SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 257
chambers at Be��ec measured 8 by 4 meters or 32 square meters each
for a total of 96 square meters.
Stangl’s reference to Hartheim castle is worth a closer look. Hans
Maršálek writes the following about the layout of the alleged Hartheim
gas chambers: 761
“Then the victims were led into the gas chamber. It consisted of a
room measuring 6.60 by 4.20 meters. The floor originally consisted
of wooden boards, was then given a layer of concrete, and finally
lined with red tiles. There were tiles as well up the walls to a level of
1.70 meters. In the center of the ceiling there was a water pipe with
three shower heads. Alongside three of the walls there was a tube
(15 mm in diameter) with many perforations. This is where the poison
gas came from; a physician in the room next door always supervised
its feed from a steel bottle.”
The number of victims put to death in this alleged gas chamber of
6.60m×4.20m = 27.72 square meters is said to have been 18,269. 762 At
Sobibór, on the other hand, for the gassing of hundreds of thousands of
Jews, three gas chambers of a total of 36 square meters are alleged to
have been planned!
As far as the gassing technology is concerned, the descendance of
those at Be��ec and at Sobibór from the gas chambers of the euthanasia
institutions is furthermore inconsistent, because for the latter carbon
monoxide gas in cylinders is reported to have been used, whereas for
the former there allegedly was a switch to exhaust gas from an engine,
Diesel at Be��ec, gasoline at Sobibór. Who decreed when, where, and
why such an essential departure from the original way of operation?
For the first gas chambers at Be��ec this new gassing technology is
not documented; to be more precise, no kind of technology is documented
here at all. As far as Sobibór is concerned, mainstream Holocaust
historiography suddenly brings in an engine for the gassings,
based more on an act of faith that the local gas chambers were identical
to those of Be��ec than on anything else. The defendant Erich Fuchs declared
in this regard: 763
“Some time in the spring of 1942, on orders from Wirth, I drove
a truck to Lemberg to pick up a ‘gasoline engine,’ which I then
761
Hans Maršálek, Die Vergasungsaktionen im Konzentrationslager Mauthausen. Dokumentation,
Wien 1988, p. 26.
762
Willi Dressen, “Euthanasie,” in: E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl et al. (eds.), op. cit.
(note 45), p. 62.
763
Interrogation of 2 April 1963, in: J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 70), pp. 118-119.