TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter VIII: Indirect Transports of Jews to the Eastern Territories 261
Jews to White Russia was, according to C. Gerlach, “extremely extensive” 772
and they were “taken to Minsk by railway”. 773
7. Transfers into the District of Galicia
A further portion of the Jews deported to the Lublin district was shunted on
to Galicia.
Some former French prisoners of war who had been interned in the front
line POW camp Stalag 325 at Rava-Russka (17 km from Be��ec on the road to
Lemberg/Lviv), were questioned by Belgian researcher Jean-Marie Boisdefeu.
They claimed to have seen western, mainly French, Jews in that zone. 774 As
Boisdefeu stresses, declarations made by other prisoners of war in the year
1945 confirm this. Thus, one Paul Roser testified at Nuremberg: 775
“The Germans had transformed the area of Lemberg-Rawa Ruska into
a giant ghetto.”
A Dr. Guérin wrote: 776
“The province, situated in gloomiest Galicia, on the border of the
Ukraine, had been transformed into a giant ghetto, in which Jews deported
from the whole of occupied Europe were staying. They were guarded by
brutal Ukrainians, who were in the pay of the Germans.”
There was also a ghetto in Rava-Russka, where 18,000 Jews were living in
the summer of 1942. Of these, 14,000 were allegedly murdered between December
7, 1942, and January 10, 1943, and another 2,000 sent into the ‘death
factory’ of Be��ec. 777 It is not clear why this ghetto still existed several months
after the opening of Be��ec, which was all of 17 km away from it, and why the
alleged 14,000 victims were not sent directly into the ‘death factory.’ Not to
mention the fact that on November 10, 1942, the Rava-Russka ghetto officially
became one of the numerous ‘Jewish residential districts’ of Galicia. 778
772
Ibid., p. 762.
773
Ibid., p. 763.
774
Jean-Marie Boisdefeu, La controverse sur l’extermination des Juifs par les Allemands, Tome
2: Réalités de la “solution finale”, Vrij Historisch Onderzoek, Antwerp 1996, pp. 65-71;
Jean-Marie Boisdefeu, La controverse sur l’extermination des Juifs par les Allemands. Corrigenda
et addenda, Vrij Historisch Onderzoek, Antwerp 1998, pp. 10-18.
775
IMT, vol. VI, p. 291.
776
Dr. Guérin, Rawa Ruska, Editions Oris, Paris 1945, p. 13.
777
Protocol of the Soviet Investigative Commission for Rava-Russka of September 26-30,
1944. GARF, 7021-67-78, pp. 138f.
778
See lists in Notes 798f., pp. 266.