The Sobibor Death Camp

History, Biographies, Remembrance

Chris Webb

• Publisher: Ibidem Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783838269665
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

The Sobibor Death Camp was the second extermination camp built by the Nazis as part of the secretive Operation Reinhardt—with intent to carry out the mass murder of Polish Jewry. Following the construction of the extermination camp at Belzec in south-eastern Poland from November 1941 to March 1942, the Nazis planned a second extermination camp at Sobibor, and the third and deadliest camp was built near the remote village of Treblinka. Sobibor was similarly designed as the first camp in Belzec, it was regarded as an 'overflow' camp for Belzec. This account of the Nazis' remorseless and relentless production line of killing at the Sobibor death camp tells of one of the worst crimes in the history of mankind. Chris Webb's painstakingly researched volume ranges from the survivors and the victims to the SS men who carried out the atrocities.

What makes this work special is the research which has been gathered on the survivors, who by good fortune, courage, and determination survived Sobibor and built new lives for themselves, new families, but bore the scars of this terrible place for all of their lives. Webb focuses on the victims and presents details of their lives which have been found and re-tells them to keep their memory alive, to show they are not forgotten. The cruel and barbaric murder process is described in great detail, as well as the confiscation of the valuables and possessions of the unfortunate Jews who crossed the threshold of this man-made hell. One cannot fail to be moved by the personal accounts of those who survived, their loved ones perished in this factory of death.

The book covers the construction of the death camp, the physical layout of the camp, as remembered by both the Jewish inmates and the SS staff who served there, and the personal recollections that detail the day to day experiences of the prisoners and the SS. The courageous revolt by the prisoners on October 14, 1943 is re-told by the prisoners and the German SS, with detailed accounts of the revolt and its aftermath. The post-war fate of the perpetrators, or more precisely those that were brought to trial, and information regarding the more recent history of the site itself concludes this book. There is a large photographic section of rare, previously unpublished photographs and documents from the author's private archive.

Part I
The Hell Called Sobibór

Chapter I
‘Aktion Reinhardt’
(An Overview)

Einsatz Reinhardt, or as it is better known, Aktion Reinhardt[1] was the code name for the extermination of Polish Jewry in the former Generalgouvernement and the Białystok area. The term was used in remembrance of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the co-ordinator of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, translated as Die Endlösung der Judenfrage, that involved the extermination of the Jews living in the European countries occupied by the German military during the Second World War. Members of the Czech underground resistance fighters, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, ambushed Heydrich in his car on May 27, 1942, in a suburb of Prague, while en-route to his office in the capital from his home at Panenské Březany. Heydrich died from his wounds at Bulovka Hospital on June 4, 1942.[2]

Four days after his death, approximately 1,000 Jews left Prague in a single train that was designated AaH (Attentat auf Heydrich). This transportion was officially destined for Ujazdów, in the Lublin district of Poland, though the passengers were gassed at the Bełżec death camp. The members of Odilo Globocnik’s resettlement staff henceforward dedicated the murder program to Heydrich’s memory, under the name Einsatz Reinhardt.[3]

The Head of Aktion Reinhardt was SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik. The SS and Police Chief of the Lublin District was appointed to this position by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. At the Führer’s Headquarters in Rastenburg (a town in present day Poland known as Kętrzyn), Heinrich Himmler, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger and Odilo Globocnik met on October 13, 1941, and at this meeting Globocnik was authorized to build a death camp at Bełżec. Bełżec was the first death camp built using static gas chambers, the first mass Extermination Camp in the East; Kulmhof (a town in present day Poland known as Chełmno), used gas vans to murder the Jewish victims from early December 1941.[4]

On January 20, 1942, at a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, Heydrich organized a conference on ‘The Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. The conference was postponed from December 8, 1941, as Heydrich wrote to one of the attendees Otto Hoffmann that it had been necessary to reschedule the conference ‘on account of events in which some of the invited gentlemen were concerned.‘[5] Those attending the Wannsee Conference included the director-generals of the relevant ministries, senior representatives of the German ruling authorities in the occupied countries, and senior members of the SS, including Heinrich Müller, Head of the Gestapo, and Adolf Eichmann, Head of Department IV B4, the Jewish Section of the Gestapo.

*

The man who was appointed to lead Aktion Reinhardt was Odilo Lothario Globocnik. He was born on April 21, 1904 in Trieste, the son of an Austro-Slovene family, a Construction Engineer by trade. He joined the Nazi Party in Carinthia, Austria in 1930 and after the banning of the Nazi Party in Austria in 1934, earned the reputation as one of the most radical leaders of its underground cells. In 1933, Globocnik joined the SS, which also became a prohibited organization in Austria in 1934, and was appointed Deputy Gauleiter (Deputy Party District Leader).[6]

After serving several short terms of imprisonment, for illegal activities on behalf of the Nazis, he emerged as a key figure in the pre-annexation plans for Austria, serving as a pivotal liaison figure between Adolf Hitler and the leading pro-Nazi Austrians.[7] Globocnik’s star was in the ascendency and he was appointed to the coveted strategic position of Gauleiter of Vienna on May 24, 1938. His tenure was short-lived and on January 30, 1939 he was dismissed from this superior position for corruption, illegal speculation in foreign exchange and tax evasion—all on a grand scale.[8]

After demotion to a lowly SS rank and undergoing basic military training with an SS-Standarte, he took part with his unit in the invasion of Poland. Eventually pardoned by Himmler, who needed such unscrupulous characters for future ‘unsavoury plans’, Globocnik was appointed to the post of SS- und Polizeiführer of Lublin on November 9, 1939. Globocnik had been chosen by the Reichsführer–SS as the central figure in the Aktion Reinhardt program, not only because of his ruthlessness, but also because of his virulent anti-Semitism.

In Lublin, Globocnik surrounded himself with a number of his fellow Austrians, SS-Officers like Herman Julius Höfle, born in Salzburg on June 19, 1911. Höfle became Gobocnik’s Deputy in Aktion Reinhardt, responsible for the Personnel and the organization of Jewish deportations, the extermination camps and the re-utilization of the victim’s possessions and valuables. Höfle was later to play a significant role in mass deportation actions in Warsaw and Białystok. Ernst Lerch from Klagenfurt became Globocnik’s closest confidante and adjutant. Georg Michalsen from Oppeln in Silesia was another adjutant and he, too, participated with Höfle in the deportation of Jews from the ghettos in Warsaw in 1942 and Białystok in 1943. Another member of this group was Amon Göth, who cleared the Tarnów, Kraków and Zamość ghettos, and later became the notorious Commander of Płaszów Arbeitslager in Kraków, in March 1943.[9]

The Headquarters of Aktion Reinhardt was located in the Julius Schreck[10] Kaserne at Litauer Strasse 11, close to the city centre in Lublin, and Höfle not only worked, but also lived in this building, in a small room on the second floor. Also located in Lublin, were the buildings where the Jewish belongings and valuables were stored, at Chopin Strasse, the former ‘Katholische Aktion’ and at the sorting hangers located at the Alter Flugplatz (Old Airfield) just outside Lublin.[11]

The most infamous Member of Aktion Reinhardt was SS-Obersturmführer Christian Wirth, the first Commandant of Bełżec and later Inspector of the SS-Sonderkommandos Abteilung Reinhard. Before his transfer to Poland, Wirth had been a leading figure in ‘Aktion T4,’ the extermination of the mentally and physically disabled in psychiatric institutions in the Reich. The role of the ‘T4’ euthanasia program was fundamental to the execution of Aktion Reinhardt, the great majority of the staff in the death camps served their ‘apprenticeships’ in mass murder at the euthanasia institutes of Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Pirna / Sonnenstein, where the mentally ill and disabled victims had been murdered in gas chambers. The senior Officers i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Author’s Introduction
• With Grateful Thanks
• Abbreviations used in the Footnotes
• The Author – Whitehill 2016
• Part I The Hell Called Sobibór
• Part II Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators, and the Aftermath
• Appendix 1 The Sobibór Area Labor Camps
• Appendix 2 List of Trawniki Männer Who Served at Sobibór Death Camp
• Illustrations and Sources
• Documents, Drawings, Maps and Sources
• Equivalent Ranks
• Glossary of Nazi Terms
• Selected Bibliography
• Sources and Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Copyright