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

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J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 67<br />

tion according as he saw fit. The people he selected were allowed to<br />

remain in the town and work, the others were loaded on trucks, taken<br />

to Sobibór and executed there. (These Jews were sent to Sobibór<br />

because Beec was, by then, ‘overcrowded.’) Out <strong>of</strong> the 5,000 persons,<br />

1,000 were moved to Sobibór.”<br />

In November <strong>of</strong> 1943, the underground press devotes a few lines to<br />

the revolt at Sobibór. Informacja Bieca No. 44 <strong>of</strong> 10 November states<br />

for example: 104<br />

“The Jews have destroyed the Sobibór camp and escaped into the<br />

woods.”<br />

A furtive reference to Sobibór is made in the report from the Delegatura<br />

for November/December 1943: 116<br />

“The work camp at Lemberg with a few thousand Jews who still<br />

remained there was dissolved. This also applied to 2 other, smaller<br />

camps. This fact could not be prevented, although a Jewish group<br />

had destroyed the camp and the execution site at Sobibór – as had<br />

happened at Treblinka earlier on.”<br />

Marszaek stresses that these meager rumors did not provide any information<br />

on the organizational structure <strong>of</strong> the camp: 104<br />

“Hence one did not know anything about the layout <strong>of</strong> the camp,<br />

nor the kind <strong>of</strong> [supervisory] personnel; there was no information<br />

about the Kommando that carried out the routine work for the operation<br />

<strong>of</strong> the camp, nor any details <strong>of</strong> the extermination method. Furthermore,<br />

there was no attempt at estimating the human losses.”<br />

The situation was similar to that concerning the camps at Treblinka<br />

and Beec, about which the most absurd rumors were bandied about<br />

during WWII. 117<br />

Hence, practically nothing was known about Sobibór. This made the<br />

historical reconstruction <strong>of</strong> the camp particularly difficult, as we can see<br />

from this text written in 1945 by the Polish War Crimes Office, which<br />

attempted to give some kind <strong>of</strong> historical shape to the vague rumors: 118<br />

116<br />

117<br />

118<br />

Jüdisches Historisches Institut Warschau (ed.), Faschismus – Getto – Massenmord, Dokumentation<br />

über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten<br />

Weltkrieges, Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1960, p. 366.<br />

Cf. in this respect: C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 10, Engl. ed.), pp. 47-69; C. Mattogno,<br />

op. cit. (note 11, Engl. ed.), pp. 9-34.<br />

“Report by the Polish War Crimes Office, Dr. J. Litawski, Officer in charge, on the<br />

German crimes in Poland,” 1945. AGK, MSW London [In the original, the name “London”<br />

is in Polish], 113, p. 626.

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