The Journey to Auschwitz
On the night of December 5, 1942, the third night of Chanukah, the Jews of Lunna- Wola and other neighboring towns were ordered to assemble at the center of Kelbasin Camp (see note 1). Before assembling, Sarah Gradowski (previously Zlotoyabko) from Lunna, who was in her thirties, led the Jews of Lunna in singing the Chanukah hymn "Maoz Tzur" inside the underground hut of the Lunna Jews. The Jews were forced to walk on a bitterly cold rainy night two kilometers to the Lososna train station. There they were brutally shoved into some twenty small railroad wagons. Each car - mostly freight wagons, although there were a few passenger cars – contained approximately 120 persons. A single pail was used as a toilet for an entire car. Very little fresh air could come into these sealed wagons, and what little did, was bitterly cold. Families tried their best to stay together. The transport consisted of about 2,500 people, which included some Jews from towns other than Lunna.

The train made several stops on the way, but the Jews were not allowed to leave the wagons and the gentiles from the villages through which the train passed were prohibited by the Germans from giving the Jews water. During the three-day journey from Kelbasin to Auschwitz, most Jews ran out of the small amount of water and food that they carried with them from Kelbasin, and many children and elderly people suffered from hunger and dehydration. Many Jews on the transport suspected that a terrible fate awaited them, but they did not know for sure what plans the Germans had for them.

Zalman Gradowski who was on that transport with his wife Sara and her family, wrote a detailed account of the journey from Kelbasin to Auschwitz, which was discovered buried near the crematoria in Auschwitz after the liberation of the camp in 1945. His journals were written in Yiddish, translated into Hebrew and were published in "Megilat Auschwitz" by Ber Mark. Gradowski noted that at one point in the journey, the train passed Bialystok and the Malkinia Junction, but did not turn off in the direction of Treblinka. In passing by this junction, the people in the transport felt relief, and some began to believe that they were actually being sent to a labor camp. These unfortunate Jews had heard rumors about an extermination camp in Treblinka, but did not know about Auschwitz, which was located far away in the southwestern part of pre-war Poland.

Auschwitz Death Camp
The transport of Jews from Lunna-Wola and the neighboring towns arrived at Auschwitz between 7 and 9 o’clock on the morning of December 8, 1942, the fifth day of Chanukah. Out of the entire transport of 2,500, approximately 315 men were "selected" for labor and joined the prisoners of Block 9 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. Of these, approximately 120 were from Lunna (see note 2).

The rest were sent immediately to the gas chambers, including all women and children (see note 3). The office responsible for organizing these transports was known by the official German acronym "RSHA” (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Security Headquarters). The RSHA was where Adolf Eichmann, among others, planned and oversaw their murderous activities. According to Danuta Czech, a historian at the Auschwitz Museum, RSHA Transport No. 3 is listed at Auschwitz as follows: "December 8, 1942. Jews from Grodno; 231 men with numbers 80764-80994 were sent into the camp. Children, mothers, and old men were gassed." To date, we have been unable to obtain a copy of this transport list, which may contain the names of the victims.

On the late evening of December 9, 1942, the SS soldiers "selected" about eighty young, strong men from Block 9. Those persons were moved to Block 2, which was the block for the Sonderkommandos ("Special Commandos"), who were forced to carry dead bodies from the gas chambers on wheelbarrows and burn them in "Bunkers". The Germans "liquidated" Sonderkommandos every so often and replaced them with newcomers. The typical Sonderkommando lasted about three months.

A partial list of Sonderkommandos indicates that proportionately more Jews from the Lunna-Wola transport that arrived on December 8, 1942 were forced to work as Sonderkommandos than from almost any other town in Europe. We know of at least seventeen persons from Lunna-Wola who were forced into such work: Zalman Gradowski, Yosef Derewianski, David Goland, Moshe Chernyawski, Shneur-Zalman Friedman, Eliezer Welbel, Eliezer Eisenshmidt, Berl Becker, Nissel Lewin, Aizik Nowik, Aron Leibowicz, Tewel Gisser, Abel (Aba) Suchowlanski, Zalman Rochkin, his brother Chaim Rochkin, Heshl (Yehoshua) Furman, and his cousin Kalman Furman (Heshl Furman and Chaim Rochkin died shortly after their selection).

During the winter of 1942-1943, many of the other persons selected on December 8, 1942 (but not sent to work as members of the Sonderkommandos) died from typhus, “pneumonia” (“Lungenentzuendung”) and other diseases. Motel Gisser, one of the people from Lunna who arrived in Auschwitz on December 8, 1942 in the RSHA transport from Kelbasin (Grodno), was assigned the camp number: 80828.
 

By the end of 1943 - approximately one year after the transport of Jews from Lunna and the neighboring towns arrived at Auschwitz – only about thirty people remained alive from the several hundred persons who survived the initial selection. As noted, most of those thirty persons were forced to "work" in the crematoria and gas chambers in Birkenau as members of the Sonderkommandos, while other more "fortunate" Lunna Jews including Moni Berenhaus were forced to work in the "Canada Unit" (sorting out clothing and other personal possessions of the countless victims). A few Jews were forced to work as sewer workers, digging holes and building canals, as well as performing other work duties in the main Auschwitz camp or its satellite camps.

By the spring of 1944, the Germans were operating four crematoria in Birkenau, which they numbered II, III, IV, V (the prisoners used the numbers: I, II, III and IV; further references will use the German numbering system.) The crematoria also included undressing rooms and gas chambers; two were underground (Crematory II and III) and two were at ground level (Crematory IV and V). Approximately one-hundred-twenty Sonderkommandos worked at each crematorium. The Sonderkommandos from Lunna who were forced to work in Crematory II were: Zalman Gradowski, Yosef Derewianski, David Goland, Moshe Chernyawski, and Shneur-Zalman Friedman. Those in Crematory IV were: Eliezer Welbel, Eliezer Eisenshmidt, Berl Becker, Nissel Lewin, Aizik Nowik, Aron Leibowicz, Tewel Gisser, Aba Suchowlanski (Nissel Lewin's brother-in-law), Zalman Rochkin, and Kalman Furman.

By the late spring of 1944, even as it was evident to the world that Germany was going to lose the war, the German murder machine ramped up to its greatest tempo. Within just a few months, the Germans murdered almost two-thirds of the 825,000 Jews of Hungary. By October 7, 1944, after the vast majority of European Jewry had been murdered, including, most recently, the majority of the Jews of Hungary and the last remaining Jewish Ghetto in Poland, Lodz, the SS, on Himmler’s orders, slowly began to wind down operations at Auschwitz. This decision was based, in part, on the fact that the transports had dwindled to a small percentage of what they had been, and due to the rapidly approaching Russian Army.

Over the course of 1944, the Sonderkommandos had heard from various sources that the SS soldiers were planning to liquidate all of them. As early as the Spring of 1944, Sonderkommando members, including those from Lunna, made preparations to revolt. They prepared makeshift weapons including stones, axes, as well as homemade grenades from explosives that were smuggled from a munitions factory by female inmates on the outside. The Polish resistance from outside the camp and a few Russians inside the camp were also involved in planning the revolt. For various reasons, however, the Polish partisans, who were deemed necessary to the success of the revolt, postponed the plan.

On October 7, 1944, in the morning, the Germans ordered the Sonderkommando members into a formation ("Appel") and selected thirty members, including the group of people from Lunna who had "worked" in Crematory IV and isolated them in Crematory V (see note 4). A  few hours later, some other Jewish members of the Sonderkommando in Crematory IV set the crematory on fire, destroying the gas chambers and the crematory. The Sonderkommando members taking part in the uprising also planned to blow up Crematory II and managed to kill three of the Germans and wounded about twelve others. During the actual revolt, 451 Sondekommando members were killed by the Germans and 212 remained alive (see note 5).

The Lunna residents who were killed during the Sonderkommando uprising were: Zalman Gradowski and Yosef Derewianski, who were among the leaders of the revolt, David Goland, Moshe Chernyawski and Shneur-Zalman Friedman. Some of the persons who were not shot during the rebellion were in fact murdered in the next few days. According to Mr. Eisenshmidt, in the remaining three months before the Auschwitz camp was "evacuated" (in January 1945), approximately seventy-five Sonderkommando members (out of the 212 who remained alive after the revolt) were either killed by the Germans or died. Those thirty members who were isolated in Crematory V (including the group of people from Lunna) were forced to burn the bodies of those inmates who died in Auschwitz and the neighboring camps, while other Sonderkommando members who remained alive were forced to work in disassembling and destroying Crematory II and III (see note 6).

It should be noted that, despite the fact that, as mentioned above, the average life expectancy of a worker in the Sonderkommando was approximately three months, most of the Lunna Jews survived almost two years or longer working in the crematoria (except for two persons who were liquidated soon after the selection). The testimony of Eliezer Eisenshmidt from Lunna, as well as other Jews who were forced to work in the Sonderkommando, is presented in the book "We Wept without Tears" by Gideon Greif.

By the beginning of 1945, the Soviets were rapidly approaching Auschwitz. In the face of certain defeat, the Germans destroyed records, blew up the existing crematoria and gas chambers, and forcibly evacuated those prisoners capable of walking, all with the intent of covering up all traces of their crimes. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march in bitter cold conditions with little clothing on their backs, in the general direction of Germany. All of the Jews of Lunna who had managed to remain alive in Auschwitz were among about 5,000 prisoners who were forced on this death march from Auschwitz on January 18, 1945. Many of these 5,000 evacuees died, while others eventually arrived in various other camps in Austria and Germany and were liberated from May 5 to May 9, 1945. Some 7,000 Jews who were too ill to walk remained in Auschwitz and were liberated by the Soviets on January 27, 1945. Many of these persons died shortly after their liberation.

As noted above, Zalman Gradowski recorded the events starting with the deportation of the Jews from the Lunna-Wola Ghetto to Kelbasin Camp, through his experiences in the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. His notes were found in tin cans under the ruins of the gas chambers after the war. These notes document the mass killing of Jews in the camp's gas chambers, as well as the work of the Sonderkommandos. Other members of the Sonderkommandos (including Zalman Levental and Leib Langfus) also buried accounts of the murder of European Jewry that were found after the war (see note 7).
 

Notes

Note 1: According to Eisenshmidt, the other neighboring towns were: Ozory and Yanov. However, he is not too certain about it since he was ill in Kelbasin camp. >back

Note 2: The numbers 315 and 120 are based on Eisenshmidt's estimates. >back

Note 3: In a sad twist of fate, later that same day, a number of rabbis and leaders of the American Jewish community met with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to urge him to take action against the genocide of the Jews of Europe. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/fdrmeet.html    >back

Note 4: Zalman Rochkin and Kalman Furman from Lunna were not among these 30 members since they were killed by the Germans before October 7, 1944. >back

Note 5: See: "We Wept without Tears" by Gideon Greif, p. 78 >back

Note 6: According to Piper's lists, the last transport arrived in Auschwitz on October 28, 1944. >back

Note 7: See Megilat Auschwitz by Ber Mark and "We Wept without Tears" by Gideon Greif. >back


 

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