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

64 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
no longer there, as they had been deported to the extermination
camp in mid-May.
The following day the two young women reached Hrubieszów.
On the way into town they met a column of several thousand Jews
from Hrubieszów and its surroundings who were being herded to the
station by the Germans.
A few days later ‘Frumka’ Potnicka reported about this to Eliahu
Gutkowski, the second secretary of the underground archives of
the ghetto, who recorded the accounts of the two couriers: ‘I almost
fainted, the people marched in rows of four, more than 2,000 persons,
men, women, and youngsters, no children. I noticed two or
three children holding the hand of an adult. There was a deadly
stillness in the ranks, people marched quietly, looking down with
eyes that no longer saw anything…’ This column was followed by a
second group: old people and sick women, some eight to twelve
people each on farm wagons; one could hear their subdued complaints
and their prayers: ‘Save us, oh Lord.’ As ‘Frumka’ Potnicka
learned later, the children had been taken away from their parents
and were taken ‘to an unknown destination’ in sealed [railway] cars.
The next day, the two liaison women were present at the station
of the nearby town of Mici. And here, for the first time, they heard
the name: ‘Sobibór.’ ‘Frumka’ Potnicka told Eliahu Gutkowski:
‘From morning till nightfall people arrived here with their wagons
and their possessions. In the evening the Jews were herded into special
cars, they could not take their possessions along […]. The train
left for ‘an unknown destination.’ There are rumors that the Germans
had built another death camp at Sobibór, modeled on Beec.’
‘Frumka’ Potnicka died during the defense of the ghetto at Bdzin
(Bendsburg, Upper Silesia). ‘Chawka’ Folman survived and later
published her memoirs in Israel.”
On 1 st July 1942 the journal Polish Fortnightly Review published an
article which mentioned Sobibór in connection with the “destruction of
the Jewish population” in Poland: 109
“The German press reported that the ghetto had been transferred
from Lublin to the village of Majdan Tatarski [Majdanek], but in fact
almost the entire population was exterminated. For instance, it is
generally known that a certain number of Jews from the Lublin ghet-
109
“Documents from Poland. German attempts to murder a nation. (5) Destruction of the
Jewish Population,” in: Polish Fortnightly Review, No. 47, July 1 st , 1942, pp. 4-5.