SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 177
such an immense slaughter “the credible statements provided under oath
by the witnesses L. and R.” They did not even think of looking critically
into the structure and the dimensions of the “gassing building.”
All of the German trials of “NS perpetrators” accused of having participated
in “gassings of Jewish persons” would follow this basic design.
No forensic investigations or documentary evidence of the alleged
mass murder were needed – after all, “credible statements provided under
oath” were plentiful.
Shaindy Perl, Esther Raab’s publicity agent, provides us with the
reason for this flagrant disregard of legal principles: 498
“Since the Germans were eager to prove to the world that they
were taking action against the vicious murderers who ran the infamous
death camps, their government wasted no time in setting a date
for Bauer’s trial.”
“The Germans” therefore conducted such trials in an effort to prove
to “the world” that they were repentant. For “the world” to believe
them, they not only had to accept the extermination of Jews in gas
chambers as a historical fact, but also nail it down legally – and this
worked only if one blindly accepted the veracity of the testimonies
made for the prosecution.
We will conclude this chapter with a look at a sentence pronounced
by the Berlin court which virtually takes one’s breath away. Among the
eleven points of Erich Bauer’s indictment, number six states: 508
“At one time there was a transport of some 15,000 Jewish detainees
from Majdanek, to be gassed [here], as Majdanek did not have
a gassing installation. As the Sobibór installation was unserviceable
at that time, they had to await their extermination for days on end in
camp I without receiving any food. This led to many of them dying of
exhaustion. When others who had been given some food fought over
it, SS personnel including the defendant shot into the pile of defenseless
people. In the process, the defendant, too, killed at least four or
five detainees.”
Hence, the sentence of the Berlin Court states that Majdanek did not
possess a gassing installation. This clashes with the following excerpt
from the sentence passed by a Düsseldorf court at the end of the Majdanek
trial (1975 – 1981): 509
508 Ibid., p. 3.
509 Landgericht Düsseldorf, Verdict against Hackmann et al., XVII 1/75, vol. I, p. 86 ff.