First half of September 1942 It’s time to fight back. It might take very long, but history shows
that sooner or later the pressure of oppression is so high that acts of resistance, suicidal
and futile as they might be start to build up. In World War Two that turning point is early
September 1942. This is War Against Humanity, a sub-series
of World War Two in Real-Time. I’m Spartacus Olsson. In late August we saw how the Luftwaffe bombed
Stalingrad, killing tens of thousands of Civilians, who had not been permitted to flee the city
by Stalin. In the middle of the hundred deadliest days
of the Holocaust, the murder operations in Treblinka broke down, causing even more suffering
and death. Hitler issued new orders to fight the persisting
resistance by Partisans in the East. In Germany where there is little resistance
to begin with, the major resistance network started to get dismantled by the Gestapo,
while new networks began to form. In occupied Western Europe resistance was
slow to mount, possibly due to the somewhat less violent oppression by the Nazi occupiers. But that oppression is about to increase - and
it will now give birth to more resistance. On September 4, 1942, French prime minister
Pierre Laval and Chief of State Phillipe Pétain sign the ‘loi relative à l’utilisation
et à l’orientation de la main-d’œvre’ – a law ‘on the use and guidance of the
workforce’. This so-called 'reléve' or 'relief' scheme
arranges an exchange program with Germany. For every three French workers sent to Germany,
one French Prisoner of War will be released. It might look like a patriotic way to release
PoWs, but in reality it is a thinly disguised collaboration by the Vichy regime to supply
the German slave economy that I covered in a recent special -episode link is in the description.Over
300.000 young workers will be press ganged into going to Germany. For the French resistance this presents a
recruitment opportunity as young people selected for forced labor in Germany begin fleeing
into the countryside ready to join the resistance. La Resistance is however in little position
to capitalize on it at this point. There are five resistance organizations, Combat,
Libération-Sud, Francs-tireurs, Comité d'action socialiste , and Front national, not to be
confused with the later political party of the same name. Not only are they at times in direct opposition
to each other, within each of them the cells are small and disjointed. Perhaps the only common denominator beyond
opposing Vichy and the Germans, is that they have been unwilling to cooperate with the
Free French outside of France, under Charles de Gaulle. To change this de Gaulle sent Jean Moulin,
codename Rex to France in early 1942, with coffers full of money and promises of arms
deliveries. Moulin is a former Vichy public servant who
in 1941 had refused to collaborate, been imprisoned, escaped, and fled to Great Britain. He’s been negotiating with little success
to get the resistance leaders to unite for eight months, but now Combat, Libera-tion-Sud,
and the Francs-tireurs have finally agreed to merge their militant sections into the
Armée secrète. In the first week of September their forces
are united under command of resistance opera-tive, and former French Army General Charles Delestraint,
codename Vidal. It is a sign of change to come, but by no
means the beginning of French resistance as depicted in post-war cinema and television. That kind of widespread and active resistance
does pick up in other places in September 42 though. On elf them is Poland - the resistance here
received severe blows already as it started in 1939. First by the preemptive mass murder of Polish
intelligentsia by the Nazis, then by the Soviet persecution in their zone of occupation. Like we’ve seen in 1940 resistance persevered
though, and the Under-ground Polish State and the Armia Krajowa - home army - was formed. With yet more setbacks they have however been
laying relatively low, preparing for a future when they hope to fight to liberate Poland
as the Allies attack Germany. That date has not arrived, and the situation
in Poland contin-ues to deteriorate. Like in France, but with more severity, it
is the Nazi slave policies that is affecting non-Jewish Poles mostly. And although the Jewish Poles and the resistance
have had a mixed relationship, and the Resistance has not helped the Polish Jews on any large
scale to date, the beginning of mass murder of the Jews on Polish soil earlier this year
has rattled some resistance operatives into action. Some Jews have manage to flee the ghettos,
and formed their own resistance cells. Only few have been accepted into the non-Jewish
resistance. In any case, across all parts of the Polish
resistance, which by now counts more than 100,000 members, preparations for active resistance
is under way. As the hope of a swift Allied attack continue
to dwindle, it looks more and more likely that these operations will have to happen
only from the inside. But the most pressing situation is for the
Poles who are Jewish who are now being shipped to the extermination factories by the hundreds
of thousands each month. There is simply no way to save them all when
faced by the German and Nazi military machine. Even trying to save a single jew is a near
certain suicide mission, but some will try. Since the Grossaktion in the Warsaw Ghetto
started in July, Irena Sendler, codename Jolanta has been secretly shuttling in and out of
the Ghetto day and night. She is a social worker, and intellectu-al
who has been fighting against systemic anti-Semitism in Poland, despite being non-Jewish, since
her university days in the early 30s. Together with a dozen other social workers
she is smuggling Jewish children out of the Ghetto one after the other. Adults are too well monitored to flee unno-ticed,
The children are given false papers, and Jolantas network finds places for them among willing
families, convents, and orphanages. Altogether they save some 2,500 children. They will I’ve, but their parents, siblings,
and relatives are taken by the thousands daily to be mur-dered at Treblinka, where the murder
machine is once again running at full speed after the break-down in August. On September 10 one of the last transports
from the Polish capital arrives with between 5000 and 6000 Jewish men, women and children
are gassed on arrival. Living, breathing humans relegated into the
statistic of 200,000 murdered in the first two weeks of September in Op-eration Reinhardt. Among the arrivals that day are Meir and Rachel
Berliner and their daughter Rosa - Argentinian Jews caught up in the German invasion in 39
while visiting family in Warsaw. Rachel and Rosa are killed on arrival. Meir and few other able bodied men are selected
to stay alive for now and work the gas chambers and crematories. The new arrivals are to replace exhausted
workers on the details, who will now be murdered. At roll call that evening they are ordered
to separate into old and new arrivals. Knowing what will come the men hesitate - the
guards start beating them into their groups. “At that moment a man jumped out of the
ranks, ran toward the [commanding officer Obersharführer] Max Bialas with a drawn knife,
and stabbed him in the back. He did the deed – then stood by, hesitating.” Meir Berliner has avenged his wife and daughter. On the spot, one of the Ukrainian guards beats
Meir to death using a shovel. Ten more inmates are selected randomly and
immediately shot in front of the others. Max Bialas succumbs to his wounds the next
day. Christian Wirth, overseer of the death factories
is still at Treblinka, and orders another 150 in the work details killed as reprisal. Further East, there is more resistance brewing
out of desperation. When the Germans overran Western USSR in 1941,
thousands of young Jewish men and women were able to flee before being rounded up. Yet more Soviet Jews in the Red Army, soon
found themselves behind the German enemy lines. Tens of thousand are tracked down by the Germans,
or have their hiding places betrayed by non-Jewish countrymen, are killed or taken to the Ghettos
and forced labor camps. By now the largeGhettos have been dissolved
- the inhabitants added one after the other to the more than 1.5 million murdered by the
Einsatzgruppen. But many of the smaller ghettos remain in
place as pawns in a brutal hostage game. By the summer of 42, Mordekhai Zaytshik is
interned at the Forced Labor Camp in Hantsavichy to-gether with 150 other Jewish men from the
township Lenin in Belarus. One thousand of their friends, relatives and
families remain in the Lenin Ghetto. “Every day our determination to run away
grew stronger. It was clear to us that […] our fate was
likely to be the same as all of the Jewish communities, and we understood that we should
not deceive ourselves that we would transform the murderers into good men[…] We knew that if we ran away it would bring
about a disaster for our brothers, sisters and parents left at home. Our escape would speed the death sentence
of the members of our community. For now, we knew they were still alive; policemen,
the sons of the farmers of the area, would bring us letters from them.” But now that the operation to murder every
single Jew in Europe is under way, the small Ghettos are no longer spared, including in
Lenin. “They took them to the well-known bloody
hill on the main road to the village of Steibelovichi, opposite the orchard of the Agarkov farm. Deep ditches had already been dug there. At the edge of the ditches the cursed murderers
undressed the people of our town and took their clothes, and opened fire on them with
their machine guns. Their shocked screams were heard by the Christian
residents, who were eyewitnesses to the massacre. The bodies of our martyrs rolled and fell
into the ditches. The killers arranged the bodies in layers,
one on top of the other. And blood mixed with blood. The blood of babies mixed with that of their
mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers.” A few families of skilled workers, in all
28 are left alive as slave labor for the German occupiers and the Christian inhabitants of
the town. When Mordekai and his comrades hear of the
fate of their families, they have nothing to lose and escape. Many are recaptured, but Mordeaki and a few
dozen others manage to join the Partisans. In the same weeks of August and early September,
the people in the nearby Ghettos of Mikashevichy, Horodok, and Lachwa meet the same fate. But On September 3, in Lachwa the Jews will
also not go silently to their graves. “The men there, and also the young, were
not taken to work camps. […] When the Nazis came to massacre them,
the young people set the ghetto on fire, killed a few of the soldiers from the companies of
Nazis that held the ghetto under siege, and ran away into the forests and swamps. […] Most were hunted down one by one by
the Christian population around the city, [and] delivered to the Nazis. In spite of that, many of the runaways were
saved and joined the partisans and were able to participate in the war of revenge against
the enemies of humanity.” It is the first Ghetto uprising in a war that
will now also be visited on the murderers in Lenin. Yehuda Tsiklik and Zev Zevin, also from Lenin
were fighting in the Red Army in 41, and then joined the Parti-sans. Yehuda now convinces their non-Jewish commander
that they should use the opportunity of a reduced force at Lenin to attack, steal take
whatever they can, and rescue any survivors. Yehuda and Zev are sent to spy out the town. They conclude that a reduced force of 100
Wehrmacht personnel and around 30 local policemen are in the town. A force of 120 partisans is pulled togeth-er,
and on September 12 they launch a surprise attack.Fighting their way from the outer perimeter
of Lenin they close in on the German garrison. After a heavy firefight, three German officers,
including the garrison's commandant, 14 soldiers, and 13 policemen are killed. The Germans are forced to retreat, and among
blazing fires Yehuda sets out to look for survivors’ “I met a young man wearing a policeman's
uniform, [from] village of Plostevich and […] a Nazi employee. When he saw me, he remained in his place like
he was nailed to the ground. Without thinking much, I shot the Nazi employee
with the modern weapon that I obtained from his employer. Wonderful weapon! The evil employee fell before he could speak. I continued to run. I crossed the bridge over the lake and came
to our house at the edge of town. And here I stand in front of our house and
I don't hear anything. A deathly silence prevails in the house […] where
I spent my childhood, where I grew up, where a loving mother hugged me and a father's hand
stroked me. I stood in front of the house – and my heart
moaned inside me. I made an effort to walk away. And here came the priest's wife, whose house
was next to our house, and told me that there are over twenty Jewish survivors in Avraham-Yitzchak
Chinitz's house. I quickly rushed over there, and a few minutes
later I saw myself surrounded by people from our community. Yehudah Shuster and his family, Nuska's daughter
with her twin babies in her arms, and her husband.” But soon the Germans have regrouped and start
a counterattack. The Partisans set the town ablaze and leave
with a cache of weapons, ammunition, the valuables of the murdered Jews, and the survi-vors. Among them is Fanya Lazebnik, also known as
Faye Schulman. She is a professional photographer and will
go on to document life in the Partisan ranks, where more and more Jewish men and women are
now fighting back in the war against humanity. They are fulfilling a promise of divine retribution
in the poem The Lonely Mound, by Manshe Ben-Yisrael, another survivor of the Lenin massacre. Inside the forests,
between fields, meadows, a dirt mound is rising
on our beloved brothers. Long is the mound,
hiding a thousand martyrs; fathers and sons,
grandfathers and great-grandsons. Isolated and desolated,
in a blood-soaked earth, lonely and orphaned,
away from the community. There is no one to pray on their grave
take pity on their dust, saturate it with tears
and lament their memory. They will be mourned from a distance
their names will be dedicated with broken hearts and tears
by their surviving sons. Rest in peace,
you will be remembered forever, a mighty God, who resides for eternity,
will avenge your blood. Never Forget.
