Kurt Thomas describes Camp I of the Sobibor killing center.
Transcript
KURT THOMAS: They were expert...trade experts. There were cobblers who made shoes to order, and boots. There were tailors who made clothing to order. There were goldsmiths. There was a shop of over 30 carpenters who made beautiful furniture. And the SS, who after 42 days of service went for 18 days on furloughs, and dragged every time anything they could get and ordered in the meantime from these shops.
All these shops were in the Camp of number 1...Camp number 1, where we also slept and where there was a kitchen; and in the center was a artisan well, where you pulled the water with a long rope...rod or pole. On the end of which, there was a hook; and you let a wooden bucket go down there and then pulled the water up.
That was camp number one.
Next to the German living quarters and the building where Niemann lived was the area of Sobibor known as Camp I. Jewish prisoners who had been kept alive for forced labor lived and worked there.
The camp was surrounded by an electrified fence with pine branches woven in to prevent people from looking in or out, as later described by several survivors. A second fence, guards on patrol, and a minefield made escape nearly impossible.
German staff living quarters (background) and Sobibor Camp I (foreground), as seen from a watchtower, early summer 1943. —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz
In the photograph above, two blurry figures in light colored shirts can be seen on the left, in the vicinity of what was either a workshop for prisoner labor or a communal toilet. These were likely prisoners. Stacks of firewood that prisoners were forced to gather are visible along the perimeter of the fence. The firewood was used to burn the corpses inside the killing area of Camp III. To the right, a guard can be seen patrolling between two perimeter fences. The large post office building in the far left background and railway station on the right predated the killing center and are still standing today.