SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

284 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
those with him hoped that the people had not been murdered, but had
been sent to Ukraine. This in spite of the fact that they worked only a
few hundred meters away from the gas chambers.” 857 (Emph. added)
What matters here is not so much the contradictions of the witness
Freiberg, but the contradiction with the official thesis of mass exterminations
– as we can read in the article from the Polish Fortnightly Review
of 1 st July 1942 mentioned earlier (p. 65) that “the fetor of the decomposing
bodies in Sobibór is said to be so great that the people of the
district, and even cattle, avoid the place.”
As the alleged extermination activity at Sobibór began for Arad “toward
the end of April 1942” and as Freiberg arrived at the camp on 15
May, 858 the stench of the decomposing corpses should have been even
more unbearable in camps I and II and should have immediately revealed
the “truth,” i.e. the alleged extermination on the spot.
The detainees, however, did not know anything about this “truth:” 859
Ada Lichtman tells us about the pep talk Oberscharführer Hermann
Michel would give, in which he promised to the victims that, once they
had taken their bath, they “would be going to the Ukraine to live and
work.” 860 On this point J. Schelvis writes: 861
“Michel was so full of conviction when he delivered his speech,
even as he was pulling the wool over the victims’ eyes, that the Arbeitshäftlinge
[inmate workers] also dubbed him ‘the preacher.’
Sometimes he would make out that the camp was a transit camp, that
the journey to Ukraine was only a matter of time, and that the Jews
would even be granted autonomy there. Other times he would tell
them they would all be going to Riga. On a number of occasions his
speech so roused the audience’s enthusiasm – even among the
Polish Jews – that they burst out in spontaneous clapping and cheering,
completely oblivious of the fact that they would be dead within
half an hour”
A few pages on he asserts that even “the Arbeitshäftlinge of Lager 1
were not exactly sure of what went on in Lager 3,” yet on the other
hand “the stench of decomposing bodies, and later still the tall flames of
the fires […] pointed to the fact that people were being murdered
there” 862
858 Ibid., p. 75.
859 Cf. chapter 4.
860 Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 49), p. 76.
861 J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), pp. 70f.
862 Ibid., p. 68.