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Marek Bem Sobibor Extermination Camp 1942 – 1943 Copyright © 2015 by Dr Marek Bem All rights reserved This publication was made possible with the support of Stichting Sobibor and the Province of Gelderland Translated from Polish to English by Tomasz Karpiński Natalia Sarzyńska-Wójtowicz English language consultant Jack Dunster Cover design by Anna Butryn Graphics design by Renata Mozołowska Typeset by Jacek Dróżdż Printed and bound by Drukarnia BIGA-DRUK, C. Wałachowski, J. Leszczyński s.c. 26-600 Radom, ul. Tartaczna 16/18 First Edition ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6 Stichting Sobibor Amsterdam 2015 Evil, the embodiment of which is Sobibór, did not commence either the moment the Sobibór gates threw open or finish the moment the camp was liquidated. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................7 CHAPTER I THE PLAN OF THE ‘FINAL SOLUTION TO THE JEWISH QUESTION’ AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION. THE ORIGINS OF THE GERMAN EXTERMINATION CENTRE IN SOBIBÓR. ..............................................21 CHAPTER II THE CREATION OF THE EXTERMINATION CENTRE .........................45 1. The construction of the extermination centre .......................................45 2. Extension ..............................................................................................64 3. Explanations concerning the demarcation of the boundaries of the former German extermination centre in Sobibór .....................106 CHAPTER III THE CAMP PERSONNEL ............................................................................109 1. The role and the functions of the German personnel .........................109 2. SS guard units ..................................................................................... 119 3. The looting of Jewish property ...........................................................134 4. Corruption ...........................................................................................137 CHAPTER IV TRANSPORTS. THE TOTAL NUMBER OF VICTIMS ...........................139 1. Deportations .......................................................................................139 2. Reception of transports .......................................................................148 3. Transports from the Netherlands ........................................................153 4. Transports from France ......................................................................154 5. Transports from Germany and Austria ...............................................156 6. Transports from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and from Slovakia ...............................................................................157 7. Transports from the Soviet Union ......................................................158 8. Deportations of Gypsies .....................................................................159 9 Transports from the General Government. The total number of victims of the German extermination centre in Sobibór ................161 CHAPTER V PRISONER-LABOURERS ............................................................................183 1. The life and work of the prisoner-labourers .......................................183 2. Punishment, sadism, torture and executions .......................................194 3. Kapos ..................................................................................................196 4. Music and singing in the camp ...........................................................199 CHAPTER VI EXTERMINATION ........................................................................................203 1. On the railway ramp ...........................................................................203 2. From the railway ramp to the gas chamber ........................................208 3. The gas chamber .................................................................................213 4. The disposal of the bodies of murdered Jews .....................................216 5. The Lazaret – the camp’s ‘field hospital’ ............................................226 CHAPTER VII PREPARATIONS FOR THE UPRISING. THE REVOLT AND THE PRISONER ESCAPE .....................................................................................237 1. Escapes and spontaneous forms of prisoner resistance ......................237 2. The revolt and the prisoner escape .....................................................263 3. The consequences of the revolt and the prisoner escape ....................277 CHAPTER VIII REACTIONS AND PUNISHMENT .............................................................303 1. Trials of war criminals from Sobibór .................................................303 2. The public understanding of knowledge about the German extermination centre in Sobibór .........................................................321 CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................337 APPENDICES .................................................................................................361 SOURCES AND LITERATURE ...................................................................419 7 INTRODUCTION In the extermination camp in Sobibór, built during World War II, the Germans were implementing the immediate genocide of Jews. Over a quarter million Jews from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union were gassed there by means of exhaust fumes in special chambers. While considering the tragedy that happened in the camp, it is necessary to bear in mind not solely the calibre of the crimes committed there, but also other aspects of the matter. Evil, the embodiment of which is Sobibór, did not commence either the moment the Sobibór gates threw open or finish the moment the camp was liquidated. That kind of extermination has revealed a completely different aspect of modern civilisation: if large-scale industrialised murder could happen once, it can happen again because mankind is capable of performing it. Anxiety about a possibility of genocide happening again does not allow one to forget about either Sobibór or all the other places of extermination; this anxiety warns people against diminishing the significance of those places. However, nobody is capable of reconstructing the full tragedy of over a quarter million human beings who were killed in that camp. The whole knowledge about it, which has been recorded in books and stored in archives and libraries, seems to be highly inadequate. The reason for this is that the tragedy of Sobibór constitutes a whole network of manifold phenomena, not only perceivable ones, but also those that were going on in the minds of the victims - their physical and mental suffering. Sobibór was the most mysterious of all extermination camps. Moreover, very few official camp documents have survived. Most of them were destroyed1. According to Jules Schelvis, a historian who deals with Sobibór, very few documents from Sobibór and other death camps have been preserved. After the Sobibór prisoners had successfully rebelled and escaped on 14 October 1943, Odilo Globocnik wrote to Heinrich Himmler that all the evidence connected with the camp should be destroyed as quickly as possible. Consequently, nearly all the documents were burnt soon afterwards2. The aim of this book is to describe a unique phenomenon – Sobibór, a Nazi German centre of summary extermination which existed between 1942 and 1943. The Sobibór camp (centre) of extermination (Vernichtungslager in German) was a specific kind of German camp set up for the purpose of the physical extermination of Jewish people confined within its limits. In rare cases, the prisoners were first used as slave labour force before meeting their death. To this day, this subject has not received a thorough examination. Although the present work is not aimed at being this kind of detailed description, it attempts to embrace this subject in terms of the present state of knowledge and scientific research. On the one hand, the historical analysis included in this work is focused on re-creating facts (the description of the camp itself, the extermination procedures, etc.). On the other hand, it concentrates on 1 Tomasz Blatt, Z popiołów Sobiboru [From the Ashes of Sobibór], Włodawa, 2003, p. 280. 2 Jules Schelvis, Sobibor. A History of a Nazi Death Camp in Sobibór, Washington, 2007, p. 2. 8 portraying emotions, experiences and attitudes of people who were part of the camp realities. Chronologically, the time period concerns the construction and functioning of the camp as well as its liquidation, that is, the years of 1942-1943. Only Chapter I is an exception: putting anti-Semitism, Nazism and the pre-war Nazi German policy into historical perspective, it centres upon events which directly led up to the building of the German extermination camp in Sobibór. In terms of territory, the work is concerned with the placement of the camp, which was constructed next to the local railway station of Sobibór, near to the village of Sobibór in Poland, in the Lublin Province in the Włodawa commune on the Bug River. The history of the German death camp in Sobibór can be analysed from various points of view: psychological, sociological, legal and theological. The present treatise offers the point of view of both a historian and cultural anthropologist. It is based on an analysis of the currently available materials as well as relevant literature which is being
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