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Eli Rosenbaum   Letter 01   22-Nov-1999   Barry the Terrible of Wherever
"Thank you very much — and Shalom." — Judge Moshe Landau
Director of the US Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Eli Rosenbaum, has already made his appearance on the pages of the Ukrainian Archive in his earlier role as General Counsel for the World Jewish Congress, performing among other tasks that of monitoring the work of Ukrainian writer Michael Bociurkiw.  Below is a fuller picture of Eli Rosenbaum's career:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1995 (202) 616-2771
  TDD (202) 514-1888


ELI ROSENBAUM NAMED DIRECTOR
OF OFFICE OF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS


WASHINGTON, D.C. — Eli Rosenbaum has been named director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Jo Ann Harris, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, announced today.

OSI is the unit of the Criminal Division that identifies and takes legal action against those who participated in prosecutive activities of the Nazi regime during World War II.  "OSI's outstanding work has led to the successful deportations of many such individuals from the United States," Harris said.

At the same time Harris also announced the appointment of Ronnie L. Edelman, a career Justice Department attorney, as Principal Deputy at OSI.

A native of New York, Rosenbaum, 39, came to the Department through the Honors Program after his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1980.  He was a trial attorney with OSI from 1980 to 1984.  In 1984, Rosenbaum left the Department to work as a corporate litigator with a New York law firm and then as general counsel for the World Jewish Congress.  He later returned to OSI in 1988 where he was appointed as Principal Deputy Director.

Edelman, who received her law degree from New York University in Buffalo in 1979, also was an Honors Program attorney when she joined the Department.  Initially she was assigned to the Fraud Section.  There she moved up through the ranks, serving as Deputy Chief of the Consumer and Institutional Fraud Branch, and as Acting Chief of the Government Regulatory Branch.  In 1982 she joined OSI and was named Deputy Director in charge of litigation in 1990.

"Ronnie and Eli are a tremendous pair who have dedicated extraordinary efforts to further OSI's mission," Harris said.  "They represent the highest degree of professionalism and integrity and I am grateful that they will continue to provide OSI with their exceptional leadership."

In 1994, OSI filed seven new cases, the highest yearly total in the last decade.  To date, some 42 persons have been removed from the United States and 50 have been stripped of their citizenship.

# # # #

95-081

The reader is able to consult images of all pages in the Demjanjuk trial transcript on which survivor testimony alludes to the dog, Barry the Terrible of Treblinka.
Barry: The Bravest St. Bernard
After having sent off the letter to Eli Rosenbaum below, it came to my attention that Barry might be a favorite name given in children's stories of brave St. Bernards, as evidenced for example in Amazon offering the following two books for sale:

B. Hurlimann, Barry the Story of a Brave St. Bernard, and

Lynn Hall, Barry: The Bravest St. Bernard, whose cover is shown on the left.


  November 22, 1999


Eli Rosenbaum
Director, Office of Special Investigations
Criminal Division
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Eli Rosenbaum:

It appears that the prosecution of John Demjanjuk for being Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka having ended in the vindication of John Demjanjuk, his persecutors insist on having the last word, and now accuse John Demjanjuk of having been a camp guard at Sobibor.  However, as Holocaust history has become so corrupted that no one knows what happened at Sobibor, I wonder how the OSI can view service at Sobibor as culpable even if KGB-supplied evidence were to be credited with suggesting that some such service did take place.


No Forensic Evidence, Only Survivor Testimony

Where does our knowledge of Sobibor come from?  Yitzhak Arad, then director of Yad Vashem for the previous fifteen years, testified in 1987 at the trial of John Demjanjuk in Jerusalem that not a shred of physical or forensic or documentary evidence can be found supporting Holocaust stories of the camps Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, and that our knowledge of these camps comes exclusively from survivor testimony:


Blatman:  Now, Dr. Arad, could you tell us something about the setup of the camp.  I gather that the camp was obliterated entirely.  There are no original maps extent and that all descriptions and all research into the manner in which it were set up are based on evidence and trestimonies by witnesses.

Arad:  Both Treblinka and other camps, once they had fulfilled their task of extermination they were liquidated, disbanded, they were obliterated, they were turned into agricultural land and some greenery was planted.  All we do have is survivors' evidence and testimony, especially Yaakov Vernick, who a few months after he escaped from the Treblinka Camp at the time of the revolt — I will come back to that at a later stage — he had prepared a drawing, a sketch or diagram of the Treblinka Camp and he in fact constructed in Israel, at a later stage, a scale model of Treblinka on the basis of the drawing he had brought along.  And this is the main source for our information about the camp.
Demjanjuk trial transcript, 17Feb87, pp. 229-230.  All errors in the Demjanjuk trial transcript (such as the "trestimonies" above) can be credited to the original Israeli document, and were not introduced by the Ukrainian Archive.

Levin:  The camps of Belzec and Sobibor, were they also destroyed, or does anything remain of these camps?

Arad:  Sobibor and Belzec were totally eliminated, same innihilation.  Sobibor was almost an exact duplicate of this and Belzec, the first camp was somewhat different.  But, on the basis of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were built and along the same lines — all three of them were utterly eradicated.  Now, afterwards the government of Poland decided to establish monuments but there are no remains of the camp as such.
Demjanjuk trial transcript, 17Feb87, pp. 242-243.

No forensic evidence, only survivor testimony.  But what is the nature of this survivor testimony?  It is, quite simply and indisputably, that survivor testimony concerning Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka lacks credibility.  After prosecutors have selected a handful of the most coherent witnesses from the hundreds who volunteer, the testimony that is elicited from that elite handful turns out to be a string of palpable falsehoods.

Was Barry the Terrible at Treblinka?

Before proceeding to demonstrate how little we can rely on eyewitness testimony — the only kind of evidence that exists — concerning Sobibor, it will be necessary to review some evidence concerning a certain dog.  This dog had six outstanding characteristics:


(1) Name.  The dog's name was Barry, a name which in English receives the alternative spellings Beri, Bari, and Barri.

(2) Owner.  The dog belonged to Kurt Franz, often referred to as "Lulke" or "Lalke," meaning "doll" because of his good looks.

(3) Size.  The dog was large, sometimes being described as large as a calf.

(4) Attack target.  The dog had been trained to attack prisoners, particularly male genitals.

(5) Attack signal.  The dog attacked upon a command which addressed the dog Barry as a man, and the human victim as a dog, as for example: "Man, go get that dog!"

(6) Location.  The dog was at Treblinka.

The fraction of the six above characteristics that is confirmed in each quotation below appears within square brackets at the end of each heading:


(1) In 1944, Yankiel Wiernik places Barry at Treblinka [3/6]

Yankiel Wiernik mentions Barry three times, twice on p. 152 and once on p. 155, corroborating three of the six characteristics (the name Barry, the owner Kurt Franz, the location Treblinka), as for example:

A group of Scharführers and Ukrainian guards, headed by Untersturmführer Franz and his dog Barry stood before us.
Jankiel Wiernik describing Treblinka, One Year in Treblinka, 1944, in Donat, The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary, 1979, p. 152.


(2) In 1948, Oskar Strawczynski places Barry (Bari) at Treblinka [5/6]

One might infer that a dog able to tear a worker to pieces must be large, but as dog size is not explicitly articulated, the Strawczynski testimony is given a score of only [5/6]:

Oskar STRAWCZYNSKI:  The SS Unterscharführer Franz was looking man, tall and young.  He had a dog named Bari.  The dog was trained that at the words "Mensch, nimm den Hund," he jumped at the worker and tore him to pieces.
Oskar Strawczynski testifying concerning Treblinka, Extracts from the particulars of evidence in support, in Marian Muszkat, Polish Charges Against German War Criminals (Excerpts from some of these) Submitted to the United Nations War Crimes Commission by Dr Marian Muszkat, Polish Main National Office for the Investigation of German War Crimes in Poland, Warsaw, 1948, p. 195.  The words "was looking" were in the original, and probably should have been "was a good looking"

(3) At the Eichmann trial in 1961, Kalman Teigman places Barry at Treblinka [6/6]

Attorney General  This Franz amused himself with the prisoners.  Can you describe this?

Teigman  Yes.  He had a large dog named Barry.  Upon a shout of Jude or Mensch, schnapp den Hund! (Man, catch the dog!), the dog would attack people and actually tear off pieces of their flesh.
Kalman Teigman describing Treblinka, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 66, 06Jun61, p. 1209.

(4) At the Düsseldorf trials in 1965 and 1970, many witnesses place Barry at Treblinka [6/6]

The dog Barry was brought to the Treblinka extermination camp either late in 1942 or early in 1943.  He was the size of a calf, with a black and white spotted coat, a mixed breed but with the physical characteristics of a Saint Bernard predominating.  At Treblinka he attached himself to the defendant Franz and adopted him as his master.

Mostly, when Franz made the round of the "Lower" and "Upper" camps, Barry would accompany him.  Depending on his mood, Franz would set the dog on inmates who for some reason had attracted his attention.  The command to which the dog responded was, "Man, go get that dog!"  By "Man" Franz meant Barry; the "dog" was the inmate whom Barry was supposed to attack.  But Barry would attack an inmate even if he merely heard Franz shouting at that individual.  In other words, the command "Man, go get that dog!" was not always necessary to galvanize Barry into action.  Barry would bite his victim wherever he could catch him.  Barry was the size of a calf so that, unlike smaller dogs, his shoulders reached to the buttocks and abdomen of a man of average size.  For this reason he frequently bit his victims in the buttocks, in the abdomen and often, in the case of male inmates, in the genitals, sometimes partially biting them off.  When the inmate was not very strong, the dog could knock him to the ground and maul him beyond recognition.
Excerpt from First Düsseldorf judgement, in Alexander Donat, The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary, Holocaust Library, New York, 1979, pp. 312-313.

The above is by no means all that the Düsseldorf tribunal had to say concerning the dog Barry.  In fact, the judgement expatiated at length on Barry's qualities and behavior, detailing instances in which Barry attacked the genitals of inmates, listing something like a dozen survivors who provided testimony concerning Barry, and even going so far as to summarize the sworn expert opinion of the director of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Research in Seewiesen on the question of whether Barry could be vicious when in the presence of his master Kurt Franz, but otherwise gentle.  However, these further details need not concern us here.  Sufficient for our purposes is to note the presence of all six of the Barry characteristics that were enumerated above.

(5) At the Demjanjuk trial in 1987, Pinchas Epstein places Barry at Treblinka [6/6]

On the question of dog size, if one interprets a "Bernadine" dog as a "St. Bernard," and infers from this that the dog was large, then one arrives at a score of [6/6]:

A:  Lulke would appear and would torment inmates without any reason whatsoever.  He had a sort of blood thirst, he had this dog, a Bernadine dog, the dog was called Barry and Barry he would call Mensch and he would call the inmates Hund.  He would call the dog and say 'Mensch beiss der Hund', [Bite the dogs] and the dog was commanded to bite them brutally.
Pinchas Epstein describing Treblinka, Demjanjuk trial transcript, 24Feb87, p. 885.

(6) At the Demjanjuk trial in 1987, Yosef Czarny places Barry (Bari or Barri) at Treblinka [6/6]

Yosef Czarny:  Your Honors, in Treblinka there was another murderer, not a human being — he was a dog and this dog was called Bari.  It was Lalke's dog.

I remember this dog, Your Honors.  Quite big, with brown spots and this dog had an adjutant — an assistant — I was told that he wasn't a Jew, he was related to the President of Czechoslovakia at the time — Yan Masaryk.  I don't know why he had got there.  He may have had a Jewish wife.  But he was the adjutant of this dog.  And this dog — at the time that I had to transport one thing — from one place to another — Lalke would promenade with this dog and he would say to one: mensch, man, take this dog and this dog had been trained to snap off the genitals, the sexual organ.  [...]  But whoever was called out for this and he would say — he would call to this dog.  And the dog would tear of the sexual organ and of course, blood would flow all over the place.  And he would walk with his legs astride.
Yosef Czarny describing Treblinka, Demjanjuk trial transcript, 03Mar87, p. 1530-1532.

O'Connor:  He [Kurt Franz] was the biggest sadist in the camp.  I have once, although it was forbidden, laid down in the chicken pen.  He found me out through his tracking dog which had the name of Barri.  He has trained the dog to bite.  The dog bit me.
Yosef Czarny describing Treblinka, Demjanjuk trial transcript, 03Mar87, p. 1613.  Defense counsel Mark O'Connor reads from a letter written by Josef Czarny in 1959.

(7) At the Demjanjuk trial in 1987, Chil Rajchman places Barry at Treblinka [4/6]

Taking the existence of the command "Man, bite this dog!" as evidence that the dog did bite upon command raises the score to [4/6]:

Q:  Do you know who Kurt Franz was?

A:  Unfortunately yes I know.  That was the assistant commandant of Camp I and II.  The Assistant Commandant of Treblinka Camp.  I also knew his dog.
Chil Rajchman describing Treblinka, Demjanjuk trail transcript, 11Mar87, p. 2292.

Interpreter:  Witness said: he slapped me on my face and I had to get slapped on the other side, too.  He then addressed his dog and said: man, bite this dog!  The man was the dog.  And the dog was the man.
Chil Rajchman describing Treblinka, Demjanjuk trail transcript, 11Mar87, p. 2294.  The interpreter reads back Chil Rajchman's testimony to judge Levin.

From the accumulation of evidence above, there would appear to be considerable agreement as to the characteristics of the dog called Barry, and in particular considerable agreement that Barry was at Treblinka.


Or was Barry the Terrible at Sobibor?

However, it appears that two out of the three Sobibor survivor prosecution witnesses at the Eichmann trial place Barry not at Treblinka, but at Sobibor, so that his owner changes as well from Franz to Paul.


(1) At the Eichmann trial in 1961, Dov Freiberg places Barry (Beri) at Sobibor

Questions below are being put by the Attorney General, Gideon Hausner, and answers are being made by Dov Freiberg:


A.  Right from the first day, people were killed, shot, set on by a dog called Beri.

Q.  Whose dog was it?

A.  At first, the dog belonged to an SS man of Camp 3 who was called "Beider" (bathhouse attendant), because he was in charge of the bathhouses, the gas chambers.  Afterwards, the dog was passed on to Unterscharführer Paul, one of the greatest sadists in the camp.  He used to call the dog and say: "Beri, my man, grab that dog — Beri, you are acting in my place."  Generally speaking, very few of the people who were mauled by the dog remained alive, since the Germans could not stand injured persons, sick persons.  I was bitten twice by that dog — I still bear the marks on my body.  By chance — and everything was a matter of chance — I remained alive.  There was one other dog, but he was less powerful.  The dog "Beri" I am talking about was the size of a large calf, and if he got hold of a man, that man was helpless.  The dog would attack him, and he had to submit to it.  There were latrines there.  After work, people were afraid to sit there.  The dog was very well trained; if he came to any place, he would finish off anyone who was there.
Dov Freiberg describing Sobibor, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 64, 05Jun61, p. 1168.


(2) At the Eichmann trial in 1961, Moshe Bahir places Barry (Beri) at Sobibor

The name Beri and the characteristic of attacking sexual organs in the following description is enough to confirm that Moshe Bahir is talking about the same dog, but now again not at Treblinka, but at Sobibor:


A.  When we were running two hundred metres with the bundles, there was a pit, and when someone was injured or had his sexual organs bitten by the dog Beri, Unterscharführer Paul Grott would say to him: "What happened to you, my poor man?"
Moshe Bahir describing Sobibor, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 65, 05Jun61, p. 1179.

Although it is possible to imagine that two almost-identical dogs existed, one at Sobibor and one at Treblinka, or that a single dog Barry spent some of his time at Sobibor and some at Treblinka, perhaps the most plausible explanation is that a story of Barry the Terrible was floating around among prosecution witnesses, and the two Sobibor witnesses Dov Freiberg and Moshe Bahir became confused as to which camp the dog was supposed to have been at, and appropriated him to bolster their stories of Sobibor.

It may be noted parenthetically that Eichmann's defense counsel, Dr. Robert Servatius, could have made something of one witness placing Barry where he had been traditionally placed — Treblinka — whereas two other witnesses placed Barry at Sobibor, but Dr. Servatius allowed the witnesses to present their clashing testimony without challenge.


Other Instances of Questionable Testimony Concerning Sobibor

At the Eichmann trial, a total of three witnesses testified concerning events at Sobibor.  Unfortunately, all three witnesses proved to lack credibility.  The first two — Dov Freiberg and Moshe Bahir — we have already seen above discrediting their own testimony by placing the dog Barry at Sobibor.  The third Sobibor witness was Ya'akov Biskowitz.  The testimony of all three only occasionally rises to the level of plausibility, and more often sinks to the depths of fantasy.  Below are some further instances of the three Sobibor witnesses indulging in fantasy.


(1) Dov Freiberg: Ivan the Terrible of Sobibor was one of a pair of "half-shaved" Jews

We have already seen above that the Dov Freiberg testimony is discredited by his placing the dog Barry at Sobibor instead of at Treblinka.  On top of that, we see below that if we credit the testimony of Dov Freiberg of Sobibor, then we are going to have to believe that Ivan the Terrible of Sobibor was Jewish, and along with another Jewish prisoner had peculiar shaving habits.  Questions below are being put by the Attorney General of Israel, Gideon Hausner, and answers are being made by Dov Freiberg:


A:  There was a certain Jew there, whom Paul and all the Jews called "Der schreckliche Ivan" (Ivan the Terrible).  Half the beard of this man had been shaved off, half the hair of his head, half his eyebrows and half his moustache.

Q:  Who shaved him in this way?

A:  A Jewish barber.  There was another one, on the other side.  They used to appear every day at the roll-call, half shaven.
Dov Freiberg describing Sobibor, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 65, 05Jun61, p. 1172.


(2) Dov Freiberg: Ukrainian guards supported Jewish insurrection at Sobibor

If we credit the testimony of Dov Freiberg of Sobibor, then we are going to have to believe that Ukrainian guards collaborated with prisoners in organizing revolt (and thus that any Ukrainian guard who was at Sobibor might deserve commendation today, and not blame), that a Ukrainian guard demonstrated extraordinary courage in resisting the Germans (and thus perhaps deserves recognition by Yad Vashem), that the Germans decapitated eighty Sobibor prisoners, and that a photograph of these decapitations has been discovered (and thus should be tendered in evidence at any prosecution relating to Sobibor):

Witness Freiberg  A Jew.  He headed the organization for revolt.  And, at that time, there were some individuals amongst the Ukrainians whom we thought it was possible to talk to.  They related all kinds of stories about partisans, and a conspiracy was established between him and the Ukrainians to organize a revolt.  One of the Ukrainians apparently disclosed this; at a roll-call in the evening, they took him out and began to interrogate him as to who were the organizers of the planned escape.  This man withstood beatings and endless tortures and maintained: "I was the only one who wanted to escape."  He did not reveal anything.  The Germans said that if he would not tell them, they would take all the people of the block — I don't remember how many there were in the block to which he belonged — they would take them to Camp 3, and there they would cut off the heads of all of them in front of him, and he would be the last to be killed.  He said: "In any case, you do as you like — from me you will not learn anything."

Then an order was given to the entire block to move to Camp 3 — the block numbered eighty persons.  The next day, we learned that the Germans kept their word, and all the people were beheaded.  And, after the War, there was evidence from a young man who is now overseas, that he caught the German who was responsible, Novak — he was in the Russian zone — they searched his home and found all kinds of photographs; amongst the photographs they found was a picture of the decapitation.
Dov Freiberg describing Sobibor, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 65, 05Jun61, pp. 1174-1175.


(3) Moshe Bahir: Sobibor had a landing strip and a casino

We have already seen above that the Moshe Bahir testimony is discredited by his placing the dog Barry at Sobibor.  On top of that, if we are going to credit the testimony of Moshe Bahir, then we are going to have to believe that Sobibor had a landing strip and a casino, and that when Bahir worked at the Sobibor casino, he changed his uniform twice a day and showered before serving the German officers.  Below, Moshe Bahir is answering the questions of the Attorney General of Israel, Gideon Hausner:

A.  I saw him [Himmler] for the second time in 1943 — roughly in the month of February, but then it was not a train that arrived — then the officers arrived by plane — we also knew that.  I was then working in the German officers' casino.  I worked there for eight months, starting the day after the first visit, for on the day after the first visit, the two Jewish girls who worked in the German casino were killed, and, in their stead, I was chosen to work there, together with my friend, Joseph Pines.  From that day, I worked in the casino until March 1943, about one month after the second visit of Himmler and his colleagues.

Q.  Is this Joseph Pines still alive?

A.  No, he was killed during the revolt.

Q.  In the casino you were engaged in cleaning, cooking and serving?

A.  Yes.  I was engaged in cleaning, cooking and serving.  I also had a special uniform, and I used to change it twice a day, and I also took a shower before serving.
Moshe Bahir describing Sobibor, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 65, 05Jun61, p. 1180.


(4) Ya'akov Biskowitz: Sobibor Gas Chambers had Trap-Door Floors

If we are going to credit the testimony of witness Ya'akov Biskowitz of Sobibor, then we are going to have to believe that the floors of the gas chambers at Sobibor opened downward, allowing the victims to fall into train cars that carried the bodies to be burned; and we are going to have to believe that the fire of the burning bodies could be seen — "without exaggeration" — from a distance of twenty kilometres:

A:  After some time, a buzzing sound would be heard, the floor opened up, and the victims fell into the deep hollow below and were conveyed in this little train into the pit where the eighty men of Camp 3 were working, and they burned the bodies.  The fire that was ablaze in Sobibór could be seen, without exaggeration, from a distance of twenty kilometers.
Ya'akov Biskowitz describing Sobibor, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 65, 05Jun61, p. 1184.

Later in Biskowitz's testimony, the Presiding Judge, apparently recognizing the impossibility of the trap-door floors, attempts to salvage Biskowitz's credibility by inviting him to qualify somewhat, to say that he had not actually seen these trap doors but had only been passing along what he had heard.  Despite repeated attempts to get Biskowitz to back down, though, Biskowitz refuses to take the hint, backing down almost not at all, resulting in the Presiding Judge cutting Biskowitz's testimony short despite his eagerness to "describe just this one further incident."  The incoherence of the longer story that we see Biskowitz insisting on telling below could not have enhanced his credibility either.  We expect Eichmann's defense counsel to cross-examine Biskowitz in order to discredit him, but Dr. Servatius makes nothing of Biskowitz's fantasy of trap-door floors:

Presiding Judge  You described the inside of the gas chamber.  For example, you told us how the floor opened up and the bodies fell into the railway waggons.

Witness Biskowitz  Into the hollow below.

Q.  Did you see this with your own eyes, or are you talking of things that you heard from others?

A.  I will describe a shocking scene here.

Q.  But first of all — did you, in general, have an opportunity of seeing these things from the inside?

A.  Not everybody had the opportunity, but I, by chance, did.  By chance I was taken to bring a cart with a barrel of chloride.  When I was passing by the two larger stores in Camp 2, I detached the cart and pushed it towards Camp 3.  I was supposed to leave it near the gate, but I could not hold the vehicle back.  The gate opened and it pushed me inside.  Since I knew I would not get out alive from there, I began to run back at top speed and managed to reach my place of work without anyone noticing.  I kept this a secret — I am stressing this — even from the inmates of the camp who worked with me.  From a distance, I saw the pit and the hollow and the small train that carried the dead bodies.  I did not see the gas chamber from the inside; I only saw, from the outside, that there was a very prominent roof, and that the floor opened and the bodies fell below.

Q.  You came to this conclusion from the nature of the structure?

A.  Not from the nature of the structure — I saw it from afar even while I was running away quickly, although I cannot describe it exactly, after nineteen years.

Q.  Please understand me.  You are somewhat familiar with these matters.  Did you see the floor when it had opened up?

A.  I did not see that — I merely saw that underneath the gas chamber, there was a hollow which already contained bodies.

Presiding Judge  Thank you, Mr. Biskowitz, you have concluded your testimony.  I know you have not told us everything.  But there was no alternative.

Witness Biskowitz  There was another shocking case which I witnessed, and I should like to describe just this one further incident.

Presiding Judge  I am very sorry.  I have already explained it to you.  It is not only those who appear here who want to relate their story, and it is simply not possible.  Thank you very much — and Shalom.
Ya'akov Biskowitz describing Sobibor, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 65, 05Jun61, p. 1188.


Demonstrated above is that we have no more than to read survivor testimony concerning Sobibor to recognize that it lacks credibility — this despite the fact that the witnesses whose testimony we are reading have been painstakingly selected from among a stampede of witnesses rushing to gain access to the courtroom limelight.


No Forensic Evidence and No Credible Survivor Testimony Leaves the OSI Without Justification for Prosecuting

On the one hand, Holocaust authority Yitzhak Arad informs us that no forensic or documentary evidence exists supporting Holocaust stories of Sobibor.  On the other hand, we see demonstrated above that the best Sobibor witnesses lack credibility.  Therefore, even if KGB-supplied evidence suggesting that John Demjanjuk wore a German uniform at Sobibor were to be credited, as nobody knows what happened at Sobibor, American courts should find themselves unable to attach any culpability to him.



Lubomyr Prytulak


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