SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

106 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
death camps whose primary purpose was to kill in gas chambers
through the carbon monoxide from engine exhaust, and that the
hundreds of thousands of corpses of Jews killed there were first buried
and then later cremated.”
That eyewitnesses may err in their recollections is, of course, a truism.
Browning should also know that people can “recall” false memories
and that alleged perpetrators confess to crimes they never committed,
even when not physically coerced to do so. 287 The supposed consensus
invoked by him that the eyewitnesses “without exception all
concur […] that Be��ec, Sobibór and Treblinka were death camps”
where Jews were mass murdered with “carbon monoxide from engine
exhaust” is in fact nothing but a mesh of contradictions, held together
by mere belief.
In the case of Sobibór the witness accounts left by Jewish former
inmates are of little value for the question whether the camp was a center
for mass extermination of Jews, as “the most conclusive evidence”
those inmates had that gassings were taking place in camp III, to which
they lacked all access, was indeed “purely circumstantial” and, when
examined more closely, does not unequivocally confirm the mass murder
allegations. To this should be added the messages supposedly
smuggled out from camp III, whose reported contents are either absurd
or contradict the established historiography on Sobibór.
On the other hand, the statements from former camp personnel are
largely devoid of detail, especially where camp III and its killing installations
are concerned. As for the number, sizes, capacity, and construction
material of the alleged gas chambers, or the circumstances surrounding
the start of gassings at the camp, their declarations are rife
with contradictions. 288
While Browning and other historians of his ilk are satisfied with
creating a historiographic picture out of selected pieces of eyewitness
testimony and a handful of arbitrarily interpreted documents, all skeptical
inquirers searching for what really happened at Sobibór must recognize
the necessity of comparing the witness accounts with available
material evidence. Are the remains found at the former camp site really
compatible with the alleged mass murder of hundreds of thousands of
people in gas chambers? This will be the topic of our next chapter.
287 Cf. Gisli H. Gudjonsson, The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions, John Wiley
& Sons, Chichester 2003, pp. 179-186.
288 Cf. chapter 8.4.