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Federation Star
JEWISH INTEREST
November 2023
Operation Harvest Festival, November 1943 Comedy Night and Menorah Lighting featuring Sarge December 9 at 7:30 PM Nina IserJewish Cultural Center MCA is happy to welcome back to Naples, Sarge. Three years ago, he performed for a sellout crowd at Off the Hook Comedy Club. Comedian Sarge Is an entertainer who has performed worldwide to adoring audiences. A triple threat - a musical piano savant, amazing improvisational comedian and singer. His book, “Black Boychik”, traces his hilarious, inspirational life of twists and turns, ups and downs. Celebrate the third night of Hanukah with candle lighting and comedy. Light refreshments will follow the show. To register, go to:
mcanaples.org or scan the QR code.
The Cardozo Society is formed as a way to network the many existing and new Jewish attorneys in our legal community. The Jewish Federation of Greater Naples continues to reach out to raise awareness through this association of Jewish attorneys promoting professionalism, cooperation, and identification with our Jewish community. For more information contact Joshua Bialek at
jbialek@porterwright.com
OF GREATER NAPLES
By Paul R. Bartrop, Professor Emeritus of History, Florida Gulf Coast University
E
ighty years ago this During Operation Harmonth, on Nov. 3, vest Festival, the victims 1943, what was arguwere initially ordered to dig ably the largest single daymassive trenches designed long mass murder operation to combat oncoming Soviet of Jews to take place over tanks, but it was feint; the entirety of World War instead, the trenches were II happened. used as mass graves. During Referred to by the Nazis the mass shootings at both as Operation Harvest FestiMajdanek and Trawniki, val (Aktion Erntefest), it was music was played over loudordered by Reichsführer-SS speakers to drown out the Paul Bartrop Heinrich Himmler to be a sounds of continuous gunplanned operation carried out in direct shots. The process was completed in a retaliation for a sequence of resistance single day at Majdanek and Trawniki; it activities in concentration camps and took place over two days at Poniatowa, ghettos. The plan was put in the hands however, owing to prisoner resistance of SS officers Christian Wirth and Jakob within the camp. Sporrenberg. Operation Harvest Festival was Wirth had already been closely responsible for the largest single numinvolved in the Nazi “euthanasia” ber of causalities during a mass shootprogram known as Aktion T4, which ing conducted by the SS, resulting in murdered tens of thousands of Gerthe death of approximately 43,000 mans with intellectual and physical Polish Jews across the three locadisabilities, before being transferred out tions. Unquestionably, it destroyed the of the program in the summer of 1941. Jewish population of the Lublin district He was the overall commander of the of German-occupied Poland. It was part much larger murder program known as of the much larger Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard, of which Opera(Aktion Reinhard), an organized mass tion Harvest Festival was part. murder of all Polish Jews in GermanSporrenberg was SS and higher occupied Poland. police leader (SSPF) in Lublin, Poland After Majdanek had been liquidated, and was given the task of overseeing Erich Muhsfeldt was transferred back and implementing the mass shooting of to Auschwitz. Captured after the war, Jews during Operation Harvest Festival. he was tried for war crimes by the U.S. Heinrich Himmler ordered the opermilitary, found guilty of committing ation to take place following multiple atrocities at the Flossenbürg concenexpressions of resistance throughout the tration camp and sentenced to life in areas of Poland controlled by Germany prison. He was, however, extradited in which revolts had taken place. Speto Poland, where he was retried by cifically mentioned were revolts at the the Supreme National Tribunal at the Sobibór and Treblinka death camps as Auschwitz Trial in Kraków, and senwell as earlier revolts that had taken tenced to death by hanging for crimes place in the Warsaw, Białystok and against humanity. He was executed on Vilna ghettos. Fearing further Jewish Jan. 24, 1948. resistance, Operation Harvest Festival After the war, Jakob Sporrenberg was planned and carried out with the stood trial in Poland. Convicted in 1950 intention of crushing any possibility of of war crimes and sentenced to death, further resistance. he was executed in December 1952. Operation Harvest Festival began at Christian Wirth, the overall comdawn on Nov. 3, 1943, when the conmander of Operation Reinhard — of centration camp at Lublin-Majdanek, which Operation Harvest Festival together with labor camps at Trawniki was part — was also instrumental in and Poniatowa, were surrounded by SS developing what were known as the and German police. The inmates were Operation Reinhard camps (Bełżec, taken out of the camps and shot, their Sobibór and Treblinka), the exterminabodies falling into massive ditches. At tion camps specifically designed for the Majdanek, the operation took place purpose of Jewish mass murder. He was under the watchful eye of an SS nonkilled by Yugoslav Partisans on May 26, commissioned officer, Erich Muhsfeldt. 1944 in Hrpelje-Kozina (now part of Originally, Muhsfeldt served at Slovenia) near Trieste after the concluAuschwitz in 1940 but was transferred sion of Operation Reinhard. to Majdanek on Nov. 15. 1941. When It is a sobering reflection that not that camp was liquidated after Operatoo much later in far-away Australia, tion Harvest Festival, he was transferred the twelfth anniversary of Operation back to Auschwitz, where he worked Harvest Festival coincided with this supervising Jewish Sonderkommando writer’s day of birth. Placed in this conprisoners in the gas chamber complex text, the Holocaust remains very much in Crematoria II and III. part of an ongoing history. At Majdanek, Muhsfeldt oversaw the Paul R. Bartrop is Professor Emeritus day’s events on Nov. 3 as the Jews were of History and the former Director of the separated from the rest of the prisoners Center for Holocaust and Genocide Research and taken to be killed. Thus, he was at Florida Gulf Coast University. closely involved in the mass shooting of the camp’s Jewish inmates.
