SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

22 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
gunfire with the rest of the camp personnel. Nine SS-men murdered,
1 SS-man missing, 2 foreign guards shot.
Some 300 Jews have escaped, the remainder were either shot or
are now in the camp. Military police and Wehrmacht were notified
immediately and took over camp security at around 1:00 hours. The
area to the south and the southwest of Sobibór is being searched by
police and Wehrmacht.”
Five months after these events, on 17 March 1944, SS-Untersturmführer
Benda wrote an account of the Sobibór uprising – which he
wrongly dated 15 October 1943 – and of the ensuing search for the fugitives,
stating that the rebels had “shot an SS officer as well as 10 SS
NCOs.” 17
2.2.3. The Höfle Radio Message
A very important document, published only in 2001, gives us precise
information concerning the number of detainees deported to Sobibór up
to the end of 1942. 18 It is a radio message of 11 January 1943 which
was sent by SS-Sturmbannführer Höfle, a subordinate of Odilo Globocnik,
Head of Police and SS in the district of Lublin. It was addressed to
Globocnik’s deputy, SS-Obersturmbannführer Heim. The message was
intercepted and decoded by the British Secret Service, but the British
could not interpret its contents. On the subject of Sobibór the text states
that 101,370 persons had been moved to that camp up to the end of
1942. The message contains no indications regarding the fate of the deportees.
19
2.2.4. Provisional Summary
The few wartime documents which have come down to us prove
that, at least through July of 1943, Sobibór counted officially as a “transit
camp” and that 101,370 persons had been deported there by the end
of 1942. There was an uprising at the camp on 14 October 1943 resulting
in a mass escape of Jews. There is no documentary evidence for the
mass murder of Jews or for the existence of homicidal gas chambers at
Sobibór.
18 Peter Witte, Stephen Tyas, “A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of the
Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhardt’ 1942,” in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, No. 3, Winter
2001.
19 An extensive analysis of the Höfle radio message will be given in chapter 9.4.