Ordinary Men Chapter 12: The Deportations Resume

By late September 1942, Reserve Police Battalion 101 had shot roughly 4,600 Jews and 78 Poles, and had helped deport about 15,000 Jews to the gas chambers at Treblinka. Eight separate operations in three months. And they were just getting started.

This is post 14 in my Ordinary Men retelling series. If you are new here, start with the intro for background on who these men were and why this book matters so much.

The Numbers Are About to Get Much Worse

Those first three months of killing – July through September – were horrific enough. But Browning tells us that what came next was on a completely different scale. Between early October and mid-November 1942, the battalion helped deport more than 27,000 Jews to Treblinka in eight separate actions and killed roughly another 1,000 during roundups and “mopping up” shootings.

The pace was so relentless that the policemen themselves could no longer keep the operations straight. Earlier actions they could describe in detail and date fairly precisely. But this six-week stretch blurred together into one long nightmare of trains and shootings and ghetto clearings. One action ran straight into the next.

Browning himself had to piece together the chronology from postwar research by the Polish-Jewish historian Tatiana Brustin-Berenstein and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, because the men’s own memories were too jumbled to be reliable.

Restocking the Transit Ghettos

Before the mass deportations could resume, the Germans needed to concentrate Jews from smaller towns into larger holding areas. Two ghettos became the main collection points: Miedzyrzec and Lukow.

In early September, the organizational structure of the Order Police in the Lublin district was reshuffled. A new security zone was created along the eastern border, and two platoons of Lieutenant Gnade’s Second Company were transferred to Miedzyrzec and Komarowka in northern Radzyn county.

Then the funneling began. Jews from Biala Podlaska were moved into the nearly empty Miedzyrzec ghetto. Jews from Komarowka, Wohyn, and Czemierniki were routed there too, some through Parczew. Lukow served as a second transit ghetto, receiving Jews from other small towns around Radzyn county.

There is a small, gut-wrenching detail buried in this section. Among the Jews in Komarowka was a woman from Hamburg who had once owned a movie theater – the Millertor-Kino – that one of the policemen used to go to. Think about that for a second. A guy helping to deport someone whose cinema he used to visit back home.

This whole concentration process was, as Browning puts it, “an ominous prelude” to the renewed death transports and the systematic campaign to make the northern Lublin district judenfrei – free of Jews.

The October Offensive

The coordinating center for the October push was the Security Police branch office under Untersturmfuhrer Fritz Fischer in Radzyn. Fischer’s operation was small – maybe forty German Security Police and ethnic German helpers total, plus twenty permanent Hiwis (auxiliaries from Trawniki) and forty to fifty Gendarmerie spread across three towns. There was no way this skeleton crew could clear multiple ghettos on its own.

That is where Battalion 101 came in. Again. Without the battalion’s manpower, none of these deportations could have happened.

Here is the timeline:

• October 1 – 2,000 Jews deported from Radzyn to Treblinka
• October 2 – Sergeant Steinmetz’s platoon shot over 100 Jews in Parczew who had been brought there too late for transfer
• October 5 – 5,000 Jews deported from Lukow to Treblinka
• October 6 – Thousands deported from Miedzyrzec (exact number unknown)
• October 8 – 2,000 more Jews deported from Lukow
• October 9 – Another deportation from Miedzyrzec
• October 14-16 – 2,000-3,000 Jews transferred from Radzyn to Miedzyrzec
• October 27 – More deportations from Miedzyrzec
• November 6 – Last 700 Jews in Kock transferred to Lukow
• November 7 – 3,000 Jews deported from Lukow; Miedzyrzec ghetto also cleared

After six weeks, every ghetto in the region was either empty or reduced to a handful of “work Jews.”

Miedzyrzec: The City of Human Horror

The men of Second Company had a nickname for Miedzyrzec. The actual Polish name was hard for them to pronounce, so they called it Menschenschreck – which translates to “human horror.” It was grimly accurate.

Lieutenant Gnade had set up his company headquarters there in early September. The night before the first big October deportation, Gnade’s driver Alfred Heilmann took the lieutenant to a five-hour meeting at the Security Police headquarters on the main square. During the meeting, a terrible cry rose from the cellar below. Two or three SS officers walked out, emptied their submachine guns through the cellar windows, and casually said, “So now we will have quiet,” before going back inside.

Heilmann crept toward the cellar window to see what had happened. The stench drove him back before he could look. Upstairs, the drinking continued until Gnade stumbled out at midnight, drunk, and announced the ghetto would be cleared in the morning.

The Roundup

The policemen were woken around 5 a.m. Drucker’s platoon from Komarowka arrived to help, along with a large contingent of Hiwis. The Hiwis and Order Police drove the Jews into the main square while Drucker’s men cordoned off the ghetto.

Gnade and others used whips on the assembled Jews to keep them quiet. Some people died from the beatings before the march to the train station even started. The prisoners from the Security Police cellar were hauled out too – covered in excrement, clearly not fed in days.

Then the march began. Anyone who could not walk was shot where they stood. Guards shot into the column whenever it slowed down.

The Loading and the Cemetery

At the train station, Gnade supervised the loading. Shooting and beating were used freely to cram as many people as possible into each cattle car. Twenty-two years later, Gnade’s own first sergeant made a confession that was unusual because most witnesses refused to criticize their former comrades. He said: “To my regret, I must say that First Lieutenant Gnade gave me the impression that the entire business afforded him a great deal of pleasure.”

Even with all that violence, there were not enough train cars. When the doors were finally forced shut, about 150 Jews remained – mostly women and children. Gnade ordered Drucker to take them to the cemetery.

At the cemetery entrance, the policemen chased away local spectators who had come to watch. Then they waited for First Sergeant Ostmann to arrive with a truck carrying vodka for the shooters.

Ostmann singled out one of his men who had managed to avoid shooting until now. “Drink up, Pfeiffer. You are in for it this time, because the Jewesses must be shot. You have gotten yourself out of it so far, but now you must go to it.”

An execution squad of about twenty men was formed. The Jews were brought in groups of twenty – men first, then women and children. They were forced to lie face down near the cemetery wall and shot in the back of the neck. Each policeman fired seven or eight times.

At the cemetery gate, one Jewish man lunged at Drucker with a syringe but was quickly subdued. The other Jews sat quietly, waiting. One guard later remembered: “They were quite emaciated and looked half starved to death.”

Strip Searches in the Cold

In subsequent deportations on October 27 and November 7, Gnade cleared Miedzyrzec of all but about 1,000 work Jews. By this point he did not even need Hiwi units or Security Police backup. He was running the operations himself.

He also introduced a new step: a strip search. After being assembled in the marketplace, the deportees were herded into barracks where they were forced to undress and searched for valuables. They were allowed to put only their underclothing back on – in late October and early November, in the cold autumn weather. Then they were marched to the train station and packed into cattle cars bound for Treblinka.

By the end of the November 7 operation, units of Battalion 101 had deported at least 25,000 Jews from the city of “human horror” alone since late August.

Meanwhile in Lukow

While Gnade ran the Miedzyrzec operations, First Company handled the parallel deportations from Lukow. But Captain Wohlauf was no longer in charge.

His relationship with Major Trapp had fallen apart. Trapp was openly upset about the Miedzyrzec episode where Wohlauf had brought his new bride along to witness a ghetto clearing. After the Serokomla massacre, Wohlauf accompanied his wife back to Hamburg and stayed there several days. He returned to Radzyn by mid-October but got sick with jaundice. Then his brother, a Luftwaffe pilot, was killed. Days later, his father died in Dresden. Wohlauf went home for the funeral, reported sick, and eventually got his request approved to be recalled from frontline duty as the only surviving son.

He returned to Radzyn only briefly in January 1943 to pick up his things. Wohlauf had managed to extract himself from Battalion 101. His men had no such option.

The Lukow Deportations

Joined by Steinmetz’s platoon from Parczew and a Hiwi unit, First Company carried out two deportations from Lukow – 5,000 Jews on October 5 and 2,000 more on October 8. Memories varied wildly. Some policemen claimed there were only occasional shots and almost no killing. Others remembered heavy shooting. One policeman narrowly avoided being hit by a stray bullet.

During the first deportation, the head of the Jewish council and other prominent Jews were killed at the assembly point – a place the Germans called the Schweinemarkt, the “hog market.” Many who hid successfully during the first deportation were found and deported three days later.

One policeman concluded the Lukow deportation was “decidedly more orderly and humane” than the August deportation from Miedzyrzec. Browning dryly notes this reveals very little, given the “unmatched brutality” of that earlier operation.

The Final Clearing

On November 6, Lieutenant Brand and Sergeant Jurich supervised the transfer of the last 700 Jews from Kock to Lukow. When Jurich discovered that many Jews were missing, he shot the head of the Jewish council on the spot. The Jews were transported in horse-drawn wagons and did not arrive until late at night.

The next morning, the final deportation of 3,000 to 4,000 Jews from Lukow began. It took several days to complete. The Jews being marched away sang, “We are traveling to Treblinka.” They knew exactly where they were going and what awaited them.

When the Jewish ghetto police failed to report hidden Jews, the Order Police shot forty to fifty of them in retaliation.

The Identity Card Trick

After the trains left Lukow, many Jews were still hiding in the ghetto. The Security Police came up with a cruel ruse. They announced throughout the ghetto that new identity cards would be issued. Anyone who reported for a card would be spared. Anyone found without one would be shot immediately.

Desperate Jews who had managed to survive by hiding emerged from their concealment, hoping for at least another brief reprieve between deportations. After at least 200 had been collected, they were marched outside Lukow and shot on November 11. Another group was gathered and shot on November 14.

Buchmann’s Last Stand

Members of the battalion staff got swept into at least one of these final shootings. Major Trapp and the bulk of First Company were apparently elsewhere, which meant Lieutenant Buchmann – who had consistently avoided participating in mass executions – suddenly lost his protector.

Buchmann and virtually every available staff member – clerks, communications men, drivers who had managed to avoid direct killing until now – were pressed into service by the local Security Police. For men who had become jaded veterans after months of these operations, the details had blurred. But for these first-timers, the memories of shooting Jews in Lukow stayed vivid.

The Entertainment Unit

The night before the shooting, something happened that is almost too disturbing to believe. A Berlin police entertainment unit – musicians and performers touring as a kind of morale-boosting group – was visiting as a guest. When they heard about the upcoming shooting, they asked to participate. They did not just ask. They “emphatically begged” to be allowed to take part in the execution.

Their request was granted.

The Meadow

The next morning, Buchmann returned from a meeting and led his men to the Security Police building near the ghetto entrance. They lined up as guards along both sides of the street. The ghetto gate opened and several hundred Jews were driven out and marched out of town.

More guards were needed for another column of Jews, so battalion staff members were ordered to report to Security Police headquarters. Days earlier they had watched from their school lodgings as Lukow’s Jews were marched to the train station. Now it was their turn.

The first column reached an open meadow of sandy soil. An SS officer ordered Buchmann’s deputy, Hans Prutzmann, to begin the shooting. Prutzmann formed a firing squad of fifteen to twenty-five men – primarily the volunteers from the entertainment unit who had been issued guns by the battalion. The Jews had to undress. The men completely, the women down to their underclothing. They placed their shoes and clothing in a pile and were led in groups to the execution spot fifty meters away. Face down. Shot from behind with fixed bayonets used as aiming guides.

When the battalion staff contingent arrived, the shooting was already underway. Buchmann told them they had to provide a firing squad for the Jews they had brought. One staff clerk, in charge of uniforms, asked to be excused. “Because there were children among the Jews we had brought and at the time I myself was a father with a family of three children, I told the lieutenant something to the effect that I was unable to shoot and asked if he could not assign me to something else.” Several others immediately made the same request.

Like Trapp at Jozefow

Buchmann found himself in the exact same position Major Trapp had been in at Jozefow. Ordered directly by superior SS officers to carry out a mass shooting with the men under his command, he complied. But when subordinates explicitly asked to be excused – just as he himself had done at Jozefow – he consented and let four men step out.

As the shooting continued, Buchmann removed himself. He walked a considerable distance from the execution site in the company of a senior staff member he knew well and had already excused from the firing squad.

Buchmann Gets Out

Buchmann’s repeated requests for a recall to Hamburg were finally granted. He left Poland and took a position as an air defense officer. He later served as adjutant to the police president of Hamburg, and eventually was allowed to return to his lumber business. Before his release from the Order Police, he was promoted to reserve first lieutenant.

Trapp had not only shielded Buchmann from most Jewish operations in Poland – with the Lukow shooting being the one exception – but had also made sure Buchmann’s personnel file contained a positive evaluation that did nothing to damage his career.

Key Takeaway

In just six weeks, Battalion 101 helped deport over 27,000 Jews to Treblinka and killed about 1,000 more in shootings. The operations blurred together even for the men who carried them out. What stands out in this chapter is how systematic the whole machine had become – transit ghettos restocked and emptied like warehouses, identity card tricks to lure survivors from hiding, and entertainment performers volunteering to kill. The banality had become industrial.

Book: Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning | ISBN: 978-0-06-099968-8

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