SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

332 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
their passage through the disinfestation chamber, even if steam was being
used there, so that the goods could be identified as they came out.
The detainees would be given a token as a receipt with a corresponding
number, as some witnesses have stated. On this point Louis de Jong declared:
1016
“The luggage [of the deportees] had to be left in the luggage barracks;
in exchange the arrivals were generally handed numbered
metal tags.”
From the “Holocaust” point of view, which de Jong shares, the
“metal tags” could be explained as being fake “receipts” handed out to
deceive the victims, but this would not apply to the cement disks as
well. And even if they, too, were fake “receipts,” why would one have
produced over 66,000 of them? Such a high number makes sense only if
the disks somehow related to people. Were they dead or alive? From the
perspective of mainstream historiography it would have been useless to
number the corpses by means of cement tags. If anyone had wanted to
count the victims, a simple list would have been enough. The only instance
where a similar system of identification is described is the case
of the “Schamotte-Marken,” disks made of refractory material and carrying
a number that would be placed into the coffin to enable the identification
of the ashes after incineration in civilian crematoria. Initially
this method was also in use at Auschwitz.
In a letter dated 3 June 1940 the firm I.A. Topf & Söhne of Erfurt
offered to SS-Neubauleitung of Auschwitz “500 pcs. refractory tags
numbered consecutively 1 – 500” for the sum of 65 Reichsmark. 1017 But
in the camps of Aktion Reinhardt such a procedure would not have
made any sense in the eyes of “Holocaust” historians, both because
most of those camps didn’t have crematories to begin with (Be��ec, Sobibór,
Treblinka) and because it would have been absolutely foolish, if
not close to impossible, to later on try to identify the remains of corpses
in mass graves or incinerated in open pits.
Hence, the only explanation we are left with is that the tags concerned
persons that were still alive. They were no doubt a means of
identification based on the ID numbers as were used by all concentration
camps. At Mauthausen, for example, a detainees would be given
cloth tags with numbers, to be sewn on their uniforms, plus “a metal tag
1016 L. de Jong, op. cit. (note 244), pp. 24f.
1017 RGVA, 502-1-327, pp. 226-227.