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Kazimierz Skarżyński was a Pole living in the village of Wólka Okrąglik near the Treblinka Camp who testified twice in front of a Soviet investigative commission about the Treblinka Camp, once on 22 August 1944, and then again one day later. In his first deposition, he claimed to know from Jews incarcerated at Treblinka that…
The German and Slovak government agreed in early 1942 that Germany would take all of Slovakia’s Jews in return for a certain payment. During the first phase in March and April, only Jews fit for labor were deported to the labor camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz. Starting in late April 1942, everyone was deported, including…
Many a witness has claimed that the bodies of Holocaust victims were processed, and their body fat was used to manufacture soap and other fat-based products, such as lubricants for machinery. Such rumors started circulating in Poland in the summer of 1942 in connection with the deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. These…
Documented History Wartime documents concerning Sobibór are very rare, but the few that do exist do not corroborate the orthodox narrative. Chronologically the first of these few documents is a telegram sent by Hans Höfle to the SS headquarters in Berlin on 11 January 1943, which was intercepted and deciphered by the British (see the…
Roman Sompolinski was a Polish Jew who was arrested in 1939 and, after staying at various camps, ended up in Auschwitz at the end of 1943, where he claims to have worked inside Crematorium II as a member of the Sonderkommando from December 1943 until February 1944. From Auschwitz he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen in…
Sonderkommando is a German term meaning “special unit” or “special squad.” It is used to this day in German military and police forces to denote units that have been assigned special tasks outside of routine duties. This was also the case during the Second World War. Many of the subunits of the Einsatzgruppen operating in…
The modern method of source criticism was developed in the mid-1800s by German historian Leopold von Ranke, but it is in general applicable to all fields of academic inquiry. More generally expressed, it should be called “evidence criticism.” It is based on the observation that evidence needs to be evaluated as to its reliability, accuracy…
Introduction The Soviet Union played four roles within the context of the Holocaust: Crime Scene Victim Perpetrator Propagandist The last role is discussed in detail in the section on the Soviet Union of the entry on propaganda, so it will not be covered here. Anti-Bolshevism was one of the four main motives of National-Socialist enmity…
Rudolf Spanner was a professor of human anatomy at the university of Danzig until 1946. Primitive soap cakes confiscated at his institute were submitted during the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal by the Soviets as proof that the Germans turned the bodies of murdered camp inmates into soap. It turned out that these pieces of soap…
General Usage in German Wartime Documents The German term Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) and other related terms, such as Sonderaktion (special operation) and Sondermaßnahme (special measure) appear on numerous occasions in original German wartime documents. In a general context of the Second World War, German documents containing the term “special treatment” could have both beneficial as…
Albert Speer (19 March 1905 – 1 Sept. 1981) was Germany’s Minister of Armaments and War Production from 8 February 1942 until 30 April 1945. He was indicted during the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal for his extended use of forced laborer in the Third Reich’s various construction and armament projects that he managed. He was…
Elisa Springer (12 Feb. 1918 – 19 Sept. 2004) was an Austrian Jewess who married an Italian and moved to Italy in 1940, living under a false identity. She was betrayed in 1944, arrested and deported to Auschwitz, arriving there in early August. After three months she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen Camp. She went…
Szymon Srebrnik (10 April 1930 – 16 Aug. 2006) was a Polish Jew who, during an interview with Judge Bednarz on 29 June 1945, claimed that at age 13 he was arrested with his mother and taken to the Chełmno Camp. He is one of only three Chełmno inmates who have testified about their alleged…
During his time as commander of Einsatzgruppe A since Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, SS Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker compiled two extended reports on the structure, personnel and activities of his task force. The first of these so-called Stahlecker Reports covers events and activities since the outbreak of hostilities until and including 15 October 1941….
At the beginning of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Walter Stahlecker (10 Oct. 1900 – 23 March 1942), SS Brigadeführer, was the head of Einsatzgruppe A operating in the Baltics and northern Russia. He is the author of two extended reports on the activities of his Einsatzgruppe, the so-called Stahlecker Reports. Stahlecker died as…
Numerous witnesses have claimed to have been present when an alleged homicidal gas chamber at a German wartime camp was opened after a mass execution using poison gas. Many of them have described that the packing density of the victims inside the gas chamber was so high that there was no room for the dead…
Franciszek Stanek was a Polish employee at the Auschwitz railway station during the war. He was interrogated by the Soviets on 3 March 1945, during which he helped fill in the information gap caused by the lack of documents on transports by claiming vastly exaggerated numbers of deportation trains arriving at Auschwitz: 150 transports in…
Franz Stangl (26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971), SS Hauptsturmführer at war’s end, worked various positions within the so-called Euthanasia Program from early 1940 until March 1942. After this, he was transferred to Aktion Reinhardt. He served as commandant of the Sobibór Camp from 28 April until 28 August 1942, when he was transferred…
Hans Stark (14 June 1921 – 29 March 1991), SS Oberscharführer, served at the Auschwitz Camp from Christmas 1940 to November 1942, with an extended furlough from Christmas 1941 until the end of March 1942. In June 1941, he joined the Political Department. In preparation of the Frankfurt Auschwitz show trial, he was interrogated on…
Jean-François Steiner (born 17 Feb. 1938) is a French-Jewish author who in 1966 published a novel, to some degree ghost-written by Gilles Perrault, which is allegedly based on statements of former inmates of the Treblinka Camp. In spite of it being presented as fiction, it was initially nevertheless highly praised by the orthodoxy and was…
Ursula Stern was an inmate of the Sobibór Camp. According to a deposition summarized and published by the Dutch Red Cross, Stern claimed that there was one gas chamber at this camp into which the gas was fed through showerheads. After the murder, the floors opened, and the bodies were discharged into a space below….
Yakov Steyuk was a Ukrainian Jew interned in the Syretsky Camp, 5 km from Kiev. On 18 August 1943, he was taken from there to Babi Yar, a place where tens of thousands of Jews are said to have been shot and buried by the Germans in mass graves in late September 1941 (see the…
Oskar Strawczyński was a Polish Jew deported to the Treblinka Camp, where he claims to have arrived on 5 October 1942. He was interviewed about his experiences on 7 October 1945. His knowledge about the claimed exterminations occurring at that camp are all from hearsay: “From the accounts of Hersz Jabłkowski, who was a blacksmith…
Julius Streicher (12 Feb. 1885 – 16 Oct. 1946), a German newspaper publisher and National-Socialist politician, is most famous for his tabloid newspaper Der Stürmer – which translates to “The Striker” or “The Attacker.” This periodical is today most-renowned for its radical and at times vulgar anti-Jewish articles and cartoons. To this day, these cartoons…
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