Mila 18 - Leon Uris [171]
The Polish camps are:
LUBLIN DISTRICT
Belzec—Located on the Lublin-Tomaszow rail line near Rawa Ruska, handling Jews from the Lwow-Lemberg area with a capacity of ten thousand a day.
Sobibor—Near Wlodawa, between Wlodawa and Chelm. Capacity believed to be six thousand a day.
Majdanek—An early concentration camp in the Lublin suburb Majdan-Tartarski under the personal direction of Odilo Globocnik, SS Gruppenführer of Poland. Capacity in excess of ten thousand a day.
WESTERN POLAND
Chelmno—The oldest extermination center (in operation at the end of 1941), nine miles from Kolo, on the rail line between Lodz and Poznan, exterminating Jews in western Poland.
CENTRAL POLAND
Treblinka—Most recently discovered by underground efforts, located in the Sokolow Podlaski province near Warsaw, liquidating Jews from the Warsaw ghetto as well as Radom, Bialystok, Grodno, the Baltics, Czenstochowa, Kielce.
SOUTHERN POLAND
Auschwitz—Located just outside the Silesian village of Oswiencim. The concentration camp has some fifty satellite labor camps. Extermination facilities are in a compound named Birkenau. Capacity in excess of forty thousand a day. Gypsies, Russian POWs, political, criminal, and other prisoners are liquidated here as well as Jews.
SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT # 1
by “Jan” on the Majdanek extermination camp in Lublin
I was able to enter Majdanek disguised as a Polish laborer, one of hundreds who work on construction jobs in the outer compounds.
At 0700 I left Lublin by horse and cart with a party named “Leopold.” We were halted at a rail terminal approximately one kilometer from the main gate of the camp. The terminal is adjacent to the main highway. We sat and waited while several thousand Rumanian Jews were herded over the highway on a march to the camp gate.
A line of Red Cross vans waited alongside the terminal building. German guards loaded these vans with aged, cripples, infants, and others unfit to walk the mile. Leopold told me these Red Cross vans are actually sealed, escape-proof cabins. Once they are in motion, the carbon monoxide from the exhaust is routed back into the van so that by the time they reach Majdanek the occupants are dead.
(Note: This same method was used in both Chelmno and Treblinka but ruled out as too slow and costly. It is used only to supplement the main extermination facilities.)
I entered the outer compound at 0800 through a gate which bore a sign: LABOR BRINGS FREEDOM. My crew was working on a brick barrack in the outer camp, fifty meters from the inner camp, for use by a new guard contingent. I was able to place myself on the third-story roof in a hidden spot and in a position of observation through a pair of field glasses which I brought in in my lunch box.
I should estimate that the entire camp area covered six or seven hundred acres. At its closest point it was only a kilometer and a half from Lublin. The outer camp contains guard barracks, the commandant’s home, a general store, garage, and other service buildings of a permanent nature.
The inner compound is composed of forty-six barracks made of wood of the type used as German army stables. Air and light came through a narrow row of skylight windows. I was told that each barrack holds nearly four hundred prisoners. Obviously they are crammed with room only for slabs for beds and a narrow passageway to the main door.
The inner compound is surrounded by double walls of barbed wire five meters high. Between the two walls is a continuous patrol by Ukrainians with Alsatian dogs. I am told that the inner wall is electrified at night.
High guard towers with floodlights and machine guns stand every twenty-five meters along the outer wall.
Leopold called my attention to the set of barracks nearest us. He told me these are warehouses. The Rumanian Jews whom I had seen earlier at the rail terminal were already filing into the first barrack, which is a selection