SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 171
6. The Sobibór Trials
6.1. Legal Proceedings as the Basis for Historiography
Once the victorious Western Allies had created a puppet state called
“Federal Republic of Germany,” its leaders ordered the judiciary to fabricate
the evidence for the mirage of the murder of millions of people
in gas chambers, for which not a single shred of evidence survived – if
it ever existed. To prove our point, all we have to do is quote Martin
Broszat, long-time head of the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute
of Contemporary History), who said in his introduction to Adalbert
Rückerl’s documentation about the “NS extermination camps:” 490
“Without intending to anticipate a historical investigation and
valuation of the part played by the German judiciary in the prosecution
of NS crimes, we may retain as of today one aspect, particularly
in respect of the activity of the central agency [at Ludwigsburg]:
One must not judge the significance of the large-scale investigations
carried out by the prosecuting and the judicial authorities since the
end of the nineteen fifties merely by the – frequently minor – conviction
rates. […] Even though the fact of the ‘final solution of the Jewish
question’ can be found in nearly all history and other schoolbooks
about the NS era, the specific circumstances of those horrifying
events have so far been documented hardly at all in a systematic
manner. The methodical obfuscation by the agencies involved and
the thorough elimination of all traces at the end of the campaigns
have prevented a precise reconstruction of the events over long periods
or rendered them very difficult. This applies in particular to
the large and carefully hidden extermination camps set up in the occupied
Polish territories. In spite of unfavorable starting conditions,
the long and painstaking investigations of the judiciary have brought
about a general clarification of the facts and the circumstances.”
Succinctly said: Although nearly all history and other schoolbooks
mentioned the final solution of the Jewish question, the latter had been
490 A. Rückerl (ed.), op. cit. (note 36), p. 7 ff.