Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: The Gas Chambers of Sobibor Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Blaurock,Fuchs,gas,Krychow,Sobibor Archive/File: holocaust/poland/reinhard/sobibor sobibor.gas Last-modified: 1993/03/24 "The first gas chambers erected in Sobibor were in a solid brick building with a concrete foundation. ... There were three gas chambers in the building, each 4 x 4 meters. The capacity of each chamber was about two hundred people. Each gas chamber was entered through its own separate door leading from a veranda that ran along the building. On the opposite side of the building, there was a second set of doors for removing the corpses. Outside was a shed in which the engine that supplied the carbon monoxide gas was installed. Pipes conducted the gas from the engine exhaust to the gas chambers." <1> "In the middle of April, 1942 ... experimental killings were carried out ... About 250 Jews were brought from the Krychow labor camp, which was close to Sobibor, for this purpose. <2> Wirth arrived ... to attend these experiments. With him came a chemist whose pseudonym was 'Dr. [Karl] Blaurock.' SS Scharfuhrer Erich Fuchs, who served in Belzec, describes the preparations and the first experimental killing in Sobibor: ....We unloaded the motor. It was a heavy Russian benzine engine ... at least 200 horsepower ... we installed the engine on a concrete foundation and set up the connection between the exhaust and the tube. I then tested the motor. It did not work. I was able to repair the ignition and the valves, and the motor finally started running. The chemist, who I knew from Belzec, entered the gas chamber with measuring instruments to test the concentration of the gas. Following this, as gassing experiment was carried out. .... about thirty to forty women were gassed in one gas chamber. The Jewish women were forced to undress in an open place close to the gas chamber, and were driven into the gas chamber by [the SS and Ukrainians]. ...Both of us stood by the motor and switched from "Neutral" (Freiauspuff) to "Cell" (Zelle), so that the gas was conveyed to the chamber. At the suggestion of the chemist, I fixed the motor on a definite speed so that it was unnecessary henceforth to press on the gas. About ten minutes later the ... women were dead." <3> "The first stage of killing operations in Sobibor lasted from May until the end of July 1942. In this period Jews were sent there from ghettos in the Lublin district and from Czechoslovakia and Austria. The Jews who came from foreign countries were deported either to ghettos in the Lublin district and from there to Sobibor or directly to the camp. ... during these months 10,000 Jews arrived from Austria and Germany ... During the first stage of the killing operations in Sobibor, which lasted three months, at least 90,000 - 100,000 Jews were murdered there. At the end of July 1942, the large-scale deportation to Sobibor ceased because of the reconstruction work on the railway between Lublin and Chelm, which meant that no trains from the General Government could reach the camp." <1> Adalbert Ruckerl, "NS-Vernichtungslager in Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, DTV Dokumente", Munich, 1977, pg. 163 <2> Yad Vashem Archives 1284/1255, Sonia Guter's testimony, Rejowiec <3> Yad Vashem Archives TR-10/1069, Band 9, p.1784, the Sobibor-Bolender trial, Dusseldorf; Adalbert Ruckerl (See <1> above), pp.165-166. As quoted in.... BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7
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