burn the bodies, and exhumed the bodies of people who had been shot from the pits where they had been buried. Early in 1942 two furnaces for burning bodies were built on the territory of the camp. As there were a great many bodies, in 1942 the Germans started building a huge new crematorium with five furnaces, which they completed in autumn, 1943. These furnaces burned continuously. The temperature in them could be raised to 1,500 degrees Centigrade. So as to be able to place more bodies in each furnace, the Germans dismembered the bodies, hacking off the extremities.

Furnaces Worked Round the Clock

The technical experts who thoroughly examined the structure of the furnaces came to the following conclusion: "The furnaces were intended for burning bodies and designed to function uninterruptedly. Four bodies with hackedoff extremities could be placed in one furnace at a time. It took 15 minutes to burn four bodies, and so with all furnaces working round the clock it was possible to burn 1,920 bodies in 24 hours. Taking into account the great quantity of bones discovered all over the camp (in pits, in vegetable gardens and manure heaps), the Committee of Experts believes that bones were taken out of the furnaces before they could be completely consumed, and that therefore, in fact, many more than 1,920 bodies were burned in 24 hours."

The Commission has established that over a long period, especially in the past two years, besides burning bodies in the special furnaces the Germans frequently burned bodies on bonfires, both on the territory of the camp and in Krempec Forest. Planks were placed across pieces of railing or automobile chassis, which served as fire bars, and corpses were put on the planks, then another layer of planks and another layer or corpses; from 500 to 1,000 corpses were placed on each bonfire. Inflammable liquid was poured over all, and the pile was set on fire. Every such bonfire burned for two days.

Witnesses Gospodarek and Matysek, from the village of Desenta near Majdanek camp and the village of Krempec, confirmed that they saw gigantic bonfires on the territory of the camp and in Krempec Forest, on which bodies of people shot or tortured to death by the Germans were burned. On the territory of the Extermination camp and in Krempec Forest a large number of sites where bodies were burned have been discovered. A truck frame on which bodies have been burned was discovered in a pit on the territory of the camp.

After the exposure of the German atrocities in Katyn Forest the Hitlerites became particularly zealous in exhuming bodies from pits and ditches and burning them. The medico-legal experts have opened 20 such pits, including 18 at Majdanek and two in Krempec Forest. In some pits there have been discovered considerable numbers of bodies which the Germans had no time to burn. For instance, as a result of excavations 42 bodies were discovered in Pit No. 1 near the crematorium, 368 bodies of men, women and

children in pit No. 19 in Krempec Forest; considerable numbers of completely decayed bodies and skeletons were discovered in other pits. Immense quantities of bones have been discovered in a number of pits.

Bones Ground in Mill

In order to conceal the gigantic scale of their mass extermination of people, the Hitlerite fiends buried the ashes in pits and ditches, scattered them over the large territory of the camp vegetable plots, mixed the ashes with manure and used them as fertilizer. On the territory of the extermination camp the Commission has discovered over 1,350 cubic meters of compost consisting of manure, ashes of burned bodies and small human bones. The Hitlerites resorted to grinding small bones in a special "mill." This mill and its design have been described in detail by witness Stetdiner, a Diesel mechanic who the Germans forced to work at this mill.

The former military commandant of the town of Lublin, Lieutenant General Hilmar Moser of the German army, stated: "I have no reason to keep silent on Hitler's grave crimes or to cover them up, and I consider it my duty to tell the whole truth about the so-called extermination camp set up by the Hitlerites near the town of Lublin along the Chelm highway. . . .

"In the winter of 1943–1944 a great number of those interned were exterminated, including, to my great indignation, women and children. The number of murdered people ran into the hundreds of thousands. The unfortunate people were shot or killed by gas. I was told many times that in the extermination camp the doomed people were forced to perform extremely hard work beyond their strength, and were urged on by brutal beatings. I learned with indignation that prisoners in that camp were also tortured before they were killed.

"In the spring of the current year an immense number of bodies were exhumed and burned in specially erected furnaces, evidently in order to cover up traces of the crimes perpetrated on Hitler's order. Gigantic furnaces were built of brick and iron and formed a crematorium with a large capacity. The stench of corpses often penetrated the town, a least its eastern part. It was clear, even to less well-informed persons, what was going on in that horrible place. . . . Himmler himself visited the camp when he arrived in Lublin in the summer of 1943, which confirms that its activities were directed by Hitler's government."

1,380,000 Corpses Burned

The Commission established that over 600,000 bodies had been burned in the crematorium furnaces alone, over 300,000 on gigantic bonfires in Krempec Forest, over 80,000 in two old furnaces and not less than 400,000 in the camp itself near the crematorium.

In order to cover up the traces of their crimes the Germans exterminated those of the camp who had worked in the gas cells and crematorium.

The Board of Medico-Legal Experts in the above-mentioned composition under the direction of Professor of Forensic Medicine Szilling-Singaliewicz, of Lublin Catholic University, as a result of examination of numerous medicolegal findings and material evidence, ascertained:

"In Majdanek camp, during all four years of its existence, there was carried out a deliberate, carefully considered and consistent system of mass extermination of people, both of those confined in the camp and those brought to the camp to be destroyed."

7. Hitlerites Plundered Valuables and
Property of Camp Inmates

The Hitlerites systematically robbed the camp inmates and those tortured to death. Material evidence discovered by the Commission in the camp a storehouse filled with the footwear of people who had been shot or who had died, a storehouse filled with various articles belonging to the inmates, as well as a storehouse which belonged to the Gestapo and was located in Chopin street in Lublin— proves that all the stolen articles and prisoners' belongings were carefully sorted and sent to Germany.

Enormous storehouses filled with footwear, discovered in the sixth section of the camp, contain footwear with the trademarks of firms in Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Warsaw, Trieste, Prague, Riga, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Kiev, Krakow, Lublin, Lvov and other towns, footwear of various styles, footwear of men, women, adolescents, children of preschool age, soldiers' boots and shoes and peasants' boots. Together with the footwear there was discovered in the storehouse a large quantity of parts of foot wear (soles, inner soles, heels), sorted, packed, stacked, and prepared for dispatch to Germany.

820,000 Pairs of Footwear

The Commission established that in theextermination camp alone there are more than 820,000 pairs of various kinds of children's, men's and women's footwear, which belonged to prisoners who were tortured to death or died. In the huge Gestapo storehouse in Chopin street in Lublin the Commission discovered large stores of men's, women's and children's underwear, as well as all sorts of articles of personal use, for example, several shelves with balls of knitting wool, thousands of spectacles, tens of thousands of pairs of men's, women's and children's footwear, tens of thousands of men's ties with trademarks of firms in various citiesParis, Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brusselstens of thousands of ladies' belts, some of which had been packed and prepared for dispatch, bathrobes, pajamas, bedslippers, a large number of children's toys, nipples for babies' feeding bottles, shaving brushes, scissors, knives, and a huge quantity of other household articles.

A large number of suitcases which had belonged to Soviet citizens, Poles, French, Czechs, Belgians, Dutch, Greeks,

Croats, Italians, Norwegians, Danes and Jews of various countries were also discovered there.

Instructions to Camp Commandants

In this storehouse the Commission discovered part of the office files, which show that the storehouse in Chopin street had been a base where articles were sorted and made ready for dispatch to Germany. Concerning the dispatch of articles which had belonged to persons shot in the camp there existed the following special instructions: “SS-Central Commissary Administration. Chief of Administration D-concentration camps. D-1 AC: 14 DZ. Orainenburg, July 11, 1942. To all commandants of concentrations camps. According to a statement of the Central Administration of State Security, packages of clothing were sent from concentration camps chiefly to the Gestapo Administration in Bruenn, and on several occasions these articles had bullet holes in them or were stained with blood. Some of these packages were damaged and thus outsiders were able to learn what the packages contained. Insofar as the Central Administration of State Security will shortly issue regulations concerning the disposal of articles left after the death of prisoners, immediately discontinue sending articles pending final clarification of the question of the disposal of articles left after the execution of prisoners. (Signed) Glicks, SS Brigade Commander and Major General of SS troops."

The testimony of captured SS troopers who formerly worked in the extermination camp reveals that it was a matter of routine for the personal belongings and property of prisoners to be plundered, and for various officials to use the property of persons tortured to death and shot. The German war prisoner Rottenführer SS trooper Vogel stated at a plenary session of the Commission: "I was assistant chief of the clothing storehouse at Majdanek camp. The clothing and footwear of exterminated prisoners were sorted there, and the best articles were sent to Germany. I myself in 1944 dispatched over 18 truckloads of clothing and footwear to Germany. I cannot say exactly how much footwear and clothing was sent away, but I affirm that there was a very large quantity. What I dispatched was only part of what was sent to the address: Platzensee-Berlin, Straf-Anstalt."

War prisoner SS Obersturmführer Ternes, a German army officer, who was financial inspector of the camp, testified: "I personally know that money and valuables taken from prisoners were sent to Berlin. Gold taken from prisoners was sent to Berlin by weight. All this loot was a source of income for the German state. A great amount of gold and valuables was sent to Berlin. I know all this because I worked in the financial inspection in this camp. I wish to emphasize that large amounts of money and valuables were not registered at all, as they were stolen by the Germans who took them from the prisoners."

Findings of Commission.

Thus the plundering of persons tortured to death in Majdanek Camp, as well as in other camps, was a definite source of income for Hitlerite plunderers of various ranks. On the basis of documentary material, the interrogation of witnesses of German crimes in the town of Lublin, in Majdanek concentration camp, in Lublin prison and in Krempec Forest, as well as on the basis of abundant material evidence discovered by the Commission and the findings of the medico-legal, technical and chemical experts, the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission has established:

1. The Majdanek concentration camp, which the Germans called "Vernichtungslager,” i.e., Extermination Camp, was a place for the mass extermination of Soviet war prisoners, war prisoners from the former Polish army and civilians from various countries of Europe occupied by Hitlerite Germany, as well as temporarily occupied regions of Poland and the USSR.

2. At Majdanek, the inmates were subjected to an atrocious regime. Methods of mass extermination of inmates were single and mass shootings and murders, mass and single killings in gas cells, hanging, torture, violence and organized starvation. In this camp SS and Gestapo hangmen engaged in the mass extermination of Poles, French, Dutch, Italians, Serbs, Croats and persons of other nationalities, as well as of Soviet war prisoners and war prisoners from the former Polish army-both persons confined in this camp and others specially brought to this camp from other places to be destroyed.

3. In order to cover up the traces of their criminal activities, the Hitlerite hangmen devised a whole system of measures, such as burning the bodies of prisoners on huge bonfires in Krempec Forest and in the camp, burning in a specially constructed crematorium, grinding of small bones, scattering ashes in the fields and vegetable gardens belonging to the Hitlerite administration of the camp, preparation of huge piles of fertilizer consisting of human ashes mixed with manure. The Hitlerite bandits, as a matter of routine, robbed the people they had tortured to death, so enriching rank and file SS troopers and Gestapo men as well as those at the top of the gang. Robbery of the inmates of this camp was a source of considerable income for the Hitlerite state.

The Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission has established that in the four years' existence of the Majdanek camp the Hitlerite hangmen, on the direct orders of their criminal government, exterminated by mass shootings and mass murder in gas cells about 1,500,000 persons-Soviet war prisoners, war prisoners from the former Polish army, persons of various nationalities: Poles, French, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Croats and a huge number of Jews.

Names of the Criminals

The Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of the German Atrocities in Lublin has established

that the main responsibility for these crimes is borne by the Hitlerite governments, the superhangman Himmler and their SS and SD henchmen on the territory of Lublin province.

The main executors of these atrocities were: Obergruppenführer Globotschnik, leader of SS and SD in Lublin; exgovernor of Lublin province, Wendler; leader of SS and SD in Lublin, Sturmbannführer Dominnik; chiefs of war prisoners camps in Poland, Sturmbannführer Liski; camp chiefs Standartenfuehrer Koch and Obersturmführer Kegel, Assistant Camp Commandant Haupsturmführer Meltzer; Haupsturmführer Kloppmann, Obersturmführer Tumann, Oberscharführer Mussfeld, Oberscharführer Kostial, camp doctors Hauptscharführer Erich Gruen, Hauptscharführer Rindfleisch, Hauptsturmführer Blanke, chief of the crematorium Untersturmführer Wende and all other persons who acted as hangmen and are guilty of exterminating guiltless people.

(Signed)

Chairman of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission, Vice President of the Polish National Liberation Committee, Witos;

Assistant Chairman of the Commission, Kudryavtsev (USSR);

Members of the Commission: Member of the Polish National Liberation Committee Sommerstein, Professor Grashchenkov (USSR), Professor Prozorovsky (USSR), Prelate of Lublin Catholic Cathedral the Priest Doctor Kruszinski, President of the Lublin Red Cross Christians, Professor of Lublin Catholic University Bialokowski, Professor of Lublin University Poplawski, Attorney of Lublin Court of Appeal Balcezak, President of Lublin District Court Szczepanski.

German Death Factory in Sobibor

The Sobibor extermination camp was established as part of Operation Reinhard in 1942 in the eastern part of the Lublin district in Poland. As many as 250,000 Jews were killed at Sobibor from May 1942 to October 1943, when the camp was closed after a major uprising. Following the revolt, the Germans completely liquidated the camp, leaving no trace of its existence. The Soviet Army and troops of the Polish People's Army liberated the region during the summer of 1944.

The following article describes the atrocities that occurred in Sobibor as told to the liberators by one of the few who escaped. Three hundred prisioners escaped during the October uprising; about fifty survived. Included is an account of the 1943 uprising.

Reprinted from A. Rutman and S. Krasilshchik, "German Death Factory in Sobibor," Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Information Bulletin, (Washington; D.C.) vol. 4, no. 102 (15 September 1944): 5–7.

World public opinion already knows of the Lublin camp of destruction. We saw the huge incinerators with charred human remains the ditches where many thousands of people lie buried, the gardens fertilized with human ashes, the storehouse packed with hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes removed from the feet of men, women and children.

But the Lublin camp had many counterparts. Factories for the wholesale extermination of human beings existed also in Sobibur, Treblinka, Belzec, Oświęcim and near Chelm. In Chelm we met survivors of the Sobibor camp who told us about their horrible experiences behind the barbed-wire fence of the German concentration camp at the station of Sobibor in Lublin Province.

The following story was told us by B. Freiberg, from Warsaw, who escaped by a miracle:

Destruction Conveyor

"I was brought to Sobibor in May 1942. The camp was opened on May 15, 1942. Actually there were three camps situated on the vast grounds. The first had various workshops where the prisoners made shoes, clothing and furniture for the Germans. There were about a hundred people working there. I was put to work in the second camp, where the stores and warehouses were situated. There were 200 of us working in that camp; 120 men and 80 women. Whenever a fresh party of prisoners was brought the Germans lined them up on the grounds in front of our camp and ordered them to undress.

"You will be sent to the Ukraine to work,' Oberscharführer Michel would tell them. 'You must now go to the bathhouse before proceeding on your journey. You may leave your clothes here and will get them back half an hour later.'

"The people undressed. Three barracks were built for the women, one for removing their shoes, the second for their clothing, while in the third their hair was cut and packed in sacks for shipment to some factories in Germany. From the second camp the people were taken to a third one. Entrance to this camp was strictly forbidden to the prisoners of the first two camps, but we knew what was happening there. None of the people taken there ever returned. A brick building with heavy iron gates was situated there. Oberscharführer Getdinger was always stationed at the gate to see that order was maintained. As soon as about 800 people passed into the building the doors were locked.

"An electric engine in an adjoining wing pumped poison gas into the building, and as a rule all the people inside perished in 15 minutes. There were no windows in the building with the exception of a tiny window on the top through which the German known as the bathhouse superintendent watched the people suffocating to death.

"At a signal from him the flow of gas was stopped, the floor in the building slid apart automatically and the bodies dropped into the basement, where special carts were kept. Dozens of doomed people loaded the bodies into the carts,

which took them to the woods on the grounds of the third camp where they were buried in a huge pit. Then and there the Germans shot the people who had removed the bodies from the basement.

"As soon as the doomed people undressed in the second camp we gathered all their clothes and sorted and stored them separately. They were later packed for shipment to Germany.

"Every day some eight to ten trains arrived at Sobibor, bringing 800 to 1,000 people each, yet the number of prisoners in the camp did not increase. All the newcomers were undressed and taken to the third camp to die in agony.

"I saw a train pull in from Byelostok packed with nude people. Some were completely exhausted and others dead. En route the people were given neither food nor water. Lime was poured over the dead and the living, causing the latter horrible torture. This was in June 1943.

"I saw the Germans lift children, throw them on the ground and kick them with their boots. I saw hungry dogs set upon defenseless people and tear them to bits.

"There was in our camp a brutal executioner, a German boxer from Berlin by the name of Gomerski, who could kill a man with one blow of a stick, and always boasted of it. Another German chauffeur by the name of Paul acquired skill in chopping off heads, arms and legs with one blow of an axe."

Production of the Death Factory

"At the end of 1942 the cremation of corpses began in the third camp. Rails were laid and fires were constantly kept burning under them. The Germans brought a special dredge for digging up the huge graves, and the bodies were heaped up on top of the rails. Thousands were burned every day; the fires were kept burning day and night, the flames rising very high. The stench was nauseating and suffocating.

"Bodies removed from the basement gas chamber were no longer buried but cremated at once. Special containers were fitted to the rails for collecting human fat. The furnaces were manned by a special crew of 150 prisoners. The ashes were collected in sacks and sent to Germany for use as fertilizer. The fat was packed in barrels, also for shipment to Germany. The Germans said that it made good soap. There was also a mill in the third camp for grinding human bones.

"Sometimes people were burned at the stake. One day I heard terrible screams from the direction of the third camp and later learned that women and children were thrown into the fire alive.

"I spent 17 months at Sobibor and fled with other prisoners when a rebellion broke out in the camp in October 1943.”

The lad who told us this story had a tired look in his eyes the eyes of an old man. They had seen too much suffering to retain their youthful luster.

The death factory in Sobibor was kept going day and night for 18 months. Trains rattled over Europe's railways,

bringing hundreds of thousands of people to Sobibor to be gassed and burned by the Germans, while trains leaving Sobibor for Germany carried the ghastly products of the death factory-cases filled with ashes, barrels of human fat, sacks of women's hair, carloads of clothing and shoes.

A Girl from Holland

Zelma Weinberg, from the Dutch town Zvolle, told us, “All that I have seen and experienced cannot be described in words. At any rate, I cannot find adequate words for it.” Zelma saw a German, Wolf, from Lind, approach naked children as they were driven to the brick gas chamber, hand out cheap German candy and pat their little heads, saying, "You'll soon get well here, children." The children were led off to their death of torture and Wolf watched them go, very pleased with his own sense of humor.

Zelma Weinberg knew a Dutchman who worked in the clothing storehouse of the second camp. One day he saw familiar clothing among a new heap received. He ran to the yard and among the crowd of nude people saw his whole family. He rushed toward them, but they were barely able to recognize him, so terribly had his appearance changed in the death camp. He pleaded with the Germans to kill him together with his dear ones, but it is too simple for Germans to kill a man. They like to see him suffer.

The Dutchman later recalled that he himself had written a postcard to his relatives, inviting them to come to Poland. Zelma had seen such postcards in Holland-one of the treacherous provocations of the executioners. Germans with maps in their hands went through the trains pointing out to the victims the places allegedly designated for Dutch settlers, and suggested that they write to their relatives in Holland to induce them to come to Poland. They took the bait and wrote. How many of them, realizing later that they were doomed, recalled with horror that they had themselves helped to lure their dear ones, their children, into the trap.

The girl from Holland spoke with great difficulty. She could find no words to express all that was plainly written in her face. Zelma Weinberg was brought to Sobibor in April 1943. After six months' work in the second camp she fled during the uprising on October 14, 1943.

The Uprising in the Camp

The prisoners in Sobibor resisted the Hitlerites. A few survivors will remember to their dying day the beautiful girl from Wodlawa who, before her execution, threw into the face of the Germans, "We will be avenged! There will be no mercy for you bandits!" The girl was brutally beaten with rifle butts and then shot.

Escape from Sobibor was almost impossible. The camp was fenced off with three rows of barbed wire. Rising above the wire were sentry towers and beyond it was a ditch three meters wide, after which there were minefields.

Nevertheless, many attempts were made. In June 1943 a Dutch journalist organized the escape of 72 prisoners. Nearly all the fugitives were caught and murdered by the Germans. Prisoners working near the infernal furnaces began to dig an underground tunnel in preparation for escape. When a 30meter passage was already dug, the initiators were caught and shot by Oberscharführer Neuman personally.

Many such attempts were made, but only Soviet citizens were capable of preparing and organizing a real uprising, as soon as they were brought to this camp. Here is the story as told by H. Powroznik, a carpenter from the village of Luboml:

"In August 1943, 600 Red Army officers and soldiers taken prisoner were brought to Sobibor from Minsk. Eighty were assigned to work and the rest were gassed and burned. Among the 80 left behind was a young officer. No one ever learned his surname. We called him Sashko and he said he came from Rostov.

"Immediately upon arrival at the camp Sashko began to prepare for an uprising and mass escape. Very scrupulously he selected assistants to help him carry through his plan of cutting the camp's system of communications and signals, killing the German guards and setting all the prisoners free. Knives and small axes which could easily be hidden were forged secretly at night in the prison shop.

"The uprising was scheduled for October 14, 1943. Many tailors and shoemakers of the first camp had asked their German clients to come for fittings at the appointed hour, 5:00 P.M. At that very hour the prisoners cut the camp's communications. When Oberscharführer Greuschut, chief of the prison guards, came to the shoemaker, the latter killed him with an axe as soon as he opened the door. Klatt, a guard, was also killed in the same shop. The tailor likewise killed his client by striking him on the head with an axe, and hid his body under the bed.

"The same thing also happened in the second camp. Unterscharführer Wolf and his brother were killed in the clothing storeroom. Unterscharführer Beckman fired back, but he was killed by Henrich Engekl, a young man from Lodz.

"Armed with weapons taken from the dead Germans the prisoners opened fire at the sentry towers. Those who had no arms were taught by Sashko to fill their pockets with sand and throw it into the eyes of the Germans. The blinded executioners were finished off with stones and sticks.

"After killing all the Germans we could find we made for the fence, tearing the barbed wire with everything we could lay hands on. We got across the ditch, but many perished on their way through the minefields. Then we began to drag boards from the camp to lay a passage through the minefields. Four hundred came through alive.

"When we reached the forest Sashko ordered us to break up into small groups and to try to get through to the guerrillas. The Germans organized pursuit and even planes were called in to shell the forest. Fifty fugitives from Sobibor survived.