SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 81
brother somehow conveyed his story to the other Jews. 174 This took
place either “a couple of days” 174 after Ada’s arrival, or after “many
days.” 175 According to the other version: 176
“[The Germans believed that] we did not know what was going
on here. And we had to pretend and act the role that we do not
know. […] at the beginning I really didn’t know. But then I knew
very well, because one day while we were lined up in appell [rollcall],
we saw a fire, as big as the wall of a huge house, fire. And one
felt the […] smell of burn… of burnt corpses. And we know[sic] it.”
As will be seen from our discussion of the beginning of cremations
at Sobibór in the next chapter, this implies that it took the inmates three
to four months before they realized that they were in a death camp!
Historian Arad contradicts both of Lichtman’s versions, stating that
“the truth of what was going on in camp III became known to the Jewish
prisoners in Sobibór at the beginning of June 1942,” that is, more
than a month after the camp began operating. 177 According to Arad this
revelation came about thanks to the cunning inmate cook Hershl Zukerman
(also spelled Cukierman): 178
“I came up with an idea. Every day I used to send twenty or
twenty-five buckets with food for the workers in Camp III. [179] The
Germans were not interested in what I cooked, so once I prepared a
thick crumb pie and inside I put the following letter: ‘Friends, write
what is going on in your camp.’ When I received the buckets back, I
found in one of them a piece of paper with the answer: ‘Here the last
human march takes place, from this place nobody returns. Here the
people turn cold…’ I informed some other people about the substance
of this letter.”
174
A. Lichtman, op. cit. (note 167), p. 24.
175
Ibid., p. 34.
176
Ibid., p. 40.
177
In the account published by Novitch, Zukerman writes that it took him ten weeks to find
out about the gas chambers (cf. chapter I). According to Schelvis (op. cit. (note 71), p.
232), Zukerman (here spelled Cuckierman) was deported with another 2,500 Jews from
Nalenczow in May 1942. Thus the inmates in camp I and II would have “learned” of the
alleged gas chambers at the earliest in mid-July, not at the beginning of June.
178
Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 49), p. 79.
179
Regarding the number of detainees in camp III several widely divergent estimates are
given. In his Eichmann trial testimony Ya’acov Biskovitz gave their number as 80. Thomas
Blatt estimates their number to a mere 30 man (op. cit. (note 65), p. 232). According
to Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 49), p. 79, on the other hand they numbered 200-300. Witness
Chaim Engel states that “about fifty, sixty Jews” worked in camp III; J. M. Greene, S.
Kumar (eds.), op. cit. (note 166), p. 154.