Most of us are familiar with the peculiar fate of Moshe Peer,
the young boy who survived six gassings in a gas chamber in Belsen
(as related in the Montreal newspaper The Gazette, August
5, 1993), or with Arnold Friedman, the man who survived a gas chamber
in Flossenburg (likewise unknown to historians) by means of breathing
through the keyhole (cf. Death Was Our Destiny, Vantage Books
1972). There exists however another rare subspecies of gas chamber
survivors: those few lucky ones who have escaped from a Hitlerite
extermination chamber prior to or during a gassing. This article
recounts briefly their amazing stories.
The first of the gas-chamber escape artists to bear witness to
her experience was Sophia Litwinska. At the Belsen trial against
Josef Kramer, who had also been commandant at Auschwitz, Ms. Litwinska
testified:
“About half-past five in the evening trucks arrived and we were
loaded into them, quite naked like animals, and were driven
to the crematorium. (...) The whole truck was tipped over in
the way they do it sometimes with potatoes or coal loads, and
we were led into a room which gave me the impression of a shower-bath.
There were towels hanging round, and sprays, and even mirrors.
I cannot say how many were in the room altogether, because I
was so terrified, nor do I know if the doors were closed. People
were in tears; people were shouting at each other; people were
hitting each other. There were healthy people, strong people,
weak people and sick people, and suddenly I saw fumes coming
in through a very small window at the top. I had to cough very
violently, tears were streaming from my eyes, and I had a sort
of feeling in my throat as if I would be asphyxiated. (...)
At that moment I heard my name called. I had not the strength
to answer it, but I raised my arm. Then I felt someone take
me and throw me out from that room. Hoessler put a blanket round
me and took me on a motorcycle to the hospital, where I stayed
six weeks.”
Regarding the curious fashion in which the victims were brought
into the gas chamber, Litwinska stated in a previous affidavit that
she and the others “slid down the chute through some doors into
a large room.”
Witness Regina Bialek recounted a very similar incident in an
affidavit prepared for the same trial:
“There were seven gas chambers at Auschwitz. This particular
one was underground and the lorry was able to run down the slope
and straight into the chamber. Here we were tipped unceremoniously
on the floor. The room was about 12 yards square and small lights
on the wall dimly illuminated it. When the room was full a hissing
sound was heard coming from the centre point on the floor and
gas came into the room. After what seemed about ten minutes
some of the victims began to bite their hands and foam at the
mouth, and blood issued from their ears, eyes and mouth, and
their faces went blue. I suffered from all these symptoms, together
with a tight feeling at the throat. I was half conscious when
my number was called out by Dr. Mengele and I was led from the
chamber.”
The witness then attributes her astonishing survival to the fact
that, as a political prisoner, she was of "more value alive than
dead.” Certainly, this is why the guards were willing to risk of
entering the death chamber while a mass gassing was actually in
progress.
The astonishing similarity between Litwinska’s and Bialek’s testimonies
must be what Pressac and others call “a convergence of evidence”!
Gas-chamber escapes did not only occur at Auschwitz. There are
also two known reported cases from Majdanek. The first involves
Mietek Grocher, a Polish Jew who after the war settled in Sweden,
where he now spends most of his days in retirement witnessing to
school children about watery soup with a rotten turnip thrown in
and SS guards ripping Jewish babies apart. According to an interview
in the Swedish local newspaper Östgöta-Correspondenten on
December 8, 2004, Grocher managed to sneak out of a gas chamber
at Majdanek:
“When I was in there I understood what was awaiting me and the
others inside that space. Instinctively I started to move a
little backwards, without really thinking that I would manage
to escape. By chance I managed to do it. An officer started
talking to another officer and moved away a few steps. During
that moment I managed to sneak away and reunite with my parents
in the camp.”
According to another article on Grocher which appeared in the
local Katrineholms-Kuriren on May 15, 1998, the guard discovered
young Mietek sneaking out of the chamber and fired all six shots
of his revolver at him, missing the escapee but hitting six other
Majdanek martyrs. So much for German marksmanship!
Mr. Grocher tells the Östgöta-Correspondenten reporter
regarding his feat: “I would say I'm the only one who managed to
do that.” But as we know, there are others who have experienced
the same good luck!
The second case from Majdanek concerns a Ms. Mary Seidenwurm
Wrzos. At the end of the war, this Polish Jew was saved and found
herself in Sweden. There she left the following witness account
for a book entitled De dödsdömda vittnar [”The doomed bear
witness”, ed. by Gunhild and Einar Tegen, Stockholm 1945]:
“We walked three kilometers from the labor camp in Lublin to
the actual concentration camp [Majdanek], under guard by heavily
armed SS men. We were taken to subterranean rooms that were
very conveniently furbished. Each of us received a clothes hanger
to put our things on. The shoes had to be properly tied together.
“We went into the "shower room" completely naked, carrying only
a towel and a piece of soap. I immediately noticed that the
doors were made of unusually thick iron. Since I did not push
myself forward, it happened that I was the last to step inside
the gas chamber. I looked at the ceiling. Besides the usual
shower heads I could see three large black holes. Now I knew
where I was! The heavy iron door began to close, but slowly,
very slowly. And about at the same time gas began to pour out
of the three large black holes!
“With supernatural power I began to bang on the door, which
had still not closed completely. "I am a German, I am a German
camp police, I am a German transport guard". I yelled these
words over and over and at the same time I beat on the door
like crazy. It began to open, but very slowly. Blood was dripping
from my forehead, from my arms, from my knees. I lay there,
all my weight put against the door, panting for air, while it
slowly opened before me (it seemed to take an eternity). My
whole body was covered in cold sweat. I am going to suffocate.
Then the door is opened. Men wearing gas masks pull me out through
the narrow opening. I hear a couple shots fired at the women
who try to get past me. Air. Air. At last air. Everything is
spinning. Then I lose consciousness.
“When I woke up the female German-Jewish Kapo stood before me.
She helped me up and put me in order. (Everything had taken
less than half a minute.) When I looked at myself in the mirror
the next day, I saw that I had a gray stripe of hair on the
left side.”
Unfortunately, besides failing to point out exactly where this
underground gas chamber, unknown to Majdanek historians, was located,
the witness fails to tell us what the reaction of the SS was when
they discovered that she wasn’t a German guard. Apparently they
neither shot her, nor put her in the queue to the next gassing!
Stories as those recounted above have little bearing on the gas
chamber narrative in large, and they are rarely if ever quoted by
"serious historians.” It is however a significant and disturbing
fact that people such as Mietek Grocher, David Faber or Misha Defonseca
(”the wolf girl”) continue to pander their bizarre yarns to school
kids and the media, completely undisturbed and unquestioned by historians
and journalists. Here we are not talking of the generic ambulating
Auschwitz survivor, speaking to children of persecution and camp
misery, no doubt having some basis in reality, and throwing in a
few references to flaming chimneys or Mengele for good measure.
Such persons might be given the benefit of doubt and be presumed
to genuinely believe in the existence of the gas chambers based
on hearsay and camp rumors. Grocher and his ilk however seem to
be accomplished liars, even if the possibility remains that they
have come to believe their own lies.
The silence of the historians, their unwillingness to expose
obvious frauds, is of course easy to understand. If they denounced
those patent liars openly, they would be at risk of waking up the
critical faculties of the public, whose interest would eventually
turn to the veracity of the testimony left by the key witnesses
to the alleged homicidal gas chambers. At that point, our historians
would have to face a large number of inconvenient questions.
This article originally appeared in Smith's Report No. 149, April
2008