On the way was a full company of Ukranian recruits from the Trawiki training camp. Their worth was also highly suspect. The reinforcements would double Treblinka’s garrison, but not improve its quality. Wirth would have preferred a company of Wafen SS or even Wehrmacht infantry. But there were no SS combat units available, and Treblinka, like all the death camps, was off-limits to regular Wehrmacht troops. Hopefully, thought Wirth, numbers would make up for quality. Between the existing garrison and Wirth’s reinforcements, the small death camp would be protected by nearly three hundred men.
Wirth’s mood wasn’t bettered by his first good look at Treblinka.
If Sobibor had represented a industrial death factory disguised as a summer camp, Treblinka appeared to be exactly what it was—a human slaughterhouse. While Stangl had run Sobibor with cold efficiency, Dr. Erbel could not keep up with the workload. From the main gate Wirth could see corpses strewn about the wire—would-be escapees shot down and left to rot where they died. Deeper inside the camp the situation was much worse. Corpses lay in piles near the railroad siding and near the so-called deportation square. The stench was overpowering.
Within the deportation square, the last remnant of a transport—all women and children—had been stripped and were now being herded toward the gas. There was no doubt as to their fate, the pile of bodies surrounding them told the story. The women wailed or sobbed, terrified children clung at their breasts or feet, while the guards used whips and dogs to move them along. There was little order or organization, and no attempt to minimize the horror. The SS and Ukranian guards shot or brutally beat the shocked or recalcitrant on the spot—regardless of sex or age.
After watching the last of the doomed Jews enter the Himmelgang Wirth walked over to Treblinka’s Forward Camp. There he found Erbel in his office with an aide, poring over sheets of statistics listing the number of Jews murdered over the past week. The commandant seemed surprised but not displeased to see Wirth, who was considered an expert on gassing.
“Wirth! Good to see you! What brings all the way out to the front?” said Erbel, not getting up from his desk.
“I’d hardly call this the front Dr. Erbel” said Wirth. “Although there certainly enough bodies laying around that someone might make that mistake.”
“Yes, yes, the bodies. You know Wirth, they send us a transport a day, sometimes two.” Erbel rose from his seat and gestured to the window. “It’s impossible to keep up, and the more we fall behind the more difficult it becomes. We have to shoot them at the platform in the assembly area, or at the burial sites. The gas chambers are insufficient, and the engines break down too often. But you know this Wirth!” exclaimed Erbel ruefully. “You and General Globocnik send the transports!”
“Sobibor and Belzac seem to manage the load alright” said Wirth frostily.
“Well” said Erbel with a smirk, “not Sobibor anymore.”
“What do you know about Sobibor?”
“Only what Globocnik has told me” said Erbel defensively. “What happened at Sobibor could never happen here!”
“Why not?”
“We don’t get loads of Dutch and Austrian Jews here Wirth—nice orderly kikes who go to the chambers with hardly a peep! We get Poles from the Warsaw Ghetto! They come off the transports ready to fight and we give them one. I’d have shot those partisans down the minute the stepped off the train!”
“I doubt they’ll try that tactic again” said Wirth.
“Why? Is another attack expected?”
“That’s why I am here. To assist with the defense of this place” said Wirth carefully, deciding then and there he would not relieve Erbel. Why should he be saddled with trying to pick up the pieces of what seemed to be a looming disaster. Globocnik would understand, assuming Wirth got out alive.
“Assist me?” asked Erbel. How?”
“I’ve come with an additional SS platoon—good men all” he lied.
“And a company of Ukranians will arrive within the next few hours.”
“A whole company? There is no place to put them.”
“The Ukranians can make camp outside the wire and patrol from there.”
“Wirth—is this really necessary? Who would attack this place? It’s only Jews dying here” said Erbel, pursing his lips in a scholarly way. “I think Sobibor must have been a mistake. The partisans must have thought it was a Russian or Polish prison camp… it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“You may be right Dr. Erbel” said Wirth, conceding that the man had a point—he had been a respected lawyer before the war after all. “It is puzzling—but just in case Treblinka must be prepared.”
Chapter 22
Late in the afternoon Yatom sent Ilan and Bolander ahead to reconnoiter an approach route to the death camp and to photograph it. They were joined by Fiegel and Sandler too, much to the displeasure of the Israeli marksmen. It was a risk to send the inexperience Jews on such a mission. But they and their men would be attacking the Treblinka too, and it would help to actually see the ground. The four men took a pair of digital cameras that the sayeret brought for their original mission—to be used to photo-identify their elusive original target after he’d been killed. But now they would serve another purpose. The Israelis would have to do without the usual satellite and air recon imagery, and instead relay on photos analyzed from the view screens of the cameras—not up to the usual standards, but much better than nothing.
The scouting party returned in the early evening, having closed to within 500 meters of the camp. Judging by their description and the photos, Treblinka resembled Sobibor in hasic layout. A Forward Camp covered half the southern extremity of the installation near the railroad line and the unloading platform. Next to that was an assembly and sorting area, much like at Sobibor. To the northwest lay the extermination area, accessed as at Sobibor by a kind of covered passage. Overall, Treblinka appeared to be a less well designed than Sobibor, with the watchtowers concentrated around the extermination area, and the main camp merely fenced in and patrolled.
At least that is how it had been until late that afternoon. The photos also revealed a significant reinforcement of the camp. At least a company of Ukranians had set up a crude bivouac a few dozen meters to the east of the perimeter fence. Taking into account the earlier reinforcement Yatom had witnessed, it was clear that the Germans were expecting an attack. In the main this was good, thought Yatom. It meant that the Germans had devoted their efforts to defending Treblinka, rather than hunting down the survivors of Sobibor.
Yatom sat down with Mofaz, Shapira and the two Israeli snipers to plan the assault. Feldhandler was excluded—this was to be a professional commando operation. It went without saying that the Israelis would wait until the darkest part ofthe night, which in these northern latitudes meant after midnight. That way, they would gain full advantage from their night vision equipment. Unlike the Sobibor assault, that relied on surprise and a rapid daylight attack, Yatom intended to take Treblinka by confusing and whittling down the German defenders until they broke. The Israelis would penetrate the camp, seize positions inside, and invite the inevitable German counter-attacks. These would be shredded by the Israelis superior weapons and night vision.