What Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR had in common. Excerpt from Timothy Snyder's new book

At the end of August, the collaboration of Choven and Local History publishing houses will publish a bestselling book in Ukrainian by American historian Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, a deconstruction of the nature of two related totalitarian regimes: Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR, which was transformed into modern Russia.

In the heart of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered around 14 million people. The bloody lands, the place where all the victims died, span from central Poland to western Russia: Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. During the rise of National Socialism and Stalinism (1933-1938), the joint German-Soviet occupation of Poland (1939-1941), and then the German-Soviet war (1941-1945), mass violence descended on this region on an unprecedented scale in history. The victims were mainly Jews, Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, and the peoples of the Baltic states.

Timothy Snyder's study summarizes the most tragic pages in the history of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century.

LIGA.net publishes a fragment of the book.

The death factory in Treblinka was completed on July 11, 1942. Eight days later, on July 19, Himmler ordered "the relocation of the entire Jewish population of the Generalgouvernement by December 31, 1942." This applied primarily to Warsaw.

On July 22, 1942, in Warsaw, Globocnik's "resettlement" specialist Hermann Hefle and his group of SS officers who were clearing the ghetto were briefed at the Warsaw Security Police Department and then visited the head of the Judenrat, Adam Czerniaków. Hefle informed Czerniaków that the next day he was to gather five thousand Jews at the transfer point (Umszlag Plac). Czerniaków, who knew about previous ghetto cleansings in the Lublin District, realized what was happening. Not wanting to take responsibility for coordinating the murder of his people, he committed suicide. After his death, the Germans resorted to deception by ordering the Jewish police to post signs promising bread and jam for those who would show up at Umschlag Platz. The first transport of approximately five thousand Jews left Warsaw for Treblinka on July 23. As Blum Bergman recalled, hungry people would do anything for a crumb of bread, "even if they knew they would be killed."

Thus began the operation in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans called the "Great Action." Hefle and his team were stationed at 103 Żeleazna Street within the ghetto. Like in other cities and towns in Galicia in the Lublin and Krakow districts of the Generalgouvernement, they used coercion together with the local security police. With the help of several hundred soldiers from Trawniki and approximately two thousand Jewish policemen, the Germans organized almost daily raids in the Warsaw ghetto over the next two months. Having gotten rid of the hungriest, the Jewish police took on the most vulnerable groups: orphans, the poor, the homeless, and prisoners. The oldest and youngest did not stand a chance. Children under 15 disappeared from the ghetto without a trace. The smallest, the sick, the disabled, and the elderly were shot on sight by the Germans.

At first, the Jewish police managed to carry out their tasks almost without German supervision. After several days of deportations of the hungry and helpless, the Germans used the same technique in Warsaw as they did everywhere else: an unexpected blockade of a multi-story building or part of a street, document checks, and deportation of all Jews unable to work. The Jewish police, under German supervision, conducted the first blockade on July 29, 1942. The Germans decided which areas were to be cleared and when; at dawn, Jewish policemen would unseal an envelope with instructions on which areas they were to clear that day. In general, the Germans carried out two actions a day in an attempt to fulfill the quota. (...)

In August 1942, the Germans demanded that every Jewish policeman bring five Jews to the deportation every day, otherwise they would watch their families being deported. The result was the elimination of those who could not defend themselves. On August 5, the largest orphanages were devastated. A well-known teacher, Janusz Korczak, took his students to Umschlag Square. He walked with his head held high, holding two of them by the hands. Among the 6,623 people deported that day with him were teachers and guardians of ghetto orphans: his colleague Stefania Wilczynska and many others. The oldest and youngest were taken to Umschlagplatz on carts. The Jewish police took a little girl out of the house while her mother was out on business. The last words of the girl before she was deported to Treblinka have been preserved: "I know you are a good man, sir. Please don't take me away. My mom went out for a minute. She will be back in a moment, and I will be gone, please don't take me away."

During the first two months of the "Great Action," 265,040 Jews were brought to Umschlag-Platz, and another 10,380 were murdered in the ghetto itself. Approximately 60,000 Jews remained, mostly healthy young men.

The horrors that accompanied each stage of the mass murder of Warsaw's Jews inspired hope that at least the near future would be better than the recent past. Some Jews truly believed that work in the east would be more bearable than life in the ghetto. The Jews gathered at Umschlag Platz can be understood if they preferred to travel by train rather than wait for something forever under the scorching sun without food, water, or sanitary conditions. The Jewish police supervised the square, whose members sometimes freed their acquaintances or those who could pay bribes. As historian Emanuel Ringelblum has noted, in addition to cash, the Jewish police sometimes demanded payment in kind, i.e. sexual services, from the rescued women.

Illusions were dispelled on the trains. Although the Jews were assured that they were being taken to a labor camp "to the east," some probably suspected that this was not true: in the end, it was the people with work permits who remained in Warsaw. If it was about work, why were the oldest and youngest sent first? These trains had the lowest priority in the railroad system and often took only a few days to reach their destination, although it was quite close to Warsaw-Treblinka was located about 100 kilometers to the northeast. Jews were given neither food nor water, and many died on the trains. Children licked sweat off each other. Mothers sometimes threw their young children out of the cars, believing that they had a better chance of survival there than where the train was headed. Some parents explained to their young children, born in the ghetto, what they could see through the windows or cracks in the doors. The youngest children had never seen fields or forests before. They were not destined to see them again. (...)

Oskar Berger, who arrived in Treblinka on August 22, recalled "hundreds of bodies lying around." Jankel Wernick recalled his arrival on August 24: "The camp yard was covered with corpses, some half-dressed and others naked, their faces contorted with fear and horror, black and swollen, with wide eyes, tongues sticking out, skulls crushed, bodies mutilated." The Jew who had arrived the day before, on August 23, was miraculously not in that pile. He was chosen for labor, mostly to dispose of human remains. He recalled the killings in Treblinka during the first weeks: "After we got out of the train car, the Germans with whips in their hands drove us into the yard and forced us to lie down on the ground. Then they walked along the line, shooting at the back of our heads." (...)

The commandant of Treblinka, a German doctor (Austrian) named Irmfried Eberl, hoped to prove himself worth something. He wanted the mortality rate in his camp to exceed that of the commandants of other camps, such as the police commanders in Bełżec and Sobibór. In August 1942, he continued to receive trains, although the number of people to be killed far exceeded the capacity of the gas chambers. Thus, death then spread outward: from the gas chambers to the waiting area in the yard, and from there to the trains waiting at the station, or on the tracks, or somewhere far away in occupied Poland. The Jews almost all died anyway; however, this time a few managed to escape from the trains, which had rarely happened during previous transports to Sobibor and Bełżec.

The fugitives returned to the Warsaw ghetto, often realizing what they had escaped. The disorder also attracted the attention of outsiders. Due to the numerous delays, trains carrying German soldiers to the Eastern Front were more likely to miss death trains or be dragged behind one; several witnesses took photographs, while others were sickened by the stench. Some soldiers were headed to southwestern Soviet Russia to take part in the offensive against Stalingrad. However, those who saw the transportation to Treblinka found out – if they wanted to know – what exactly they were fighting for. (...)

As rumors of Treblinka began to spread, the Germans launched a propaganda campaign. The Polish government, which was in exile in London, relayed reports to its British and American allies about gassings and other crimes committed by the Germans against Polish citizens. Throughout the summer, the government called on the British and Americans to retaliate against German civilians, but to no avail. Officers of the Polish resistance, the Home Army, considered attacking Treblinka, but never carried it out. The Germans denied the gassings. The head of the Jewish police in Warsaw and the official "resettlement commissioner," Józef Szerynski, claimed to have received postcards from Treblinka. There was indeed a post office in the Warsaw ghetto, and it was even working at the time. Postmen wore caps with bright orange visors to avoid becoming victims of raids. However, of course, they did not bring news from Treblinka.

Transportation from Warsaw to Treblinka resumed on September 3, 1942. The last train of the "Great Action," on September 22, 1942, was filled with Jewish policemen and their families. As they approached the station, they threw their caps and everything that could indicate their former position or social status out of the windows (Jewish policemen mostly came from wealthy families). This behavior demonstrated their prudence, as Jewish policemen in a concentration camp could expect hostile reception from their countrymen. However, Treblinka was not a camp. It was a factory of death, and therefore their actions could not change anything. The policemen were gassed like everyone else.

Within a few months, the Stangl had transformed Treblinka, increasing its killing efficiency. Jews arriving in Treblinka at the end of 1942 did not arrive at an empty platform with corpses lying around it, but rather at a train station that Jewish workers had painted to make it look real. There were clocks, train schedules, and ticket offices. As the Jews left the "station," they could hear music-an orchestra led by Warsaw musician Artur Gold. Those who limped, hobbled, or seemed weak were taken to a "clinic" at this stage.

Jewish workers wearing red armbands escorted them to a building marked with a red cross. Behind this building, Germans dressed as doctors killed sick Jews over the moat by shooting them in the back of the head. The chief executioner was August Miethe, whom the Jewish workers called the "angel of death"-Malach HaMavet. Those Jews who could move independently were taken to a kind of courtyard, where men and women were separated: men on the right, women on the left, and spoken to in German and Yiddish.

In the courtyard, Jews were forced to strip naked under the pretext of disinfection before being transported "to the east." The Jews had to fold their clothes in a neat bundle and tie their shoes with shoelaces. They had to hand over all their valuables; women were searched especially carefully. At this stage, several women from some trains were selected for rape; and several men (also from several trains) were selected for labor. After that, the women shared the fate of the others, while the men could live for several more days, weeks, or even months as forced laborers.

All women went to the gas chambers without clothes or hair. Each woman had to have her hair cut by a Jewish "barber." Religious Jewish women who wore wigs also had to give them away. Even in that last moment before death, people behaved differently, individually. Some women took the haircut as a confirmation of the story of "disinfection"; others saw it as proof that they were going to be killed. The hair of these women was used to make stockings for German railroad workers and to cover shoes for German submarine crews.

Both groups, first women and then men, naked, humiliated and helpless, had to run through the tunnel. It was a few meters wide and about 100 meters long; the Germans called it the "road to paradise." At the end of the tunnel, the Jews saw a large Star of David attached to the entrance to a dark room. There was a ceremonial curtain with an inscription in Hebrew: "Behold, the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter in by it." Apparently, not many of them paid attention to these details, because they were roughly pushed inside by two guards who came from Travnyky. One soldier was holding a part of a pipe, the other a saber, and both were shouting and beating the Jews. Then one of them would lock the door and shout "Water!" – this was the last element of deception that this doomed group locked in the gas chamber no longer needed, but it was performed for those who could still wait outside. The third Travnik would lower the lever, and the tank engine would pump carbon monoxide into the chamber.

Twenty minutes later, officers from Travniki opened the back door of the gas chamber, and Jewish workers removed the bodies. As a result of desperate jerking and death agony, the bodies were twisted with limbs and very flaccid. As Yechiel Reichman, a worker from Treblinka, recalled, the bodies underwent a "terrible metamorphosis." The corpses and the entire cell were covered with blood, feces, and urine. The Jewish workers had to clean the cell so that the next group would not suspect the deception of disinfection and panic at the entrance. Then they had to separate the bodies and lay them face up on the ground so that a group of Jewish "dentists" could do their work: remove the gold teeth. Sometimes the faces of the corpses were completely black, as if burnt, and the jaws were so tightly clenched that the "dentists" could barely open them. After removing the gold teeth, Jewish workers dragged the corpses to the pits where they were to be buried. The entire process, from the disembarkation of the living Jews from the train to the disposal of their bodies, lasted no more than two hours. (...)

The victims rarely managed to leave any traces behind. Yechiel Reichman arrived in Treblinka with his sister. As soon as he saw the complex, he put their suitcases on the ground. His sister asked him why he was doing this. The last words she heard from him were "it's all for nothing." Reichman was selected for labor. While sorting clothes, he "came across a dress that my sister was wearing. I stopped, took the dress, held it in my hands, and thought about it." Then he had to put the dress down and continue working. Tamara and Itta Willenberg left their bundles of clothes nearby. Their brother Samuel, a Jewish laborer, accidentally found their clothes intertwined "as if in a sister's arms." As the women were having their hair cut, they had a few minutes to talk to other Jews who might have survived them and remembered their words. The hairdresser who cut Ruth Dorfman's hair reassured her that her death would be quick, and they cried together. Anna Levinson begged the hairdresser to escape and tell the world what was happening in Treblinka.

Jews could control their property only by being very prudent. Most often, they instinctively kept their movable property (if they had any) with them, hoping to exchange something or bribe someone later. Sometimes, realizing what awaited them, Jews threw their money and valuables out of the train so as not to enrich their persecutors. This usually happened near Treblinka. At the death factory, Jewish workers searched for valuable items and, of course, hid some of the loot in their pockets. Later, they gave the found items to the guards from Trawniki, who had the right to leave the complex, in exchange for food from nearby villages. These soldiers would give the jewelry to local women and prostitutes who seemed to come from distant places like Warsaw. When people from Travnyky contracted venereal diseases, they turned to Jewish workers who were doctors for help. This created a special vicious cycle of the local economy, which one witness described as a decorated and decaying "Europe."

Thanks to these connections, the Jewish workers who survived in 1943 knew something about the outside world and the course of the war. People from Travnyky usually knew how to read Russian and had access to Soviet propaganda and the press. They belonged to the millions of Soviet citizens who worked for the Germans in one way or another, and so they heard the gossip. They knew about the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, which meant that Jewish workers also learned about it. They had seen with their own eyes that the number of transports had decreased in 1943, and they feared, quite rightly, that the reason for their existence would soon disappear. By then, most of Poland's Jews were already dead. Suspecting that their factory would soon be closed, some Jewish workers started a riot on August 2, 1943, seized weapons and set fire to part of the complex. Several hundred workers escaped through a hole in the fence; several dozen survived the war. Among them were Yehiel Reichman and other workers who wrote memoirs about Treblinka.

On November seventeen, 1943, the complex was actually closed. The last victims of Treblinka were the 30 Jewish workers who dismantled the facility. Finally, they were divided into groups of five and shot, and cremated by the Jews who were still alive. Soldiers from Travnyky cremated the last group of five. Around the same time, the Germans began massacring other Jewish workers who were still working in the concentration camps on the territory of the Generalgouvernement. During this operation, known as the Harvest Festival, the Germans killed approximately 42,000 Jews.

Saul Kuperhand, one of about 50 survivors from Treblinka, realized that the death factory was "ruled by numbers." the 265,040 Warsaw Jews deported during the "Great Action" were carefully counted. In the course of some 14 weeks, from August 4 to mid-November, at least 310,000 Jews from the Radom district of the General Government were gassed in Treblinka. In total, 780,863 people were murdered in Treblinka, mostly Polish Jews from the General Government. Most of the Jews who did not perish in Bełżec or Sobibór were gassed in Treblinka. In total, Operation Reinhard took the lives of approximately 1.3 million Polish Jews.

The purpose of Treblinka became clearer as the war continued: to cleanse a declining racial empire of its Jewish population, thus achieving a dubious victory and reaping its terrible rewards. The body can be burned to generate heat, and it can feed microorganisms that make the soil fertile. Even human ashes fertilize the earth. After dismantling Treblinka, the Germans used bricks from the gas chambers to build agricultural buildings and turned the killing fields into farms. A few guards from Travnyky agreed to work there. This is how the Nazi fantasy of saving the earth through the extermination of the Jews was realized in a gruesome and literal way. The remains and ashes of Jews were supposed to fertilize the soil for German crops. However, the grain never sprouted.

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Timothy Snyder – is an American historian, writer, and public intellectual. He is a professor at the University of Toronto (Canada); a specialist in the history of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, in particular the histories of Ukraine, Poland, and Russia. Researcher of nationalism, totalitarianism, and the Holocaust.

Timothy Snyder's main books have been published in Ukrainian, including Reflections on the Twentieth Century (together with Tony Judt); The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America"; "On Tyranny. Twenty Lessons of the Twentieth Century. Graphic Adaptation"; "Our Affliction. Lessons of Freedom from a Hospital Diary"; "Black Earth. The Holocaust as History and Warning"; "The Red Prince", "On Freedom".