Sobibor: a history of a Nazi death camp
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Hitler had annexed the western areas of Poland by 8 October. The districts of Poznań, Kalisz and Łódź were merged into the Reichsgau Wartheland and four days later a decree created the new General Government
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the ultimate aim,
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move the Jews living in the countryside to concentration points within the larger cities.
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as possible, and they should be located either by a major railway junction
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The establishment of Jewish concentrations in the cities is to be justified on the grounds of their substantial participation in terrorist attacks and looting
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German–Soviet border treaty of 28 September 1939
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‘not a square kilometre of this territory will be returned. […] The General Government is a fundamental part of the German Reich, and will remain so forever.’
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7 October 1939 Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as Reichskommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volktums (Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Nation),
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he was to eliminate all ‘foreign influences’ present within the Reich, and create new Lebensraum (living space)
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A quarter of a million living in the General Government managed to escape to the Soviet side just in time, while 20,000 made it to Romania and Hungary
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‘At what point in time and with what methods the ghetto, and with it the city of Łódź, is to be cleansed of Jews will be determined at my discretion. The ultimate aim must nevertheless be for us to burn out this plague completely.’
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the status of the Jews in Germany, because ‘after the war there would be none left in the land in any case’
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The counter clerk can then operate a switch to activate both X-ray tubes, as radiation must come from two sides. This way, around 150 to 200 persons can be sterilized each day; twenty of such installations will take care of 3,000 to 4,000 persons.
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Very briefly the victims were told that their clothes were to be disinfected. They then had to go inside and undress, after which they proceeded down to the cellar, where a sign pointed ‘To the bath’. Instead, a side-door opened straight out onto the loading ramp of a truck. There was no way back. After the captives were forcibly pushed inside, the engine was started and exhaust fumes entered the loading space via a tube. The carbon monoxide rendered the victims unconscious within seven to eight minutes, and after a few more minutes they were dead.
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The final executions took place in January 1945, when the victims were killed by a shot to the back of the head. Simon Srebrnik and Mordechai Podchlebnik managed to escape when SS guards presumed wrongly that they were dead. A few hours later, they knocked at the door of a farmer, Gradziel, who gave them something to eat and drink
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As far as the Jews are concerned – and I will be quite frank about this – they must be disposed of. […] I have been in negotiations to have them deported to the East. […] Gentlemen, I must urge you to brace yourself against any feelings of pity. We must destroy the Jews, wherever we find them, and wherever possible, in order to preserve the social fabric of the Reich as one unified nation. […] To us, the Jews are also extremely malignant parasites. […] The General Government must become as free of Jews as the Reich is.
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From now on, with the express permission of the Führer, the solution will be to evacuate the Jews to the East. Under authorized leadership the Jews will, within the context of the Endlösung, be sent to work in the East as appropriate. Those who are able to work will be transported in labour convoys to these areas, they will be segregated by sex, and deployed on the construction of roads, which will undoubtedly result in a large number of natural losses. Those who potentially survive, i.e. those with the highest resistance levels, will be treated accordingly. Otherwise, if they were ever to be freed, they might form a natural elite and become the seeds from which new generations of Jews would germinate. Within the context of the practical execution of the Endlösung, Europe will be combed from west to east. The Reich, including the protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, must, in view of the housing issue and other political implications, take first priority. Each and every Jew who is evacuated will first be transferred to so-called transit ghettos, and from there be transported farther east. There are around 11 million eligible Jews.
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The Nazis were still confident of victory, hence they included Jews from Britain and the neutral countries on their list as well.
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the expression Sonderbehandlung der Juden (special treatment of the Jews), which insiders knew really meant ‘murdering’ them
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At this very moment, the Jews from the General Government, those from Lublin first, are being deported to the East. There, a rather barbaric method that cannot be further described here is being used, which leaves nothing much of the Jews themselves. In general terms it can be established that 60 per cent will have to be liquidated, while only 40 per cent can be put to work. The former Gauleiter of Vienna [Odilo Globocnik], who is in charge of this initiative, does it very covertly and discreetly […]. As the ghettos in the cities of the General Government become vacant, the Jews expelled from the Reich are moved in. After some time has passed, the whole process will repeat itself.
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clarified the real purposes of the conference, admitting that there was talk of killing, eliminating and destroying
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an employee of the Gesundheitsamt (local health authority) in Radom stated that it was ‘absurd if anyone from the SD still claimed to be unaware that Jewish people were being gassed’.
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Of all the Jews who ended up in the extermination camps, a few thousand did not disappear immediately into the gas chambers. On arrival, they were selected either to work elsewhere for the Germans, or to be put to use as Arbeitshäftlinge in the extermination camps themselves, forced to keep the factories of death running at full capacity.
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Only sixteen of them survived the war.
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Hitler’s view was that Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the war against the Soviet Union, would be more than a conflict of arms and extend into a battle against two world visions: Bolshevism and Judaism. His goal was to extinguish both. Once war on the eastern front had become a reality on 22 June 1941, the liquidation of the ‘Jewish-Bolshevist intelligentsia’ became one of the main goals, equal in importance to the military offensive.
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communists, Gypsies and Jews
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On 6 June 1941 General Warlimont had issued guidelines for the treatment of political commissars. These stated that: In the battle against Bolshevism we cannot count on the enemy having any regard for the fundamental principles of humanity or human rights. Especially from the political commissars, who are the true rebels, a German prisoner of war can only expect an atrocious and inhumane treatment driven by pure hatred. The troops must be aware that in this combat, towards these elements, pity and an appeal for human rights would be misplaced. They are a danger to individual safety and to a rapid pacification of the conquered territory. The political commissars are the instigators of barbaric Asiatic combat methods. This calls for direct and decisive action. If they are captured either in battle or while offering resistance, they must be immediately liquidated without question by force of arms.5
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He announced that all Komintern54 officials must be executed
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In front of the petrol station a fair-haired young man of medium height, aged around 25, stood leaning on a large club. At his feet about fifteen or twenty people lay either dying or already dead. Water from a hose was used to wash the blood of the victims into the drain. A few yards behind him, another twenty people were awaiting their death. On a signal the first one quietly stepped forward and, with the excited audience greeting each and every blow with loud cheers of approval, was savagely clubbed to death. These atrocities belong to the most painful in all of the history of the German army. One of the fundamental duties of any occupying force, also in the first days following an invasion of a large town, is to take basic measures to maintain order, and to take responsibility for protecting all of the local people. The officers of the army staff told me that they were aware of these mass-executions. But they also put it down to a spontaneous outburst of the Lithuanian people.5
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Occasionally, soldiers of the Einsatzkommandos in Russia would develop psychological problems associated with executing defenceless women and children. This sometimes prevented them from shooting straight, and the command leader would then be called upon to take over with his pistol. It was in order to avoid the personal involvement in the shooting of victims that the RSHA decided to start using mobile trucks for gassing people.
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The driver would step on the accelerator pedal, and the exhaust fumes, channelled through tubes, would fill the inside. After about twenty minutes, the truck reached either the anti-tank defences on the edge of town or the forest, by which time the women and children would have suffocated and their menfolk long since been executed
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97,000 were processed without any problems arising with the trucks
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There must have been around 600 Jews on that transport; some had already frozen to death by the time they arrived.
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They tried to hide in the forest and were struck down by intense firing from machine-guns, and all of the 360 prisoners were killed.
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I heard many shots coming from that direction. Some time after that, the train returned empty.
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Czechoslovakian Jews who had been deported to the Łódź ghetto only a few months earlier, were taken there to be murdered in specially adapted gassing trucks.
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Zyklon-B gas was used to kill around 600 Russian prisoners of war as well as 250 Polish patients from the camp’s hospital on 3 September 1941.
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Himmler was visiting Birkenau and witnessed the gassing of a group of women.
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increased the camp’s capacity by 4,000 victims a day
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as trains passed by very frequently, the camps’ existence soon became public knowledge.
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Labourers from the village of Bełżec, under Thomalla’s supervision, started work on building the camp as early as 1 November 1941.
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Four months later, by March 1942, it was ready for occupation.