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

36 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
Inside were three gas chambers; each measured four by four meters
and could hold 150 to two hundred people at a time.” (p. 112)
Hence it was possible to press together in each chamber nine or even
twelve persons per square meter. While the former figure still appears
vaguely possible, the latter is not. Ten pages further on we have SS-
Oberscharführer Kurt Bolender stating at one of his interrogations (p.
122):
“I would estimate that it took forty to fifty people to fill a chamber.”
If that was the case, what is the basis for the figure of 150 to 200
persons per chamber given by the author?
Another eleven pages on, we encounter the following passage:
“The new building [i.e. the larger one, built in September of
1942] had six gas chambers, three on each side. Its layout was similar
to that followed in Beec and Treblinka, where the entrances to
the gas chambers branched off from a central passage. The new
rooms here were not larger than the old ones – that is, four by four
meters – but the extermination capacity was increased to twelve
hundred or thirteen hundred people.” (p. 133)
This means that in the gas chambers more than 13 persons could be
squeezed onto one square meter! There is no witness statement to substantiate
this ridiculous assertion.
How this collective volume deals with historical sources is illustrated
by the following sentence:
“On 5 July 1943, shortly before the end of the Jewish transports
from Holland, Himmler ordered the Sobibór extermination camp to
be transformed into a concentration camp [KZ] for the storage and
dismantling of captured enemy munitions.” (German edition, p.
191) 47
Actually, Himmler had spoken about a transit camp in his directive
and not about an extermination camp. 48 In the section “The Liquidation
of the Camps” we read:
“The terrain of the former extermination centers was plowed up,
trees were planted, and peaceful-looking farmsteads constructed. A
47
48
In the English edition (p. 137) we read: “Himmler declared that Sobibór was to be converted
into a concentration camp.” However, since apparently no revisions were made
from the German original in this chapter of the book, we find it likely that the omission
of the word “Vernichtungslager” (extermination camp) in the English edition is due to
the translator.
Cf. chapter 2.2.1.