Documents

Foreign Press Disbelieves Report of Liquidation

The growing pace of the extermination campaign prompted the Directorate of Civil Resistance in Warsaw to issue the following proclamation dated September 17, 1942.

It was published by the entire underground press and transmitted to London, where it was repeated by the BBC, SWIT, and other allied radio stations. Unfortunately, the first dispatches—including the information that the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto was begun on July 22, 1942—were not believed in London and taken for exaggerated, anti-German propaganda. Only when the British intelligence service confirmed the information months later was the proper use made of the report:

The tragic fate that befell the Polish people, decimated by the foe, is now compounded by the monstrous, planned slaughter of the Jews that has been carried on in our country for nearly a year. These mass murders are without precedent in the history of the world, and all the cruelties known to man pale beside them. Infants, children, young people, men and women, whether of Catholic or of the Hebrew faith, are being mercilessly murdered, poisoned by gas, buried alive, thrown out of windows onto the pavements belowfor no other reason but that they are Jewish; even before death, they suffer the tortures of slow agony, the hell of humiliation and torment, the cynical sadism of their executioners. More than a million victims have already been slaughtered, and their number grows with each passing day.

--The Directorate of Civil Resistance

Unable to counteract these crimes, the Directorate of Civil Resistance protests in the name of the entire Polish nation against the atrocities perpetrated on the Jews. All Polish political and civic groups join in this protest. As in the case of Polish victims of German persecution, the executioners and their henchmen will be held directly responsible for these crimes.

In a letter dated April 23, 1943, Mordechai Anielewicz refers to the above report on which a SWIT broadcast was based:

“The fact that .... the radio station SWIT broadcast a beautiful program about our struggle (which we heard on our set here), was the source of great satisfaction. It gives us courage in our fight to know we are not forgotten on the other side of the ghetto wall.”

The Stroop Report

To follow are excerpts of the report by SS Brigadefuhrer Jurgen Stroop on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising presented at the Nuremberg Trial. He recorded his daily killings in a boastful 75-page report. After WWII, Stroop surrendered to the Allies, claiming he was just following orders. The Stroop Report was used by the Allies at the Nuremberg Trials to confirm his guilt. Jurgen Stroop was turned over to the Poles and hanged on the site of the ghetto in 1951.

“The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could be broken only by relentlessly using all our forces and energy by day and night. On 23 April 1943 the Reichsfuehrer SS issued his order to complete the combing out of the Warsaw Ghetto with the greatest severity and relentless tenacity.

I therefore decided to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire, including the blocks of residential buildings near the armament works. One concern after the other was systematically evacuated and subsequently destroyed by fire. The Jews then emerged from their hiding places and dugouts in almost every case. Not infrequently, the Jews stayed in the burning buildings until, because of the heat and the fear of being burned alive, they preferred to jump down from the upper stories after having thrown mattresses and other upholstered articles into the street from the burning buildings. With their bones broken, they still tried to crawl across the street into blocks of buildings which had not yet been set on fire or were only partially in flames.

Often the Jews changed their hiding places during the night, by moving into the ruins of burnt out buildings, taking refuge there until they were found by our patrols. Their stay in the sewers also ceased to be pleasant after the first week. Frequently from the street, we could hear loud voices coming through the sewer shafts. Then my men courageously climbed down from the shafts to bring out the Jews and not infrequently they then stumbled over Jews already dead, or were shot at.

It was always necessary to use smoke candles to drive out the Jews. Thus one day we opened 183 sewer entrance holes, and at a fixed time lowered smoke candles into them, with the result that the bandits fled from what they believed to be gas in the center of the former Ghetto, where they could then be pulled out of the sewer holes there. A great number of Jews who could not be counted were exterminated by blowing up sewers.

The story continues in daily teletype reports, from which the following are excerpts:

“Our setting the block on fire achieved the result in the course of the night that those Jews whom we had not been able to find despite all our search operations left their hideouts under the roofs, in the cellars, and elsewhere, and appeared on the outside of the buildings, trying to escape the flames. Masses of them -entire families -were already aflame and jumped from the windows or endeavored to let themselves down by means of sheets tied together or the like. Steps had been taken so that these Jews as well as the remaining ones were liquidated at once.”

“When the blocks of buildings mentioned above were destroyed, 120 Jews were caught and numerous Jews were destroyed when they jumped from the attics to the inner courtyards, trying to escape the flames. Many more Jews perished in the flames or were destroyed when the dugouts a sewer entrances were blown up.'

“Not until the blocks of buildings were well aflame and were out to collapse did a further considerable number of Jews merge forced to do so by the flames and the smoke. Time and again the Jews try to escape even through burning buildings. Innumerable Jews whom we saw on the roofs during the conflagration perished in the flames. Others emerged from the upper stories in the last possible moment and were only able to escape death from the flames by jumping down. Today we caught a total of 2,283 Jews, of whom 204 were shot, and innumerable Jews were destroyed in dugouts and in the flames.”

“The Jews testify that they emerge at night to get fresh air, since it is unbearable to stay permanently within the dugout owing to the long duration of the operation. On the average the raiding parties shoot 30 to 50 Jews each night. From the statements it was to be inferred that a considerable number of Jews are still underground in the Ghetto. Today we blew up a concrete building which we had not been able to destroy by fire. In this operation we learned that the blowing up of a building is a very lengthy process and takes an enormous amount of explosives. The best and only method for destroying the Jews therefore remains the setting of fires.”

“Some depositions speak of three to four thousand Jews who still remain in underground holes, sewers, and dugouts. The undersigned is resolved not to terminate the large-scale operation until the last Jew has been destroyed.”

On 24 May 1943 the final figures were compiled by Major General Stroop:

“Of the total of 56,065 caught about 7,000 were destroyed in the former Ghetto during large scale operation. 6,929 Jews were destroyed by transporting them to Treblinka Camp No. 2. The sum total of Jews destroyed is therefore 13,929. Beyond the number of 56.065 an estimated number of 5 to 6,000 Jews were destroyed by being blown up or by perishing in the flames.”

Source: Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Volume I, Ch. VII, Office of the U.S. Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946, pp. 995-998.