version of his account? If the latter, then he would have had time to read accounts by genuine survivors of Sobibor and Treblinka and incorporate details from them into his own account.

Proof, Michael, proof? Accusations of conspiracy are not to be taken lightly. Put your money where your mouth is and provide the proof. Similarity in details of the practices in the O.R. death camps is not proof of conspiracy, it is to be expected if these people were in the camps. Also, for a long time Reder and Hirszman were the only known survivors of Belzec. I'm pretty sure that they had no contact with Sobibor or Treblinka survivors in the chaotic post-WWII world.

In the section on Reinhold Feix, a description by Reder is also quoted. From the testimony of other German camp staff members, Feix is known to have served at Belzec camp during the extermination period in 1942. However, there seems to me no reason why he could not have been serving there earlier, during the period when it was a labour camp. No details of his background are given, except the description by Reder.

Well then, give us the proof.

[Earldor]

The Tregenza article indicates that Hackenholt was transferred to Belzec in the autumn of 1941, but no month is given.

It was most likely early November 1941. That was when the construction of Belzec extermination camp began.

The camp beside the railway near Blezec station had been existence as a transit camp since late 1939; Karski describes it in his first 1940 report as holding Jews waiting to cross the nearby border into the Soviet Zone of Occupation.

"The work camps in Belzec and nearby villages were abandoned in October 1940." http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/labourcamps.html

The camp appears to have been closed for a period, and then reactivated some time in the late summer-early autumn of 1941.

Not exactly. The Belzec extermination camp was just in the same general area as the labour camps had been two years earlier.

Eichmann in his 1957 interviews with Sassen describes a visit he made to a camp in Poland shortly after the start of the war with the Soviet Union, and meeting there a police captain (most probably Christian Wirth) who was working outside in shirt-sleeves; Eichmann noted that the captain was not wearing his uniform jacket.

It is a generally known fact that Eichmann either lied about the timeframe of this visit or was mistaken.

Eichmann's visit was therefore made between early July and early September; at any later time it would have been too cold to be outside in shirt-sleeves.

Oh, please. Your extrapolations are becoming more and more desperate.

We may presume that work on the reactivation of the camp at Belzec before Eichmann's visit.

No, we may not. Eichmann made a couple of visits to the O.R. camps and his memory is more likely to have played tricks on him as to the date.

We know that work on the Belzec extermination camp began on the 1. November.

"On 1 November 1941, as part of Aktion Reinhard, the Germans began construction of an extermination camp at Belzec. The site they chose was near the railway station, about 400 meters away on a railway siding, and only 5 m east of the main Lublin - Lemberg railway line. SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla from the SS Zentralbauleitung Zamosc supervised the construction works. The on-site supervisor was an unidentified red haired SS officer, known as "the Master" ("der Meister"). Poles from Belzec, who were later replaced by Jews from the nearby villages of Lubycza Krolewska and Mosty Maly, did this work. The construction was completed at the end of February 1942." http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/belzec.html

It seems to me unlikely that that decision can have been made before selecting Belzec as a location, since the camp is not well-sited as a killing centre; it is too exposed to view, being right next to the Lublin-Lwow mainline from where curious passengers on the many trains passing through could look right into it, and it was also very close to the Belzec village.

Well, obviously the Germans disagreed with you.

The location of the camp is however well-suited for the function of a transit camp, which was its original purpoae back in December 1939, when Karski visited it.

And were is the proof that Belzec acted as a transit camp? We have plenty of evidence of Jewish transports going to Belzec and returning empty. The evidence from Poles, Germans and Jews agree on this. You are, again, going off on a tangent.

The entire sequence of events suggests that a decision was made to reactivate Belzec in its function as a transit camp, and then a second decision made to turn it into a killing centre by installing a very primitive gas-chamber. That second decision may have come as late as March 1942, just before the start of the deportation of Jews from Lublin District.

Your view is not supported by the evidence.

It seems to me highly unlikely that the decision to turn Belzec camp into a killing centre can have been made in the summer of 1941, before the first SS-men turned up at the site to begin the recommissioning of the camp. The elapse of time until the arrival of the first Jews from Lublin in March 1942 was seven months, plenty of time to build a really good state-of-the-art gas-chamber, using the experience gained in the euthanasia program which had been under way for 18 months.

State-of-the-art? What would that be like? The experience the Germans got during the building of Belzec was used to improve the Sobibor and Treblinka camps.

"Franz Suchomel from Treblinka quotes Belzec as a laboratory, and so it would seem. Wirth carried out experiments to determine the most efficient method of handling the transports of Jews from the time of their arrival at the camp until their murder and burial. He developed basic concepts for the process of extermination and for the camp structure. The aim was to give the victims the impression that they had arrived at a transit camp from where they would be sent onward to a labour camp. The deportees were to believe this until they were enclosed inside the gas chambers disguised as baths. The second principle of extermination was that everything should be carried out with the utmost speed. The victims had to run, having no time for looking around, reflecting and understanding what was going on."

However, such a gas-chamber was not built; instead it was a very flimsy affair, seemingly thrown together just before the arrival of the first Jews from Lublin.

"Because of increasing transports the three wooden gas chambers were no more sufficient. New ones with larger capacity had to be built. The old wooden gassing hut was dismantled, and in a central location, a larger, more solid structure was erected. The new building was 24 m long and 10 m wide. It had six gas chambers each of them 4x8 m (although some sources state: 4x5 m). Towards the middle of July 1942 the new chambers were operational."

The most likely sequence of events would appear to be;

I wouldn't call it "most likely", I'd call it "extrapolating to the max, without any proof."

1. A decision made soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union to deport the Jews of the Generalgouvernement into the territory expected to be conquered from the Soviet Union, with the camp at Belzec being reactivated as a transit camp to facilitate the deportation.

Funnily, there were no transports of people (not counting the transport of sonderkommando to Sobibor to be gassed) out of Belzec as you would expect with a transit camp. Also, all the people who were in Belzec at the time agree that Belzec was an extermination camp.

If we assume that Belzec camp did not have a homicidal purpose during the period when it was being re-commissioned in the autumn of 1941, then it is understandable that local labour would have been drafted to work on the recommissioning and then released when the work was completed.

And pray tell, why the same wouldn't hold true if the Belzec camp was to be an extermination camp?

That could explain how a mechanic like Rudolf Reder could be brought in to service machinery like excavators during a four-month period, and also work as a bricklayer, and then be released when he was no longer required. Under that scenario, the extremely unlikely escape described by him would not be necessary.

Your personal incredulity does not make Reder's account of his escape impossible. A lot more incredible things have happened. I see no reason to revise my view.

I asked for proof on many occasions in this exchange, Michael. You haven't provided any. I feel that you are dishonest in your attempt to muddy the waters and you should not use your claim that Reder was not in the Belzec death camp from now on.

[David Thompson]

Earldor -- You said:

How intellectually dishonest can you get

and

Your demands are ludicrous.

and

you conveniently forget

and

Put your money where your mouth is

Vituperation is a game two can play, and because it disrupts the civil exchange of information and viewpoints, we don't allow that game to be played here at all. Please avoid unnecessarily personalizing posts.