SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 185
on a concrete foundation and installed a connection between the exhaust
and the piping. I then tested the engine. Initially, it did not
work. I repaired the ignition and the valves and the engine finally
started. The chemist whom I had already met at Be��ec went into the
gas chamber with a measuring device and tested the gas concentration.”
Then Fuchs goes on to describe a “test gassing” of 30 or 40 Jewesses.
525 While the other courts had not made the slightest attempt at
elucidating the murder weapon and the gassing procedure, the Hagen
judges were at least able to base their verdict on Fuchs’ statement in
this regard. Thus, the gas chambers together with the gasoline engine as
a murder weapon went on record. The fact that Fuchs supplied the
names of several others, who had helped him with the installation of the
engine and were present at the first gassing, may have helped him as
well. We do not doubt in the least that the mild sentence was the result
of a bargain. Fuchs supplied the desired evidence and was assured of
the court’s leniency.
What is perhaps even more interesting is a look at the acquittals at
the Hagen trial. Adalbert Rückerl is surprisingly taciturn in this respect
when he writes: 526
“The remaining five out of the eleven defendants – a twelfth had
committed suicide – were excusable, as the written reasoning states,
on account of their unopposed claims of an emergency state of putative
compulsion. [527] Although for each one of them a realistic suspicion
remained as to their actions under the individual circumstances,
they had to be acquitted for lack of evidence.”
We can find some additional information via the internet encyclopedia
Wikipedia, which supplies us with the names of the five persons acquitted
together with the charges against them:
� Erich Lachmann, charged with aiding and abetting with others the
murder of at least 150,000 persons;
� Hans-Heinz Schütt, charged with aiding and abetting with others the
murder of at least 86,000 persons;
� Heinrich Unverhau, charged with aiding and abetting with others the
murder of at least 72,000 persons;
525 Cf. chapter 8.4., S. 267.
526 A. Rückerl (ed.), op. cit. (note 36), p. 85f.
527 “Putativer Befehlsnotstand” = A situation where one merely believes to be forced under
threat of punishment to obey an illegal order.