by Yitzhak Arad
While construction was going on and experiments were being carried out, the organizational structure was also taking shape. Christian Wirth was the commander of the camp and the dominant figure there. One of his subordinate SS men in Belzec described him:
Wirth was the absolute ruler in the Belzec camp. Every one of the camp personnel received orders from him. He was seen everywhere and supervised the execution of his orders. But even during general briefings he personally allotted us specific duties and gave us detailed orders, what we were to do or what we were to say. During his absence the orders were given by Schwartz. . . .10
SS Oberscharführer Gottfried Schwartz was deputy commander of the camp. SS Oberscharführer Josef Niemann (later promoted to the rank of Untersturmführer) was in charge of Camp II, the extermination area. SS Oberscharführer Josef Oberhauser, Wirth’s adjutant, was the third in the camp’s chain of command, and was in charge of construction. He organized the Ukrainian unit in Trawniki for its duties in Belzec. SS Scharführer Lorenz Hackenholt was in charge of operating the gas chambers, with two Ukrainians subordinate to him. SS Unterscharführer Heinrich Unverhau was in charge of the storerooms where the clothes and personal belongings of the victims were kept and sorted to be sent on to Lublin. The storeroom was located outside the camp in the locomotives garage, close to Belzec station.
All the SS men were given assignments in the camp administration and were in charge of specific activities. Some of them had several duties. From time to time, there were changes in these assignments. Close to the expected arrival of a transport with Jews, the SS men were assigned specific duties in handling the liquidation of the deportees—from disembarkment to gassing of the victims and shooting those unable to be brought to the gas chambers.
The Ukrainian unit under the command of Oberscharführer Feiks included sixty to eighty men organized in two platoons. SS Scharführer Fritz Jierman and, later, SS Scharführer Werner Dubois were in charge of their training and discipline. The platoon and squad commanders were mainly Volksdeutsche and, like the other members of this unit, former soldiers in the Soviet army. They had the police ranks of Hauptzugwachmänn and Zugwachmänn.
The Ukrainians manned the guard positions in the camp, at the entrance, at the four watchtowers, and with some patrols. Some of them helped in operating the gas chambers. Before the arrival of a transport with Jews, the Ukrainians took up guard positions around the railway ramp, the undressing barrack, and along the “tube” leading to the gas chambers. During the experimental killings and even the first transports, the Ukrainians were in charge of removing the bodies from the gas chambers and burying them.
The organizational structure of the camp’s staff took its final shape after weeks and months of experimental operation of the camp. As Belzec was the first death camp of Operation Reinhard, its manpower and organizational needs were improved as more and more experience was attained. Toward the middle of March 1942, Belzec death camp was ready to absorb the first transports.
A map for Belzec extermination camp became available too late in the book’s publication process to be placed in its proper chapter. Because of its historical significance, however, the map, with its key, is appended on pages 436–437.
4
Construction of Sobibor
Sobibor was the name of a small village in a wooded area on the Chelm-Wlodawa railway line, 8 km south of Wlodawa. The Bug River, the border between the General-Government and the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine, was 5 km east of Sobibor. The whole area was swampy, wooded, and thinly populated. The exact location for the death camp was selected by the SS Central Building Administration in the Lublin district. The camp was built alongside the railway, west of Sobibor station, and was surrounded by a sparse pine forest. Close to the railway station buildings was a spur that was included in the camp site and was used for disembarkation of the transports. In the area selected for the camp two wooden buildings existed—a former forester’s house and a two-story post office. The entire camp area encompassed a rectangle 600 × 400 meters. At a later stage it was enlarged.
The construction of the Sobibor camp began in March 1942, at the same time that extermination actions were beginning in Belzec. SS Obersturmführer Richard Thomalla, from the SS Central Building Administration in Lublin, was put in charge of the construction of Sobibor. The workers employed at building the camp were local people from neighboring villages and towns. A group of eighty Jews from the ghettos in the vicinity of the camp was brought to Sobibor for construction work. A squad of ten Ukrainians from Trawniki arrived to guard these Jews. After completing their work, the Jews were shot.1
By the beginning of April 1942, construction of the camp had fallen behind schedule. To speed things up, Globocnik appointed SS Obersturmführer Franz Stangl commander of Sobibor. Stangl was ordered by Globocnik to travel to Wirth in Belzec for guidance and to obtain experience in preparation for the operation of Sobibor. Stangl described his visit to Belzec:
I went there by car. As one arrived, one first reached Belzec railway station. . . . Oh God, the smell! It was everywhere. Wirth wasn’t in his office. I remember they took me to him . . . he was standing on a hill next to the pits . . . the pits . . . full . . . they were full. I cannot tell you; not hundreds, thousands, thousands of corpses . . . that’s where Wirth told—he said that was what Sobibor was for. . . .
Wirth told me that I should definitely become the commander of Sobibor. I answered that I was not qualified for such a mission. . . . I received from Globocnik the task to erect the camp. That it was not to be an ammunition camp but a camp for killing Jews I learned finally from Wirth. During the discussion with Wirth he told me if I would not do it, another would come. He would then put me back at the disposal of the Brigadeführer [Globocnik]. Actually, I was not relieved [of my post]. I stayed in Sobibor. Transports arrived and were liquidated. . . .2
After Stangl’s arrival in Sobibor, the building of the camp was accelerated, and a second group of Jews from ghettos in the Lublin district was brought there for construction work.
The first gas chambers erected in Sobibor were in a solid brick building with a concrete foundation. They were located in the northwest part of the camp, more isolated and distant from the other parts of the camp than in Belzec. There were three gas chambers in the building, each 4 × 4 meters. The capacity of each chamber was about two hundred people. Each gas chamber was entered through its own separate door leading from a veranda that ran along the building. On the opposite side of the building, there was a second set of doors for removing the corpses. Outside was a shed in which the engine that supplied the carbon monoxide gas was installed. Pipes conducted the gas from the engine exhaust to the gas chambers.3
In the middle of April 1942, when the building of Sobibor was close to completion, experimental killings were carried out there. About 250 Jews were brought from the Krychow labor camp, which was close to Sobibor, for this purpose.4 Wirth arrived in Sobibor to attend these experiments. With him came a chemist from the euthanasia program whose pseudonym was “Dr. [Karl] Blaurock.” SS Scharführer Erich Fuchs, who served in Belzec, describes the preparations and the first experimental killing in Sobibor:
As ordered by Wirth, I drove an LKW [a car] to Lvov, fetched a gas motor and transported it to Sobibor. When I arrived at Sobibor, close to the railway station I saw a tract of land with a concrete construction and some other solid buildings. The Sonderkommando there were commanded by Thomalla. Other members of the SS who attended were F. B. Stangl, F. Schwartz, Kurt Bolender, and others. We unloaded the motor. It was a heavy Russian benzine engine (presumably a tank or tractor motor) at least 200 horsepower (V-motor, 8 cylinders, water cooled). We installed the engine on a concrete foundation and set up the connection between the exhaust and the tube.
I then tested the motor. It did not work. I was able to repair the ignition and the valves, and the motor finally started running. The chemist, whom I knew from Belzec, entered the gas chamber with measuring instrume
nts to test the concentration of the gas.
Following this, a gassing experiment was carried out. If my memory serves me right, about thirty to forty women were gassed in one gas chamber. The Jewish women were forced to undress in an open place close to the gas chamber, and were driven into the gas chamber by the above-mentioned SS members and by Ukrainian auxiliaries. When the women were shut up in the gas chamber I and B [Bolender] set the motor in motion. The motor functioned first in neutral. Both of us stood by the motor and switched from “Neutral” (Freiauspuff) to “Cell” (Zelle), so that the gas was conveyed to the chamber. At the suggestion of the chemist, I fixed the motor on a definite speed so that it was unnecessary henceforth to press on the gas. About ten minutes later the thirty to forty women were dead. The chemist and the SS leader gave the sign to stop the motor. I packed my tools and saw how the corpses were removed. The transportation was done with a lorry trail that led from the gas chambers to a remote plot.5
After this experiment, which verified the smooth working of the gas chambers, and with the completion of some other construction work, Sobibor death camp was ready for its task. The structure of Sobibor was similar to that of Belzec and was based on the experience that had been gained there. The camp was divided into three parts: the administration area, the reception area, and the extermination area. The reception area and administration were close to the railway station. The extermination area was in the remote part of the camp.
The administration area, which was in the southeast of the camp, was divided into two sub-camps: the “Forward Camp” (Vorlager) and Camp I. The Forward Camp included the entrance gate, the railway ramp, and the living quarters and services of the SS men and Ukrainians. Unlike Belzec, in Sobibor all the SS men lived inside the camp. The Jewish prisoners who worked in Sobibor were kept in Camp I. This area included their living quarters and workshops, where some of them worked as shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, etc.
The reception area was called Camp II. The Jews who arrived with the transports were, after disembarking, driven inside this area. It included the undressing barracks of the victims and the barracks where their clothes and belongings were stored. The former forester’s house, located in this area, was used for camp offices and living quarters for some of the SS men. A high wooden fence, which prevented observation, separated the main part of the forester’s house from the area where the victims passed. At the northeast corner of this fence began the “tube.” This “tube,” which connected Camp II with the extermination area, was a narrow passageway, about 3 to 4 meters wide and 150 meters long. It was closed on both sides by barbed wire intertwined with tree branches. Through here the victims were driven into the gas chambers located at the end of the “tube.” Close to the entrance of the “tube” was a stable, a pigpen, and a poultry coop. Halfway through the “tube” was the “barber shop,” a barrack where the hair of the Jewish women was cut before they entered the gas chambers.
The extermination area, called Camp III, was on the northwest side of the camp. It included the gas chambers, burial pits, a barrack for the Jewish prisoners employed there, and a guard barrack. The burial pits were 50 to 60 meters long, 10 to 15 meters wide, and 5 to 7 meters deep. For easier absorption of the corpses into the pits, the sandy sidewalls were made oblique. A narrow railway with a trolley led from the railway station up to the burial pits, bypassing the gas chambers. People who had died in the trains or those who were unable to walk from the platform to the gas chambers were taken by the trolley.
The whole camp was fenced off by barbed wire intertwined with tree branches to prevent observation from the outside. Along the fence and in the corners of the camp were watchtowers. All the sub-camps, and particularly Camp III, were fenced off from each other by dense barbed wire.6
While the basic installations necessary for initiating the killing operations were being completed, the organization of manpower was also taking shape. Stangl’s deputy, second in command in Sobibor, was the camp Oberscharführer, Hermann Michel, who was replaced a few months later by Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner. Camp I, where the Jewish prisoners were kept, and Camp III, the extermination area, had their own commanders, subordinate to Stangl. The commander of Camp I was Oberscharführer Weiss, who was replaced by Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel. It was his duty also to supervise the Jewish prisoners when they worked in Camp II. Kurt Bolender served as commander of Camp III from April until autumn 1942. He was replaced by Oberscharführer Erich Bauer. Alfred Ittner was in charge of the camp administration; he was later transferred to Camp III.
The Ukrainian guard unit in Sobibor was organized in three platoons. They came from the Trawniki training camp with commanders who for the most part had served in the German police and held police ranks; Erich Lachman, a former policeman who trained the Ukrainians in Trawniki, became their commander in Sobibor. Being an “outsider” among the euthanasia members, he was replaced as commander of the Ukrainians by Kurt Bolender in autumn 1942.7
In Sobibor, as in Belzec, each member of the German staff in the camp was in charge of a specific function and duty. When a transport of Jews arrived, most of the SS men carried out particular duties in the process of annihilation. SS Oberscharführer Erich Bauer, who served in Sobibor, testified at the Sobibor trial in 1964:
Normally, inside the camp, each member of the permanent staff had a specific function (for example, commander of the Ukrainian auxiliaries, leader of a working group, excavation of pits, erection of barbed-wire fences, etc.). However, when a transport with Jews arrived, there was so much “work” that the regular activity was interrupted, and everyone on the permanent staff had to participate somehow in the routine extermination process. Primarily, each member of the permanent staff took part occasionally in the unloading of the transports.8
Forward Camp
1. Unloading platform
2. Dentist and jail for Ukrainian guards
3. Guard house
4. SS clothing store
5. SS quarters
6. SS quarters
7. Laundry
8. Well
9. Showers and barbershop for SS
10. Garage
11. SS kitchen and canteen
12. Living quarters of the camp commanders
13. Armory
14. Barracks for Ukrainian guards
15. Barracks for Ukrainian guards
16. Barracks for Ukrainian guards
17. Bakery
Camp I
18. Dispensary
19. Tailor shop for SS
20. Shoemaker and saddler shop for SS
21. Smithery
22. Carpentry
23. Latrine
24. Painters’ shop
25. Barracks for male prisoners
26. Barracks for male prisoners
27. Prisoners’ kitchen
28. Barracks for female prisoners
29. Shoemaker shop for Ukrainian guards
30. Water ditch
Camp II
31. Undressing barracks where deportees deposited their clothing and luggage
32. Barracks where luggage was sorted and stored
33. Undressing yard
34. Storage warehouse for food brought by the deportees
35. Electrical generator
36. Storage of silverware
37. Stable and barns
38. Administration building and storeroom for valuables
39. SS ironing room
40. Shoe warehouse
41. Garden
42. Barracks for storing property
43. Barracks for storing property
44. Barracks for storing property
45. Barracks where women’s hair was cut
46. Incinerator
47. Former chapel
48. Latrine
Camp III
49. Barracks for Camp III prisoners
50. Barracks for Camp III prisoners’ kitchen and “dentist” workshop
51. Gas chambers
&n
bsp; 52. Engine room for gas chambers
53. Fenced yard
54. Mass graves and outdoor crematoria
Sobibor station and village
55. Railway station building
56. Living quarters of Polish railway-workers
57. Houses of local agriculture workers
58. Farms of Polish peasants
59. Living quarter of railway workers
Watchtower
Minefield
Railroad
Narrow-guage
railroad
Barbed wire fence
Camouflaged
barbed wire fence
Forester’s tower
The Sobibor Death Camp
Toward the end of April 1942, Sobibor death camp was ready for operation. Dov Freiberg, who was brought to Sobibor with the first transports in May 1942, describes his first impression of the camp:
The appearance of the camp was like an ordinary farm, except for the barbed-wire fences that surrounded it and some barracks. Actually, it was a farm, with all its buildings, in the midst of a beautiful green forest. . . . It seems that the camp was erected in a hurry and had few basic installations. I mean Camp I and Camp II [reception and administration areas]; about Camp III [extermination area], we did not yet know of its existence. But the area was big. . . .9
5
Construction of Treblinka
The construction of Treblinka death camp began after Belzec and Sobibor were already operational. The expertise gained in the building and in the killing operations in the other two camps were applied in the planning and construction of Treblinka. It became the most “perfected” death camp of Operation Reinhard.