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J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, <strong>SOBIBÓR</strong> 173 men stationed in Sobibór, Bauer among them, 494 but does not ascribe to any of them any specific crimes. Bauer’s promotion to the rank of “Gasmeister” is the work of the former Sobibór detainees Esther Raab and Samuel Lerer who appeared in Berlin as witnesses for the prosecution. Shaindy Perl, whose only source is the testimony of Esther Raab, gives the following account of the circumstances leading to Bauer’s arrest: Esther Raab and Samuel Lerer are said to have lived in Berlin after the war. One day, Samuel Lerer burst into Esther Raab’s Berlin apartment telling her that he had discovered Bauer and his family at a fair on a ferris wheel. The two of them ran to the fair and bribed a policeman with two pounds of coffee to arrest Bauer: 495 “The policeman eyed the sack of coffee greedily. ‘Okay,’ he said finally, ‘but I hope you two are not mistaken.’ Esther and Samuel assured him that they weren’t. Then they watched with trepidation as the policeman approached Erich Bauer and whispered quietly to him. Bauer’s color drained from his face and the policeman took his arm and led him away.” We leave it up to the reader to decide whether this account is credible. On the other hand, it is a fact that the Berlin court, in its sentence, relied almost entirely upon the depositions of the witnesses “R.” (Raab) and “L.” (Lerer). The only other two witnesses, “the former detainees ‘B.’ and ‘C.,’ who have testified outside of court and have meanwhile emigrated,” are mentioned only in passing. This means that Raab’s and Lerer’s credibility is extremely significant. We know little about Lerer, but the fact that he spoke of a million victims at Sobibór 496 should make us pause, to say the least. We have already stressed the doubtfulness of the witness Esther Raab. 497 Her notorious lack of reliability also becomes apparent when we see that she supplied her, as it were, biographer Shaindy Perl with inaccurate information concerning key questions. The following passages have been taken form Shaindy Perl’s book, 22), p. 208. 494 “Szpic, Wagner, Frenkel, Niemand, Rost, Greischutz, Gomerski, Getzinger, Konrad, Gebrüder Wolf, Vetland, Michel, Veis, Bauer, Sztojbel, Richter” (Spelling of names unchanged from source), ibid., p. 209. 495 S. Perl, op. cit. (note 62), p. 221. 496 J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 70), p. 239. 497 Cf. chapter 2.3.4.2. and 2.3.15.
174 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, <strong>SOBIBÓR</strong> which, as we have already mentioned, is based exclusively on Esther Raab’s statements. 498 “One day before his departure [to America], Samuel suddenly burst into Esther’s apartment, his face flushed with excitement. ‘Esther, come quick! It’s him!’[ 499 …] Since Samuel was scheduled to leave Germany the next day, he followed the police to the station and gave them a brief statement about the crimes committed by SS Oberscharführer Erich Bauer in Sobibór.’[ 495 …] ‘Samuel’s testimony stretched into the late afternoon, and it was already early evening when he finally left the station. He ran home to finish packing his belongings, and the next day he left the country as planned. Now, Esther remained the only person to witness against the notorious Bademeister.” The wording of the sentence against Erich Bauer squarely contradicts this account. When Bauer’s lawyer asked to have the two witnesses “L.” and “R.” (Lerer and Raab) confront the two former SS men “G.” (Hubert Gomerski) and “K.” (Johann Klier), the court struck down the request, saying i.a.: 500 “An adjournment of the proceedings would also disallow another objective of the defense, i.e. a confrontation of these witnesses with the witnesses L. and R., because the latter have announced that they are about to emigrate; thus a new main hearing would have to take place without them.” Hence, Samuel Lerer, at the time of the trial, had not yet emigrated at all and was still in Berlin, continuing to be a witness for the prosecution against Bauer. The arrest of the latter had incidentally taken place in 1949, 501 which means that several months had passed between Bauer’s identification by Lerer and the trial. It is inconceivable that Esther Raab could have forgotten these circumstances and Lerer’s participation in the trial, which means that she lied to Shaindy Perl on purpose. The only motive for this would be egocentricity: Esther Raab apparently wanted to be the only person to have tracked down Bauer all by herself and without any help from Lerer. 498 S. Perl, op. cit. (note 62), p. 222. 499 S. Perl, op. cit. (note 62), p. 219. 500 LG Berlin, op. cit. (note 277), p. 7. 501 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobibor-Prozess. J. Schelvis confirms on p. 236 that Bauer’s arrest took place in 1949. On p. 247, though, he asserts that Bauer was arrested as early as 1946 (op. cit. (note 71)). We assume that the former date, and not the latter, is in accordance with the facts.
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