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

246 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
plan Ost did not needlessly stress the significance of a network of
superhighways which were to link the individual settlements. This
program of road-building was to be carried out by Soviet prisoners
of war, as Adolf Hitler stressed in mid-October of 1941. In accordance
with these ideas, Organisation Todt, too, had banked on the
use of Red Army prisoners for the construction of Dg IV. [715] When
these men were no longer available, Jewish forced laborers replaced
their murdered predecessors. Their utilization for road works in the
Ukraine was envisaged in January of 1942.”
Hence, Heydrich referred to this project during the Wannsee conference.
The SS was also thinking of the improvement of the swampy regions
of the Pripyet, which stretched out between eastern Poland and White
Ruthenia, as can be seen for example from two studies which appeared
in December 1941 and June 1942, respectively. 716 Furthermore, the idea
of a system of canals to link the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea had already
been raised by Alfred Rosenberg on 8 May 1941 in a directive to
a Reich commissariat for the eastern territories. 717
On 14 August 1942 SS Brigadeführer Otto Rasch, head of Einsatzgruppe
C, proposed to Berlin the following solution of the Jewish
question: 718
“The surplus of the Jewish masses could well be employed and
used up in the cultivation of the vast Pripyet swamps as well as those
of the northern Dnyeper and along the Volga.”
Drainage operations were also being carried out in the Sobibór region
and employed Jewish manpower. Schelvis tells us: 719
“Dutch Jews are known to have been working on a drainage
project alongside German and Slovakian Jews at Arbeitslager
Ujazdów, fifteen kilometres to the southwest of Osowa, around 15
June 1942.”
715
716
717
718
719
The Durchgangstraße IV or Dg IV was to go from Galicia to the eastern Ukraine.
Richard Bergius, “Die Pripjetsümpfe als Entwässerungsproblem,” and Hansjulius Schepers,
“Pripjet-Polesien, Land und Leute,” in: Zeitschrift für Geopolitik; quoted by G. Aly,
“Endlösung.” Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden, S. Fischer
Verlag, Frankfurt/Main 1995, pp. 275f.
PS-1029.
Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD. Ereignismeldung UdSSR No. 52 of 14 August
1941. NO-4540.
J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 125. See also ibid., p. 209