THE DRAGNET
MILITARY FUNERAL FOR NAZI SS KILLED IN THE SOBIBOR REVOLT
Chelm
Poland, October 17, 1943
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A quietness lay over Sobibor. The few Germans Still alive,
Erich Bauer. Kail Frenzel, Willy Wendland. Rechwald and Siegfried Wolf assessed the situation. The guards assembled but many of their comrades
were now gone. On those parts of the fences that remained standing and on the
ground now torn by the explosions, bodies were lying scattered about.
Taken by surprise, the Germans were
unable to comprehend the situation. Was this revolt accomplished by the
wretched Jews alone, or was it a planned military action with the help of
outside partisans? They were in a panic. The camp telephone was not
functioning, and Frenzel called the nearby base of the Border Police and the SS
Mounted Unit in Chelm from the village train station. He also sent a chaotic
message to the Security Police headquarters in Lublin asking for immediate reinforcement to save the lives of the remaining Nazis: Jews revolted ...Some escaped ...Some SS officers, noncoms, foreign
guards deed. ...Some Jews still in camp. ...Send help.
The Commandant of SS and Police forces in Lublin, Lieutenant
General Jakob Sporrenberg, immediately informed General Frederick Krόeger in
Krakow, the Commandant of all SS and Police forces in occupied Poland of the
Sobibor uprising and the Nazi casualties. His cable to them follows:
October 14. 1943, at about 17:00
hours, a revolt of Jews in the SS camp Sobibor, 40 km north of Chelm. They
overpowered the guards, seized the armory and after a shutout with the camp
garrison, escaped in an unknown direction. Nine SS killed. One SS wounded. One
SS missing. Two guards of non-German nationality shot to death.
Approximately 300 Jews escaped. The
remainder were shot to death, or are now in the camp. Military Police and armed
forces were immediately notified and took over the security of the camp at
about 1:00 hours. The area south and southwest of Sobibor is now being searched
by police and armed forces.
____________________
General Hilmar Moser, wasted no time in ordering Major Hans
Wagner, commander of the 689 Werhmacht Security Battalion in Chelm, to quell
the uprising and capture those who had escaped by every necessary measure.
Help arrived quickly in the form of
a small Border Patrol unit of seven men under the command of SS
Untersturmfuehrer Adalbert Bends. Late that night Major Eggert of the Security
Police, and Captain Erich Wullbrandt, an officer in the Security Police
decorated with the highest German military honors, arrived.
SS-Untersturmfuehrer Benda reported:
During the mopping up of the camp itself our men had to use arms because the
prisoners resisted arrest. A great number of prisoners were shot: 159 prisoners
were treated as ordered. All the men of the Einsatzkommando were equal to their
task.
The next order of business was the
pursuit.
____________________
For the Jews who had escaped the
next few weeks were terrifying. They were hunted by over 100 regular soldiers,
100 mounted police, and 150 Ukrainians and SS soldiers. On October 16 and 17
the second and Third Squadron of Mounted SS and Police added five hundred more
men to the manhunt. This force was formidable enough; but one must add to it
the auxiliary units, regional police units, and local collaboration - aided by
two Luftwaffe observation aircraft - to comprehend the odds against these Jews.
The bridges across the Bug river
were guarded and traps were set on the crossroads. Circling in the forest, some
Jews inadvertently returned to the camp area where they were spotted and caught
The search was finally officially halted
on October 2. But the escapees continued to be captured individually or in
groups and cables were sent regularly to Krakow as each of the escapee was
caught. Some of them:
Security zone Bug: October 17- 19. 1943. Jews who escaped from
Sobibor on October 14, were apprehended in the area of Sobibor and Rozanka,
fifty two kilometers north of Chelm. The military police killed forty-four more
Jews and fifteen Jews were taken into custody. Seized: one rifle, one pistol,
one hand-grenade.
October 21, 1943 Sawin, fifteen kilometers north of Chelm.
Wehrmacht posts in Sawin apprehended six Jews from Sobibor. One Jew was shot
death attempting to escape.
Security zone Bug: October 28. 43. In the area of Sawin, one Jew
from Sobibor was shot in an escape attempt by Wehmiacht post 27.
October 29. 43, in the municipality of Wyryki, o 489, the
military police apprehended two escapees from Sobibor. They were executed.
The Jewish Side
Original number of prisoners at the time of the revolt
. 550
Not able or willing to escape,
including 30 in Lager I..
. (150)
Killed in combat and mine fields
. (80)
_____
Initially escaped Sobibor
.. 320
Captured in dragnet and executed
. (170)
_____
Successfully escaped
150
Killed
fighting Germans as partisans or in the army
. (5)
Killed
in hiding, mostly by hostile native elements
. (92)
_____
Survivors of the revolt to be liberated by the Allies
..
.. 53
Additional 9 Jews survived from earlier individual escapes,
which makes a total of 62 Sobibor survivors.
The Nazi side:
Germans
and Ukrainian guards on duty at the time of the revolt
.. 137
Germans killed (including 2 Volksdeutsche
guard leaders
... 12
German
wounded
... 1
Ukrainian guard
killed
8
Ukrainian guards
wounded
... 12
Ukrainian guards not
accounted for
. 28
(Fled for fear of German
reprisals).
Word of the escape first got to the
outside world through an October 25 cable send by the Polish underground (AK)
to their government-in-exile in London: In an heroic fight with the Germans
the Jews destroyed their place of torment. This was the first and only
case in which so many Nazis ware killed by prisoners in a single action, in one
day, during the Second World War. Bauer recalled in his post-war testimony;
...l transported seven coffins to
the city of Chelm. The rest of the coffins came with the train to Chelm.
Those I transported from the railroad station to the City HaIl. In all
twenty-one or twenty-three persons were killed.
Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoes
notes in his memoirs that The Jews (of Sobibor) were able, by force, to
achieve a major breakout, during which almost all the German personnel were
wiped out...
The uprising in Sobibor represented
one of the most heroic pages in the anti-fascist resistance in World War ll, as
well as in Holocaust history as a whole. Lt was unique in its plan and
execution, and in successfully eliminating most of the SS staff in the camp.
As a result the camp was closed. The
area was plowed under, and a Ukrainian Guard settled at the site.
__________________
On another level, the Sobibor
Uprising had more far reaching and tragic repercussions. On October 19, 1943
the Sobibor Revolt was discussed extensively at a meeting held in Governor
General Hans Frank Mansion in Krakow. In attendance were the Chefs of the
Security Service and Police in the General government. Citing Sobibor as an
example of danger they decided to accelerate theliquidation of the remaining
Jews in camps in Lublin area. Himmler immediately ordered SS-General Friedrich
Krueger to carry out this policy.
Twenty days
after the revolt on November 3, 1943, under the cod-name Ermtefost (Harvest Festival), the liquidation began.
The total was staggering: 10,000 Jews were killed at Trawniki, 18.000 at
Majdanek, and an additional 15.000 in other camps - a total of 43.000 killed in
six days.