The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was pacified primarily by Waffen-SS units, Ordnungspolizei, and Trawnikimännerze (sentries), mostly of Ukrainian origin. They were supported by Wehrmacht soldiers and Polish blue police. Their cruelty and greed seemed to know no bounds.
When the ghetto uprising broke out on April 19, 1943, the residents of the tenement house at Muranowska 38 fled to a half-finished bunker. It stretched from the basement of one of the outbuildings in the courtyard to the cellars beneath a ruined house adjacent to Niska Street. Five rooms, originally intended for around a hundred people, ultimately hid as many as 250 Jews. There, they languished in darkness, cramped quarters, and stuffy conditions. Risking their lives every day, they foraged for food and cooked meals outside the shelter.
After ten days, the group of unfortunates was discovered. First, a shot and German voices were heard at the camouflaged entrance to the bunker. Then a sweet, choking gas began to spread throughout the room. All hell broke loose. This is how 21-year-old Marian Berland, one of the hiding Jews, described those tragic moments: "Everyone rushed toward the exit like an avalanche. But here the gas was at its strongest. This way it bursts in. People are crowded and trampled to death. Anyone who falls in this crush will never rise again. […] The wheezing and coughing of the suffocating, the screams, the cries for help. You can't see anything. You can only feel and hear what's happening here. I don't know how long it lasts, but it seems like ages. People made a last effort to save themselves, to prolong their lives, even if only for a moment. They stormed several more times to the exit, but to no avail. Waves of gas threw them back. The number of those trampled and suffocated only increased. Moans and cries for mercy burst through the walls."
Throughout this deadly chaos, Father Berlanda maintained his composure. "Working like hell," he dug out a boarded-up basement window overlooking Niska Street. Thanks to his efforts, after a few minutes, the unimaginably tired and terrified Jews emerged one by one into the light of day, right under the barrels of the Waffen-SS machine guns.
After the bunker's occupants emerged, able to move on their own, the Germans went underground. They shot the wounded. The SS men, as Berland's account indicates, were amused by the whole situation: "The officer laughs, pleased, thanking us for a job well done. The soldiers slap each other on the back with joy. The longer they look at us, the more they laugh. They point at those who are suffering more and hold their sides. We look at them, completely stunned. What kind of people are these? They are beasts dressed in human clothing. […] Can there be a place in the world for such gangrene?"
A few minutes later, the Germans began the robbery. They ordered the Jews to surrender all their valuables and currency. The terrified crowd obediently filled a bucket and a helmet with them. Then, the SS men, their spirits further lifted by the loot, took a photo with the terrified and wounded men to commemorate their "success." Finally, they escorted the column of unfortunates to the nearby Umschlagplatz. There, they handed them over to another group of executioners – Ukrainian guards.
The "unprecedented bravado" of the murderers
The suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was undoubtedly one of the most barbaric acts of World War II. The fates of both victims and insurgents are most often, and rightly, described in the context of this tragedy. However, it is also important to remember who the perpetrators of this crime were, those "beasts in human clothing" who unflinchingly carried out Adolf Hitler's genocidal plan. Let's begin with the commanders-in-chief.
The first commander responsible for the operation to liquidate the ghetto was the then 46-year-old Colonel Ferdinand von Sammeren-Frankenegg. He came from Upper Austria, the Nazi hotbed. By education, like many leading SS criminals, he was a doctor of law. He himself was in Heinrich Himmler's "Black Order" until 1932. In July 1942 became head of the SS and police in Warsaw. He was co-responsible for carrying out the "great action" in the summer of 1942, during which at least 254 people were murdered. The inhabitants of the ghetto were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. When on the morning of April 19, 1943 sent his men again to finally liquidate the Jewish quarter, he hoped that the operation would go just as smoothly. He was sorely mistaken. After entering the wall, both German columns were attacked with Molotov cocktails and fired upon by insurgents from the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Union. After a short clash, the German forces withdrew with losses. The defeat in the skirmish with the Jews shocked the SS leadership. Friedrich Krüger, commander of the SS and Police in the General Government, described it as a "stain on the honor" of the formation. He called von Sammeren-Frankenegg an "idiot doctor" and demanded his imprisonment. Ultimately, the Austrian was urgently replaced in his position by the then 47-year-old SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop. The dark figure of the ghetto torturer was immortalized in the book "Conversations with an Executioner" by Kazimierz Moczarski. Stroop came from Westphalia. He was active in the SS and NSDAP from the early 30s. 20th century During World War II, he served in the territory of Greater Poland, which was incorporated into the Reich, fought on the front in the SS-Totenkopf Panzer Division on the Eastern Front, and commanded SS and police structures in occupied Russia and Ukraine. When Stroop took over command in Warsaw on the afternoon of April 19, he immediately changed the tactics of the pacification units. The Germans began to comb the ghetto in smaller groups, supported by field and anti-aircraft artillery fire, as well as using armored cars and tanks. After a few days, on April 23rd to be precise, he decided that the best method of fighting the insurgents would be to simply gradually – quarter by quarter – raze the district to the ground. Stroop put it this way in his report: "The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could only be broken by the energetic and tireless combat action of the assault units, lasting day and night. […] That is why I have now decided to completely destroy the Jewish residential district by burning down all the apartment blocks, including the blocks near the armaments factories. One factory after another was systematically emptied and immediately set on fire. At that time, Jews almost always came out of their hiding places and bunkers.”It is difficult to assess what forces the Germans threw into this criminal operation every day. Stroop precisely claimed that on average he had 2090 soldiers and officers. In turn, the Home Army estimated the size of its group at around 5. They had overwhelming numerical and firepower superiority over several hundred Jewish insurgents, armed almost exclusively with pistols. Szmuel Krakowski estimated that the sheer number of rifles and machine guns possessed by Hitler's soldiers gave them an advantage over the small arms arsenal of the ŻOB and ŻZW by at least 27 to 1. It was further increased by the fact that the occupiers had inexhaustible supplies of ammunition, while the Jews had only 10-15 cartridges per pistol.
Obsessed with Nazi ideology, Stroop seemed oblivious to the fact that he was waging a campaign against defenseless civilians. He wrote of the pacification as a heroic battle. He praised the sappers for their "tireless and selfless effort" in blowing up houses. The Ordnungspolizei units, which primarily "hunted" frightened Jews hidden in bunkers, for their "unparalleled bravado." But there were more units that disgraced themselves for participating in this criminal operation. Here is a cursory overview.
SS and Wehrmacht troops
The core of the pacification group was the Waffen-SS, the front-line units subordinated to Himmler. These were primarily young recruits, often as young as 19, from the panzergrenadier and cavalry training battalions. On average, 821 soldiers and officers from these units participated in the ghetto operations daily. They may have constituted over half of the total German forces involved in suppressing the uprising.
Among those serving in these units was 19-year-old SS-Sturmmann Erwin Maletz. When he was captured by the British a year later, he did not deny his involvement in the shootings of Warsaw Jews. He testified, likely in a partial attempt to shift responsibility, that one of the non-commissioned officers, Unterscharführer Warth, "forced" his unit to participate in mass executions. He also admitted that some of his colleagues did not need to be encouraged to kill. Strummann Erlach, for example, took pleasure in it, saying, "The more (Jews he kills – ed.), the better."
In these crimes they were assisted on average by 228 gendarmes and six officers from the infamous 22nd Ordnungspolizei Regiment (Polizei-Regiment Warschau), subordinate to Colonel Rudolf.
Wehrmacht sappers and artillerymen (averaging 56 men and three officers) also participated in the pacification operation. They shelled and blew up the ghetto buildings.
Trawnikimänner
On numerous occasions during Operation Reinhardt—including during the liquidation of the Radom and Częstochowa ghettos—German forces were supported by units of the so-called Trawnikimänner. This was a collaborative SS guard unit formed in 1941 from Soviet prisoners of war, primarily of Ukrainian origin. They were first trained at the SS camp in Trawniki near Lublin (hence their informal name) and then sent to serve in the Nazi archipelago of crimes. They served, among others, in the extermination camps in Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka.
In April and May 1943, Stroop commanded 335 guards trained at Trawniki every day. It was they who, on April 29th, captured a group of Jews from the bunker at Muranowska 38, including Marian Berland, from the SS. They locked the prisoners, along with hundreds of other unfortunates, in the school building at Umschglplatz for several days. The "Ukrainians," as the Jews called them, outdid each other in tormenting their victims. They denied them access to water. They beat them in drunken frenzy, often to death. They raped women. They tormented and shot those who "displeased them." They focused most of their activity on plunder. For example, under threat of death, they extorted ransoms from entire groups of prisoners. They also extorted exorbitant bribes for even small amounts of water, which was deliberately withheld from Jews.
After a few nightmarish days in such conditions, the "Ukrainians", beating them mercilessly on the head with clubs, herded the Jews, including Berland's group, onto a train that went to Treblinka.
Navy blue policemen
Unfortunately, Polish Blue Police also played a disgraceful role in quelling the Ghetto Uprising. Each day, 360 officers from all Warsaw police stations participated in the operation. Their primary task was to guard the ghetto wall from the outside and stop escaping Jews. According to accounts cited by Professor Jan Grabowski, many exploited the desperation of the escaped Jews, attempting to extort money or valuables from them. They also committed crimes within the ghetto. Leon Najberg recalled that it was Blue Police, working alongside the Germans, who shot several of his acquaintances in the courtyard of the tenement house at 4 Wałowa Street.
Crime and Punishment
Stroop's report indicates that at least 631 identified bunkers in the district held approximately 56 Jews. Of these, 7 were murdered on the spot, and another nearly 7 were sent to Treblinka. The rest (approximately 36) were deported to various concentration camps. The Jewish quarter was reduced to a ghastly, burnt-out ruin. During the operation, according to German data, 17 soldiers from the pacification units were killed and 93 wounded. These figures are likely a significant underestimate – the SS could not admit to having bled to death in battle with "subhumans." It is difficult to estimate how many of the ghetto's executioners were brought to justice after the war. It certainly wasn't a significant percentage, especially at the lower levels. Importantly, Jürgen Stroop was held responsible. He fell into American hands in May 1945 and was handed over to Poland two years later. He was sentenced to death for war crimes. He was hanged in Mokotów Prison in March 1952.
Bibliography:
- Berland, "Days as Long as Centuries. Testimony from Hiding Since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising", Warsaw 2023
- Grabowski, "At the Police Station. The Participation of the Polish Blue Police and Criminal Police in the Holocaust," Wołowiec 2020
- Engelking, J. Leociak, "The Warsaw Ghetto. A Guide to a Non-Existent City", Warsaw 2013
- Black, "A Simple Soldier of Operation Reinhardt. Troops from Trawniki and the Extermination of Polish Jews" in: D. Libionka (ed.) – "Operation Reinhardt. The Extermination of Jews in the General Government", Warsaw 2004
- W. Blood, "Hitler's Snipers. Special SS Units to Combat Partisan Movement", Warsaw 2008
- Krakowski, "The Balance of Power in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" in: "Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute/Jewish History Quarterly. Selected Articles from 1950-2017", Warsaw 2017
- Stroop, "The Jewish residential district in Warsaw no longer exists!", Warsaw 2009
- Moczarski, "Conversations with an Executioner", Warsaw 1992
- Najberg, "The Last Ghetto Insurgents", Warsaw 1993
