Wannsee Conference in 100 Facts

[RolandVT]

German invasion of the Soviet Union triggered the Holocaust for a very simple reason: while the decision to kill all male Jews of military age was made and approved sometime in early April of 1941, it could have been implemented only after the Jews in question fall under German control. Which started to happen on June 22, 1941 – on the very first day of Operation Barbarossa.

Invasion of the Soviet Union was inevitable for two reasons: Hitler wanted to destroy the Bolshevist Soviet Union (and thus eliminate genuinely existential threat to Germany, Europe and the whole human civilization) … and to get the Lebensraum for Germany (in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Baltic countries).

Hence, Operation Barbarossa in reality was a highly controversial (ambiguous) endeavor: on the one hand, it was a brutal, murderous and criminal colonial war which would have resulted in serial mass murder of millions of “Untermenshen” – and in enslavement of tens of millions.

On the other hand, it was a highly noble (salvific even) project aimed at saving Germany, Europe, Christian Church and the whole human civilization as we know it from annihilation by Bolshevist hordes.

There is ample evidence that Stalin intended to invade Europe via Poland (again) in the end of June of 1941. First, the Soviets tried it once (in 1920) but failed (thank God). Second, the whole Soviet industrial (and economic) activities in 1922-41 had but one objective: build a military-industrial complex capable of taking over the whole continental Europe – and subsequently over the whole world.

But the most damning evidence is provided by Soviet military documents declassified after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They contain orders to transform military districts in the Western part of the USSR into “fronts” (the Soviet equivalents of Army Groups).

These orders were given on June 15th, 1941. Which meant that the Red Army was to go to war a week later (roughly). However, when the mighty Wehrmacht attacked, the whole Soviet military and civilian system (including Stalin) was in complete shock. Which meant but one thing: Red Army was to attack Wehrmacht just days after June 15th, 1941.

Historian Mark Solonin proved (IMHO, beyond the reasonable doubt) that this attack was set to happen on June 23rd, 1941. Which means that Hitler pre-empted Stalin by mere 24 hours or so.

Saving Germany and Europe – and ultimately killing four million Jews.

[RolandVT]

Holocaust perpetrators (first and foremost, Nazi leaders – Himmler, Heydrich, Göring and Hitler) were textbook serial killers. Serial mass murderers, sure – but still serial killers. Mission-oriented serial killers, to be more precise.

Hence, it is no surprise that they did what serial killers do: they escalated, snapped – and then escalated again. First, they escalated from forced emigration to internment in Europe (Nisko plan), then to deportation to Africa (Madagascar)… and then to serial mass murder (in other words, they snapped).

They snapped sometime in early April of 1941, when the decision was made (by Himmler and Heydrich) and approved (by Göring and Hitler) to murder all male Jews of military age. Thus, commencing the first stage of “Holocaust by Bullets”.

This stage commenced the next day after the invasion of the Soviet Union… and things quickly (and predictably) went out of hand. In other words, Einsatzgruppen, Order Police and local radical anti-Semites (first and foremost, in Baltic countries) started killing ALL Jews – men, women, children and elderly.

This “grassroots initiative” quickly made its way to the very top of Nazi hierarchy – to Himmler, Heydrich, Göring and Hitler – and prompted radical escalation of Nazi Jewish policy.

SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler (officially in charge of all security in occupied territories of the USSR) gave tacit unofficial approval to serial mass murder of all Jews – from infants to the elderly.

At the same time, another critical problem emerged: with acquisition of Jews by tens of thousands in newly occupied territories, the number of Israelites under German control (already over four million) was rapidly becoming unmanageable.

Hence, the Nazi leaders needed to find – and fast – the acceptable answer and the workable solution to the genuinely existential question: what to do with ALL Jews under German control (not just in occupied territories of the USSR).

In Germany and Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, Serbia and Greece, France and Benelux, Denmark and Norway. And with ALL Jews under control of German allies (Axis Powers): Italy and Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, Bulgaria and Finland.

To find this “final solution to the Jewish question” in all territories under control of either Germany or other European Axis powers, Göring and Hitler tasked Reinhard Heydrich and his RSHA.

For an obvious reason – the latter were already up to their ears in “Jewish question” (their Einsatzgruppen started to shoot Jews en masse since day two of Operation Barbarossa). Besides, they already had relevant experience in “pacifying” Poland (operations Tannenberg, Intelligenzaktion and AB-Aktion) … plus in conducting Aktion T4 (mass murder by gas) in occupied Polish territories.

Heydrich (for obvious reasons) insisted on official written order (similar to the one that started Aktion T4), so on July 31, 1941, Hermann Göring (second-in-command in Nazi Germany) sent him the following letter (memo):

“As a supplement to the task which was entrusted to you in the decree dated January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish question by emigration and evacuation in the most favorable way possible, given present conditions, I herewith commission you to carry out all necessary preparations with regard to organizational, substantive, and financial viewpoints for a total solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.

Insofar as other competencies of other central organizations are affected, these are to be involved. I further commission you to submit to me promptly an overall plan showing the preliminary organizational, substantive, and financial measures for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question”

It was Hitler’s order (obviously); however, the latter – as usual – issued only the verbal order. The written one came from his First Deputy.

Final solution to Jewish problem on occupied territories of the USSR was simple and evident: just shoot them all. Hence, in August of 1941, Himmler ordered the extension of “Holocaust by Bullets” to all Jews – men, women, children and elderly.

Jews in German-controlled territories outside the USSR (first and foremost, in Poland) were a different matter entirely. In Poland, there were simply way too many of them to shoot – over 3.3 million – and in other nations mass shootings were impossible politically.

Hence, the “final solution had to wait” – until termination (officially suspension) of Aktion T4 (forced euthanasia program) provided Heydrich and his RSHA with the critically important resource.

Personnel.

[RolandVT]

Babi Yar Massacre is definitely the best-known massacre of the “Holocaust by Bullets” perpetrated by the Nazis. This genuinely horrific story has only one problem: it never happened. In fact, no one was killed in Babi Yar during the German occupation (mass shootings did happen in Kiev – but in other places).

According to mainstream Holocaust historians, exactly 33,771 Jews were murdered in Babi Yar ravine in Kiev on 29-30 September 1941 in retaliation for the destruction of Kiev center on 20-28 September by the bombs planted by the Red Army demolition units and detonated with radio signals (after these detonations Kiev center looked not much better than Dresden after Allied bombing in 1945).

The bombings did happen – but the shooting of Jews did not. There is ample evidence that proves it beyond the reasonable doubt. For starters, there were no 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29th – not even close.

According to a memo by Nikita Khrushchev (yes, that Khrushchev) – at the time Gauleiter (in German terms) of Soviet Ukraine, by the time Wehrmacht entered Kiev (meeting no resistance) on September 19th, 90% of the 170,000 Jews that resided in the city before the war, have been evacuated.

This memo is trustworthy, because it is based on detailed list of the Jews who had to be provided with transportation (to very distant places), places to live, food, jobs, schools, etc. Out of the remaining 17,000 or so almost everyone left when the Red Army vacated the city on September 18th (it left unopposed by Wehrmacht).

Hence, the number of Jews in Kiev on September 29th was in the hundreds – not thousands (if that) … and they hid very well, being fully aware of the fate of Israelites under German occupation.

Second, Order Police Battalion 101 trials in Germany in 1960s proved beyond the reasonable doubt that even in a perfectly organized process (according to “witnesses”, the one in Kiev was anything but), it was physically possible to murder 150 Jews an hour (this low rate was one of the reasons for “Holocaust by Gas”).

As Kiev in the last days of September was under mandatory blackout at night (the front was still pretty close), the perpetrators had only 12 hours each day for shooting. 1800 per day – and 3,600 in two days max. In reality, it could have been much less (if it, indeed, happened) – 10 times less than is officially claimed.

All “survivor stories” are fake – at the end of September in Kiev the temperature at night dropped to around zero centigrade; hence, a naked human being in the mass grave would have been dead from hypothermia in an hour or so… if he or she did not suffocate under the weight of dead bodies – or after being covered with dirt.

Authors of the “Babi Yar fairy tale” obviously had no clue about situation in Kiev at that time. The damage to the city – a major operational hub for Wehrmacht – was so serious (and Kiev was still burning) that its commandant for weeks cared only about restoring some semblance of normality in the city.

He simply had neither time nor resources for such a large-scale massacre – which was NOT confirmed by aerial photos – they show no disturbance of the earth after the alleged massacre compared to pre-war recon photos by Luftwaffe.

Not once during the “Holocaust by Bullets” the perpetrators used natural ravine (such as Babi Yar) as shooting/burial site. Only existing ditches (e.g., anti-tank) or ditches (mass graves) dug specifically for the occasion.

But the evidence that proves beyond the reasonable doubt that not one human being was ever killed in Babi Yar by Germans (NKVD allegedly buried thousands of its victims there during Holodomor and Great Terror) is the Kurenivka mudslide.

Not mudslide proper, but the decision made by Soviet authorities in Kiev in 1950 (the Great Patriotic War was still fresh in memory and Stalin was still in command of the USSR) to fill Babi Yar with liquid waste from neighboring brickyards.

Given the fact, that at that time – and even decades later – the Soviets treated every site of Nazi massacre as a shrine, it was possible only if they knew for a fact (and they did) that no one was ever killed by the Nazis in Babi Yar. Not one.

In 2003, the Prosecutor General office of independent Ukraine opened an official investigation into the Babi Yar massacre. It was quickly suspended, shelved and classified so that just about no one could access it. Now why would that be?

Hence, the whole Babi Yar story is but a grandiose hoax by Soviet propaganda. No surprise here – the Soviets (quite successfully) claimed for almost 50 years that Katyn massacre was perpetrated by the SS in the fall of 1941 (in reality, by Soviet NKVD in spring of 1940).

Does it mean that “Holocaust by Bullets” never happened? Of course, not – there is plenty of evidence that it did. It only means that (like every homicide investigation) the history of Holocaust is filled with conscious or unconscious lies. Everyone lies – witnesses, perps, survivors – for a number of reasons.

Hence, the Holocaust must be properly investigated (as any homicide) – and all alleged crimes proven beyond the reasonable doubt in the court of law.

[RolandVT]

The Holocaust was a highly organized and bureaucratic project that was implemented in six major phases: identify the Jews (more precisely, those defined as Jews by Nuremberg laws); exclude them from German society; confiscate their property; move them into ghettos; deport them to killing centers, and exterminate them using bullets or (mostly) gas.

The first step towards implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question” was (obviously) to figuring out just whom the Nazis wanted to kill – in other words, to conduct the census.

And that’s precisely what Nazis did – right after the Enabling Act gave them dictatorial power in Germany. On April 12, 1933, the German government announced plans to conduct a long-delayed national census. The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime.

Due to the sheer magnitude of the task, it could have been done only with punched-cards technology, in which IBM was a virtual monopoly at that time.

No surprise here IBM originated from the U.S. Census Bureau, which used a new electromechanical punched-card tabulator for its 1890 survey. This machine was the brainchild of 28-year-old American inventor Herman Hollerith, the son of a German immigrant (of all people).

By the 1930s, the new Nazi government needed that technology – and recruited IBM for the job. Tabulating machines made tracking lines of Jewish descent possible, even if a German citizen’s family had married out of the religion or converted generations ago.

The latter did not matter for the Nazis as they identified Jews by blood (Jews who baptized or converted to Christianity went to the same gas chambers and the ones who practiced Judaism) but they defined a Jew by the religion of grandparents.

Punched card technology (in which IBM was the global monopoly) made possible the genocide on previously unimaginable scale. Adolf Hitler wasn’t the first murderous dictator to commit genocide (just ask Stalin or the Turks or the Japanese), but he was the first to do so with automation technology on his side.

And with the demographic treasure trove collected in the 1933 census (and again in 1939), the Nazi government could identify, detain and murder Jews with previously unheard-of precision.

IBM’s punch card machines were perfect for this, and for tracking the train traffic coming into the killing centers. In fact, the Nazis soon placed tabulating machines made by IBM’s German subsidiary, Dehomag, in every train depot and into every concentration camp and death factory.

Every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM’s punch-card technology (cards and machines).

And throughout the whole “Holocaust years”, IBM used foreign subsidiaries to funnel its international profits back to the U.S. Two of those subsidiaries — Dehomag and Poland’s Watson Business Machines — played a crucial role in making possible millions of deaths. After all, you can kill only those whom you can identify and watch.

Not surprisingly (given the importance of the “Holocaust Project” to the Nazis), Third Reich soon became the second most important customer of IBM after its primary market in the USA.

The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be crucial to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately annihilate the German Jews.

But the Nazis (obviously) did not stop there – as the Nazi war machine occupied successive nations of Europe, occupation was followed by a census of the population of each conquered nation focused (no less obviously) on identification of Jews and Romani.

These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM’s German and new Polish subsidiaries. True, IBM ostensibly severed all ties with Nazi Germany in 1938 (after Kristallnacht) … but the well-oiled tabulation and control machine continued to operate perfectly.

Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the Nazis to identify, concentrate and ultimately annihilate ethnic Jewish populations across Nazi-occupied Europe.

Without IBM’s machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler’s death factories could have never managed the numbers they did.

[RolandVT]

Actually, it is not a fact but a conspiracy theory (it was, indeed, an international conspiracy); however, it is supported with solid circumstantial evidence.

First, it is a well-established fact that Nazis and Zionists worked closely together since the very first days of the former coming to power in Germany (Haavara Agreement was one of the results). They worked together because they had the same goal: Zionists wanted all German Jews to emigrate to Palestine – and the Nazis wanted them to emigrate… wherever.

Officially, this cooperation ended after the outbreak of Second Great War in September of 1939 (and the idiotic declaration of war by Zionist #1 Chaim Weizmann helped enormously to terminate this relationship).

However, there are persistent rumors that it did not (politics makes even stranger bedfellows) … and the SS even supplied Jewish fighters with weapons and able-bodied Jewish soldiers to make British in the Middle East very unhappy.

One of the most secret (taboo even) topics in the history of Second World War is the proverbial “trading with the enemy”: purchase of strategic war materials by Nazi Germany from nations that it was at war with (UK, Canada, USA, etc.). Financed by the Vatican Bank and/or the Wallenbergs in Sweden.

It is a well-known fact that the whole Nazi war machine (and not just concentration camps) during the whole war ran on IBM punch-card technology on a scale that IBM subsidiaries in Germany and Poland simply could not handle (some serious assistance from American HQ was needed).

This is not as far-fetched as it seems: none of the above wanted Germany to be defeated before it sufficiently weakened the Bolshevist USSR which was recognized as a far bigger threat than the Third Reich (see quote by Truman).

Then there are strange stories of the Holocaust proper. For starters, why would Arthur Nebe – a professional Kripo detective and head of German criminal police – want to command for several months the SS death squad (Einsatzgruppe B) when he did not fit the profile of Einsatzgruppe leaders at all?

He was not an ardent Nazi (far from that – he was rather apolitical police officer); in fact, he was exactly the opposite – he joined the German anti-Nazi resistance well before the Second Great War. He played a crucial role in July 20, 1944 plot for which he was executed by the Nazis in March of 1945… or so it seems.

Another SS death squad commander (Otto Rasch of Einsatzgruppe C) is another enigma. Right after alleged Babi Yar massacre in Kiev – which never happened – Rasch suddenly resigned his command, left the military service altogether and assumed position… of the director of Continental Oil, Inc. in Berlin (the German subsidiary of a major US oil company).

Now who would hire him for that position – and why, given his zero training or experience (he was a lawyer and economist by training and a lawyer and a politician by profession)? And why would his Einsatzgruppe C insist on a totally ridiculous story of murdering 33,071 Jews in Kiev on September 29-30, 1941 when they could have killed only around 3,000 if the massacre has happened (it didn’t)?

After the war, things got even stranger. Rasch was arrested by the Allies and (predictably) indicted at the Einsatzgruppen trial at the end of September 1947. However, the case against Rasch was discontinued on February 5, 1948, allegedly because his physical and mental health were rapidly deteriorating from Parkinson’s disease and associated dementia.

Rasch was transferred back to an internment camp in the British zone and soon released altogether (in June 1948). He allegedly died of his illness at his home in Wehrstedt, Lower Saxony in November 1948.

And then we a have a very strange death of Reinhard Heydrich who was killed not by British commandos, but by Himmler’s personal physician who refused to administer the treatment that would have saved Heydrich’s life.

My theory is that Himmler wanted to use (and used) the Holocaust (which was not his project but rather Heydrich’s) to sell a large number of Jews – tens of thousands at least to Zionists (with whom he had a good working relationship since 1933) for hard currency – and ultimately for strategic materials for Nazi war effort.

So, Himmler dispatched Nebe to put together a pilot project of sending a batch of Soviet Jews… wherever. Officially Jews were shot by Einsatzgruppe B – but in reality, with new papers (Himmler as head of German police could issue any) became anything but Jewish and safely emigrated… wherever (as Jewish quotas no longer applied to them). And Himmler got strategic materials for Germany.

Rasch sent more than 30,000 Jews (who officially died in Babi Yar) to… wherever. Again, with new papers – but this time they were sold ultimately for oil. Allied powers were scared shitless of Rasch testifying in court on “trading with the enemy” – so they just let him go. He died (officially) – and escaped to… wherever, where he joined Arthur Nebe, who officially died almost four years prior.

Fanatical anti-Semite Heydrich got wind of Himmler’s deals with Zionists, wanted to inform Hitler… and was (very conveniently) wounded by British commandos – and then murdered by Himmler’s personal physician.

[RolandVT]

Contrary to a popular misconception, Jews did fight back during the Holocaust – both in ghettos (the biggest were in Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos) and even in death camps (Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz).

Within months inside occupied Poland, the Germans created hundreds of ghettos where they interned the overwhelming majority of Polish Jews (there were ghettos in other Nazi-occupied countries as well).

In most ghettos the Jewish underground resistance movements developed almost instantly, although forced isolation had severely limited their access to resources. The Jewish fighters ghetto took up arms during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust known as Operation Reinhard (extermination of all Jews in Poland). No surprise here – now they had nothing to lose.

Uprisings took place in over 100 locations – overwhelmingly in eastern Poland. Some of these uprisings were more massive and organized, while others were small and spontaneous. The uprisings erupted in five major cities, 45 provincial towns, five major concentration camps and killing, as well as in at least 18 forced labor camps.

The best known and the biggest of all Jewish uprisings during the Holocaust took place in the Warsaw Ghetto between April 19 and May 16, 1943, and in Białystok in August. In Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 56,065 Jews were either killed on the spot or captured and transported aboard Holocaust trains to extermination camps before the Ghetto was razed to the ground.

At the Białystok Ghetto, following deportations in which 10,000 Jews were led to the Holocaust trains, and another 2,000 were murdered locally, the ghetto underground staged an uprising, resulting in a blockade of the ghetto which lasted for a full month.

The other most significant ghetto uprisings took place in Slonim (June 29, 1942), Lakhva (September 3, 1942), Mizocz (October 14, 1942), Minsk Mazowiecki (January 10, 1943), Czestochowa (June 25-30 1943), Bedzin (August 3, 1943).

Almost all these uprisings were suicidal, often leading to the wholesale burning of the ghettos such as in Kołomyja (now Kolomyia, Ukraine), and mass shootings of women and children as in Mizocz. Still, it was worth is as fighters died with valor, dignity and honor – not as sheep in the slaughterhouse as all others.

[RolandVT]

No surprise here – Warsaw Ghetto was the largest by far with almost half a million inhabitants. After the Grossaktion Warsaw of summer 1942, in which more than a quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto with the intent to die fighting with valor, dignity and honor – not as sheep in the slaughterhouse.

A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred Polish resistance groups to support the Jews in earnest. It did not make much of a difference overall – but made the SS job harder.

Although the Polish Home Army’s stocks were meager, and general provision of arms limited, the right-wing ŻZW received significant quantities of armaments, including some machine and submachine guns, rifles, pistols and grenades

The uprising started on 19 April when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop (subsequently tried and executed in Poland), who ordered the destruction of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. A total of 13,000 Jews were killed, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. Stroop reported 110 German casualties, including 17 killed (the real death toll was up to 10 times higher).

Overall, 56,065 Jews were killed or captured of which approximately 36,000 deported to extermination camps (Treblinka and Majdanek).

It is worth noting that suppression of the uprising was a multinational effort: German troops included a unit of multinational (commonly but inaccurately referred to by the Germans and Jews alike as “Ukrainians”) ex-Soviet POWs. The latter predictably accounted for lion’s share of German casualties.

Quashing the uprising was not an easy job for the SS – they had to use mortars, flamethrowers, tanks, armored cars and even anti-aircraft guns. Still, the fighting continued for almost a month – to May 16th.

The uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew that victory was impossible and survival unlikely. Marek Edelman, the last surviving rebel commander (yes, there were survivors), said their inspiration to fight was “not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths“.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the uprising was one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people. Which is very possibly true.

[RolandVT]

In the beginning of the XX century, Bialystok (then part of the Russian Empire) was essentially a Jewish city: four out of five inhabitants were Jewish. Pogroms and anti-Semitic policies of the government of independent Poland changed the situation – but prior to World War II the majority of inhabitants were still Jewish.

The Białystok Ghetto was set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In February 1943, the first wave of mass deportations to Treblinka extermination camp took place, under Aktion Reinhard.

The final liquidation of the ghetto was attempted on August 16, 1943, by regiments of the German SS reinforced by Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Latvian auxiliaries (as usual, it was a multinational effort).

The revolt began upon the German announcement of mass deportations from the ghetto. The main objective was to break the German siege and allow the maximum number of Jews to escape into the neighboring forest… or at least to die in combat with honor rather than in Nazi gas chambers.

A group of about 300 to 500 insurgents armed with 25 rifles and 100 pistols as well as home-made Molotov cocktails for grenades, attacked the overwhelming German force with a great loss of life (no surprise here).

The fights in isolated pockets of resistance lasted for several days, but their defenses were broken almost instantly with a tank sent into the ghetto. German soldiers then set fire to the area.

The leaders of the uprising committed suicide after their bunkers ran out of ammunition. In spite of the insurgency, the planned deportations to concentration and extermination camps went ahead on August 17, 1943, without any delay (in this respect, the revolt was an abject failure).

Approximately 10,000 Jews were led to the Holocaust trains and sent to camps in Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz where they died in gas chambers. A transport of 1,200 children were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp and later to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

Still, several dozen insurgents managed to break through German lines to the forests surrounding Białystok where they joined the Polish partisans and survived the war. It is estimated that out of almost 60,000 Jews who lived in Białystok before World War II, only several hundred survived the Holocaust. In this respect, the revolt was partially successful.

[RolandVT]

The Treblinka uprising was a rebellion and mass escape of prisoners that took place on August 2, 1943 at the German Nazi Treblinka II killing center.

The uprising was organized by the camp’s resistance group, which had formed in the early months of 1943. Its goal was to destroy the extermination center (it did not happen) and enable a mass escape of the prisoners (it did).

The conspirators managed to acquire weapons from a German warehouse, but due to the premature start of the uprising, they were unable to eliminate the camp staff or destroy the gas chambers.

Out of approximately 840 prisoners who were in the camp at the time of the uprising (Treblinka II was the death factory, not the forced labor camp), half were killed in the fighting, and nearly 400 managed to escape (so the uprising was partially successful). Fewer than 70 of the escapees survived the war.

From the outset, the Germans planned that all physical labor in the killing centers – especially tasks directly related to the process of murder – would be carried out by Jewish prisoners who were spared immediate death in the gas chambers.

On average, between 700 and 1,500 prisoners worked in the reception and administrative-living areas of the camp. Their tasks included leading victims from the trains, forcing them to undress, sorting looted clothing and belongings, cutting women’s hair, and performing various other duties for the camp and its guards.

As Generaloberst Ludwig Beck eloquently put it, “in a military operation nothing ever happens according to plan”. And Treblinka revolt was no exception. Due to unexpected turn of events, the insurgents were force to prematurely shoot SS-Oberscharführer Kurt Küttner, commander of the so-called “lower camp”.

Immediately, all Hell broke loose (literally). Chaotic gunfire erupted in various parts of the “lower camp”. Leader of the uprising, who had unfortunately chosen a poor command post, quickly lost control of the battle.

Hundreds of prisoners (both involved and not involved in the uprising) began a chaotic escape. The insurgents set fire to some buildings and took control of the guardhouse, where they found some weapons. Although the central watchtower had been neutralized, the guards in the towers along the fence decimated the escaping prisoners with machine gun fire. Nonetheless, 400 prisoners managed to escape the camp.

However, within the first 24 hours, nearly half of the escapees were captured and murdered. In the following days, approximately 100 more escapees were killed. Only 70 survived the war.

[RolandVT]

Sobibor uprising was a major success because it forced the SS to destroy the camp immediately after the uprising thus putting an end to serial mass murder that took place there (after about 250,000 were murdered by gas in Sobibor). Most of the victims were from Poland, about 33,000 arrived from the Netherlands, and several thousand came from Germany.

The Sobibor uprising was a revolt of about 600 prisoners that occurred on October 14, 1943. It was the second uprising in a killing center by Jewish prisoners against following the revolt in Treblinka on August 2nd. Unlike the latter which was only partially successful, it was a major success (in Treblinka, the insurgents failed to destroy the death factory).

In the spring of 1943, when fewer Jewish transports arrived at the Sobibor camp, the prisoners realized that the camp’s liquidation was approaching, which meant their execution. Now they had nothing to lose – so they started planning a revolt. But they (wisely) decided to wait until the competent leaders arrived.

On September 23, 1943, a group of 80 Soviet POWs arrived at the camp, including Alexander Pechersky (a Jew), who was a lieutenant in the Red Army. He and his comrades had the necessary competencies for making the revolt a success.

The operation was to begin at 16:00, and the escape was planned for 17:00 near sunset on October 14th. The revolt began as planned; the rebels killed several SS guards… unfortunately, when SS mechanic Oberscharführer Erich Bauer arrived in a truck and noticed a dead guard lying on the ground among the prisoners and immediately shot at the prisoners with his pistol.

Like in Treblinka, chaos erupted and about 600 prisoners escaped without coordination. Ukrainian guards panicked began firing from the watchtowers and the SS guard fired a machine gun at the prisoners.

In the desperate attempts of the escaping prisoners to overcome the wire fences and minefields, they were caught in the guards’ crossfire, as they were stopped by wire fences and stepped on mines. 365 inmates managed to escape from the camp, but only 200 reached the nearby forest.

Ultimately, 47 escapees survived the war (fewer than in Treblinka). The SS demolished the camp down to its foundations and levelled the area to cover up their crimes. In the place where the death factory stood, they established an innocuous-looking farm and planted a pine forest over the remnants of the killing center.