SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 99
As we have already seen in our first chapter, the witness Moshe Bahir
is especially fond of ascribing cruelties of the more extreme and unbelievable
kind to members of the camp staff. His mendacity is further
demonstrated by the claim that the guard dog Barry, well-known also
from Treblinka, was “the size of a pony.” 246 Ada Lichtman states that
young girls were “raped before being gassed” and that a newborn baby
was drowned in the latrines by Gustav Wagner. 247 However, she also
maintains that Wagner always was very nice to her, that he once saved
her from being beaten by a Ukrainian guard, and that, at another occasion,
he let Ada go without punishment after discovering her eating stolen
food. 248 Esther Raab in turn recounts that Wagner once gave her
candy. 249 Clearly the man was something of a split personality!
Other witnesses claim that inmates were forced to climb trees which
were then cut down, so that they fell to their death, and that SS Gomerski
and Wagner amused themselves by using babies as slingballs.
250 In court the former camp commandant Stangl gave a rather different
version of the alleged tree climbing murders: 251
“It came to my attention that Bolender was bullying the Jewish
inmates by forcing them to climb up the trees. He would make them
whistle or sing, and then they had to jump down. […] I called Bolender
to order and told him that as long as I was at the camp, this
must not continue any longer. I forbade him to engage in any more
such bullying. At the subsequent meeting with the other officers I let
it be known that I would not tolerate such bullying.”
who was killed in the revolt, and Walter Novak, who is said to have disappeared in 1947
after having spent some time as a prisoner of war. Schelvis notes that the Pirna police in
1946 searched the home of Walter Novak’s wife, and that valuables supposedly taken
from the camp were found, but mentions nothing of photographs or other documents; J.
Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 260.
246
Ibid., p. 150. Photos taken of Barry at Treblinka by Kurt Franz show him to have been of
perfectly ordinary size (www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/pic/bigz04.jpg). According to
Kurt Bolender, the dog was “rather aggressive,” but never severely harmed any of the
inmates; J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 92.
247
M. Novitch, op. cit. (note 39), p. 55.
248
A. Lichtman, op. cit. (note 167), p. 42, 44.
249
R.L. Rashke, op. cit. (note 44), p. 319.
250
“Sobibór – Mordfabrik hinter Stacheldraht,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 25 August 1950, p.
5.
251
Statement made by Franz Stangl in Duisburg on 29 April 1969, Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen
Ludwigsburg (subsequently quoted as ZStL) 230/59-12-4469;
quoted in J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 113.