SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 95
were killed using chlorine (Feldhendler, Metz, Hanel) or an unidentified
gas or substance (Pechersky, Freiberg’s 1944 account). This can only
mean that those witnesses did not connect the alleged gassings with the
sound of an engine. 220
The railroad employee Jan Piwonski, when interviewed by Claude
Lanzmann in the 1970s, stated that he had clearly heard the sound of a
diesel motor from inside the camp. 221 Diesel engines, especially those of
an older type, produce a characteristic knocking sound which makes
them distinguishable from petrol engines. 222 As already mentioned, the
exhaust gas from diesel engines is not feasible as a weapon for mass
murder.
In his book Freiberg recalls the acoustic impressions of his first
night in Sobibór thus: 223
“We sat on the sand, under the roof, waiting for the unknown. No
more children crying, no more women sighing. Complete silence, as
if no one was there. We heard only the hum of a motor that operated
nonstop, accompanied by the croak of frogs, a sound that was somehow
both monotonous and terrifying.”
Interestingly, later in the book Freiberg describes how, while being
led to the haircutting barrack near camp III where he and other inmates
were to work, “only the monotonous hum of the generator and the
sound of the crickets could be heard.” 224 Curiously, the former SS Hubert
Gomerski testified that the camp only had one generator, 225 which
was located in camp I, i.e. the other end of the camp, but he also mentioned
that “in the gas chamber there was a light, which was powered
by the [gassing] engine,” 226 a statement which means that there indeed
was a generator located in camp III. Treblinka eyewitness Jankiel Wiernik
speaks of a “power plant” located alongside the gas chambers in
that camp, housing “a motor taken from a dismantled Soviet tank”
which, besides acting as the killing agent, supplied the camp with elec-
220
Many years after the war Ada Lichtman insisted that she had not heard the sound of an
engine; A. Lichtman, op. cit. (note 167), p. 24.
221
Transcript of the Shoah Interview with Jan Piwonski. Translation by Erica Booth, Volunteer-Visitor
Services, May 2008, available at
http://resources.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_50
31/2ED4B8F9-C263-4A75-AD79-9C05BB0D486C.pdf
222
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine
223
D. Freiberg, op. cit. (note 68), p. 190.
224
Ibid., p. 249.
225
According to Blatt, Sobibór was equipped with “an excellent lighting system in and
around the camp which had an independent generator”; T. Blatt, op. cit. (note 17), p. 14.
226
J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 113.