18 January 1943 A.D. German Fascists & Genocidalists Resume
Deportations to Treblinka Concentration Camp
Germans
resume deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka
On this day, the deportation
of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the concentration camp at Treblinka is
resumed—but not without much bloodshed and resistance along the way.
On July 18, 1942, Heinrich
Himmler promoted Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hess to SS
major. He also ordered that the Warsaw ghetto, the Jewish quarter constructed
by the Nazis upon the occupation of Poland and
enclosed first by barbed wire and then by brick walls, be depopulated—a
"total cleansing," as he described it. The inhabitants were to be
transported to what became a second extermination camp constructed at the
railway village of Treblinka, 62 miles northeast of Warsaw.
Within the first seven weeks
of Himmler's order, more than 250,000 Jews were taken to Treblinka by rail and
gassed to death, marking the largest single act of destruction of any
population group, Jewish or non-Jewish, civilian or military, in the war. Upon
arrival at "T. II," as this second camp at Treblinka was called,
prisoners were separated by sex, stripped, and marched into what were described
as "bathhouses," but were in fact gas chambers. T. II's first
commandant was Dr. Irmfried Eberl, age 32, the man who had headed up the
euthanasia program of 1940 and had much experience with the gassing of victims,
especially children. He was assisted in his duties by several hundred Ukrainian
and about 1,500 Jewish prisoners, who removed gold teeth from victims before
hauling the bodies to mass graves.
In January 1943, after a
four-month hiatus, the deportations started up again. A German SS unit entered
the ghetto and began rounding up its denizens—but they did not go without a
fight. Six hundred Jews were killed in the streets as they struggled with the
Germans. Rebels with smuggled firearms opened fire on the SS troops. The
Germans returned fire—machine-gun fire against the Jews' pistol shots. Nine
Jewish rebels fell—as did several Germans. The fighting continued for days,
with the Jews refusing to surrender and even taking arms from their Germans
persecutors in surprise attacks.
Amazingly, the Germans withdrew
from the ghetto in the face of the unexpected resistance. They likely did not
realize how few armed resisters there were, but the fact that resistance was
given at all intimidated them. But there was no happy ending. Before this new
incursion into the ghetto was over, 6,000 more Jews were transported to their
likely deaths at Treblinka.
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