SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

280 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
correspond to the elusive Führerbefehl, the only reasonable conclusion
which mainstream historiography could draw from the transfer of a portion
of the T4 staff to the Aktion Reinhardt camps would be the extension
of the euthanasia program to the Jews who were to be moved to the
East. 850
In such a case, however, the deportees in the camps would not all
have been assassinated (except for a handful selected for work), but only
a small fraction of them. One could thus no longer speak of pure extermination
camps. Be��ec, Sobibór, and Treblinka would thus have had
a double function: a principal function as a transit camp for the resettlement
to the East, and a secondary function as a euthanasia center for
the mentally ill or the incurably sick.
This conclusion would also explain the double chain of command
applying to those camps:
Führer chancellery � Wirth: for euthanasia
Himmler � Globocnik: for the deportation.
It would also be in agreement with the (low) quantitative material
findings at Be��ec and Sobibór (mass graves and ash) which cannot be
integrated in any way into the thesis of extermination.
The official thesis discussed above contains, moreover, a fundamental
incongruity. The reasoning of the verdict for the Sobibór trial
states: 851
“This command had the task of helping the sick and the disabled
as well as the children which were not accompanying the women on
the normal path to extermination to climb into vehicles. German
guards, in an effort to make them or keep them unsuspicious as to
the killing plan, explained to these arrivals that they would be taken
to the camp ‘sick-bay.’ They were taken to the stretch of woods east
of camp III and were then shot and interred by members of the Ger-
850 According to mainstream Holocaust historiography, the Poles were subjected to euthanasia
from autumn of 1939 onwards, but on a very limited scale (a few thousand persons).
Stanis�aw Batavia, “Zag�ada chorych psychicznie,” in: Biuletyn G�ównej Komisji Badania
Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, III, Pozna� 1947, pp. 91-106; Willi Dressen, op. cit.
(note 762), pp. 62-65. However, the case of the 25,000-30,000 Poles suffering from incurable
tuberculosis in the Warthegau raises doubts on this point. On 1 st May 1942 (NO-
246) Gauleiter Greiser proposed to Himmler to kill them, but on 18 November this problem
was still being discussed (NO-249), and in the end these patients were not killed.
(“The Medical Case,” op. cit. (note 828), pp. 759-794, “Project To Kill Tubercular Polish
Nationals”), although it would have been easy to send them to Che�mno.
851 A. Rückerl (ed.), op. cit. (note 36), p. 168.