Beyond the Himmelgang, in Camp 3, the sergeant-in-charge, Scharfuehrer Schnabel huddled near one of the gas chamber buildings with the three remaining SS men.
This was Sobibor’s heart, the place where people were killed with factory efficiency. The gas chamber buildings themselves, like every other structure in Sobibor, appeared ordinary and benign to casual observation. The buildings and the chambers they housed were quite small—little more than large shacks really. The victims were packed in like sardines. Each of the gassing buildings was connected to an old Russian tank engine which pumped carbon monoxide into the sealed chambers until Schnabel and his associates were confident that everybody inside was dead. Over the months Schnabel had worked it down to a science. He was quite proud of his unit’s production and effectiveness.
As with Sobibor in general, Schnabel operated with a relatively small team. Two SS sergeants operated the gas engines while Schnabel’s deputy supervised a squad of 15 Ukrainians that rotated through—two more Ukrainians usually manned the machinegun in the watchtower directly above the sub-camp.
The dirty work in Camp 3 was carried out by the Jews of the Sonderkommando and their Kapos. The Sonderkommando consisted of 40 Jewish men, usually relatively young and strong, who’s job it was to empty the gas chambers of their victims, and transport them to the mass graves, really just large open pits, that occupied most of the space in Camp 3. Since the graves were already mostly filled with several months of murderous work, Stagl had ordered the Sonderkommando, when not otherwise occupied, to begin digging several open air crematoria nearby. The crematoria when completed would have been, like everything else in Sobibor, cheap, simple and efficient—large pits intersected with discarded pieces of iron railroad track. Fires ignited at the bottom of the pit would burn the bodies piled upon the railroad tracks to ash, much like a giant grill.
Schnabel had been preparing for the cargo with his usual focus and drive when he heard shooting break out at the main camp. The sub-camp had neither a radio nor a telephone, so Schnabel had no way of knowing what was happening in the main camp, although he assumed that the train passengers had rioted. Schnabel dispatched a Ukrainian runner to Der Speiss but the man did not return.
Concerned, but hardly panicked, Schnabel locked up the Sonderkrmrnrado within their barracks and alerted the Ukrainians, who could be lazy. Since there were no defensive positions within Camp 3 other than the watchtower, mostly everyone just stood about.
From the watchtower above the sub-camp one of the guards had reported that a battle appeared to be raging at the rail platform, and prisoners were running about. Seconds later, as Schnabel watched, the guard and his mate were killed by sniper fire. That’s when Schnabel fled behind one of the gas chamber buildings with the other Germans. Ten minutes after the tower guards died, Schnabel and his men were joined by three other Germans who had fled the SS barracks. These fellows, whom Schnabel knew and trusted, recounted the attack on the Forward Camp and the probable death or capture of Stangl.
Sobibor, it appeared, was under a general assault by a combined force of escaped prisoners, and some well armed foreign soldiers. Schnabel ordered two of the recent German arrivals, both mere corporals, up into watch-tower to man the machinegun and report on the situation within the main camp. Reluctantly, the two men complied, climbing the tower and heaving the bodies of the two dead Ukrainians out.
Shortly after manning the machinegun, but before they could describe the situation in the main camp, they were also shot dead.
Schnabel stared at his remaining German comrades, at a loss for words. A Ukrainian guard kneeling in the dirt a few feet from the Germans suddenly keeled over, a neat bullet hole drilled into his chest.
Another Ukrainian tried to run behind one of the gas chamber buildings but was hit several times before he reached safety. This unhinged the remaining Ukranian guards who now began to shout and crawl to cover wherever they could. Some made it, but many were also hit.
Schnabel knew that the only way to defend Camp 3 was to block the Himmelgang. Two Ukranian guards were already sheltering within the covered way, and Schnabel decided that at the very least he should reinforce them. He ordered Untershmfuehrer Blum, the last of the SS barrack escapees, to round up as many Ukranians as he could and bar the Himmelgang.
Instead of saluting and setting off like a good SS man, Blum looked at Schnabel and asked “Why me?”
“Because I ordered you, corporal“ said Schnabel nervously.
“Send one of your chums” answered Blum, nodding at Henshel and Magdeburg, the two gas experts. The gas men, who were older and plumper than most of the SS in the camp shook their heads as if a puppeteer where directing them. They looked as pale as puppets as well, thought Blum.
“We are skilled technicians,” said Magdeburg. Blum snorted at that.
Schnabel unholstered his pistol, and pointed it at Blum. “Do your duty.”
Blum unholstered his own pistol, as if he were going to fight, but then turned away from Schnabel, and looked out into the open ground between the gas building and the entrance to the Himmelgang. He turned back toward Schnabel and the gas men. “Cowards” is all he said.
Blum ran out into the open calling for Ukrainians to join him. None did. He looked back at Schnabel. Bolander and Ilan shot Blum a second later. Blum fell, pierced by two bullets, one of which took off the top of his head. Schnabel and his chums pressed their bodies against the building and shivered.
In the Sonderkommando barracks, twenty meters away from Schnabel, 42 Jewish prisoners and three Kapos huddled together in the cramped windowless building. Like Schnabel, when the shooting began, the Jews assumed that the Germans were just perpetrating another massacre on the platform. Several long minutes later it dawned on some of the Sonderkommados that the Germans themselves might be under attack.
Near the front of the building David Sandler, a 21 year-old who used to work in a iron mill, and a veteran of three weeks in the death camp, managed to pry apart a pair of wooden slats in the wall. Just as he forced an opening, to his astonishment and glee, he saw an SS man hit by rifle fire and collapse into the dust. A few meters beyond the German lay the body of a Ukranian. Off slightly to the left of the German corpse, Sandler could just make out the corpulent body of the SS gasman Magdeburg, cowering in the lee one of his buildings.
Sandler reported all this excitedly to the others in the gloomy barrack.
“Shut up you!” shouted Judah Hertzburg, the head Kapo of Camp 3. Hertzburg was a big strapping man from Lodz. Unlike the other two Camp 3 Kapos, Hertzburg was quick to use his whip, and uncurled it now.
Sandler rose. He was exhausted and almost starved, but sensed that the time to act had come. He would he killed in a few weeks anyway if he did nothing.
“The Germans are being killed out there Hertzburg. Do you want to join them?” snarled Sandler.
“I told you…” began the Hertzburg, when Adolf Burstin, another Kapo grabbed his whip hand. Hertzburg turned on Burstin, a small, squat man with dark eyes and thick forearms.
“Judah. Let’s have a look,” said the smaller man.
“You can look, but I’m following my orders!” Hertzberg shouted, turning head around the darkened barrack, challenging the other men.
“Do as I say or you’ll be shot like dogs.”
Most of the Sonderkommandos were terrified of Hertzburg and the power he wielded. They knew his threat was not idle. Death in Sobibor was only a moment away. The Sonderkommados did the most disgusting and humiliating work in the camp, just to live another day. Most had already surrendered their last vestige of pride or honor. They were not a rebellious lot.