Customer Reviews

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps

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These three camps were put into full operation shortly after the assassination of Heydrich, the "brains" behind the Final Solution. Unlike concentration camps, these were extermination centers. Most were killed shortly after arrival. The man in charge seemed to be Christian Wirth, who can only be described as a beast in human form. Initially devoted to mass executions of Soviet POWs, the camps soon focused on liquidation of Jews once the Final Solution was put into full swing. Very little is known about the camps simply because there were so few survivors. These were truly some of the most dreadful camps, even though they operated for only a brief period.

Yitzhak Arad has achieved an extraordinary feat with the publication of this book, detailing in full the features and practices of places the Nazis did their best to erase. He juxtaposes horrifying descriptions of life and death in the camps with the clinical statistics (themselves horrible for their sheer magnitude) surrounding this aspect of Hitler's war against the Jews. This book is made all the more poignant by the fact that Arad's parents died in Treblinka. It is books like this that illustrate the dire necessity for tolerance and compassion in our world.

Among the first books I purchased to study the Holocost.

The scholorship of this book is superb. Gives the reader a feeling for these awful places. You get to meet the human monsters who put these horrible places together and operated them. Just as you get to meet the innocent human beings who were slaughtered there.

It is a cold expression of human evil in its coldest unemotional form.

The cold facts are depressing. And an appetite killer for the unnitiated. Like all material on the Holocost, there is only depression from what is here.

I only wish the death camp of Chlemno had been included in this work, for scholarly reasons. I know that Chelmno, the first of the death camps, used gas vans, and there are a fed other differences. But it would save the reader one less visit to hell to study.

I've read dozens of books on this subject now along with actually visiting Auschwitz Birkenau and I was extremely impressed with Yitzhak Arad's work here as the level of detail he goes into in terms of background, context etc. and his cross-checking of facts, conflicting accounts etc. is extraordinary. As such, I doubt there is a more accurate and detailed study of these 3 camps in published existence and it is certainly a very important piece of holocaust literature that can be used as a guide for all those interested in the subject.

The book is also very well written and like many books on the subject; it avoids overt sentimentality and subjective conclusions. The collation of the evidence used in the book is incredibly impressive and well referenced. The fact any detail at all can be given about Belzec is also impressive given the sheer lack of survivor testimony (only 2 people survived Belzec). As a result, I will certainly be buying the other books the author has written such as Ghetto in Flames

Although I know a lot on the subject already, I was certainly left a lot more enlightened in regard to the level of resistance there was at times as this is covered in detail in the book. I'd recommend watching Escape From Sobibor (1987) [Remastered Edition] as a companion to this book. Whilst the film is not completely accurate based on known facts, the book is and it helps give a visual context to this area of the book. Escape from Sobibor is available free to legally watch on the internet due to a lack of copyright, I forget the link but a simple search should allow you to find it and download it. From memory, Rutger Hauer played the role of Alexander Pechersky (who was the commander of the underground in Sobibor and the leader of the uprising there). I knew little about the uprising in Treblinka until reading this book. The difficulties faced by escapees (which in turn were one of several reasons why the Jews did not try to escape much of the time) is also well covered in this book.

My wife asked me how I could read this book in bed before going to sleep and asked did it not give me nightmares? My reply was that no nightmare could possibly be more terrifying than what the book describes.

The level of scholarship and precision by the author does testament to the chilling tale he chronicles. Again, I am amazed at the bureaucratic details debated by various forces within Nazi Germany as they sort through the massive task of efficiently transporting, eliminating, and erasing the evidence of the existence of nearly two million Jews during wartime. There are petty concerns, logistical issues, and "normal" human emotions felt by these bureaucrats despite the ungodly and horrific mission to which they have been assigned.

Having just watched the excellent "Escape from Sobibor," I also found the escapes at Treblinka and Sobibor to be told in thrilling, masterful detail. You do truly feel as if you were there, with the brave heroes who risked all to end these death camps.

In several ways the stories of these death camps are grimmer even than that of Auschwitz. For one thing, their story is largely untold and unknown, even to many Jews. Second, there was no "work" component to these camps -- the Jews were tricked into thinking they were at a transit camp on their way East, merely getting deloused along the way. The Nazis were proud of their crowd control technology, which was perfected over time, to truly evil results.

The scholarship preserved here, once learned, is unforgettable.

"lets the terrible record speak for itself" is the most accurate comments of the book,which is filled with survivors' testimonies and data. I am affected deeply.

Yitzhak Arad provides a great deal of information relative to the extermination of Jews (and also Gypsies), but nothing on the genocide of Poles. He elaborates on such things as German plans for the Final Solution, the construction and function of the death camps, camp "life" for those not immediately gassed, Jewish revolts and escapes, the German cover-up, postwar trials of camp functionaries (well into the 1960's), etc.

The remainder of this review focuses on matters not addressed by the other reviewers.

David Engel has accused the Polish-Government-in-Exile of deliberately understating the extent of, and delaying the publicizing of, Jewish deaths at the hands of the Germans. Arad rejects this insinuation: "The Polish Underground transmitted to London the reports on the death camps and the extermination of the Jews of Poland via its messengers and radio stations. It did not hide these facts nor delay their relay, and the reports reached London and the British Government. But they were received with disbelief, doubt, and distrust. They did not receive the proper sort of publicity..." (p. 359).

Of course, the Polish-Government-in-Exile had to be very careful about the credibility and accuracy of the reports it had available. Ironically, the first reports had inflated the actual then-current Treblinka death toll by 3-fold to 4-fold (p. 355). Also, early reports on the rebellion at Treblinka had grossly exaggerated the number of Jewish escapees and the number of Germans killed (p. 358).

Unfortunately, Arad sometimes lapses into standard Polonophobic formulations, of which only a few can be discussed owing to space limitations. He makes the frankly laughable accusation that the Polish Underground failed to warn the Jews about their fate (p. 359), before refuting himself: "The information about Belzec came mainly from Poles who lived close to the camp, and from Polish railway workers, and it reached the Polish Underground. From their Underground publication, it reached the Jewish Underground." (p. 243). As for Jewish reactions to Polish warnings, Arad quotes Yitzhak Lichtman: "On the train to Sobibor, we were told by some Poles that we were being taken to be burned. We didn't believe them. We thought that the Poles, who were anti-Semites, wanted to scare us." (p. 242). Jewish rejection of Polish warnings was the rule, as Arad comments: "Even when rumors or some information about Belzec and Treblinka, and, to a much lesser extent, about Sobibor, reached the Jews still left in the ghettos of the General Government, the people were reluctant to believe them." (p. 377).

Predictably, Arad faults the Polish Underground for not blowing up the tracks leading to the death camps. This ignores reality. Sabotaged tracks can be repaired in a few hours, and the Germans would have savagely retaliated against nearby Polish villages.

Arad mentions the fact that the Communist AL guerillas had "...a relatively large number of Jews..." (p. 346). This made them instant enemies of the vast majority of Poles. Arad repeats charges of the AK killing fugitive Jews without ever attempting to verify the identities of the killers.

Arad repeats the perennial myth of fugitive Jews being almost never helped by Poles and almost certain to be betrayed by them. His own information refutes this. Of the 100 or so Jews who managed to evade the intensive German-Ukrainian dragnet near Treblinka following the uprising and escape (p. 298), and to scatter throughout occupied Poland, about 70 were still alive at the end of the war (p. 363)! Every surviving Jew was helped by a long series of Poles, as exemplified by Wiernik. Assuming that each of the 100 fugitive Jews had, on average, "run the gauntlet" by encountering a total of only 200 Poles, it follows that 1 in every 561 Poles, at very most, was a denouncer or killer of Jews. This overestimates the actual rate because it doesn't take into account the fact that most denouncers and killers of Jews didn't rely solely on chance encounters, but actively hunted for them. Moreover, this figure completely ignores non-Polish causes of the 30 Jewish deaths (e. g., suicide, wartime misadventures, belatedly caught directly by Germans, denounced by Polish-speaking Ukrainian, German (Volksdeutsche), or Jewish agents sent by the Germans to monitor the Polish countryside, etc.). Other studies (e. g., Paulsson's SECRET CITY and Chodakiewicz' BETWEEN NAZIS AND SOVIETS) corroborate the foregoing-estimated low rates of Polish anti-Jewish actions.

Comparando muchos libros sobre la tristísima célebre "Operación Reinhard", Yitzhak Arad ha conseguido con su obra aglutinar de una manera exhaustiva y rigurosa, toda la información posible sobre esos cruentos años. El libro es ciertamente desgarrador y a medida que pasan las pàginas, necesitas reflexionar sobre el devenir de la Humanidad. Pasaje a pasaje, logra nuestro estudioso autor, crear una trístemente cierta atmósfera tétrica sobre el comportamiento de los genocidas, su actitud hacia los prisioneros, evacuación de los Ghettos, construcción de las cámaras de gas, sublevación de los campos, etc... Sólamente hay un pequeño inciso que hubiera podido ser mejorado: una más profusa y densa biografía sobre los autores materiales del Holocausto. Salvaguardando este matiz, se puede considerar esta obra como la más completa y documentada de todo el género.

i have read all of her books and i was in a holocaust class so i know all most everything that happed to them.