The second day of the conference focused on Aktion Reinhardt and Aktion Erntefest from different perspectives. A historical framing of Aktion 1005 in the shadow of Aktion Erntefest was made by Berlin researcher Jens Hoffmann, referring to the example of the Waldlager Borek near the city of Chełm. Aktion 1005 aimed to dig up and burn the bodies of the victims of the Nazis and thereby erase the traces of their crimes. Begun in 1942, this action will continue until 1945.
Paradoxically, it was the compulsory work under Aktion 1005 that allowed Peter Sedgman (1917 - 2016) to escape the death that was normally destined for him in Aktion Erntefest. It was his grandson, Michael Evans, who came to talk about his grandfather's survival. Born Perez Szechtman in a Jewish family in Lublin, Peter Sedgman attended the Aktion Erntefest on November 3 and 4, 1943, without even knowing the name of this mass murder that would separate him from his brother. He managed to escape from the work commando that was supposed to dig up and burn the bodies and reach Italy after the war to finally start a new life in Australia. The testimony and "return to the roots" of his grandson, who was the first to notice the link between Peter Sedgman's story and Aktion Erntefest, was the human side of the conference and somehow symbolized the story of the victims and survivors of Aktion Reinhardt.
The Italian historian Tristano Matta, for his part, covered a less well-known section of the men who played the Sonderkommandos of Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka and who had often had a precedent in Aktion T4. With Aktion Erntefest marking the de facto end of their work, the men of Odilo Globocnik and Christain Wirth followed their leaders to Trieste in occupied Italy to fight the partisans under the name of Abteilung R and by taking their criminal methods there. La Risiera di San Sabba, the concentration camp set up in a former rice factory, became a symbol of Nazi cruelty that left its mark on generations of Italians.
The last speaker at the conference, the Dutch archaeologist Ivar Schute, presented the results of several seasons of excavations at the site of the former extermination centre in Sobibór. Being the most excavated of the three centres of the Aktion Reinhardt, some 100,000 artifacts have been found in the ground, which is a great paradox with the surface that seems so empty if we ignore the trees that cover the current site. Does Ivar Schute's question "Does archaeological research on extermination sites - and in the annex, concentration camps - lead to a new paradigm? "seems to be able to be answered in the positive.
In any case, archaeology provides answers to questions that neither witnesses (executioners or survivors) nor historians have been able to answer to date. Here too, political and religious imperatives weigh on scientific research. More importantly, the names of victims come back to light as the discoveries are made and thus extract these murdered people from the fateful place of oblivion in which they had been buried for decades.
To close the conference, the educational coordinator of the non-profit organization Mémoire d'Auschwitz - Auschwitz Foundation, Johan Puttemans, briefly presented the study trip proposed each summer to the Belgian public, to the places where the Nazi extermination centers were located in nowadays Poland. The trip proposes to follow the traces of the Shoah in the ancient ghettos from Warsaw, Łódź, Radom, Lubin, Zamość, Włodawa and Siedlce while visiting the places of memory that have become Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka and Majdanek. The survivors are symbolically present during the trip through their testimonies, which are red on the spot, the executioners, are put back into the historical context of the place of their misdeeds through photos and maps that are presented to the participants.
The interventions that were filmed will be available on the Auschwitz Foundation website (www.auschwitz.be) and a dossier will be devoted to the theme of the conference in the international scientific journal Testimony. Between history and memory.
Frédéric Crahay
Director of the non-profit organization Mémoire d'Auschwitz - Auschwitz Foundation