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

38 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
chambers. 51 This latter contraption, which allowed the corpses of those
murdered to drop right down into a cellar, was mentioned in 1944 by
the witness Dov Freiberg, a.k.a. Ber Freiberg. 52 Arad, while quoting
Freiberg on three occasions (pp. 75, 128, 129), does not mention this
uncomfortable fact, quite obviously because it would immediately discredit
Freiberg as a witness in the eyes of any critical reader.
If we follow Arad, “at least 90,000 to 100,000 Jews were murdered”
at Sobibór up to the end of July, 1942. (We remind the reader that according
to the Höfle radio message, which Arad did not yet know, a total
of 101,370 persons had been deported to Sobibór up to 31 December
1942). Still, the SS felt that the capacity of the old gassing building with
its three chambers, each 4 meters square, “could not cope with the tasks
imposed on this camp,” so that “during the two-month lull in extermination
activities in autumn of 1942 [sic], the old gas chambers were partially
dismantled and the three additional gas chambers were built.” (p.
123)
We are not told what we are to understand by the “three gas chambers
[…] 4 × 4 meters” being “partially dismantled.” Arad goes on:
“The new six-room gas chamber building had a corridor that ran
through its center and three rooms on either side. The entrance to
each gas chamber was from the corridor. The three gas chambers
were the same size as the existing ones, 4 × 4 meters. The killing capacity
of the gas chambers was increased to nearly 1,300 people simultaneously.”
(p. 123)
Apparently it was not “the old gas chambers” that were “partially
dismantled” but the building in which they were housed. The statement
that the six gas chambers, each with a floor area of 16 square meters,
could now hold “nearly 1,300 people simultaneously” signifies that 13
persons would have had to stand on one square meter – an impossible
thing to achieve, which we have already noted in our discussion of the
collective volume Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas.
Just as the collective volume, Arad has no source for this assertion.
We should add that ten years before Arad’s book appeared, Adalbert
Rückerl, in the documentation Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen
durch Giftgas, had assigned to the “six cells” of the new “gas chamber
building” a total capacity of “about 480” or 80 persons per “cell.” 53 This
51
52
53
Cf. chapter 3.
Cf. chapter 3, p. 69.
A. Rückerl (ed.), op. cit. (note 36), p. 173.