SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

176 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
provided under oath by the witnesses L. and R., former Sobibór detainees.
Both of them have identified the defendant as having been
the man who was acting as Gasmeister in the Sobibór camp.”
Sensing the extremely hostile position of the court, Erich Bauer apparently
did not deem advisable to deny the alleged mass murders at
Sobibór, as he feared that such a stand would be regarded as “persistent
disavowal” and held against him. He thus limited himself to “deny the
atrocities and inhuman acts with few exceptions.” In later years, countless
defendants in NS trial would adopt the same strategy.
The man ‘Toni’ identified by Bauer as having been the Gasmeister
was most probably the SS man Anton Getzinger, who did guard duty at
camp III and was killed in late summer or fall of 1943 while trying to
defuse a Soviet tank grenade, which exploded in his hands. 505 As the
court could no longer indict Getzinger, Bauer apparently decided to
blacken a dead man by nominating him Gasmeister posthumously. It
did not help him in any way, though.
As we have already stated, Bauer’s lawyer wanted to have Gomerski
and Klier – awaiting trial in their Frankfurt jail at the time – testify on
his client’s behalf. The court, however, refused to hear them, not only
because of the impending emigration of the witnesses Lerer and Raab,
but also because it a priori held them to be untrustworthy: 506
“The witnesses G. and K. are SS men who were leaders of the
Sobibór camp at the same time as the defendant; both of them have
been indicted for having committed crimes against humanity in the
Sobibór camp and are presently held awaiting trial or were formerly
so held at the time of their provisional interrogation by the Frankfurt
local court […] and this court thus did not hesitate in deciding
that it had to accept the depositions of witnesses L. and R. rather
than the untrue depositions of witnesses G. and K.”
This means the court believed that witnesses for the prosecution
were, by definition, always telling the truth whereas former SS men
were, by the same token, always lying – except, of course, in those cases
where they testified against themselves or against their former comrades.
The Berlin court was of the opinion that “hundreds of thousands of
Jews” had been gassed at Sobibór. 507 The judges accepted as “proof” of
505 J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 255.
506 LG Berlin, op. cit. (note 277), p. 6.
507 Ibid., p. 10.