SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

366 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
from Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, and other
countries had been held in the camp of Salaspils in Latvia. 1088
10.4.5. The Diary of Herman Kruk
During the German wartime occupation of Lithuania the Jewish librarian
Herman Kruk wrote a diary of about 700 pages. After the dissolution
of the Vilnius ghetto in September 1943 Kruk was deported to
the labor camp Lagedi in Estonia, where he was reportedly killed on 18
September 1944. The Yiddish original of his diary was published in
1961 under the title Hurbn Vilne (The Destruction of Vilnius). An English
translation followed in 2002. 1089 We will now quote several passages
which are of particular importance to our topic.
16 April 1943 (p. 518):
“I learned that for the past two weeks two trains have been
halted in Vilna, each with 25 cars of objects, apparently from the
Dutch Jews. […] Today a rumor is circulating that there are about
19,000 Dutch Jews in [the small Lithuanian town of] Vievis.”
Since there is no reason whatsoever why Kruk – or anybody else –
should have invented this story, we regard this passage as strong evidence
for the deportation of reportedly “gassed” Dutch Jews to the occupied
Eastern territories. Between 2 March and 6 April 1943 six transports
with altogether 7,699 Dutch Jews left Westerbork for Sobibór. 1090
(A seventh transport which departed from Westerbork on 13 April
could not yet have reached Lithuania by 16 April, the date of the respective
entry in Kruk’s diary.) In view of these facts nothing is more
logical than the assumption that these Jews were sent to Lithuania via
Sobibór.
There are two possible explanations why Kruk mentioned the presence
of 19,000 Dutch Jews in Vievis instead of just some seven to eight
thousand. First it may be that the information Kruk relied upon was incorrect
regarding the number of Jewish deportees from the Netherlands.
However, there is another and more probable explanation: In addition to
Dutch Jews deported to Vievis via Sobibór there may have been others
who had arrived earlier via Auschwitz. Between 17 July 1942 and 25
1088
Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, University of California Press, Berkeley-
Los Angeles 1994, p. 96.
1089
Herman Kruk, The last days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Chronicles from the Vilna
Ghetto and the camps 1939-1944, Yale University Press, New Haven/London 2002.
1090
J. Schelvis, Vernietigingskamp Sobibór, op. cit. (note 72), p. 246.