The Sonderkommando Uprising – October 7th, 1944 – Part 3

By: Yaakov Rosenfeld

Please click here to view part 2 and here to view part 1.

As a continuation of our articles on the Sonderkommando Uprising, we will tell you about three individuals, good and pure-hearted Jews, who were guided by the Supreme hand of Providence to be part of the Sonderkommando, the dark group in the Shadow of Death, and despite being at the site of horror on earth, under the watchful eyes of the Nazi beast of prey, they did not lose thier G-dly image. They fought like lions until the last drop of their blood and sanctified Heaven there in their lives and death. There were certainly many more like them, but the uniqueness of these three is that they managed to put their experiences and feelings on paper, which constitute important documents for understanding the period and its tragic events.

This, in a nutshell, is the story of Dayan (rabbinical court judge) Rabbi Leib Langfus, Rabbi Zalman Gradowski, and Rabbi Zalman Levental, may G-d avenge their blood.

The Dayan from Makow

Rabbi Leib, a dayan from Makow Mazowiecki, was deported in 1942 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was forced to work in the Sonderkommando. He was born in Warsaw and studied in the Sandomierz Yeshiva, and after his marriage to the daughter of Dayan Rabbi Shmuel Yosef Rosenthal of Makow Mazowiecki, he moved to the town. After his father-in-law’s passing, he became the rabbi of the town and became known as ‘Der Makower Dayan” (the Dayan of Makow).

According to the testimony of Avraham Garfinkel from Makow, already in the first months of the Hitlerite regime, the dayan strongly argued that one should not trust the Germans and that their instructions and orders should not be carried out. “The whole goal of the Germans is to destroy us, and we must oppose them.” Garfinkel, a Judenrat member, testified about him: “We looked at him then as a crazy man.”

In November 1942 the Jews of Majow Mazowiecki were deported to Mlawa and from there, in the beginning of December, to Auschwitz. Rabbi Leib Langfus, his wife, and one son were among this group. His wife and son were gassed to death immediately upon their arrival.

In Auschwitz, Rabbi Langfus was forced to join the Sonderkommando, and as part of his “work,” had to prepare women’s hair for shipment to Germany. Even in these horrific conditions, according to testimonies, “his faith in G-d remained unshaken during his time in Auschwitz-Birkenau and he surrendered his life peacefully to G-d.” He was an active member of the Sonderkommando underground that eventually blew up one of the crematoriums in Birkenau.

Sonderkommando men at work

Jews from the Sonderkommando, to their credit, strove throughout that period to ease the suffering of the Dayan and carried out some of the tasks assigned to him themselves.

Rabbi Leib was treated with respect and admiration even though his views did not match with the views of many of the Sonderkommando, especially with those of the leaders of the rebellion. According to Zalman Levental, Dayan Langfus opposed the slogan of the Sonderkommando “to live and enjoy today at any cost because tomorrow death may come.” In the atmopshere of disintegration, he radiated, in his very respectable standing, his struggle to preserve his G-dly image.

Based on the diary of Zalman Levental (that was found in 1962), Rabbi Langfus was one of the underground operators and planners of the uprising in the crematoria. He is believed to have been executed on November 27th, 1944.

After the war, manuscripts were found describing the deportation from Makow, as well as the work of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1943 to November 26th, 1944. In the end, in the book of the historian Bernard Barr, the works were identified with Rabbi Leib Langfus. One of the abbreviations with which he used to sign his writings was (in Hebrew letters) “YARA,” which stood for “Yehuda Aryeh Regel Aruka,” meaning “Yehuda Aryeh (the common Hebrew name for the Yiddish name Leib) Long Leg.”

Excerpts from the Diary

In his report on the deportation from Makow-Mazowiecki, he felt sorrow at the disconnection with the whole world: “They are so alone in the middle of the earth that belongs to everyone, everyone except them, the Jews.”

An excerpt:

“It happened at the end of the winter of 1943, with the arrival of a transport of children from the Shavli (Šiauliai, Lithuania) Ghetto following the so-called ‘children’s action’ on November 5th, when the Sonderkommando approached the boy to undress him, his sister tried to stop him and shouted: ‘Go away, you murderer of a Jew! Don’t put your hands stained with Jewish blood on my beautiful brother…’ Another boy exclaimed: ‘But you are Jewish! How can you lead precious Jewish children to be gassed so that your lives will be saved! Is your life in the company of murderers more worthy than the lives of so many Jewish victims?'”

Elsewhere, he describes another emotional scene, this time not involving Sonderkommandos. The Boyaner Rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Friedman, who arrived in Auschwitz on Passover, approached the Oberscharführer on duty and told him to his face that the Germans would not succeed in their plot to murder the Jewish people, and that they would pay tenfold for every Jewish soul that they murdered. After that, the Rebbe put on his hat, and together with the whole group, passionately and devoutly recited the Shema Yisrael (Hear Oh Israel) prayer and went to his death. The author comments: “It was a moment of transcendence that has no parallel in human life, proving the eternity of Judaism’s power of spiritual resistance.”

In the chapter titled “Di 600 Yinglech” (The 600 Children), he describes the horrifying spectacle of 600 children being brutally pushed to death in the gas chamber. Some begged the Sonderkommando prisoners to save them. Others turned to the SS men, who, instead of answering, pushed them even harder into the bunker. The screams and cries of the children were deafening until death silenced them, and at that moment an expression of satisfaction slipped over the faces of their tormentors. Langfus ends the testimony with the question: “Did they never have children?”

On another occasion he describes a group of Polish and Jewish prisoners who were led to be murdered. A Polish girl left the group and asked the Sonderkommando prisoners to tell her people that she and her friends had died a heroic death.

In one incident he tells the story of Jews from Tarnow who passively waited for their execution, some of them read Viduy (the confessional prayer) before they died. Suddenly, a young man jumped on the bench and started shouting that it was impossible that they were going to die, that such a terrible thing could not happen in this world. Mesmerized, the victims listened to his speech, but within minutes, all of them, including the speaker, were led to their deaths.

In the last section of his diary, he wrote: “Now we are being taken to the area. The last 170 of us who are left. We are sure we are about to meet our death. 30 people have been chosen to stay in crematorium number V. Today is November 26th, 1944.”

Rabbi Langfus also appears in the biography of Sonderkommando member Filip Muller, where the last moments of Rabbi Langfus and his fellow prisoners are described. Langfus stepped out of line to reprimand the SS officers for lying to them about their fate, and addressed his fellow condemned prisoners:

“We must be alone, without family, without relatives, without friends, without a place we might call our own, doomed to wander the world aimlessly. For us, there will be no peace and no mental rest, until one day we die in some corner, lonely and abandoned. Therefore, brothers, let’s go to meet death with courage and honour!”

(Note: I imagine that Rabbi Langfus uttered additional comments before his death, which Filip Muller did not hear or undersand -Y.R.)

To be continued, G-d willing.