SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 255
diameter of some 25 cm at a height of some 50 cm from the floor.”
(Emph. added)
Mainstream historiography asserts that “the stoves described were
used to heat the shed’s rooms, thus allowing the bottled gas and Zyklon
B used in the early stage of the camp’s killing activities to work more
efficiently in cold weather.” 751 The source for this claim is the following
passage from an article by Michael Tregenza: 752
“The first attempts at mass murder by gas were conducted by
Wirth in the small gassing barrack in February of 1942. This test
gassing liquidated the 150 Jewish workers who had been deported to
Be��ec for the construction of the camp. They were gassed by means
of Zyklon B.”
Tregenza refers to the interrogation of Josef Oberhauser of 12 December
1960, 753 a reference which would later be taken up by Robin
O’Neil with a corrected date (13 Dec.): 754
“The first experimental killing with Zyklon B was carried out by
Wirth on a group of about 150 Jews who had been brought to the
camp from the nearby town of Lubycza-Królewska to complete construction
of the camp and fell trees.”
However, Oberhauser’s interrogation of 12 December 1960, a transcript
of 5 pages, does not deal with alleged gassings in Be��ec at all,
whereas the one dated 13 December, a transcript of 11 pages, does not
even mention Zyklon B. The defendant had in fact declared: 755
“While bottled gas [Flaschengas] was used in the first test series
and for the first transports of the second series of tests, the Jews
from the later transports were killed with the exhaust gas from a
tank engine or a truck engine which Hackenholt operated.”
In this deposition, “bottled” gas obviously refers to carbon monoxide
and not to Zyklon B, which was packaged in cans. In the passage following
the one just quoted Tregenza himself actually asserts that “for
the ensuing experiments” the gassings were carried out “with carbon
monoxide gas from steel cylinders.” The expression “bottled gas and
751
Be��ec Camp History, in: www.deathcamps.org/Be��ec/Be��ec html
752
M. Tregenza, “Be��ec – Das vergessene Lager des Holocaust,” in: I. Wojak, P. Hayes
(ed.), “Arisierung” im Nationalsozialismus, Volksgemeinschaft, Raub und Gedächtnis,
Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/New York 2000, pp. 248f.
753
Ibid., note 34 on p. 263.
754
R. O’Neil, Be��ec: Stepping Stone to Genocide; Hitler’s answer to the Jewish Question,
chapter 8, in: www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Be��ec1/bel081 html#33
755
Interrogation of Josef Oberhauser on 12 December 1962. ZStL, 208 AR-Z 252/59, vol.
IX, p. 1685.