Wirth returned moments later. He had been unable to raise Sobibor by telephone or radio. Not only that, he’d checked the communication logs, and there had been no report from Sobibor in over twelve hours.
“That’s not terribly unusual though” said the SS Lieutenant.
“Communications with the eastern camps is often spotty.”
“Yes. But missing transports are not” shot back Globo nervously.
“Take a detail out to Sobibor immediately. Bring a radio and a spare.”
Wirth saluted and departed. Globo looked at the clock. It was seven in the morning. Too early to awake Heydrich he rationalized, In reality, he hoped Wirth would reach Sobibor and report that all was well without involving Heydrich. No need to worry the Reich Protector unnecessarily. Globo called in his secretary and ordered breakfast.
Four hours later, as Globocnik was finishing his third cup of coffee and sixth cigarette an SS communications sergeant deferentially entered his office. Wirth was reporting in on the radio. Globo strode purposefully into the radio room down the hallway, choking back his unease. He put on a pair of headphones.
The radio reception was scratchy and full of static but Globocnik could hear Wirth clearly enough to feel sick. “….Sobibor Camp…annihilated…Stangl dead.” Globocnik spoke as best he could with Wirth for another few minutes, and finally ordered the communications sergeant to have Wirth dictate a full report, transcribe and deliver it immediately.
Back in his office Globocnik pondered his predicament. Wir-th’s report, even broken by static, was far worse than the SS Obergruppenfuchrer could ever have imagined. The entire camp annihilated—Stangl and all his officers dead? Inconceivable, and yet evidently truer Wirth was a serious and reliable officer.
Globo’s duty was to contact Heydrich immediately, but Globocnik had not risen in the SS without a fine sense of bureaucratic, and even physical, survival. To call Heydrich now, with nothing but bad, even disasterous news, would be like digging his own grave, professionally if not literally. To delay reporting the disaster would infuriate Heydrich as well, but Globo could not imagine anything upsetting the man more than the sudden destruction of his best run, and most secret, death camp. Better to report the catastrophe with at least a dose of good news, of which none was available at that moment.
Globocnik left his desk returned to the communications room just as Wirth was finishing his report.
“Wirth!” Globocnik shouted into to radio. “You must locate the partisans who did this! Find them and exterminate them!”
“Herr Obergruppenfuehrer… not partisans… Ukranian survivors commandos… Russians… uncertain.”
“Wirth! There is a Polish police station in a village just north of Sobibor. Send a patrol there. Maybe they know something. Break them if you have to!”
“Jawohl… ”
Globo grabbed the communication sergeant’s notes and quickly scanned them. A few Ukranians had survived the attack. They reported a mixed group of attackers, partisans, with a small number of enemy soldiers—unusual looking but clearly uniformed troops. Wirth guessed that they were Russian, although one of the Ukranians insisted that the strange soldiers did not speak Russian, but some other language he could not place.
Globocnik wasn’t sure what to make of the report. He was a policeman by training, and not a bad one. He needed more evidence and a lead or two. At least then he could report to Heydrich that he was on the trail. Ultimately he realized that the only way out of his predicament would be to hunt down and kill the men who destroyed Sobibor.
Globo spent the day making certain that news of the attack did not escape Lubin. He knew that word of the disaster might have reached Heydrich through either the railroad command or the Wehrmacht, but considered that unlikely. Sobibor was a secret SS installation and Globocnik should be able, at least for a day, to keep a lid on the news. It was not until late in the afternoon that Globocnik got the information he craved. It came from Wirth, calling on a decent telephone line from the Polish village of Przyroda, near to Sobibor.
There Wirth had interrogated a pair of very frightened Polish policemen.
Nervously, the two Polish officers described an encounter with a German military unit early that afternoon, much like Wirth’s, looking for the partisans that had attacked Sobibor. The Poles insisted that they had not reported the incident because the men they encountered were Germans. The Poles stuck to their story even under torture, and even after Wirth executed an older officer in order to panic a younger policeman into changing his story. But even then the second policeman insisted that the men he encountered were German. One of the Germans said that the unit was heading north after a partisan band.
Wirth asked Globocnik whether he had any further questions for the surviving Pole, who though injured and suffering was still able to talk.
“Ask him if the ‘Germans’ spoke with an accent.” Globocnik heard Wirth put the question to the Pole, and the Pole eagerly agreed that yes indeed, the Germans spoke strangely—at least one of them.
“Anything else Herr Obergruppenfuehrer?”
“No. You know what to do with him,” mumbled Globocnik.
“Yes sir.”
Globocnik heard the sound of a single pistol shot. “Put some fear into the rest of the village as well—choose ten males over the age of thirteen, put them against a wall, and remind these Poles the cost of attacking their overlords.” Globocnik hung up the telephone. Glonocnik’s instincts told him that the Poles had been telling the truth. That was no reason to exercise mercy, but it was a sufficient basis on which to make plans. If the “Germans” were heading north; Treblinka might be their next target. Why on earth a partisan or commando band would want to liberate Jewish death camps was beyond him, but as a policeman, he would go where the evidence pointed. And with a chase afoot, Heydrich could hardly sack him. He picked up the phone and asked his secretary to place a call to Prague.
Chapter 19
The Israelis ran a circuitous route from Sobibor. Using maps taken from the death camp, Yatom took the column east then north. Although it was broad daylight the roads were almost entirely deserted. They passed just two peasant farmers driving horse-drawn wagons before reaching the town of Wlodawa. Wlodawa was a larger settlement at the eastern margin of historic Poland, along a high road that ran north and south. Yatom stopped the column. The Israelis scanned the town through binoculars looking for any tell-tale sign of Germans, but saw nothing.
Although Wlodawa lay at the eastern extent of Poland, in 1942 there was no border and no distinction between Polish and Belorussian territory. The Germans controlled everything. Endless plains that stretched beyond the Polish town. For the Israelis, such expanses of ground were both mysterious and inviting, but there was no time to contemplate such thing. The north/ south high road could be reached by going through Wlodawa, or by navigating a maze of rough farm paths around the town. The route through Wlodawa was likely more dangerous, but Yatom was unwilling to risk his rickety vehicles on agricultural byways even worse than the roads they had just come through. Nor was he willing to waste the time.
“We will go through the town” he said into his radio. He adjusted his German uniform blouse and cap, gripped the MG-34, and waived the column forward.
Nir gunned the engine on the car, intent on moving the column through the town a fast as possible. “Good Nir” said Yatom “but don’t lose the trucks.”
They bounced along the last few hundred meters of the farm road in bone rattling fashion until Nir reached a paved roadway and swung the column left. The road surface was rough and pitted, but better than the farm paths. In a few minutes, Wlodawa opened up on either side of them, not much more than a collection of buildings along the high road surrounded by two—bit farms and the occasional grain silo.