Sobibor - Holocaust Propaganda And Reality - Unity of Nobility ...

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 101
part of a “deception”! We may also note in this context that, while in
Brazilian custody in 1967, Franz Stangl, the former commandant of Sobibór
and Treblinka, allegedly stated to the São Paulo police that “his
job during the war had been to take down the names of the victims as
they were marched to the gas chambers.” 259 A most thorough “deception”
indeed! 260
Another example of this laborious charade: according to Ada Lichtman
the Germans received the Dutch transports with long tables on
which were nicely set coffee, bread, and marmalade. 261 After they finished
eating, the Dutch Jews were shown around the camp. Next they
had to write postcards addressed to their remaining relatives in the
Netherlands, after which some of them were selected for work, while
the rest was finally “chased off to be exterminated”! 262
Yet another anomaly found in Schelvis’ description of the camp
concerns Walter Poppert, a German Jew deported from Westerbork
with his wife on May 8, 1943. 263 At Sobibór Poppert was foreman of
the Waldkommando, a fact which was mentioned by him in a postcard
dating from August 1943. 264 In other words: the SS allowed an inmate
in a top secret “extermination camp” to communicate with the outside
world – a contradiction which goes unnoticed by Schelvis. 265
Regarding the number of victims eyewitnesses often give figures
significantly higher than both the figure of 250,000 hitherto generally
accepted and Schelvis’ lower estimate of 170,000. Bahir claims to have
overheard a conversation between SS men Paul Bredow and Rudolf
Beckmann following Himmler’s reported second visit to the camp in
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
“Austrian seized by Brazil as Nazi,” The New York Times, 3 March 1967, pp. 1f. However,
according to a notice in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (“Treblinkas chef
greps i Brasilien,” 3 March 1967, p. 13), Stangl “denied all allegations made against
him.”
For another important indication that the deportees who arrived in Sobibór (and the other
Aktion Reinhardt camps) were indeed registered, cf. chapter 9.5.
Dov Freiberg likewise maintains that “there were transports where the people were
greeted politely, with bread, jam and coffee”; D. Freiberg, op. cit. (note 68), p. 251.
A. Lichtman, op. cit. (note 167), pp. 46f.
J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 139
Ibid., p. 112, 141.
Schelvis states that the arriving Dutch Jews sometimes were either encouraged or forced
to “send postcards home to those left behind, telling them of their safe arrival,” ibid., p.
71. This was supposedly part of the “deception” of the victims. Poppert’s postcard, however,
was sent three months after his arrival to the camp, which makes it difficult to reconcile
with the alleged policy of secrecy and camouflage.