Assembly and Undressing Area: Camp II

Chaim Engel recalls the deception by the SS.

Transcript

INTERVIEWER: Tell me, was there a deception of the people in the transports. Were they given receipts? I mean, was there a deception so they didn't know where they were going?

CHAIM ENGEL: Yeah. Well, [INAUDIBLE], it wasn't receipts or something. The deception was-- first of all, they came there, somebody came and told them that they go to [GERMAN], which in German that means to the disinfect their clothes, and they go to work, and they have this baths to have because it goes cholera or some sickness around. So they kept them.

And also what they did is when people came like from Holland, they gave him postcards and to write back to their house that they arrived here, and it is nice, and they go to work here. To deceive even the people what didn't come yet when they get a note like that. So they had the hope they come to work here. So that was a deception. To the last minute, they kept us as secret as possible. So to the last minute, they did.

Whoever didn't know by then didn't know it till the last minute. So there was a deceiving, really.

The Barnyard

Starting in summer 1942, Camp II was completed. It consisted of a fenced-in barnyard with barracks to sort the victims’ clothes and other confiscated personal belongings upon arrival of the trains.

The manner in which arriving transports were processed focused on maximum efficiency. The Germans deported Jews to Sobibor from German-occupied Polish and Soviet territory; from Germany itself; and from Austria, Slovakia, Bohemia and Moravia, the Netherlands, and France. Trains containing 1,000 or more people of all ages would arrive at the station and be brought to a side rail track. Several train cars at a time were uncoupled and pushed to a platform where the SS, Trawniki guards, and forced laborers waited. 

The SS used a combination of violence and deception to subdue the arrivals. Jews arriving from ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland were more likely to resist because they had heard rumors about the existence of killing centers. These people were driven out of the freight wagons with whips and rifle butts, often accompanied by shootings. The victims were ordered to leave their luggage on the platform, enter the “reception” area, hand over any remaining belongings, and strip. Total strangers were forced to undress together, adding to the humiliation and fear. Terrified, the victims were chased by the Trawniki guards through the so-called “tube,” a narrow fenced path camouflaged with pine branches that led to the gas chambers.

Jews arriving from countries in western Europe (the Netherlands, France, Germany, and German-annexed Austria) were less likely to have heard of the rumored existence of killing centers. They were often met by the SS with deception. An SS man in a white lab coat would give a brief speech misleading the arrivals to believe that this was a “resettlement camp” and that they were about to receive a shower and be “disinfected.”

Esther Raab describes how she and fellow prisoners were forced to take part in the deception orchestrated by the SS.

Transcript

ESTHER RAAB: The transport when, usually, most of them used to come in during the night, but there were some in the daytime too. When you heard that whistle from the Kommandant of the camp, that meant that the transport is coming in. And the men in the camp should get ready to unload the people. So that whistle was like somebody would tear out your insides.

You knew here are other people, children, older people, people who never did anything wrong in their life, and they're going to go. And you cannot say. You cannot resist. You cannot-- just inside it builded up, the revenge and that resentment and that anger and that pain, you know that, we had builded up inside. And sometimes, they came in during the day.

And sometimes so many came in that they couldn't handle. So they would put them behind our barbed wire where we were fenced in and tell us just to walk back and forth and forth and back. So what they told them that they were going to work should seem to them to be the truth. And it was hard. It was hard. You walk by, and you look at the face, and you know in a half hour won't be here. Can't even tell. You just put another smile, your best face you can.

It hurt. It was very, very hard.

Sobibor survivor Esther Raab, who witnessed the arriving transports as a member of the “sorting commando,” recalled: “Scharführer Michel [NB: SS-squad leader Hermann Michel], we used to call him the House Speaker, you know, and he would say in German, ‘Jews, you think you’re going to die. It won’t happen. It won’t happen to you. You’re brought here, you give up all your belongings with a number, you’ll get a number, and you hang up your clothes, and you go to the showers because we’re afraid of sicknesses, and then you’ll be sent to work.’”  

The SS routinely distributed postcards to the victims, instructing them to write home that they had arrived safely and were well taken care of. Some of the arrivals had received similar postcards from family members who had been previously deported to Sobibor. Separated by gender, the victims then walked the path to the supposed showers.

Forced Labor in the Barnyard

The barnyard served a second function as well. Imprisoned people were forced to raise livestock such as pigs, fowl, and rabbits as food for the German officers. In the stables, they took care of the commandant’s horses, including the one on which Niemann would patrol the killing center. If these animals became sick or died, the prisoners could be killed as punishment. The barnyard also helped deceive new arrivals into believing that they were in a non-threatening place.

In this photograph, Johann Niemann can be seen standing in front of one of the sorting barracks in the barnyard of Camp II with an unidentified Jewish prisoner, summer 1943. Referred to by the SS as an “Erbhof” or ancestral farm and identified as such by the prisoner-made signage above the entrance gate, this is the area where the victims were stripped naked before being murdered.

A well can be seen in the middle of the barnyard. Imprisoned people had to rake the sand on the ground for valuables which the victims might have frantically tried to hide before being forced into the gas chambers. In the background in the middle of the photograph is the stable in which the commandant’s horses were kept, identified by another prisoner-made sign with two horse’s heads.