SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 287
In the preceding chapter we have noted that the Sobibór camp could
not have lacked an delousing facility with baths, if only to protect the
health of the German and Ukrainian personnel. Such a sanitary installation,
however, is not found on any map drawn by former detainees or
SS men. It was probably located in the hut labeled Object E by Kola, in
which toilet articles were found. 871
Jan Piwonski relates that an SS man addressed the crowd at the
camp stating that “now you have arrived at Sobibór, this is a transit station;
so now, you are going to pass through a series of high pressure sanitary
systems, you will then be directed to areas where you will set
yourselves up permanently and work,” 872 which reminds us of an installation
for the production of steam used for disinfection and/or disinfestation.
In any case, it is a known fact that real showers and disinfestation
facilities were claimed by Holocaust propaganda immediately after the
war to have been merely fictitious installations designed to fool the victims.
It is hard to believe that Richard David Breitman would write as
late as 1991: 873
“At Majdanek, Globocnik’s realm, a large quantity of installations
have been saved from destruction. The building which housed
the gas chambers still exists – with its outside inscription Entrance
to baths, and one can see the showers and pipes which were not put
in to supply water but to fool the victims.”
If a famous historian could have gone as far as that, what can we expect
from ordinary deportees?
A similar account of the function of Sobibór was given by Judith
Eliazer in her testimony at Rotterdam on 5 February 1946, in which she
said: 874
“On 10 March 1943 we went directly from Westerbork to Sobibór,
where we arrived on 13 or 15 March. There we were selected.
Thirty girls and 44 men were taken out. The remainder were gassed
and burned. (We have seen that the others were moved away in tilting
trolleys. They may have been dumped into pits.) Sobibór was not
a camp. It was a transit camp.” (Emph. added)
871
Cf. chapter 5.4.2.5., p. 157.
872
Emph. added. J. Piwonski, op. cit. (note 221).
873
R.D. Breitman, Himmler. Il burocrate dello sterminio, Mondadori, Milano 1991, p. 318.
874
ROD [Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam], 200AR-Z251/59 0V, p.
904.