Sobibor "Gas chamber" Archeological research undertaken September 2014

[StefanM]

The headlines are at present misleading if the Spiegle media report online is accurate, it states:

"The archeologists still don't have final proof that these are the gas chamber foundations, but everything suggests that they are -- the position between the Himmelfahrtstrasse, the crematorium and the remains of the barracks of the Sonderkommando -- the mostly-Jewish prisoners responsible for removing the bodies -- as well as a water hole. Last Wednesday, experts from Auschwitz visited the site. "They immediately said, 'That's it'," says Haimi."

"...Everything suggests that they are..." is not science and is surely just speculation until there is definitive proof and IMO the archeologists should keep quite until incontrovertible evidence is discovered. Only that will silence the deniers once and for all.

[CARL]

No Stefan, sadly nothing will ever silence the deniers and filth spouters...regardless of what evidence is available.

[CampX]

WOW and Thank you for this post, I find everything about this sort of thing Interesting.

Dean O

[porta]

Interesting indeed!

[Datrus]

Sorry Carl i am not trying to acts a "denier or filth spouter" as you wrote but how do you fit +150 people into a 4X4 m room? I just could not help thinking about the math behind this.

Cheers!

[CARL]

Your question is one that many have asked regarding the sheer scale of mass murder within such seemingly confined spaces, such as those noted above. I will attempt to answer it as consisely as possible. Keep in mind that I quoted survivor's estimates that have recently been corrected - the Spiegel feature linked earlier quotes a size of 5 x 7m (16 x 23ft). Still a small space but certainly capable of such a capacity. The article also mentions up to 100 hundred persons would have been killed within each room - again, this information does not relate to the earlier statistics that were sourced from the memories of survivors.

Imagine being crushed in to the point of not being able to breathe...and then more were forced in...and yet more still. Patently, difficult for us to imagine but remember that the witnesses who quoted such figures were likely including many children, not just adults, in their estimates - research the Dutch casualties of Sobibor for example (briefly addressed in the thread linked below), it becomes clear how many infants and children were murdered at the site. Adults of the period, not to mention the poor emaciated souls in question, were also considerably smaller than we are today.

KL-Herzogenbusch - The Jewish Children's Transport

[Bill T]

Not sure if any of you follow Redditt, but for the 71st Anniversary, a woman named Esther who is heavily involved in Research and possibly an author about Operation Reinhard, did a "Ask me Anything" where members could ask her questions about the camps.

Here are some excellent links she gave to Interviews of survivors of Sobibor.

To Sobibor and Back: An Eyewitness Account: Kalmen Wewryk
wewryk

Official Sobibor Interview Site:
Welkom op Sobibor interviews - Sobibor Interviews

Anyway, here are period photos of Sobibor that she shared of some SS/Polizei men and the Fake chapel and shooting pits: (may be well known images)

[Bill T]

"A number of romantic relationships between prisoners developed in the camps and a few later led to marriages among surviving escapees." - Esther



Eda Fischer and Yitzchak Lichtmann, both Polish, met in Sobibor, escaped and married


Polish Chaim Engel met Dutch Selma Wijnberg in Sobibor and married after in 1945 and had a baby!


Chaim and Selma in the USA many years later!!

[HPL2008]

Imagine finding love in such a hellish place... Just goes to show you that, even when surrounded by death and with no reason to expect anything else for oneself, people still go on; life goes on.

[Gary J]

Likely that they both could only have feelings for someone who had gone through, and knew, the same trauma ... Bless them !