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SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

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J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, <strong>SOBIBÓR</strong> 315<br />

hidden by the even more innocuous term ‘evacuation’ even in an internal<br />

SS document. By the same token, we now know that the column<br />

‘evacuations’ of Korherr’s report includes the ‘Sonderbehandlung.’”<br />

On the subject of the significance of this word, Wellers explains<br />

elsewhere: 963<br />

“The coded term Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) and its<br />

numerous derivatives have a very precise meaning: they stand for<br />

execution, killing, murder. It does not indicate the type of execution<br />

– hanging, shooting, use of poison gas – nor the kind of people involved,<br />

but it applies massively, systematically in all of its shapes, to<br />

the case of the Jews.”<br />

In short, if we follow Wellers, “evacuation” would be synonymous<br />

with “special treatment,” which in turn is synonymous with killing.<br />

Actually, as we have shown above, “special treatment” stands only<br />

for “transporting.” It follows that according to Wellers’ hypothesis only<br />

1,449,692 out of a total of 2,506,849 Jews deported by the Germans had<br />

undergone a “special treatment,” i.e. only those “passed through” the<br />

camps of the General Government and the Warthegau: 1,274,166 allegedly<br />

killed in the extermination camps at Be��ec, Sobibór, Treblinka,<br />

and Majdanek (for the General Government) and 145,301 at Che�mno<br />

(for Warthegau). Therefore, none of the Jews deported to Auschwitz before<br />

31 December 1942 would have received “special treatment,” i.e.<br />

would have been killed, none of the 633,000 Jews evacuated to the Russian<br />

territories, none of the 170,642 evacuated to the East, and not the<br />

6,505 evacuated to France or the 87,193 Jews who went to the Theresienstadt<br />

ghetto.<br />

Witte and Tyas go on to say: 964<br />

“The authors have not been able to determine whether non-<br />

Polish Jews from Germany, Austria, the Protectorate, and Slovakia<br />

were included in Höfle’s and Korherr’s figure. Korherr’s statistics<br />

are apparently too ambiguous to determine this. On the one hand,<br />

his number for Jews deported to Theresienstadt is more than 21,000<br />

smaller than the actual number. This evident reduction in numbers<br />

suggests that at least some of the deportees from Theresienstadt to<br />

the Lublin district and Warsaw ghetto are probably included in the<br />

963 G. Wellers, Les chambres à gaz ont existé. Des documents, des témoignages, des chiffres,<br />

Gallimard, Paris, 1981, p. 36.<br />

964 P. Witte, S. Tyas, op. cit. (note 18), p. 478.

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