Upfall

Globo's duty was to contact Heydrich immediately, but Globocnik had not risen in the SS without a fine sense of bureaucratic, and even physical, survival. To call Heydrich now, with nothing but bad, even disasterous news, would be like digging his own grave, professionally if not literally. To delay reporting the disaster would infuriate Heydrich as well, but Globo could not imagine anything upsetting the man more than the sudden destruction of his best run, and most secret, death camp. Better to report the catastrophe with at least a dose of good news, of which none was available at that moment.

Globocnik left his desk returned to the communications room just as Wirth was finishing his report.

"Wirth!" Globocnik shouted into to radio. "You must locate the partisans who did this! Find them and exterminate them!"

"Herr Obergruppenfuehrer… not partisans… Ukranian survivors commandos. ..Russians.uncertain."

"Wirth! There is a Polish police station in a village just north of Sobibor. Send a patrol there. Maybe they know something. Break them if you have to!"

”Jawohl... "

Globo grabbed the communication sergeant's notes and quickly scanned them. A few Ukranians had survived the attack. They reported a mixed group of attackers, partisans, with a small number of enemy soldiers—unusual looking but clearly uniformed troops. Wirth guessed that they were Russian, although one of the Ukranians insisted that the strange soldiers did not speak Russian, but some other language he could not place.

Globocnik wasn't sure what to make of the report. He was a policeman by training, and not a bad one. He needed more evidence and a lead or two. At least then he could report to Heydrich that he was on the trail. Ultimately he realized that the only way out of his predicament would be to hunt down and kill the men who destroyed Sobibor.

Globo spent the day making certain that news of the attack did not escape Lubin. He knew that word of the disaster might have reached Heydrich through either the railroad command or the Wehrmacht, but considered that unlikely. Sobibor was a secret SS installation and Globocnik should be able, at least for a day, to keep a lid on the news. It was not until late in the afternoon that Globocnik got the information he craved. It came from Wirth, calling on a decent telephone line from the Polish village of Przyroda, near to Sobibor.

There Wirth had interrogated a pair of very frightened Polish policemen.

Nervously, the two Polish officers described an encounter with a German military unit early that afternoon, much like Wirth‘s, looking for the partisans that had attacked Sobibor. The Poles insisted that they had not reported the incident because the men they encountered were Germans. The Poles stuck to their story even under torture, and even after Wirth executed an older officer in order to panic a younger policeman into changing his story. But even then the second policeman insisted that the men he encountered were German. One of the Germans said that the unit was heading north after a partisan band.

Wirth asked Globocnik whether he had any further questions for the surviving Pole, who though injured and suffering was still able to talk.

"Ask him if the ‘Germans’ spoke with an accent." Globocnik heard Wirth put the question to the Pole, and the Pole eagerly agreed that yes indeed, the Germans spoke strangely—at least one of them.

"Anything else Herr Obergruppenfuehrer?” "No. You know what to do with him" mumbled Globocnik. "Yes sir."

Globocnik heard the sound of a single pistol shot. "Put some fear into the rest of the village as well—choose ten males over the age of thirteen, put them against a wall, and remind these Poles the cost of attacking their overlords." Globocnik hung up the telephone. Glonocnik's instincts told him that the Poles had been telling the truth. That was no reason to exercise mercy, but it was a sufficient basis on which to make plans. If the "Germans" were heading north; Treblinka might be their next target. Why on earth a partisan or commando band would want to liberate Jewish death camps was beyond him, but as a policeman, he would go where the evidence pointed. And with a chase afoot, Heydrich could hardly sack him. He picked up the phone and asked his secretary to place a call to Prague.

Chapter 19

The Israelis ran a circuitous route from Sobibor. Using maps taken from the death camp, Yatom took the column east then north. Although it was broad daylight the roads were almost entirely deserted. They passed just two peasant farmers driving horse-drawn wagons before reaching the town of Wlodawa. Wlodawa was a larger settlement at the eastern margin of historic Poland, along a high road that ran north and south. Yatom stopped the column. The Israelis scanned the town through binoculars looking for any tell-tale sign of Germans, but saw nothing.