SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

104 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
lage net was acquired when the old wooden barracks were still in
use, [280] because such a lot of steam was generated.”
Remarkably, none of the Jewish eyewitnesses who reports seeing the
roof of the “gas chamber” building protruding above the trees surrounding
camp III have mentioned a camouflage net. Moreover, the alleged
reason for the net is clearly spurious. How would pilots have been able
to see through a roof? Wouldn’t it have been much more logical to camouflage
the mass graves instead? The claim that “a lot of steam was
generated” during the gassings is likewise bizarre. By “steam,” did
Bauer mean engine exhaust? However, a native speaker of German
would never use Dampf or any word derived from it 281 to denote exhaust
fumes from an engine. There is no reason why the alleged gassing
process would have produced steam. On the other hand, hot showers
could result in a lot of steam, especially in cold weather. In addition, delousing
chambers utilizing steam or hot air may also have caused such
emissions of vapor.
In April 1963 and June 1965 two trials were held in Kiev against
former Ukrainian auxiliaries who had served in Sobibór. Thirteen of
them were sentenced to death and executed. In the late 1970s testimonies
from a handful of accused Ukrainian guards were made available to
the U.S. Department of Justice by the USSR in connection with the first
extradition trial against John Demjanjuk. When it comes to camp III
those testimonies are generally as vague and lacking in detail as the
German ones.
The witness Vassily Pankov describes all three camps where he was
posted – Sobibór, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald – as “death camps”
where the SS and their auxiliaries “perpetrated physical extermination
of civilians.” 282 The inclusion in this list of Buchenwald – a camp where
no extermination is claimed to have taken place – should be enough to
draw the veracity of Pankov’s account into question.
The former auxiliaries moreover tend to grossly exaggerate the size
of the camp, which is curious in the light of the fact that one of their
primary tasks was to patrol the camp perimeter. M. Razgonayev stated
280 The testimonial incongruity regarding the building material of the alleged gas chambers
will be discussed in detail in chapter 8.4.
281 In the original German the last part of the final sentence of the quote reads: “…weil es
dort immer so gedampft hat”; J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 70), p. 121.
282 Interrogation of Vassily Pankov in the city of Stalino on 18 October 1950. Online:
http://ftp nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/aktion reinhard/ftp.py?camps/aktion reinhard//sobibor/
pankov.001