SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

34 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
“Shaul Stark looked after geese; he fed them and weighed them
every day. Once, a goose became ill and died. Frenzel, Bredov,
Wagner and Weiss whipped Stark to death. The man’s last words
were: ‘Avenge me, comrades, avenge me.’” (p. 57)
Moshe Bahir:
“The first one of them [the camp SS] whom I encountered when I
came to the camp was Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner. […] He
would snatch babies from their mothers’ arms and tear them to
pieces in his hands.” (p. 149)
“Sometimes Grot would have himself a joke; he would seize a
Jew, give him a bottle of wine and a sausage weighing at least a kilo
and order him to devour it in a few minutes. When the ‘lucky’ man
succeeded in carrying out this order and staggered from drunkenness,
Grot would order him to open his mouth wide and would urinate
into his mouth.” (p. 150f.)
“Oberscharführer Paul Bredov, aged forty, a Berliner, was a
human beast in the full sense of the word. His direct assignment was
to be in charge of the Lazarett [infirmary], but he had additional
jobs in the camp. His beloved hobby was target-shooting. He had a
daily ‘quota’ of shooting and killing fifty Jews, all with his automatic
pistol which was never separated from him even for a minute
throughout the day.” (p. 153)
In view of the fact that the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust has accepted
this “documentation” as one of only four titles recommended on
the subject of Sobibór, one wonders about the quality of other books not
recommended by the Encyclopedia authors…
2.3.9. Richard Rashke (1982)
The American journalist Richard L. Rashke published a book entitled
Escape from Sobibor 43 in 1982. He had visited a number of former
Sobibór detainees – among them T. Blatt, S. Szmajzner and A. Pechersky
– in their homes and interviewed them. The book is a rendition
of these interviews – partly in direct speech, partly otherwise. As most
of these detainees have made their own statements about their experiences
at Sobibór, we see no reason why we should discuss this book in
43 Richard L. Rashke, Escape from Sobibor, Houghton Mifflin, 1982.