Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Gustav Wagner (Sobibor)
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Auschwitz,Clauberg

Archive/File: camps/aktion.reinhard/sobibor/staff/wagner.gustav
Last-modified: 1993/04/18

"Oberschafuhrer Gustav Wagner

"The man who actually supervised the routine and daily life at Sobibor was
Gustav Wagner. He was the quartermaster-sergeant of the camp. Moshe Bahir
described him:

     "He was a handsome man, tall and blonde -- a pure Aryan. In civilian
     life he was, no doubt, a well-mannered man; at Sobibor he was a wild
     beast. His lust to kill knew no bounds. I saw such terrible scenes
     that they give me nightmares to this day. He would snatch babies from
     their mothers' arms and tear them to pieces in his hands. I saw him
     beat two men to death with a rifle, because they did not carry out his
     instructions properly, since they did not understand German. I
     remember that one night a group of youths aged fifteen or sixteen
     arrived in the camp. The head of this group was one Abraham. After a
     long and arduous work day, this young man collapsed on his pallet and
     fell asleep. Suddenly Wagner came into our barrack, and Abraham did
     not hear him call to stand up at once before him. Furious, he pulled
     Abraham naked off his bed and began to beat him all over his body.
     When Wagner grew weary of the blows, he took out his revolver and
     killed him on the spot. This atrocious spectacle was carried out
     before all of us, including Abraham's younger brother. <1>

"Wagner's ruthless behavior toward the Jews is mentioned in some other
testimonies of Sobibor survivors. Ada Lichtman writes that on the fast day
of Yom Kippur, Wagner appeared at the roll call, took out some prisoners,
gave them bread and ordered them to eat. As the prisoners ate the bread, he
laughed loudly; he enjoyed his joke because he knew the Jews he had forced
to eat were pious. <2>

"Gustav Wagner escaped after the war to Brazil, where he lived openly. The
Brazilian Supreme Court refused to extradite him. In October 1980 his
attorney announced that Wagner had committed suicide."

<1> Publication of the Museum of the Combatants and Partisans, Tel Aviv,
    April, 1973, p.37
<2> Ada Lichtman. Yad Vashem Archives, L-11/5, testimony of Ada Lichtman
    pp. 36-37

Excerpted from....----------------------------------------------
BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps
Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7

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