A PAINFUL
EXPERIENCE
Confrontation with a Murderer
Karl Frenzel in 1943: the Nazi
officer that ordered the Blatt
family to their deaths
Karl Frenzel. one of the leading
Nazis in Sobibor was sentenced for his crimes to life imprisonment In 1983. I
was granted a four-hour tape-recorded interview with the former
SS-Oberscharfuhrer Frenzel, the man who selected me to slave work in Sobibor and
sent my whole family to the gas chambers. The following are extracts from my
article describing the interview.
“Do you remember me?”
“Not exactly”, he answered, “You
were a little boy.”
An innocent enough reply. For one
crazy moment I could almost imagine this was not what it really was. We could
have been uncle and nephew meeting after so many years, or perhaps father and
son. Yes, there were even similarities in us. Except for his receding hairline,
double chin, and fuller middle, (he was 73 and I was 56,) there was the same
coloring, ruddy complexion, very fair skin, blue eyes, hair once reddish, now
graying, and the ample nose, quite remarkably similar in shape. It was quite
possible that he did not remember me. What was I to him?... But I remember him.
I will never forget. I can’t forget. Every night my nightmares remind me.
“You are sitting here and drinking
your beer. You have a smile on your face. You might be anyone in the
neighborhood. But you are not like anyone. You are Karl Frenzel, the SS Oberscharfuehrer.
You were the third in command in the death camp Sobibor. You were the
Commandant of Lager I. Maybe you don’t remember me, but I remember you.”
I was trembling as I faced him.
“It was a dilemma”, I said to him, “but I decided to come. This was the first
case, as far as I know from the World War II literature where the accused talks
face-to-face with the victim, and I feel it is important”.
I told him I put aside the moral
implications and my feelings, and approached him objectively simply as a
researcher.
I knew why I wanted to talk to
him. As a man who has dedicated his life to the remembrance of Sobibor, and as
a serious writer and researcher of Sobibor, I felt there were still some unanswered
questions and gaps. As a former senior staff member of a death camp, one of the
few still living, he could give me some technical and other important
information and facts about the camp and the revolt known only by the 55. I
could get the German view of events and solve some puzzling aspects of the
camp. But why did he want to talk to me?
Now, speaking to him at the same
table, privately in a hotel lobby, I was in moral conflict. In a way my being
there with him could be interpreted as desecrating and insulting the memories
of the deceased— in some manner, even forgiving him. I knew that many of my
fellow survivors will point an accusing finger at me. Yet I wanted to talk to
him. I knew if I went, I would be sorry, and if I didn’t, I would be even more
sorry. So I blocked out the feelings.
“I was fifteen years old. I
survived because you picked me as a shoe-shine boy. But my father, my mother
and my brother, and the other 200 Jews from lzbica that you led to the gas
chamber, did not.”
“This was terrible, very terrible.
I can only tell you with tears”, he went on quietly, calmly in an even tone, “it isn’t only
now that it upsets me so terribly. It upset me then… You don’t know what went
on in us, and you don’t understand the circumstances we found ourselves in.”
I heard him, but nothing
registered emotionally. Functioning on an intellectual level only, my mind
simply sought out data and compared what he said with facts. And the facts
were:
SS Frenzel acted above and beyond
“duty”.
A conscientious and efficient
official, he led the incoming transports of Jews to the gas chambers. To the
slave-workers, he doled out vicious beatings for slowness and other
infractions. Those who became sick, or were caught committing “crimes” such as
theft of food, he personally led to the execution site. Was he asking me to
understand and feel sorry for his sufferings? I felt no pity, no anger,
nothing. In order to interview him I turned off all feelings, justas over forty
years ago in Sobibor I did not feel for my gassed parents and brother; if I
had, I would have broken down and been killed.
I was the objective reporter now,
and I wanted to know what he felt in those years. I said, “Frenzel, I would
like to know what you felt then... Were you an anti-Semite or did you do what
you did because you were ordered to? What I want to know is, did you believe,
when you were there, that what you were doing was right?”
There was a pause. I didn’t
realize the spot I put him in. If he said no, he would be portraying himself as
a morally deficient Nazi. If he said yes, he would be portraying himself as-a
morally deficient human being.
“No”, he said quietly and evenly,
“but we had our duty to do. For us it was also a very bad time”. I made no
comment on this comparison but asked why he joined the Nazi Party. He looked at
me dumbfounded, as if it were a silly question, and he replied, “Because there
was unemployment!” as if this were self-explanatory. He told me that by chance
his first girlfriend was Jewish. They were together for two years, but parted
when her father, who was an editor of the Social-Democratic newspaper Vorwarts,
found out that he was a member of the Nazi party. In 1934 she emigrated to
America with her family.
“You were a member of the Nazi
Party since 1930”, I said. “Why are you now having a change of heart?” “No,
room not just now”, he answered, “I’ve cursed the Nazis and all their leaders
since 1945 for what they have done. Since 1945 I have not been interested any
more in politics”. I noted that his change occurred when the Germans lost the
war, but I said nothing. After the war he lived peacefully like any respectable
citizen. After his wife’s death he took care of his five children. In 1962 he
was arrested at his job in Frankfurt where he worked as a stage lighting
technician. On his break police officers interrupted his beer drinking and
asked him if his name was Frenzel, and was he ever in Sobibor? He admitted he
was.
We went on. “Frenzel, how many
Jews were gassed at Sobibor? They say over half a million. Is that accurate?”
He replied: “No. I think no more than 160,000”. “But the railroad documents
show 250,000, and many were brought by trucks, carriages and by foot, I said.
“Are you a religious person?” I asked, “Do you attend church?” He responded: “Yes,
very often”. I then asked: “Did you have any conflict regarding your religious
beliefs and political activity?”
“No. We were German Christians, [A
Nazi-supported section of the Evangelical Church]. All my children were
christened, like myself. My brother studied theology. My wife and myself, not
every Sunday because of the children, but every second or third, we always
attended church.”
“And you have not, as a Christian,
any problems with your past?” He answered immediately, “I have nothing to hide.
I’m sorry that I was in this mess men”.
“But in Sobibor you did not think
about being sorry”, I pressed. He answered: “We didn’t know where we were ‘till
we arrived. They told us we were going to guard a concentration camp. So I had
my duty to do”. “Was the extermination of 250,000 Jews your duty?” He looked
straight at me: “I was in jail for over sixteen years and had ample time to
think about right and wrong, and I came to the conclusion that what happened to
the Jews in those times was wrong. All those years, I was dreaming about it...”
I was listening as if from far
away. I asked about his family, I knew that he had two brothers. One was
studying for the pastorate. “How much did they know?” “Both of them were killed
in the war, but my sister survived”, he answered. I asked: “How about your
children now. Do they know? And what are they saying?” He replied: “Naturally
they wondered about Sobibor. They know it was a crime. They say, ‘Father, you
were also a part of it.’” And I explained, “But they are with me and don’t
reject me. They wanted to know everything that happened at Sobibor. I was
ordered there. I was not a SS. There were only five SS. The rest were civilians
in SS uniforms.”
As a survivor I had often wondered
what a Nazi thought of the film ‘Holocaust’. Had he seen it? He shook his head.
Did he think any film or documentary could show it the way it
was? “No” he said,
“the reality was much worse... it was so terrible that it cannot be described”.
A scene flashed…Standing,
listening to the muffled screams from the gas chambers.., and knowing that men,
women and children were dying in horrible pain, naked, as I worked sorting
their clothing. I tried to keep an interviewers tone, but my voice trembled.
“Frenzel”, I said, “tens of
thousands of children were killed at Sobibor and you had children at the time.
I’ve seen pictures of them. When you saw little children, five years, one year,
one week old put to death. Did it occur to you, you had children also?” I didn’t
mean it the way he took it. Defensively, and with just a trace of anger, he
said he never killed children, but was accused of it by other witnesses. His
voice, until now in a low,
even tone with patience and self-control, suddenly took on emotion. “I want you
to know”, he said, and I could feel the resentment in his voice, “there was
this little ten year old girl and her mother, and Wagner wanted to take them to
the gas chambers, and I arranged so they didn’t go.” There was a pause and his
voice trembled slightly. “That’s why it’s upsetting that I’m accused of killing
children.” Apparently he didn’t consider ordering their deaths as “killing”.
Someone else did the actual shooting or gassing. As if sensing my feelings, he
continued. “I condemn all that happened to the Jews... I can understand that
you can never forget, but I can’t either. I’ve dreamt about it all of the
sixteen years I spent in prison.
Just as you dream about it, I dream about it too.” Surely he wasn’t comparing
his nightmares to mine.., or was he saying his conscience was bothering him?
“The
revolt was well executed, don’t you think?” I asked proudly. But if I expected
confirmation or praise, there was none. Instead, he asked a question; did I
know how long the revolt took? “Fifteen minutes”, I said. He agreed. “But, we
worked from 3:30 to 5:30”, I continued, “the time during which we annihilated your
comrades.
“Did you
leave anyone (Jews left in the camp) alive?” Quickly and defensively he
retorted that it was SS General Sporenberg who ordered the executions, not he.
I had more
technical questions. Many escapees unwittingly found themselves back near the
camp, having run around in circles in the forest. I wanted to know how many
were caught. His face lit up. A chance to show his expertise. “Yes, about
forty-five, and with the 150 Jews remaining in camp, about 195. Then I had the
search stopped. About seventy were killed in the revolt and in the mine fields
surrounding the camp.” Then, as an afterthought, looking away he added in a
matter-of-fact tone: “I’m happy for every Jew who survived.” I didn’t comment
on this irony. I dropped the subject of the revolt.
We were
quiet for a moment. Then in a confidential tone, as if between friends, quietly
and hesitantly, and I believe sincerely, he began: “Herr Blatt if, you know,
when I see on television and read about Israel, I ask myself how could so many
(go to their deaths)... When I see in Israel, proof of their courage, I can’t
understand how this could happen here… I just can’t grasp it”.
Suddenly I
realized he probably didn’t feel hatred for Jews, but contempt that they were
weak. I didn’t let him go further. My voice trembled: “I think the question you
want to ask is, why did the revolt happen so late?” Not waiting for a reply, I
continued. “For one thing, the Polish Jews had already been imprisoned in the
ghettos for three years and were demoralized. They were weak, members of
families who were separated or killed, they were broken in spirit. They were
starved, they were ill, and there were the elderly, and women with children.
And the Jews from other countries, like Holland, who had not come from ghettos,
who knew nothing, and had been tricked. You know how it was...” He did not
comment. “Besides”, I said, breaking the silence, who could believe it? They
simply couldn’t believe that Germans could do such a thing. They believed in
Humanity. You know… the fake train station, flowers, promising speeches”. I
paused. Still he said nothing.
…I asked
what he thought of neo-Nazis today. Are they strong or weak? “Very weak, and
they should be forbidden”, he answered. “Well, if they are so weak, why are you
afraid to speak out?” I asked. He leaned forward, and as if indicating various
locations on an imaginary map, he pointed with his finger on the table. “They
are here, there, and if I go to the press, they have their connections.”
We talked
for another few hours. I was trying to get more information regarding the
interaction between the Nazis in Sobibor and the inner structural organization of
the camp which was unknown to the prisoners. I sifted through the past,
verifying suspicions and rumors. Surprisingly, I was able to verify facts that
were never brought up in court and were necessary for writing the story of
Sobibor.
I lit another cigarette and we sat
back quietly for a while, facing each other. I heard voices from outside and
looked out the window. I saw on the street older women and men of Frenzel’s
age. I wondered what they were like back then. And those young kids …what will they become?
