SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 265
“Because he [Fuchs] had put into place so many installations
over the course of time, he did not remember that the first gas chambers
at Sobibór had been constructed of wood.”
Consequently, the Bauer who erred in his recollections was turned
into Bauer the reliable eye witness: 796
“From his account it can be deduced that the gas chambers were
indeed identical to those at Be��ec [i.e. constructed of wood].”
Schelvis suddenly also discovered that the fact of the first gas chamber
building having been constructed of wood was a key factor behind
its replacement with the second phase gas chambers: 797
“After a few months it became apparent that the gas chambers at
both Be��ec and Sobibór needed to be replaced. The timber walls
had become tainted with the sweat, urine, blood and excrement of
the victims. The new gas chambers were to be brick-built, more durable,
and support a larger capacity.”
Such is the arbitrary nature of mainstream Holocaust historiography!
As could be expected, the reader of the English edition is not made
aware of this 180 degree change, and no explanation is given of the reason
behind it. Likewise, Schelvis never addresses the most crucial question
raised by the eye witness accounts: how could it be that Stangl and
Bauer, two men who both should have been intimately familiar with the
gas chamber building, produced such divergent testimony?
A most revealing insight into the artificial nature of the “gas chamber”
observations is provided by the already mentioned Ukrainian auxiliary
Mikhail Razgonayev. In his interrogation of 20-21 September
1948 Razgonayev related how he was detached from the Trawniki training
camp to Sobibór in May 1942, where he served as a guard until July
1943. Thus, he was present during the first as well as the second phase
of the alleged extermination activity. His description of the killing installation
is unusually detailed: 283
“The gas chamber, or as it was termed for camouflage: ‘bathhouse,’
was a stone building punctiliously isolated by a system of
barbed wire fences from other parts of the camp and hidden by
young trees, saplings in particular, from the view of the huts, ‘dressing
rooms,’ so that the people who were in the ‘dressing rooms’
would not be able to see what was happening at the ‘bath-house.’
The ‘bath-house’ was distant from the ‘dressing rooms’ so that the
796 Ibid., p. 101.
797 Ibid., p. 103.