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

358 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
been sent from od to the land reclamation scheme in the Pripet
Marshes and to the Jewish agricultural colonies near Krivoi Rog in
the Ukraine”.
That such reports were not merely “rumors” is borne out by a letter
written on 21 June 1942 by Walter Föhl, who was Head of the Main
Department with the Reich commissar for the Consolidation of German
Ethnicity. 1066 The letter was addressed to an unknown member of the
SS, a section of which reads: 1067
“Every day now, we have been receiving trains, each with 1,000
Jews from Europe, processing them and housing them in one way or
another, and sending them on, right into the swamps of White Ruthenia
towards the Arctic Ocean; that is where they will all find
themselves when the war is over – if they survive (and the Jews from
the Kurfürstendamm or from Vienna or Pressburg surely will not) –
not without having built a few motorways. (But we should not talk
about that.)”
Highly significant in this connection is another quote from Werner’s
book, a text from a book entitled Sowjetische Partisanen und deutsche
Antifaschisten (Soviet Partisans and German Antifascists), which appeared
in communist East Germany in 1976: 1068
“Within the brotherly family of the Belorussian partisans, Czechs
and Slovaks, Frenchmen and Yugoslavs, Greeks and Dutchmen,
Spaniards and Austrians, Germans and members of other nations
fought courageously against fascism. The Communist Party and the
Soviet government attached great importance to the heroic fight of
these true internationalists. For their antifascist fight alongside the
partisan units of Belorussia and for the heroic deeds they accomplished,
orders and medals of the USSR were conferred i.a. to 703
Poles, 188 Slovaks, 32 Czechs, 36 Greeks, 25 Germans, 24 Spaniards
and 14 Frenchmen.”
The presence of Poles (both Jewish and non-Jewish) in Byelorussia
can be explained by the fact that they came from the western regions of
1066 Reichshauptstellenleiter der Dienststelle Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen
Volkstums (RKF)
1067 Fritz Arlt, Polen-, Ukrainer-, Juden-Politik, Wissenschaftlicher Buchdienst Herbert
Tage, Lindhorst 1995, p. 22. Fritz Arlt had been part of the Main Department with the
Reich commissar for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity in his function as head of
the office for Upper Silesia.
1068 Heinz Kühnrich (ed.), In den Wäldern Belorusslands. Erinnerungen sowjetischer Partisanen
und deutscher Antifaschisten, Dietz, East-Berlin 1976, p. 9.