Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (2). The Original & Second Gas Chambers at Belzec and Sobibor.

The Original & Second Gas Chambers at Belzec and Sobibor

On March 17, 1942, the first deportation trains carrying Jews from Lublin arrived at the Belzec camp. As the capacity of the ramp was limited inside the Belzec camp, the trains were often separated into two or three sections, all driven into the camps individually. Only a select few locomotive drivers were allowed to bring the trains into the Belzec camp, while the others had to stop just outside the entrance. Polish railway worker Stefan Kirsz testified to these events after the war:

As a co-driver of a locomotive, I led the Jewish transports from the station of Rava-Russkaya to Belzec many times…These transports were divided in Belzec into three parts. Each part, which consisted of twenty freight trains, was taken to the railway spur inside the camp pushed by the locomotive, and stopped near the former border wall of 1939/1940. Immediately after the freight cars stopped inside the camp, they were emptied of Jews and their luggage. I saw that in addition to the living, corpses were taken out…The Germans did not allow us to watch the camp, but I was able to see it when I approached the camp and deceptively pretended that I must put the coal closer to the entrance gate.[41]

Those Jews who survived the transport to Belzec were unloaded into the reception area (Camp I) and separated by gender. During this time, assurances were being made by SS staff (usually camp commander Wirth) that the arrivals would be bathed, clothed, and then sent on to other camps in the East. All prisoners were then made to undress. Former T4 associate SS- Unterscharführer Karl Alfred Schluch, who had been deployed to Belzec when the killing operations began, attests:

In the morning or noon time we were informed by Wirth, Schwartz, or by Oberhauser that a transport with Jews should arrive soon…The disembarkation from the freight cars was carried out by a group of Jewish prisoners under the command of their capos. Two or three Germans from the camp staff supervised this action. It was my obligation to carry out such supervisions. After the disembarkation, the Jews were taken to the assembly square. During the disembarkation, the Jews were told that they had come here for transfer and they should go to baths and disinfection. This announcement was made by Wirth and translated by a Jewish capo.[42]

SS-man Kurt Franz[43] also testified about the unloading procedure at Belzec:

I heard with my own ears how Wirth, in a quite convincing voice, explained to the Jews that they would be deported further and before that, for hygienic reasons, they must bathe themselves and their clothes would have to be disinfected. Inside the undressing barrack was a counter for the deposit of valuables. It was made clear to the Jews that after the bath their valuables would be returned to them. I can still hear, until today, how the Jews applauded Wirth after his speech. This behaviour of the Jews convinces me that the Jews believed Wirth…[44]

As the women were given haircuts, the men were sent to the gas chambers first in order to decrease the chance of rebellion. Following the haircuts, and once the gas chambers had been cleaned from the previous batch of victims, the women with children were sent on. In order to reach the gas chambers, victims were sent along a “tube” (Schlauch), a forested and fenced pathway leading from the reception area to the extermination area. A recent analysis of wartime aerial photographs of the Belzec camp revealed indications of fencing matching the description of this “tube” (see image 5.1). These lineations are likely the result of fallen needles and other foliage which was interwoven into the fence to help camouflage the march to the gas chambers.[45]

Image 5.1: Traces of the “Tube” at Belzec, with an image showing the possible location of the Gas Chambers

Source: http://holocaust-history.org/belzec/deathcamp/Figure464.html

Witness SS officer Schluch described the extermination procedure as follows:

After the Jews entered the gas chambers, the doors were closed by Hackenholt himself or by the Ukrainian subordinate to him. Then Hackenholt switched on the engine which supplied the gas. After five or seven minutes - and this is only an estimate - someone looked through the small window into the gas chamber to verify whether all inside were dead. Only then were the outside doors opened and the gas chambers ventilated… After the gas chambers were ventilated, the Jewish Work Kommando under the leadership of a Kapo and removed the corpses out of the chamber. Occasionally, I had to supervise at this place; therefore, I can describe the whole process, which I saw and witnessed personally…The Jews inside the gas chambers were densely packed. This is the reason that the corpses were not lying on the floor but were mixed up in disorder in all directions, some of them kneeling, according to the amount of space they had. The corpses were besmirched with mud and urine or with spit. On the corpses I could partially see that lips and also nose tips had a bluish discoloration. Some of them had their eyes closed, others’ eyes rolled. The bodies were dragged out of the gas chambers and inspected by a dentist, who removed finger rings and gold teeth…After this procedure, the corpses were thrown into a big pit.[46]  

The most serious criticism raised against Schluch’s testimony by MGK has been for allegedly plagiarizing the Gerstein report.[47] This charge is simply unconvincing for the many distinctions in Schluch and Gerstein’s testimonies. Whereas Schluch describes bodies in disorder inside the gas chambers, in various directions, and with some kneeling on other bodies, Gerstein is clear that the bodies were so packed that they had no space “to fall down or even lean forward.”[48] Schluch and Gerstein diverge on the degree to which gassed corpses were blue; Gerstein refers to the whole corpses as blue, while Schluch only refers to a bluish tinge on the victims’ lips and nose. While Schluch was very uncertain on the type of engine used for the gassings, Gerstein showed no hesitancy to state that it was a diesel later on in his accounts. For the size of the gas chambers, Schluch describes the size of the original/old gas chambers (4 x 8 m) while Gerstein refers to that of the new ones (6 chambers, 5 x 5 each) On the size of burial pits, Schluch’s very rough estimate (30 x 20 x 5/6 m) is not close to that reported by Gerstein (100 x 20 x 12). Schluch and Gerstein also discuss details ignored by the other; Schluch discusses the victims’ eyes, while Gerstein discusses menstrual blood. It is clear that Schluch was not drawing his testimonial evidence from the Gerstein report, despite the best wishes of MGK to disregard Schluch’s testimony.

Several weeks behind in its construction, Sobibor was planned similar in its general layout to Belzec. Victims would be brought in through rail, unloaded on a ramp, brought to the reception camp (Camp II), separated by gender, undressed, shaven, gassed, and then buried. SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl, chosen by Globocnik as the first Commandant of Sobibor, was given a taste of his future task in a required visit to Belzec, where he was to meet Belzec Commandant Wirth. Stangl later discussed the visit:

I can’t describe to you what it was like… I went there by car.  As one arrived, one first reached Belzec railway sta­tion, on the left side of the road.  The camp was on the same side, but up a hill.  The Kommandantur was 200 metres away, on the other side of the road.  It was a one-storey building.  The smell…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 can’t tell you; not hundreds, thousands, thousands of corpses ... oh God.  That’s where Wirth told me - he said that was what Sobibor was for.[49]  

At Sobibor, the gas chambers were finished in mid-April, a month after the start of operations at Belzec. Three chambers, measuring approximately 4 x 4 meters according to some accounts, were housed in a wooden structure atop a concrete base. Erich Bauer (who MGK incorrectly identify once as ‘Ernst’ Bauer)[50], self-proclaimed Gasmeister (gas master), described the newly constructed Sobibor gas chambers:

When we arrived, Lager 3 had not been completely fenced off yet, certainly not on the right hand-side, and I am not sure whether any fence had been put up through the woods. The gas chamber was already there, a wooden building on a concrete base, about the same size as this courtroom though much lower, as low as a normal house. There were two or three chambers, in front of which there was a corridor that, from the outside, you accessed via a bridge. The doors were indeed wooden; they were changed later, when the gas chamber was completely rebuilt. The airtight doors arrived only later; I collected them myself from Warsaw, but that was not until the new building went up.[51] 

The descriptions of the first gas chamber building and the first gassing experiment at Sobibor have been heavily criticized by MGK in their writings, particularly by Kues.[52] MGK highlight variations among the testimonies of Bauer, Fuchs, and Stangl regarding these items to cast doubt on the veracity of the gassing claims (though no coherent arguments are made, simply well poisoning on sources).

Regarding the building, in contrast to Bauer, Sobibor Commandant Stangl declared to Gitta Sereny that the first gas chamber “was a new brick building.”[53] While this testimony was provided nearly three decades after the event (with the profound impact such a time can have on one’s memory), it must also be remembered that Stangl was later transferred to Treblinka in early September, around the time that new brick gas chambers were being constructed at his new camp, which could be the source for the confusion.[54] The statement by Fuchs[55] regarding the building itself is ambiguous, as Kues recognizes[56], and hard to pinpoint which building Fuchs’ is referring to as the gas chamber building, and what he meant by “concrete structure.” Even so, Fuchs is in agreement with Bauer in that the supporting structure of the gas chamber was made (at least partially) of cement, for the gassing engine had been installed on a “concrete base.”

Kues similarly highlights the variations in memory between Fuchs and Stangl regarding the first gassing at Sobibor. According to Fuchs, following the installation of the engine a trial gassing was performed:

If my memory serves me right, I think 30 to 40 women were gassed. The Jewish women had to undress in a clearing in the woods near the gas chamber and were herded into the gas chamber by the aforementioned SS men (Floss, Bauer, Stangl, Friedl, Schwarz and Barbl) and Ukrainian Hilfswilligen. Once the women were inside, I operated the engine with Bauer. At first the engine was in neutral. We both stood by the engine and switched the dial to Freiauspuff auf Zelle (open exhaust to chamber), so releasing the gas into the chamber. As directed by the chemist, I adjusted the engine to a set RPM, making any further accelerating unnecessary. After about ten minutes the 30 to 40 women were dead. The chemist and the SS Führer gave the signal to shut down the engine. I packed my tools and saw how the bodies were taken away. They were transported by means of a Lorenbahn (narrow gauge railway) leading from the gas chamber to an area farther away.[57]

Stangl, on the other hand, details a different version:

Wirth was screaming and shouting again. He was around the back of the building, where the exit doors were. He was ranting and raving about the doors being too small. The people who were to be gassed had been pushed into the gas chambers through the exit doors. If they had gone in on the entrance side, they might have been spotted by someone outside the camp. (…) I think the bodies were buried near the brick building. No grave had been dug. I am certain that the bodies were not naked, but were buried with their clothes still on. I heard at the time that the people had resisted being locked inside the gas chamber. That was another reason why Wirth was so furious.[58]

In a later interview with Gitta Sereny (which Kues quotes), Stangl later states that the first Sobibor gassing was performed on 25 work Jews, implying males.[59] However, Kues ignores Stangl’s admission that his information on the gassing was hearsay. This is why Stangl constantly refers to his conversation with Michel regarding the gassing (“Michel told me later”, “Michel said”, “I heard at the time”). Only in regards to the burial of bodies does Stangl purport his own beliefs, suggesting his arrival near the gas chambers didn’t come until after the gassing, if he came at all (and didn’t simply learn of the event from Michel).

These variations, easily explainable as errors of memory (the testimonies were recorded many years after event), incorrectly reported events (Stangl admits hearsay from Michel), or as a result of two separate gassings (Fuchs does not list presence of Stangl, Wirth, or Michel at gassing), hardly substantiate MGK’s thesis that a conspiracy was determining or providing answers for the Nazi perpetrators during their trials in order to fabricate the Holocaust.

Following the successful test gassing(s), Sobibor was ready to handle transports of Jews starting in late April/early May. The opening of the Sobibor camp coincided with the liquidation of whole Kreise (counties) in the district of Lublin. Activity at Sobibor was substantially increased as a result of the sudden closure of Belzec in mid-April due to Wirth and other German officials leaving their post at the camp.[60] SS-Oberscharführer Kurt Bolender, who was stationed at Sobibor, described the extermination process:

Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharführer Hermann Michel (deputy commander of the camp) made a speech to them. On these occasions, he used to wear a white coat to give the impression (that he was) a physician. Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection so as to prevent the spread of diseases…After undressing, the Jews were taken through the so-called Schlauch. They were led to the gas chambers, not by the Germans but by the Ukrainians…After the Jews entered the gas chambers, the Ukrainians closed the doors…The motor which supplied the gas was switched on by a Ukrainian called Emil and by a German driver called Erich Bauer from Berlin. After the gassing, the doors were opened, and the corpses were removed by a group of Jewish workers.[61]

Erich Bauer also testified after the war about the Sobibor gassings:

When a transport came that I worked with, I was with Fuchs and with Askaris (Ukrainian volunteers) in Lager 3. The undressed Jews from the transport came to the gas chambers in Lager 3. Meanwhile, Fuchs and I ran the engine. Later on the motor was already started, but at first not until people were already in the gas chamber as no Freiauspuff (open exhaust) option was available. It always took two people to start the engine; the battery was not sufficient by itself. Fuchs had built a special device. There was an old magnet. One man turned the crank, starting the engine. The flywheel had a sort of tire iron, which was used to start it, while another person had to operate the magnetic ignition; that is why two men were required to start the engine. (…) The gassing lasted about 20 to 30 minutes and I have seen the bodies as they were brought out. They looked like normal bodies, many came with some blood out their nose and mouth.[62] 

As can be easily understood, figures regarding the amount of Jews put into the three approximately 4 x 4 meter gas chambers vary among the witnesses. Bauer estimated 50 to 60 people per chamber; Bolender estimated 40 to 50 people per chamber; Karl Frenzel estimated the total capacity of the three chambers between 150 and 250, thus around 50 to 80 people per chamber; Hubert Gomerski also recalled the figure of 250.[63] These estimates give an idea of the initial capacity for the three original Sobibor gas chambers. Despite the constant attacks on such estimates by MGK, these are very realistic for such a space.[64] Fluctuations in figures were likely to depend upon the size of the arriving transports, which would determine the density of Jews put inside the gas chambers. A higher capacity was possible as the chambers could be “densely packed” as Schlauch said of Belzec. Nazi documents regarding the gas vans described the “normal capacity of the vans is nine to ten per square meter.”[65]

In Sobibór, Graf writes that a density of 9 persons per square meter is “vaguely possible,” while in Treblinka he writes that 10 people per square meter is the “highest density theoretically possible.”[66] Modern mass transportation and crowd gatherings put the lie to Graf’s rejection: during the Hajj, the Jamaraat Bridge has had measured crowd densities of 10 people per square meter[67], as has also been observed at Wembley stadium[68]; buses in China occasionally reach up 13 persons per square meter[69]; buses in the Brazilian city São Paulo can carry twelve passengers per square meter[70]; trains in Mumbai reach up to 14 to 16 standing passengers per square meter during peak hours.[71] As these examples occur largely amongst adults, likely to be males who are fully clothed, even higher capacities would be possible at the gas chambers in the Aktion Reinhard camps, where an over proportional number of women, children, and elderly in the transports were stripped of their clothes, with the deportees already suffering from dangerous malnourishment.

MGK also fail to deal with the relationship between Fuchs and Bauer. In 1965, Fuchs faced charges devoted to the installation and operation of the murder weapon. He is the only defendant to have been charged in that manner. The charge is summarized in JuNSV as:

Installing and tuning of [an] engine, whose exhaust fumes were led into the gas chamber. ‘Trial gassing' of about 30 Jewish women as well as subsequent gassing of Jews arriving in 3-4 transports. Instruction of camp supervisor (Lageraufseher) Bauer - cf.  Case Nr.212 - how to operate the engine.[72]

Fuchs’ admissions should therefore be given high priority because they relate most directly to the offence with which he was charged. He should also be given priority over Bauer in any matters of dispute between them because he was instructing Bauer. MGK’s methodology is therefore flawed because it fails to examine the relative expertise of the witnesses and their access to information about the engine.

MGK claim that Fuchs gave testimony in return for a light sentence.[73] However, although Fuchs was released from the Belzec proceedings, he received four years for Sobibor, which was commensurate with an accessory to murder charge.

Following discussions by euthanasia head SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack and Aktion Reinhard chief Globocnik in Lublin, Wirth eventually returned to his post in Belzec sometime in mid-May. As larger deportations to Belzec were extended into the Krakow district at the beginning of June, Wirth decided that Belzec’s gas chambers were in need of an overhaul. The camp was closed for a month, from mid-June to mid-July 1942, in order to construct newer, larger, and more effective gas chambers. It is also likely that the old wooden gas chambers had been tarnished by the sweat, blood, urine, and excrement of the many thousands of gas chamber victims.[74]

Following the dismantling of the three old wooden gas chambers, a solid concrete or brick building was constructed which housed six gas chambers.[75] Estimates on the size of the new gas chambers vary but were likely in the neighbourhood of 5 x 5 meters, an increase in gas chamber space by nearly half. Rudolf Reder, who arrived in Belzec in mid-August 1942, described the new gas chambers:

In the small yard you went up the steps to the entrance door, above which there was a sign saying Bade und Inhalationsraeume as well as a large flower basket, which made it look as though it was really the entrance to a health spa. From the entrance a corridor, which had three solid and tightly sealed single doors one either side, ran the length of the building. These doors led into the windowless chambers, which at the far end wall, adjoining the loading ramps I described earlier, had double sliding doors. On the other side of the building, i.e. behind the wall at the far end of the corridor, there was a small room where the engines were.[76]

Following the construction of new gas chambers at Belzec, the camp was also famously visited by SS Officers Kurt Gerstein and Professor Wilhelm Pfannenstiel. Gerstein described his inspection of the new gas chambers prior to a gassing as follows:

After ascending a few small steps, we saw three rooms to our left and right, which looked like garages; 4 by 5 meters, 1.90 meters high. At the back, indiscernible, wooden exits. On the roof a Star of David made of copper. In front of the building a plaque with Hackenholt-Stiftung. That is all I saw that particular afternoon.[77]

Pfannenstiel later described the gassing on the next day:

Once the hair of the women had been shorn, the whole transport was led into a building containing 6 chambers. As far as I know, only 4 were needed that time. When the people had been locked into the chambers, the exhaust gases of an engine were fed into these chambers. Gerstein determined that it took 18 minutes for everything to become quiet in the chambers. […] Once stillness reigned, the outer doors of the chambers were opened and the corpses brought out, checked for gold teeth, and then piled up in a pit. Again, this work was performed by Jews. No physician was present. I did not notice anything unusual about the corpses. Some were bluish in the face.[78]

In Sobibor, for many of the same reasons as at Belzec, new gas chambers were constructed during a period when swampy soil conditions during the summer prevented widespread deportations to Sobibor. SS-Unterscharführer Erwin Lambert took part in the construction work at Sobibor:

As I already mentioned earlier, I spent between 14 days and three weeks at the Jewish extermination camp Sobibor. It may have been in the autumn of 1942. I cannot remember the exact dates though. Wirth had assigned me the task of enlarging the gas installations at Sobibor; I was supposed to build them using the example of Treblinka. I traveled to Sobibor with Lorenz Hackenholt. Hackenholt was at Treblinka at the time. We first traveled to a sawmill near Warsaw. Hackenholt ordered a large quantity of wood for the rebuilding works at Sobibor. Then we traveled on to Sobibor. We reported to camp commandant Reichleitner, who gave us the appropriate instructions for building the gas installation. The camp was already operational when we arrived and already had a gas chamber as well. The rebuilding was probably necessary because the old construction was either not big enough, or not solid enough.[79]

Franz Hödl also described the new gas chambers at Sobibor:

There was a gas chamber with an attached room for an engine. The exhaust gases were directed into the chambers to gas the Jews. In the engine room there were two engines. There was a gasoline engine, probably from a Russian tank, and a diesel engine. The latter was not used. The gas chamber building contained 4 or 6 chambers on both sides of a corridor, 3 on the left and 3 on the right (or 2 left and 2 right). The people were forced into these rooms from the corridor. After the gassing the outside doors could be opened and the bodies removed.[80]

In his work on Sobibor, Jules Schelvis compiles several of Hödl’s testimonies from the 1960s into a single statement[81], which MGK have criticized as “confusing,” not bothering with any further analysis.[82] In one of these statements that Schelvis uses (above), Hödl states that there were four or six gas chambers in the camp, while in a statement made three years previously, Hödl states that there were six or eight chambers.[83] Both of the statements mentioned six chambers, a number largely agreed upon by other witnesses as well. Had the Revisionists gone to the original sources, a necessary measure for their very limited and specific criticisms of witness statements, they would have seen that Hödl’s statements are anything but “confusing.” Finally, MGK have also ignored the rest of Hödl’s statement, especially the admission that both a petrol and diesel engine were present at the gas chamber, but that only the petrol motor was used for homicidal gassings.[84]

In Sobibor, following the reopening of nearby railways and the completion of the gas chambers, the camp resumed its extermination activities in October 1942.[85]

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[41] Stefan Kirsz, 15.10.1945, BAL 162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. 6, pp.1147-1148; cf. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p.69.

[42] Karl Alfred Schluch, 11.11.1961, BAL 162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. 8, p. 1511-1512; cf. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p.70.

[43] A witness who MGK fail to discuss in any substantive fashion in all of their works.

[44] Kurt Franz, 14.9.1961, BAL 162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. 7, p.1421; cf, Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p.70. 

[45] Alex Bay, ‘Belzec: Reconstruction of the Death Camp,’ Holocaust History Project, http://holocaust-history.org/belzec/deathcamp/index/

[46] Karl Alfred Schluch, 11.11.1961, BAL 162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. 8, p. 1512-1513; cf. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, pp.70-71.

[47] Mattogno, Bełżec, pp.67-68. Mattogno refers to similar descriptions on position and appearance of gassed bodies.

[48] Affidavit by Gerstein, 25.4.1945, 1553-PS.

[49] Sereny, Into that Darkness, p.111.

[50] MGK, Sobibór, p.172.

[51] Erich Bauer, 6.10.65, StA.Dortmund, Verfahren gegen Bolender, p.176.

[52] MGK, Sobibór, pp.262-269. This text incorporates Kues’ article, ‘The Alleged First Gas Chamber Building at Sobibor.’ 

[53] Sereny, Into that Darkness, p.109.

[54] See previous section.

[55] See previous section, note 36.

[56] Kues, ‘Alleged First Gas Chamber Building at Sobibor’: “The "concrete structure" is apparently the gas chamber building.”

[57] BAL 162/208 AR-Z 251/59, Bd. 9, pp. 1784-1785; cf.  Schelvis, Sobibor, pp.100-101.

[58] BAL 162/208 AR-Z 230/59, Bd. 12, pp.4464-4465; cf. Schelvis, Sobibor, p.101.

[59] Sereny, Into that Darkness, pp.113-114. Stangl’s statement: “When I got there, Wirth stood in front of the building wiping the sweat off his cap and fuming.  Michel told me later that he’d suddenly appeared, looked around the gas chambers on which they were still working and said, ‘Right, we’ll try it out right now with those twenty-five work-Jews: get them up here.’ They marched our twenty-five Jews up there and just pushed them in, and gassed them.  Michel said Wirth behaved like a lunatic, hit out at his own staff with his whip to drive them on.  And then he was livid because the doors hadn’t worked properly.”

[60] Vernehmungsniederschrift Josef Oberhauser, 12.12.42, BAL B162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd.9, p.1682; cf. Rückerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp. 136-137. Oberhauser described returning to the camp following a trip to Lublin, with the German camp leadership absent. 

[61] Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p.76; Belzec-Oberhauser, Band 7, pp.1320-1321. 

[62] Protokoll vom 15.11.1965, StA Dortmund 45 JS 27/16, Ordner November 1965, p558.

[63] Schelvis, Sobibor, p.114 n.30.

[64] Attacking witness estimates on the number of gassing victims in a single chamber is a trademark of Holocaust “revisionists” in general, and is usually one of the primary means of witness criticism employed. Witnesses are known to have a poor ability to be exact on such quantifiable details, especially as time progresses. In this case, even the higher victim estimates by the perpetrators (80 victims inside a 16 sq m room = 5 victims per sq meter) are easily achievable, especially with a substantial portion of children and women among the gassing victims. 

[65] Willy Just to Walter Rauff, 5.6.1942 BA R 58/871; cf. Kogon, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, pp.333-337. This number is entirely realistic, as some modern German train manufacturers specify the maximum standing capacity of their passenger cars (obviously full bodied, fully clothed adults) at 8 persons per square meter. See the advertising brochure from Tatra Trains, available at http://www.tatrawagen.de/werbeprospekt.pdf.

[66] MGK, Sobibór, p.36; M&G, Treblinka, p.156.

[67] Stephan Trüby, Exit-Architektur. Design Zwischen Krieg Und Frieden. Vien: Springer, 2008, p.91.

[68] G. Keith Still, Crowd Dynamics, PhD, University of Warwick, 2000, Chapter 5, available at: http://www.crowdmodelling.com/PhD-Chapter-5.html.

[69] Jeff Kenworthy and Gang Hu, ‘Threat to Global Survival? A Case Study of Land Use and Transportation Patterns in Chinese Cities, Murdoch University, 2000, available at http://www.istp.murdoch.edu.au/ISTP/casestudies/Case_Studies_Asia/china/chinese.html.

[70] ‘Schöne neue Welt,’ Profil, Bd. 25 (1994), p.160.

[71] John Pucher, Nisha Korattyswaroopam, Neenu Ittyerah, ‘The Crisis of Public Transport in India: Overwhelming Needs but Limited Resources,’ Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2004), p.101.

[72] Urteil gegen Fuchs. JuNSV Bd. XXV, Lfd. Nr. 641.

[73] MGK, Sobibór, p.185.

[74] Schelvis, Sobibor, p.103.

[75] Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p.73; cf. Vernehmung Petr Browzev, 19.8.1974, ZStL 208 AR-Z 643/71, Vol. 2, pp.458-463, here p.460; Protokol doprosa, Vasilii Shuller, 15.12.1964, ASBU Dnepropetrovsk 44-32132-1, pp.113-6.

[76] Rudolf Reder, 29.12.45, BAL 162/208 AR-Z 252/59, p.1177-1176; cf. Schelvis, Sobibor, p.105.

[77] PS-1553, also in Rückerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp. 62-63.

[78] Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, 6.6.1950, BAL 162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. 1, 43; also cited in Mattogno, Bełżec, 56.

[79] Erwin Lambert, 2.10.1962, BAL 162/208 AR-Z 251/59, Bd. 8, pp.1542-1543; cf. Schelvis, Sobibor, p.104.

[80] Franz Hödl, 29.03.1966, StA Dortmund, Verfahren gegen Gomerski.

[81] Schelvis, Sobibor, p.104.

[82] MGK, Sobibór, p.149.

[83] Franz Hödl, 29.03.1966, StA Dortmund-Gom-PB-III.

[84] This issue with be discussed further on in this chapter.

[85] See Chapter 3.