|
Sobibór (, or ''Sobibor'') was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the village of Sobibór, in occupied Poland, within the semi-colonial territory of General Government, during World War II. The camp was part of the secretive Operation Reinhard, which marked the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland. The camp was situated near the rural county's major town of Włodawa (called ''Wolzek'' by the Germans), 85 km south of the provincial capital, Brest-on-the-Bug (Brześć nad Bugiem in Polish). Its official German name was ''SS-Sonderkommando Sobibór''. Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, as well as the Soviet POWs, were transported to Sobibór by rail. Most were suffocated in gas chambers fed by the exhaust of a large petrol engine.〔Schelvis 2007, p. 100: ''Testimony of (SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs ) about his own installation of the (at least) 200 HP, V-shaped, 8 cylinder, water-cooled petrol engine at Sobibor.''〕 Up to 200,000 people were murdered at Sobibór〔''Raul Hilberg.'' The Destruction of the European Jews. Yale University Press, 1985, p. 1219. ISBN 978-0-300-09557-9〕 and possibly more. At the postwar trial against the former ''SS'' personnel of Sobibór, held in Hagen two decades into the Cold War, Professor Wolfgang Scheffler estimated the number of murdered Jews totalled a minimum of 250,000.〔( Sobibor − The Forgotten Revolt ) (Internet Archive). Webpage featuring first-person account of Holocaust survivor and ''Sonderkommando'' prisoner age 16, Thomas 'Toivi' Blatt.〕 During the revolt of 14 October 1943, about 600 prisoners tried to escape; about half succeeded in crossing the fence, of whom around 50 evaded capture. Shortly after the revolt, the Germans closed the camp, bulldozed the earth, and planted it over with pine trees to conceal its location. Today, the site is occupied by the Sobibór Museum, which displays a pyramid of ashes and crushed bones of the victims, collected from the cremation pits. In September 2014, a team of archaeologists unearthed remains of the gas chambers under the asphalt road. Also discovered in 2014 were a pendant inscribed with the word "Palestine", in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, dating from 1927; earrings; a wedding band bearing a Hebrew inscription; and perfume bottles that belonged to Jewish victims. ==Background== Beginning in 1940, the Nazi ''Schutzstaffel'' had established the so-called "Lublin reservation" near Sobibór. It comprised 16 forced labour camps, built as part of the new Nisko Plan. The district was intended to become an agricultural centre of the General Plan East, inhabited by the ethnic German "colonists" brought by ''Heim ins Reich'' into the Empire. About 95,000 Jews expelled from as far away as Warsaw and Vienna were brought into the area in order to build latifundia, in exchange for a small monthly pay. Most prisoners were housed in a network of sub-camps set up in pre-existing structures such as converted school buildings, factories, and farms. The Krychów camp was the main branch of the new complex. It was set up at a former Polish correctional centre and was the largest of the 16 forced labour camps of the Nisko Plan. During preparations for the Wehrmacht attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland the Plan was discontinued. Soon after that, the heavy concentration of Jews in the area was discussed by the Nazi officials at the October 1941 meeting in Lublin, attended by Hans Frank, Ernst Boepple, and Odilo Globocnik, among others, proposing the creation of a new order. Sobibór extermination camp was built in March and April 1942 as soon as the Final Solution was set in motion at Wannsee.〔Aktion Reinhard Camps. ''(Sobibor Labour Camps. )'' 15 June 2006. ARC Website.〕 By this time the Bełżec extermination camp was already operating, and as of 17 March 1942 it was used for mass extermination of Jews deported from the Lublin Ghetto.〔 The new camp's location, near the Sobibór village, was selected due to proximity of the ChełmWłodawa railway line connecting General Government with ''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sobibór extermination camp」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|