St-Vincent had, it appeared, refused to place his troops at the disposal of the authorities in order to round up Jews.
The news item of September 9 also told of a Vichy order for the arrest of all Roman Catholic priests who were sheltering Jews in the unoccupied zone. ‘Some arrests’, it added, had already been made. In reply to these arrests, Cardinal Gerlier, the Archbishop of Lyons, had already issued a ‘defiant refusal’ to surrender those Jewish children whose parents had already been deported, and who were being ‘fed and sheltered’ in Roman Catholic homes. 60
A main news item in
The Times
on September 11 reported ‘popular indignation’ in Lyons following the arrest and imprisonment of eight Jesuit priests who had refused to surrender ‘several hundred’ children for deportation; children whom they had kept hidden ‘in buildings belonging to the religious order’.
The Times
also reported that the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione, had informed the French Ambassador to the Vatican ‘that the conduct of the Vichy government towards Jews and foreign refugees was a gross infraction’ of the Vichy government’s own principles, and was ‘irreconcilable with the religious feelings which Marshal Pétain had so often invoked in his speeches’. 61
In Warsaw, on September 3, disaster struck the fledgling Jewish Fighting Organization. One of their leaders, Yisrael Zeltzer, had already been arrested with a group of youngsters. Then, onSeptember 3, Joseph Kaplan, another of its leaders, was arrested. His colleague Shmuel Braslaw, while trying to find out where Kaplan was being held, was stopped on the street by uniformed Germans. He tried to pull a jackknife out of his pocket but was shot on the spot. Alarmed, Yitzhak Zuckerman and the remaining leaders decided to transfer their ‘treasure’, the small cache of grenades and revolvers which they had been able to assemble, to a new hiding place. The ‘treasure’, hidden in a sack of vegetables, was being carried to its new hiding place by Reginka Justman when she was stopped by a sentry, the arms were seized, and Reginka shot.
A few days later, both Kaplan and Zeltzer were taken to the Umschlagplatz. On the way they were ordered out of the line, marched to the entrance of a building, and shot. Aryeh Wilner, the group’s representative with the Polish underground, told his devastated colleagues: ‘Our weapons have been taken from us. We should therefore vanish off the face of the earth, burrow down and hide, prepare and train there, and then re-emerge once we have become a force that can assault the enemy in a single attack.’ Some suggested going out on the streets, to attack the Germans with their bare hands, and die. But Yitzhak Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin persuaded them to try to rebuild the broken force. ‘Our remaining strength’, Zuckerman later recalled, ‘would be dedicated to that end. No effort would be spared.’ 62
Neither compliance, nor resistance, could stop the juggernaut of death. At Birkenau on September 5 about eight hundred Jewish women, too weak to work, almost too weak to walk, were gassed. The gassing was watched by Dr Kremer, who described it as ‘the most horrible of all horrors’. Another SS doctor in the camp, Heinz Thilo, commented to Kremer that day: ‘we are located here in “anus mundi”’, the ‘anus of the world’. 63
Kremer was not to forget the gassing of those eight hundred women. ‘When I came to the bunker,’ he recalled five years later, ‘they sat clothed on the ground. As the clothes were in fact worn out camp clothes, they were not let into the undressing barracks but undressed in the open. I could deduce from the behaviour of these women that they realized what was awaiting them. They begged the SS men to be allowed to live, they wept, but all of them were driven to the gas-chamber and gassed. Being an anatomist I had seen many horrors, had dealt with corpses, but what I then saw was
The news item of September 9 also told of a Vichy order for the arrest of all Roman Catholic priests who were sheltering Jews in the unoccupied zone. ‘Some arrests’, it added, had already been made. In reply to these arrests, Cardinal Gerlier, the Archbishop of Lyons, had already issued a ‘defiant refusal’ to surrender those Jewish children whose parents had already been deported, and who were being ‘fed and sheltered’ in Roman Catholic homes. 60
A main news item in
The Times
on September 11 reported ‘popular indignation’ in Lyons following the arrest and imprisonment of eight Jesuit priests who had refused to surrender ‘several hundred’ children for deportation; children whom they had kept hidden ‘in buildings belonging to the religious order’.
The Times
also reported that the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione, had informed the French Ambassador to the Vatican ‘that the conduct of the Vichy government towards Jews and foreign refugees was a gross infraction’ of the Vichy government’s own principles, and was ‘irreconcilable with the religious feelings which Marshal Pétain had so often invoked in his speeches’. 61
In Warsaw, on September 3, disaster struck the fledgling Jewish Fighting Organization. One of their leaders, Yisrael Zeltzer, had already been arrested with a group of youngsters. Then, onSeptember 3, Joseph Kaplan, another of its leaders, was arrested. His colleague Shmuel Braslaw, while trying to find out where Kaplan was being held, was stopped on the street by uniformed Germans. He tried to pull a jackknife out of his pocket but was shot on the spot. Alarmed, Yitzhak Zuckerman and the remaining leaders decided to transfer their ‘treasure’, the small cache of grenades and revolvers which they had been able to assemble, to a new hiding place. The ‘treasure’, hidden in a sack of vegetables, was being carried to its new hiding place by Reginka Justman when she was stopped by a sentry, the arms were seized, and Reginka shot.
A few days later, both Kaplan and Zeltzer were taken to the Umschlagplatz. On the way they were ordered out of the line, marched to the entrance of a building, and shot. Aryeh Wilner, the group’s representative with the Polish underground, told his devastated colleagues: ‘Our weapons have been taken from us. We should therefore vanish off the face of the earth, burrow down and hide, prepare and train there, and then re-emerge once we have become a force that can assault the enemy in a single attack.’ Some suggested going out on the streets, to attack the Germans with their bare hands, and die. But Yitzhak Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin persuaded them to try to rebuild the broken force. ‘Our remaining strength’, Zuckerman later recalled, ‘would be dedicated to that end. No effort would be spared.’ 62
Neither compliance, nor resistance, could stop the juggernaut of death. At Birkenau on September 5 about eight hundred Jewish women, too weak to work, almost too weak to walk, were gassed. The gassing was watched by Dr Kremer, who described it as ‘the most horrible of all horrors’. Another SS doctor in the camp, Heinz Thilo, commented to Kremer that day: ‘we are located here in “anus mundi”’, the ‘anus of the world’. 63
Kremer was not to forget the gassing of those eight hundred women. ‘When I came to the bunker,’ he recalled five years later, ‘they sat clothed on the ground. As the clothes were in fact worn out camp clothes, they were not let into the undressing barracks but undressed in the open. I could deduce from the behaviour of these women that they realized what was awaiting them. They begged the SS men to be allowed to live, they wept, but all of them were driven to the gas-chamber and gassed. Being an anatomist I had seen many horrors, had dealt with corpses, but what I then saw was
Similar Books
