KURT FRANZ – THE LALKA – what ever happened to him?

“What happened to Kurt Franz – the Lalka of Treblinka – after the war?”

I have been asked this by numerous readers of my book.  I didn’t exactly know.  I knew that after Treblinka shut down, he went to Trieste, Italy and later was tried for war crimes.  But I didn’t know much more.

Here is what I have found out:

After the Treblinka uprising, the Commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl was fired (are we surprised?) and the Lalka took over as Commandant.  The Lalka forced the remaining Jewish prisoners and those who had been recaptured after the uprising to dismantle the entire camp and make it look like there was no Death Camp  – just a nice farm.  All remaining Jews were murdered at the end of this dismantling project, sometime in November 1943.  After Treblinka was razed to the ground, the Lalka was sent to Sobibor and from there on to Trieste in northern Italy.

It was in Trieste that he joined his SS buddies: Odilo Globocnik, the head of Operation Reinhardt; Christian Wirth, one of the doctors at the T-4 Euthanasia Program and Commandant of Belzec; Franz Stangl, the previous Commandant of Treblinka; and Erwin Lambert, the architect of the T4 Euthanasia Program and Operation Reinhardt.  They were in charge of rounding up the partisans and the Jews.  Their job was to either murder them or send them to camps such as Auschwitz, Ravensbrook or Bergen-Belsen.

See blog post:  Italy the Perfect Vacation Spot, written April 14, 2017.

https://soyouwanttowriteaholocaustbook.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/italy-the-perfect-vacation-spot/

In May of 1945, the Lalka was arrested in Austria by the Americans.  He somehow escaped and fled to Germany.  He was later re-arrested in Germany, again by the Americans.   But – get this – he was released.  [That is crazy.]  Apparently, his actions at T-4 Euthanasia Program and at the Death Camps were not known.  He went back to Dusseldorf and worked there as a construction worker and a chef (pre-war profession).

In December of 1959, he was arrested again – on “suspicion” that he was involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Wonder what gave them that idea?

He was tried in Dusseldorf in 1965. Sam Goldberg was flown from New York to Washington, D.C. to give a deposition for the trail.  The whole family went.  Shlomo informed me that it was his first time on an airplane; he was 14.

On September 3, 1965, the Lalka was sentenced to life in prison for “participating in at least 900,000 murders.”[1]

He was released from prison in 1993 for ill health and died in an old age home in Wuppertal, just outside of Dusseldorf on July 4, 1998 at the age of 84.

July 4, 1998 – 54 days after our daughter Esther was born and named for her grandmother Esther Wisznia Goldberg – best revenge ever.

 

 

Sources:

Chris Webb and Michal Chocolaty, The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance, 321-323.

WIKIPEDIA – HISTORY OF JEWS IN ITALY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Italy#Jews_during_the_Fascist_era

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE JEWS OF ITALY

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/italianjews.html

US Holocaust Memorial Museum – Holocaust Encyclopedia: The Holocaust in Italy.

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/mapping-initiatives/geographies-of-the-holocaust/the-holocaust-in-italy

 

 

[1] Webb, Chris & Chocolaty, Michal, The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance, 323,

Sam Goldberg – Historical Record Corrected – a little bit anyway

Back row center – the short man with a hipster scarf – is Sam Goldberg. 

This iconic picture, taken by the Soviets in 1944, shows a group of men who participated in and survived the Treblinka uprising on August 2, 1943.  This picture is in almost every book about Treblinka.  The short man in the back row with the hipster scarf is either unidentified or given the name of “Shimon Goldberg.”   Shimon Goldberg is also in the picture, but he is in the front row, second from the right, the one with his legs crossed, wearing gloves – he usually gets labeled just “Goldberg.”  

Yad Vashem has this picture in their photo archive, but they gave up and just say – Treblinka uprising survivors.  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum does that same:

https://www.ushmm.org/research/the-center-for-advanced-holocaust-studies/miles-lerman-center-for-the-study-of-jewish-resistance/medals-of-resistance-award/treblinka-death-camp-revolt

Many books and websites, however, name the individuals in back row center as Shimon Goldberg.   One such website is the website run, in part, by Chris Webb, who has provided me with invaluable information and corrections to my book about Treblinka, as well as a couple of amazing photos found in the book.   His website – Holocaust Historical Society – is chocked full of so much information that you could write a master’s thesis on the Holocaust just from the information on this website.

https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/index.html

But this website had Sam labeled as Shimon in the picture and in his list of Treblinka survivors, Shmuel Goldberg’s name was missing.   So, I wrote to Chris to see if we could remedy this historical error – at least on his website.   He agreed and the mench that he is, fixed it right away.   Now the short man with the hipster scarf is identified as Shmuel Goldberg and a short biography of Sam is included in the list of survivors on the website.

https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/treblinkadeathcamp/survivorsandescapees.html

I am grateful to Chris Webb for helping me begin to fix this historical error.

But there is more – I noticed that the website includes testimonies of Treblinka survivors.   So, I asked Chris if he would be willing to include Sam’s testimony, as it relates to Treblinka, on the website.  He said “yes.”   I am so pleased that Sam’s testimony will live on the website, along with other survivor’s testimonies.   Chris may even include some of Sam’s testimony about Treblinka in the next edition of his book – The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance.  It will be published in 2020.

I am humbled as we begin to bring Shmuel (Sam) Goldberg into the world of Holocaust research and literature.  He is one of approximately 65 to have survived this place of horror, but was one of the fifty or so men who planned and participated in the uprising.  Perhaps most astonishing, he is one of only two people to have been brought to the camp in June of 1942 and forced to help build it  – to survive.

Remarkable, really.

Selma Wynberg Engel – Survivor of the Death Camp Sobibor Uprising – Leaves Us

[photo:  Sobibor memorial]

Two months and twelve days after the prisoner uprising at Treblinka, inmates at Sobibor revolted against the murderous Nazis and attempted to escape.  It was October 14, 1943.  Of the 600 inmates in the camp that day, 200 survived[1].

Sobibor was the second of the triumvirate of Operation Reinhard Death Camps built by the Nazis in Poland (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka).  It began gassing Jews in April of 1942 (Treblinka began July 23, 1943).  Over its 18 months of operation, 165,000 humans were murdered there.[2]

One of the prisoners to escape on that day in October of 1943 was Selma Wynberg.  She died on Tuesday in East Haven, Connecticut at the age of 96.   The New York Times has a beautiful obituary in today’s paper:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/obituaries/selma-engel-dead.html

After the escape, Selma married another Sobibor escapee, Chaim Engel, and together they moved to Israel in 1951 and then to America in 1957, settling in Connecticut.

You may be familiar with the 1987 movie Escape from Sobibor.  Selma’s character was played by Ellis van Maarseveen.  Also, a 2010 biography was written about Selma by Ad van Liempt, called Selma: De vrouw die Sobibor overleefde (Selma: The Woman Who Survived Sobibor); (ISBN 978-90-74274-42-5, which was made into a documentary on Dutch television (Selma is from the Netherlands).

Sadness over the loss of the survivors must spur us on to continue to tell their stories and learn from their lives.

May her memory be a blessing.

[1] Arad, Yitzchak, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Appendix A, p. 391.

[2] Id.  Compare to Treblinka – 870,000 murdered over 13-16 months.

OY, THE GUILT – A VISIT TO THE JEWISH HERITAGE MUSEUM

Sesame bagel toasted with cream cheese and pastrami lox – this is what I ate for lunch on Sunday.  As the new flavor of pastrami lox worked its magic on my taste buds, I recognized the obscene irony of sitting in this beautiful café on the second floor of New York’s Jewish Heritage Museum enjoying this hearty lunch with my husband, Shlomo.  My sense of guilt was acute.  I had just walked through the main exhibit filled with pictures of starving humans, shadows of their former selves, suffering at the hands of the Nazis.  Should I feel guilty enjoying my bagel and lox?

It was hard for me to believe, but neither Shlomo nor I had ever been to this Museum.  It is housed in a large, warehouse-looking, tan colored building in lower Manhattan, just off Battery Park.  The Museum is divided into three floors, the first floor depicts life before the Holocaust, the second floor has exhibits about the war years – 1938 – 1945, and the third floor shows life after the Shoah – divided into exhibits about Israel and the United States.  There was much thought that went into the design of the building, from a long corridor that leads to a circular space where we viewed something that looks like a memorial, to the third floor with its view of Ellis Island and its long, squat building – looking ominous, shrouded in fog.

The founders and curators of this museum had the impossible task of simplifying the complexity of what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust.  In the beginning of the exhibit, the museum emphasized that though the numbers are large, we must realize that each person murdered or each who suffered, but survived, are real people – each one, an individual with a life and a story.  In order to create an experience that conveys the enormity of what happened in a way that a museum-goer can follow, they had to simplify the history.   They did a magnificent job, given the constraints of space and time.

But it was frustrating – especially as I overheard a docent explaining that Jews in the Warsaw ghetto all went to labor camps or concentration camps.   I held back from stepping in to correct him (I really had to stop myself).  Most Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were stuffed into a train and shipped to Treblinka – the first “transport” arriving on July 23, 1942 – about a month and a half after Sam had been brought there to build the Death Camp.  Most of the remaining Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were murdered during the uprising.  You might say – no need to quibble – concentration camp, death camp – who cares what it’s called.   Well, I do.   Concentration Camps were places of cruelty and death from disease and starvation – horrible places – but they were not Death Camps, they were not Treblinka, where 870,000 people were dead 90 minutes after they stepped off the train.

And yet, it was moving to see the Treblinka uprising – August 2, 1943, proudly noted in the list of resistance attempts.  Knowing that Sam was part of this historical event when a group of Jews at Treblinka said – enough – and revolted against the murderers.   Shlomo had tears in his eyes as we stood before this engraved wall.

I feel that My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story helps to achieve the mission of this and other Holocaust museums – thought there is a collective story of what happened to the Jewish people in the Holocaust, we must not lose sight of each person as an individual with feelings, desires, fears – of the Germans, of separation, of loss, of the police, of injury, illness and death and of course, of not having enough food.  The telling of Sam and Esther Goldberg’s story brings the enormity of the Holocaust down to the story of two people, whose lives were forever changed on September 1, 1939.

This brings us back to my bagel and lox.   My mother-in-law, Esther would be so happy that we were eating such a delicious and hearty meal at this Holocaust Museum.   She would have told me – don’t feel guilty – eat!  She then would have insisted that I buy another bagel, wrap it in a napkin and put it in my purse for later – just in case.

[photos:  top: Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda poster; bottom – book about poisonous mushroom, and how Jews use poisonous mushrooms to kill German children.]