SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 17
railway platform to the burial trenches ran a narrow-gauge railway,
used to transport persons too weak to make their way to the gas
chambers on their own, as well as the bodies of those who had died
en route to Sobibór.[…]
Several hundred able-bodied Jews were chosen from among the
first few transports to form work teams. Some were employed in the
workshops as tailors, cobblers, carpenters and so on, to serve the
needs of the German and Ukrainian camp staff; all the other work
assignments related to the processing of the victims along the route
that led from the railway platform to the burial trenches. A total of
about 1,000 prisoners, 150 of them women, were eventually put into
these teams. One group, numbering several dozen, worked on the
railway platform. Its job was to remove from the cars those who
were incapable of getting off on their own; to remove the bodies of
those who had died en route; and to clean out of the cars the dirt
that had accumulated and the articles left behind. […]
In the extermination area, two hundred to three hundred Jewish
prisoners were kept, whose task was to remove the bodies of the
murdered victims from the gas chambers, take them to the burial
ground, and then clean up the chambers. A special team of prisoners,
nicknamed ‘the dentists,’ was charged with extracting gold teeth
from the mouths of the victims before their bodies were put into the
trenches. Toward the end of 1942, in an effort to erase the traces of
the mass killings, the bodies were exhumed and cremated; this task
too was carried out by a special team of prisoners. […]
Transports: First Stage. The procedure for the reception of incoming
transports was based entirely on misleading the victims and
concealing from them the fate that was in store for them. When a
train arrived, the deportees on board were ordered to disembark
and were told that they had arrived at a transit camp from which
they would be sent to labor camps; before leaving for the labor
camps, they were to take showers, and at the same time their clothes
would be disinfected. Following this announcement, the men and
women were separated (children were assigned to the women), on
the pretext that the sexes had to be separated for their showers. The
victims were ordered to take off their clothes and hand over any
money or valuables in their possession; anyone who was caught trying
to conceal any item was shot. There followed the march to the
gas chambers, which had been made to resemble shower rooms.