Sobibor Strangeness –
A small compendium
Of the three so called Aktion Reinhardt “extermination
camps” Sobibor near Wlodawa is the one least researched by revisionists.
So far there has not been published any book length revisionist
study on this camp. As for exterminationist scholarship, the
most in-depth study is provided by Jules Schelvis’ Sobibor.
A History of a Nazi Death Camp (revised edition 2007). Since
about a year ago, I have been looking into the historiography
of the camp as well as the accounts left by former inmates.
Below I will list some of the most interesting contradictions
that I have encountered within the orthodox Sobibor narrative.
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It is alleged that, in similarity with Belzec and Treblinka,
Sobibor initially contained a smaller gas chamber building,
which was later replaced with a second, larger building.
Franz Stangl, who oversaw the last phase of the camp’s construction
and served as commandant from March to September 1942, described
the first installation as a “brick building” (Sereny, Into
That Darkness, p. 109). Erich Fuchs, who supposedly installed
the gassing engine and also participated in the first trial
gassings, testified in 1963 that the chambers were housed
in “a concrete structure”. Erich Bauer was supposedly nicknamed
“The Gasmeister of Sobibor”. In 1950 he was sentenced to
death (later commuted to life imprisonment) by a West German
court for operating the Sobibor gas chambers. According
to a “confession” penned by Bauer while in prison, the first
gas chambers were not made by brick or concrete but of wood
(Schelvis, p. 101). It is significant that neither Schelvis
nor Arad, while respectively quoting both witnesses, mention
this glaring contradiction. Schelvis only remark on Fuchs’
testimony: “Because he had put into place so many installations
over the course of time, he did not remember that the first
gas chambers at Sobibor had been constructed of wood” (p.
114). How is that Stangl and Bauer, two men who both should
have been familiar with this building, produced such divergent
testimony?
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The claimed number of gas chambers as well as their sizes
and capacities differ notably between the various witnesses,
as well as among exterminationist historians. Arad (Belzec,
Sobibor, Treblinka, p. 31) writes that the first building
contained 3 chambers, each 4 x 4 meters, with a capacity
of 200 victims per chamber. For the same building Miriam
Novitch (Sobibor. Martyrdom and Revolt, p. 26) claim a total
capacity of 150 people. Schelvis on the other hand merely
notes that the figures stated by the witnesses vary between
40 and 80 victims per chamber. As for the second building,
Arad asserts that it housed 6 chambers each measuring 4
x 4 meters with a total simultaneous capacity of 1,300 people
(p. 123). Novitch in turn writes that there were five chambers,
each 4 x 12 meters, with a total capacity of 400 victims
(p. 26). Schelvis (p. 115) simply refer to the 1966 verdict
of the Hagen trial, which found it “a reasonable assumption
that each of the six gas chambers could hold 80 people”
i.e. 480 victims in total. In 1950, former SS-Scharführer
Franz Hödl gave a testimony guaranteed to please all: “…about
6 to 8 gas chambers had been erected. The gas chamber had
either 4 or 6 chambers on either side of the central corridor,
three on the left, three on the right” (Schelvis, p. 104).
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It is alleged that about one third of the victims were
buried before being cremated. Outdoor cremations were supposedly
begun in either the late summer – early autumn (Arad, p.
171) or winter (Schelvis, p. 110) of 1942. Arad writes that
the bodies were buried in an unspecified number of mass
graves “50 to 60 meters long, 10 to 15 meters wide, and
5 to 7 meters deep” (p. 33). Novitch likewise do not state
the number of pits, and give their measures as 30 meters
long, 15 meters wide, and 4 to 5 meters deep (p. 24). Schelvis
(p. 110-2) claims with confidence (using statements of Kurt
Bolender as reference) that there were ever only 2 burial
pits (and in addition to this a cremation pit over which
a grid of railway gauge was laid out). The dimensions of
the second pit are left unclear. As for the first one, Schelvis
writes that it was 60 meters long, 20 meters wide and about
6 to 7 meters deep. According to Polish archaeologist Andrzej
Kola, who supposedly carried out drillings at the former
camp site in 2001, there were 7 grave pits with an average
depth of 5 meters. The largest pit allegedly had a surface
of 64 by 23 meters (210 x 75 ft.), while the second largest
measured 18 x 23 meters (60 x 75 ft.). It was reported by
the press (The Scotsman, November 26, 2001) that the drillings
revealed the upper layers of the graves to contain cremated
remains, while the lower layers contained non-cremated remains
in a state of decay. Are we to believe that the SS staff,
given a whole year to work, did not manage to disinter all
the buried corpses? Why would the lower layers of bodies
have been left untouched, if there was an order from Himmler
to exhume and incinerate all bodies (cf. Arad, p. 170)?
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Another press item (Associated Press, November 23, 2001)
states that Kola’s team found the traces of a long barrack
“about 70 yards from the mass graves”. In one of its corners,
the archaeologists had uncovered 1,700 bullets. According
to Kola, the barrack “might have served as a gas chamber”,
adding that further study was necessary. But why would executions
by bullet have been carried out inside a gas chamber building?
In the Scotsman article published three days later the barrack
containing the bullets is described as “a hospital barrack”.
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Jules Schelvis notes that the railway passing through
Sobibor “ran through marshland” (p. 28) and Arad writes
that “the whole area was swampy” (p. 30). A look at a 1933
map of the area reveal several small lakes or ponds close
to the future camp, as well as a number of marshy areas,
including a smaller spot inside the future camp perimeter.
Franz Suchomel, who oversaw the liquidation of Sobibor,
testified in 1962 that the barracks in Sobibor were constructed
on top of “meter high piles” to avoid the danger of flooding.
In an interview in the early 1970s he further stated that
no killings were done in Sobibor “after the snow thawed
because it was all under water” adding that “It was very
damp at the best of times, but then it became a lake” (Sereny,
p. 115). In Arad we learn that inmates attempted to escape
through a tunnel (p. 311). The tunnel, which was planned
by a professional miner, “could not go deeper” than 155
centimeters below the earth’s surface, because “there was
a danger it might strike water.” Since a look at topographical
maps of the area show that Lager 3, where the gas chambers
and mass graves were allegedly located, was situated lower
than the other parts of the camp, it does not make sense
to suppose the ground water to have been at a lower level
there, allowing for the 5 meter deep grave pits alleged
by Kola. Regardless, it is a mystery why the SS construction
staff, who reportedly visited the future camp site already
in late 1941 (Schelvis, p. 27) would have chosen an area
dominated by marshland for an extermination camp where tens
if not hundreds of thousands of bodies were to be buried.
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There has of yet been published no documentation or scientific
report – in Polish, English or any other language – on the
aforementioned 2001 Sobibor excavation, despite seven years
having passed. According to a personal communication from
Mr. Yoram Haimi of the “Sobibor Archaeological Project”
(www.undersobibor.org) Kola “has a problem with the Polish
government.” Interestingly, Schelvis makes no mention of
the excavation in the revised, post-2001 editions of his
book.
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The former Ukrainian guards interrogated by Soviet officials
tend to exaggerate the camp’s area considerably, despite
one of their main duties at the camp being to patrol its
perimeter. Mikhail Razgonayev in a 1948 questioning gave
its measure as “2-3 square kilometers”. Ignat Danilchenko
stated in 1979 that the size of the area was “approximately
four square kilometers”. The actual area of the camp was
less than half a square kilometer (cf. the so-called Rutherford
map from 2002).
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According to Fuchs’ account of the first gassing, the
victims undressed near the gas chamber and were gassed naked.
Stangl on the other hand testified that he was “certain
that the bodies were not naked, but were buried with their
clothes still on” (Schelvis, p. 101).
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It is alleged that none of the inmates of “Lager 3” survived
the camp’s existence, and that all contact between the inmates
of Lager 3 and those of the other parts of the camp was
strictly prohibited. Still a number of Sobibor survivors
claim to have had contact with Lager 3 through smuggled
letters (or to have been aware of such contact). For example
we learn in Arad’s book (p. 79) that the camp cook Hershl
Zukerman was the first inmate to become aware of the existence
of the gas chambers through the reply to a letter which
he had hidden inside a thick crumb pie (in the account published
by Novitch the dish has become a dumpling). Moshe Bahir
describes letters about magical bloodstains and gas chamber
floor boards with embedded fragments of hands, cheeks and
ears (!). Stanislaw Szmajzner claims to have received letters
from Lager 3 detailing how the killing agent had been switched
from engine exhaust to Zyklon B. None of the aforementioned
communication is discussed by Schelvis. Jacob Biskubicz
testified that he himself had seen a gas chamber with a
collapsible floor. This also goes unmentioned by Schelvis.
On the other hand he mention that survivor Chaim Trager
“claimed to have seen all the goings-on in Lager 3 while
building a chimney on a rooftop in that part of the camp”
– yet he neither provides a quote from Trager’s sensational
account nor a reference to it. Novitch presents a short
account by the same witness, but it does not mention any
such observation. Where is the testimony that Schelvis is
referring to?
The above are only some of the problems
and paradoxes to be found in the orthodox historiography of
the Sobibor “death camp” – a historiography almost exclusively
based on witness testimony. It is, at least to me, evident that
there is need for a thorough, scientific investigation into
the camp’s history. It is also evident that such research will
not be carried out by the mainstream historians, but rather
by skeptics and revisionists.
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