SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

298 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
4. Piaski was to become the “collection point for the Jews coming from
the Reich.” By road Piaski is located 24 km to the southeast of Lublin
and 104 km to the northeast of Be��ec. By rail the distance to
Be��ec is even greater, some 155 km (from Trawniki to Be��ec via
Rejowiec, including the road section Piaski-Trawniki). These data
speak against the thesis that Be��ec was a pure extermination camp,
for in that case it would have itself constituted the collection point.
5. It was planned to unload 60,000 Jews at a suitable point along the
line D�blin-Trawniki, which was part of the trunk line from Warsaw
to Lublin, Rejowiec and Che�m. D�blin station was located some 70
km to the northwest of Lublin in the direction of Warsaw. Trawniki
was 13 km to the east of Piaski, for which it served as a railway station.
Just west of Rejowiec a southward line branched off to Be��ec,
Rawa Ruska, and Lemberg/Lvov. Again, all this speaks against the
assertion that Be��ec was nothing but an extermination camp.
The most important point of the document is the fact that “Jews unfit
for work would all be taken to Be��ec.” The camp “could receive 4 – 5
transports per day with destination Be��ec,” Jews unfit for work, apparently,
who would be “taken across the border and would never return to
the General Government.” That is why Be��ec was referred to as “the
outermost border station in Zamosc county.” This sentence makes sense
only in connection with a deportation of these Jews to the other side of
the border, i.e. to the East. In any case, “4 – 5 transports per day of
1,000 Jews each” could not have been taken to Be��ec for reasons of
their extermination, because the alleged three gas chambers of 32
square meters each could not have gassed 4,000-5,000 persons in a single
day.
This is how Tatiana Berenstein describes one of the first Jewish
transports to arrive at Be��ec. 905
“In the afternoon of 16 March, i.e. a couple of hours after the
start of the operation, [the SS] rounded up men in the ghetto of Lublin
to be sent to work. Actually, the transfer operation began only
half an hour after midnight. […] In the early morning, after checking
of the documents, people with a valid work card were released.
Out of the people arrested that night, 1,600 were sent by rail to the
death camp at Be��ec, the others were temporarily let go, but were
not allowed to return home. Actually, at that time, the gas chambers
905 T. Berenstein, “Martyrologia, opór i zag�ada ludno�ci �ydowskiej w dystrykcie lubelskim,”
in: Biuletyn �ydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego w Polsce, vol. 21, 1957, p. 35.