Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history,talk.politics.misc
Subject: LEST WE FORGET: "New, Improved" Sobibor Gas Chambers Operational
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Sobibor,Wirth

Sobibor's three single-room gas chambers simply could not cope with
the task at hand - their capacity was only 600 human beings at a time. So,
during a 2-month lull in the Autumn of 1942, the they were partially
dismantled and replaced with three new ones.

The new facilities were constructed by the same man who built the new gas
chambers at Treblinka, an SS Unterscharfuhrer Lambert, and SS Scharfuhrer
Lorenz Hackenholt, who ran the gas chambers at Belzec. Christian Wirth sent
them both to Sobibor.

"The new six-room gas chamber building had a corridor that ran through its
center, and three rooms on either side. The entrance to each gas chamber
was from the corridor. The three gas chambers were the same size as the
existing one, 4 x 4 meters. The killing capacity of the gas chambers was
increased to nearly 1,300 people simultaneously. With the renewal of the
extermination activities in Sobibor, in October, 1942, the new gas chambers
became operational." 

The Germans, ever efficient, then added a locomotive-driven trolley from
the railway siding to the burial pits, for those prisoners too sick to walk
to their own death in the gas chambers. This replaced the old horse- and
prisoner-drawn carts which had a tendency to tip over - this narrow-gauge
railroad ran about 300-400 meters, and included "five or six trollies and a
small diesel locomotive."

Excerpted from....----------------------------------------------
BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps
Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7
------------------------------------------------------(p.123)---

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