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Trawniki-Männer Im Holocaust

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Angelika Benz. Handlanger der SS: Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2015. 309 S. gebunden, ISBN 978-3-86331-203-9. Reviewed by Kimberly Allar Published on H-Soz-u-Kult (July, 2015) The trial of Ivan Demjanjuk opened in Mu‐ ning the extermination machinery. In all, between nich on 30 November 2009. This was to be the last one and two million Jewish men, women, and trial for Demjanjuk, the culmination of a legal children would perish under their supervision. odyssey that began in the late 1970s which Despite the international attention to Demjan‐ stretched over three decades and involved many juk’s trial, and the trials of a few other Trawniki years of statelessness, a stint on death row in Is‐ men by various governments during the past four rael, and numerous civil and criminal trials. Tried decades, little is known about this group of men with 28,060 counts as an accessory to murder, and the camps in which they operated. Scholar‐ Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to fve ship has largely been hindered by both a scarcity years in prison in May 2011. While appealing his of materials, as well as appropriate access to ex‐ conviction, Demjanjuk died one year later. Angeli‐ isting records from the former Soviet Union. As a ka Benz, Der Henkersknecht. Der Prozess gegen result, only a few articles and book chapters have John (Iwan) Demjanjuk in München, Berlin 2011. dealt exclusively with the Trawniki men. Peter Demjanjuk belonged to the group of SS auxil‐ Black, Foot Soldiers of the Final Solution. The iaries known as the “Trawniki Men.” Numbering Trawniki Training Camp and Operation Reinhard, around 5,000 men and described both during and in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 25 (2011), pp. after the war as “more brutal than the SS,” the 1–99; Sergei Kudryashov, Ordinary Collaborators. Trawniki men were involved in some of the most The Case of the Trawniki Guards, in: Ljubica Er‐ heinous crimes of the Holocaust (S. 276). Under ickson / Mark Erickson (eds.), Russia, War, Peace, Operation Reinhard, the code name given to the and Diplomacy, London 2005, pp. 226–239; Dieter Nazi plans to murder Poland’s Jewish community, Pohl, Die Trawniki-Männer im Vernichtungslager the Trawniki men were employed by the SS to do Belzec 1941–1943, in: Alfred Gottwaldt / Norbert the “dirty work” of the genocide: participating in Kampe / Peter Klein (eds.), NS-Gewaltherrschaft: ghetto raids, guarding the death camps, and man‐ Beiträge zur historischen Forschung und juristis‐ H-Net Reviews chen Aufarbeitung, Berlin 2005, pp. 278–289. Typi‐ the Trawniki men approached and considered cally, however, this group has been relegated to their position. In addition, their attitudes and be‐ passing comments or footnotes, despite their inte‐ haviors ranged from a full embrace of their posi‐ gral role in the Holocaust and Nazi plans for the tion and collaboration with the Germans, to out‐ east. Angelika Benz’s compelling study seeks to right mutiny and desertion. Through her explo‐ remedy this situation. Her recently published ration of the various responses and choices of this work “Handlanger der SS: Die Rolle der Trawniki- group, Benz offers a vital contribution to the Männer im Holocaust” is the frst book study dedi‐ growing recent scholarship exploring the complex cated completely to the investigation and exami‐ question of collaboration and perpetration in nation of the Trawniki men and the places in Eastern Europe. which they lived and operated. Her study fts into Benz’s greatest contribution lies in her analy‐ the growing scholarship on Eastern Europe, ex‐ sis of the dynamic social and individual perspec‐ ploring the difficult themes of collaboration, guilt, tives of the Trawniki men and the reconstruction and justice. of their everyday lives. Moving beyond simply ex‐ In “Handlanger”, Benz utilizes an extensive amining who these men were and what they did, array of sources from contemporary documents, she explores the world in which they operated, such as communiqués, identification cards, and providing context to their choices and behaviors. visuals such as maps and photographs, and post- The history of the Trawniki men, and the camp in war materials drawn largely from Allied interro‐ which they were trained, was intimately inter‐ gations and trial transcripts. In addition, she twined with Nazi plans for the east, and the geno‐ draws upon perpetrator and victim testimony, in‐ cide of Europe’s Jewish community. Benz investi‐ terspersing statements from German SS men and gates the warped world of Operation Reinhard, Jewish victims with the voices of the Trawniki which sought to rob, exploit, and murder Europe’s men themselves. In doing so, Benz produces a Jewish community through the specially designed complex picture of the Trawniki men, examining death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. SS- their motivations, choices, and agency from their Ausbildungslager Trawniki opened in September recruitment to the end of the war. Commonly re‐ 1941 as a training and distribution center for the ferred to as “Trawniki men” after the camp in auxiliary guards who would ensure the objectives which they trained in eastern Poland, they were of Operation Reinhard. Recruited from deadly also known as “Askaris,” “Hiwis,” “Czarnis,” or POW camps, and then later from conscription simply “Ukrainians”. Peter Black, Police Auxil‐ drives in Ukraine, the future Trawniki men were iaries for Operation Reinhard. Shedding Light on often given little choice regarding their decision the Trawniki Training Camp through Documents to collaborate with their former captors and occu‐ from Behind the Iron Curtain, in: Secret Intelli‐ piers. Individual motivations are difficult to re‐ gence and the Holocaust, David Banker (eds.), construct, but their youth, desperation, and need New York 2006, pp. 327–366, here p. 329. Previous to navigate the increasingly volatile conditions of considerations of the group have tended to ap‐ the POW camps and the eastern occupation made proach the Trawniki men as a homogenous group. this group quite adaptable within the Nazi plans Benz challenges and then dismantles this miscon‐ for the Final Solution (S. 47). After a period of ception by illustrating the multiplicity of back‐ training at the Trawniki camp, guards were either grounds and choices the Trawniki men faced. assigned to an extermination camp, or were used Hailing from a number of countries, and recruit‐ for other purposes from fghting partisans, guard‐ ed at various times and under different pretenses, there was no typical pattern in accessing the way 2 H-Net Reviews ing forced labor camps, or participating in ghetto post-war justice and collaboration, Benz leaves roundups. the reader with important questions and insights The book raises important questions concern‐ into how to approach and address some of the ing the relationships and behaviors of the Trawni‐ most difficult and uncomfortable episodes in Eu‐ ki men, which operated against a background of ropean history. Benz’s work offers an important violence. Benz chronicles not only the history of contribution to the feld of not only Holocaust the Trawniki camp, which operated as a training studies, but the study of violence and genocide. center as well as a Jewish forced labor camp, but Her account of the Trawniki men and the Opera‐ also the brief histories of the death camps them‐ tion Reinhard camps fll an important gap in our selves. She considers the administration and daily understanding of the Holocaust in the east and operations of these places of suffering and death, the men behind the on-the-ground implementa‐ providing a necessary context in which to further tion. As the last trials of the Holocaust take place, explore the personnel who lived and worked this is both an important and timely discussion. there. Though the Trawniki composed the majori‐ ty of the staff within the death camps, they exert‐ ed little authority over the camp administration. While the Trawniki were awarded nearly all pay and benefits available to their German counter‐ parts, they were barred from becoming full- fledged members of the SS, and instead acted in an auxiliary and subordinated capacity. The insti‐ tution of power hierarchies was frequently uti‐ lized by the Nazis in order to ensure collaboration and stimulate violence. Wolfgang Sofsky, The Or‐ der of Terror. The Concentration Camp, Trans. William Templer, Princeton, NJ 1997. The hierar‐ chical positioning of Operation Reinhard, in which the Trawniki men found themselves in the middle between their German superiors and Jew‐ ish victims, produced an environment of mistrust and suspicion that colored the everyday personal interactions within the camps (S. 184). It was against this tense backdrop that genocide was car‐ ried out, and most of the Trawniki men readily participated, making it clear to Benz that these de‐ spite the conditions in which they operated and the uncertain question of their loyalty: “Sie gehörten mindestens formell auf die Seite der Täter,” (S. 12) To conclude her study, Benz turns to the post- war period and the trial of Demjanjuk and the question of guilt, from both an ethical and legal standpoint. By ending on a broader discussion of 3 H-Net Reviews If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/ Citation: Kimberly Allar. Review of Benz, Angelika. Handlanger der SS: Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust. H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews. July, 2015. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44857 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 4.
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