SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

242 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
In reality, however, the number of prisoners of war actually moved
to the camps was extremely low, and those who had been transferred
died by the thousands because of the disastrous conditions under which
they had to live and work. Schulte observes: 702
“Himmler and Pohl thus again faced the question as to who
should build the SS and police agencies and the large settlements ‘in
the new eastern region’ and improve the local infrastructure. After
the brutal treatment applied to the prisoners in the PoW camps run
by the SS and in the Stalags of the Wehrmacht, Red Army personnel
would no longer be available, at least not for the foreseeable future.
A modification of the gigantic projects being out of the question, the
SS chiefs had to focus on a new group of victims for the recruitment
of their forced laborers.”
This new group would be the Jews who were to primarily carry out
road works within the colonization of the East. In this context – which,
as we shall see, clarifies the real meaning of Heydrich’s decisions as he
explained them at the Wannsee meeting – Himmler instructed Glücks
on 26 January 1942 as follows: 703
“As Russian PoWs cannot be counted on in the near future, I
shall dispatch to the camps a large number of the Jews and Jewesses
who are being emigrated [sic] from Germany. You should take
measures so as to be able to accept in the camps 100,000 male Jews
and up to 50,000 Jewesses over the next 4 weeks. Major economic
tasks and jobs will be entrusted to the concentration camps. SS
Gruppenführer Pohl will supply you with details.”
Himmler viewed these 150,000 detainees “primarily as manpower
for the Generalplan Ost.” 704
In accordance with the above directives, the first transports sent to
Auschwitz and Majdanek contained only able-bodied Jews. 705 Schulte
himself acknowledges that “according to the will of the Reichsführer
SS, it was mainly the “able-bodied” Jews who would be deported to
Auschwitz,” 706 and that “Himmler and Pohl considered [Auschwitz] to
be a forced-labor camp of Jews for the ‘settlement of the East’ as late as
June of 1942.” 707
702
Ibid., p. 56.
703
Ibid., p. 59. NO-500.
704
Ibid., p. 60.
705
Cf. chapter 9.3.
706
J.E. Schulte, op. cit. (note 675), pp. 65f.
707
Ibid., p. 67.