Aftermath
Within days after the uprising, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the camp closed, dismantled and planted with trees.
See also: Sobibor TrialKarl Frenzel, third in command at the camp and commandant of Sobibor's Lager I, was convicted of war crimes in 1966 and sentenced to life. He was released after sixteen years on appeal and because of his health. Blatt interviewed him in 1983 and taped it. Frenzel, who was at the camp from its inception to its closure, said the following about the prisoners killed at Sobibor:
| “ | Poles were not killed there. Gypsies were not killed there. Russians were not killed there...only Jews, Russian Jews, Polish Jews, Dutch Jews, French Jews. | ” |
Due to Frenzel's testimony, Blatt convinced the Polish government to change the memorial plaque at the site. It had read, "HERE THE NAZIS KILLED 250,000 RUSSIAN PRISONERS OF WAR, JEWS, POLES AND GYPSIES."
Now it reads, "AT THIS SITE, BETWEEN THE YEARS 1942 AND 1943, THERE EXISTED A NAZI DEATH CAMP WHERE 250,000 JEWS and APPROXIMATELY 1,000 POLES WERE MURDERED." The new plaque continues with language to note the revolt and escape of Jews from the camp.
Franz Stangl, chief commandant of Sobibor and later of Treblinka, fled to Syria. Following problems with his employer taking too much interest in his adolescent daughter, Stangl moved with his family to Brazil in the 1950s. He worked in a car factory (German manufacturer, Volkswagen) and was registered with the Austrian consulate under his own name. He was eventually caught, tried and convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1971 he died in prison in Düsseldorf, a few hours after concluding a series of interviews with the British historian Gitta Sereny.
Gustav Wagner, the deputy Sobibor commander, was on leave on the day of uprising (survivors such as Thomas Blatt say that the revolt would not have succeeded had he been present). Wagner was arrested in 1978 in Brazil. He was identified by Stanisław Szmajzner, a Sobibor escapee, who greeted him with the words, "Hallo Gustl." Wagner replied that he remembered Szmajzner and that he had saved him and his three brothers. The court of first instance agreed to his extradition to Germany but, on appeal, this extradition was overturned. In 1980, Wagner committed suicide.
John Demjanjuk, alleged to be one of the guards, was temporarily convicted by a German lower court as an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews and sentenced to 5 years in prison on May 12, 2011. He was released pending appeal and died in a German nursing home on March 17, 2012, aged 91, while awaiting the hearing. As a result of his death, before the German Appellate Court could try his case, the German Munich District Court declared that Demjanjuk was "presumed innocent," that the previous interim conviction was invalidated, and that he had no criminal record.
Erich Bauer, commander of Camp III and gas chamber executioner, explained the perpetrators' sense of teamwork in order to reach an atrocious result:
| “ | We were a band of "fellow conspirators" ("verschworener Haufen") in a foreign land, surrounded by Ukrainian volunteers whom we could not trust....The bond between us was so strong that Frenzel, Stangl and Wagner had had a ring with SS runes made from five-mark pieces for every member of the permanent staff. These rings were distributed to the camp staff as a sign so that the "conspirators" could be identified. In addition the tasks in the camp were shared. Each of us had at some point carried out every camp duty in Sobibor (station squad, undressing, and gassing). | ” |
Read more about this topic: Sobibor Extermination Camp
Famous quotes containing the word aftermath:
“The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)