SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 169
pressure injuries or suffocation caused by panicking fellow deportees,
leading to a total of (170,165×0.03=) 5,104 en-route deaths. Since this
is likely an overestimate, we will round off this figure downwards to
5,000 deaths.
As will be further discussed in chapter 8, we find it likely that deportees
who were found unfit for further transport to the east due to being
disease carriers, mentally ill, or dying, were euthanized at Sobibór. If
we assume that 2% of all deportees, excluding the 1,000 Dutch Jews
transferred to labor camps in the Lublin district, 486 were put to death, we
arrive at (169,165×0.02=) 3,383 victims, which we will round up to
3,500. In addition to this, there are indications that patients from mental
hospitals in the Lublin district were sent to Sobibór to be euthanized. 487
Although there is no documentary evidence to rely on, we will estimate
their number to 1,000 based on a claim of non-Jewish Sobibór victims
made by Polish historians. 488
Adding the three categories together we arrive at a total of (1,000+
5,000+3,500+1,000=) 10,500 victims. It must be stressed that this is only
a rough estimate, but we find it probable that the number of Sobibór
victims is in the vicinity of 10,000 dead.
As shown above, we have several strong reasons to believe that the
total volume estimated by Kola for the Sobibór mass graves, 14,718.75
m 3 , is significantly larger than that of the original burial pits. With an
average of (10,000÷16 =) approximately 600 corpses to dispose of per
month, the camp staff would have had no reason to economize on the
burial space. At the labor camp Treblinka I (not to be confused with the
alleged extermination camp Treblinka II) the bodies of deceased prisoners
were interred in three mass graves that averaged a burial density of 1
corpse per cubic meter. 489 It follows that the original volume of the
mass graves would have been compatible with our victim estimate.
486 The reason for this exclusion is that, judging by the eyewitness testimonies, those deportees
were not brought to camp III and thus were not screened by the camp staff carrying
out the euthanasia action.
487 Abraham Margulies (in M. Novitch, op. cit. (note 39), p. 63) and Dov Freiberg (op. cit.
(note 68), pp. 252f) both mention a transport consisting of mental patients.
488 A memorial plaque at Sobibór claims that “250,000 Jews and approximately 1,000
Poles” were murdered in the camp. A picture of this plaque is found on the book cover of
Zbigniew Sulimierski, Sobibór. Hitlerowski Obóz �mierci, Fundacja “Kamena” w
Che�mie, Che�m 1993. See also Photograph 13, p. 412; Esther Raab testified in 1949 that
Poles had also been gassed in Sobibór: Bogdan Musial, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung und
Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement. Eine Fallstudie zum Distrikt Lublin 1939-
1944, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1999, p. 206, note 43.
489 C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 10, Engl. ed.), p. 77.