SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

296 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
Even mainstream Holocaust historians Debórah Dwork and Robert
Jan van Pelt admit that Auschwitz “was to serve as a transit point between
Germany, Bohemia, and the projected reservation in the East”
within the framework of a “policy to deport the German Jews to Russia.”
901
9.3. Jewish Transports into the Lublin District in 1942
In early 1942 the Germans began to concentrate the Jews in the Lublin
district and later to move them further east in order to make room for
the Jews from the Altreich, Austria, Slovakia, and the Protectorate.
These resettlements were entrusted to an office attached to the administration
of the General Government called Main Department Internal
Administration, Department of Population Matters and Welfare, 902
which received reports from Unterabteilungsleiter SS-Hauptsturmführer
Richard Türk and from the local agencies.
On 17 March 1942 Fritz Reuter, an employee in the department of
population matters and welfare within the office of the general governor
for the Lublin district, wrote a memo on the subject of a discussion,
which he had had with SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann Höfle the previous
day: 903
“I had arranged a meeting with Hstuf. Höfle for Monday, 16
March 1942, at 17:30 hours. During the discussion Hstuf. Höfle declared:
It would be advisable to separate, at the stations of departure, the
Jews coming to the district of Lublin into persons fit for work and
those unfit. If such a separation is impossible on departure, one may
want to adopt a solution whereby the separation would be carried
out in Lublin on the basis of the above.
Jews unfit for work would all be taken to Be��ec, the outermost
border station in Zamosc county. Hstuf. Höfle is about to build a
large camp in which the Jews fit for work can be classified according
to their professions and delegated as necessary.
901 D. Dwork, R. J. van Pelt, Auschwitz 1270 to the present, W.W. Norton & Company,
New York/London 1996, p. 291 and 295.
902 Hauptabteilung innere Verwaltung, Abteilung Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge
903 Jüdisches Historisches Institut Warschau (ed.), op. cit. (note 116), pp. 269f.