Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history,talk.politics.misc
Subject: LEST WE FORGET: Sobibor, and gas chambers with tilting floors..
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Sobibor

"The name Sobibor was not immediately minted into the vocabulary of the
West, perhaps because by the time the record of the camp was exposed, the
casualty figures of the war itself had become statistics and the capacity
to respond to human suffering was blunted."

And thus begins tonight's tragic tale, with a disclaimer of epic
proportions - folks just couldn't HURT anymore - their souls had switched
off to protect themselves from the overload.

I submit to you that we, children of television, infused with death and
destruction since birth, served up in polite and public dosage, day by
weary day - that we grew to adulthood without giving much more than lip
service to the evils of our world, and that _our_ capacity to hurt, to
care, was nearly non-existant.

It is time that we paused, and took a long and clear look at the world
around us, before it gobbles us up once again.

"Yet Sobibor was one of the six largest extermination camps and matched
Auschwitz and Treblinka, not only in its death toll, but in assembly-line
techniques for extermination. The floors of Sobibor's gas chambers were
constructed to tilt, like the body of a dump truck, so that stacks of
corpses slid out smoothly. Along with the usual barbed-wire enclosures,
Sobibor was surrounded by a minefield and an adaptation of the water-filled
medieval moat. Hundreds of geese were kept in special quarters, not only to
appear on the tables of the SS mess but also because their raucous cackling
helped drown out the screams of the doomed inmates as they were killed in
the gas chambers, an unusual inversion of the classic Roman defense which
depended on geese, penned at the foot of fortified hills, to warn the
populace when marauders threatened the city.

It was at Sobibor that one of the most daring revolts flared, which again
alerted the Nazis to the enormous danger the Jews represented once they had
secured arms. Hoess of Auschwitz, in his prison autobiography, wrote that
the escape and its cost to the Nazis left a trail of shame. `The Jews,' he
noted, `were able by force to achieve a major breakout during which almost
all the guard personnel were wiped out.' Himmler was so outraged by the
`humiliation' that he ordered Sobibor to be destroyed and all evidence of
its activity erased.<22>

<22> Rudolf Hoess. Commandant of Auschwitz. p. 45

Quotes extracted from-------------------------------------------- 
"THE REDEMPTION OF THE UNWANTED", Abram L.  Sachar (New York: St.
Martin's/Marek, 1983.                                   pp. 41-42
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For an extensive bibliography dealing with the Holocaust, and containing over 
1100 citations, contact kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca - it will be sent to you
by return email. Additions to this bibliography are actively solicited.