Hi,

I know the title is a bit misleading, but I couldn't think of anything else. I remember seeing, in the film in question, some Jews in the Sobbibor camp who killed a guard by stuffing a wad of paper or a rag or something in his mouth and then repeatedly punching him in the stomach/chest. Is it possible to die in this way?

PS. Apologies if anyone finds this myth offensive, I do not condone what happened during the period of time in which the film is set. No offence intended.

Could easily happen. A rag, or some such, placed in the mouth, often works like a one-way valve - you can blow out past it, as you cheeks "puff out", but when you try and suck in, the rag is drawn in to the narrower confines of your throat and prevents ingress of air. A number of accidental suffocations have occurred when people have been "gagged" in this way. And we've all seen people punched in the stomach get "winded", whereby spasmodic reation of the diaphragm causes you to forcibly exhale. Restricting the ability to inhale, whilst simultaneously forcing the victim to exhale, would dramatically speed up the process of suffocation - most people, in extremis can survive for several minutes on the air left in their lungs - take that away and suffocation could occur in 30 seconds or less.

I don't know particularly about Sobibor, but there are many, (often unheard,) tales of quite amazing acts of resistance in the camps, including the three Polish Jews in Auschwitz, who, after clubbing two SS men to death, calmly donned their uniforms, jumped in a car, and "escorted" the third man out of the gate! The Auschwitz Museum contains a number of particularly gruesome artifacts in this vein, but although we hear so much about Nazi atrocities carried out on a submissive people, very few stories of attempts at resistance get heard. Your Sobibor story seems quite likely - it would certainly be an extremely effective method of nearly-silent killing, and many of the inmates were the intelligensia of their day - perfectly capable of logically developing a plan to use such a method. For you information, SS records indicate that over 300 SS personnel died in the camps at the hands of prisoners.

da

quote:

Originally posted by J D Shootist:
Could easily happen. A rag, or some such, placed in the mouth, often works like a one-way valve - you can blow out past it, as you cheeks "puff out", but when you try and suck in, the rag is drawn in to the narrower confines of your throat and prevents ingress of air. A number of accidental suffocations have occurred when people have been "gagged" in this way. And we've all seen people punched in the stomach get "winded", whereby spasmodic reation of the diaphragm causes you to forcibly exhale. Restricting the ability to inhale, whilst simultaneously forcing the victim to exhale, would dramatically speed up the process of suffocation - most people, in extremis can survive for several minutes on the air left in their lungs - take that away and suffocation could occur in 30 seconds or less.

I don't know particularly about Sobibor, but there are many, (often unheard,) tales of quite amazing acts of resistance in the camps, including the three Polish Jews in Auschwitz, who, after clubbing two SS men to death, calmly donned their uniforms, jumped in a car, and "escorted" the third man out of the gate! The Auschwitz Museum contains a number of particularly gruesome artifacts in this vein, but although we hear so much about Nazi atrocities carried out on a submissive people, very few stories of attempts at resistance get heard. Your Sobibor story seems quite likely - it would certainly be an extremely effective method of nearly-silent killing, and many of the inmates were the intelligensia of their day - perfectly capable of logically developing a plan to use such a method. For you information, SS records indicate that over 300 SS personnel died in the camps at the hands of prisoners.

Thanks for that reply, and answering my myth.

I studies Criminology and undergraduate and postgraduate level and specialised in war crimes for my dissertations. In particular I have developed a strong interest in the holocaust over the years.

The Sobibor uprising was led by Alexander Pechersky and in the first instance SS were lured into the tailors barracks to try on a leather coat only to be hit over the head with an axe. Other reports include SS men being stabbed with daggers and when prisoners managed to gain firearms others were shot.

I do not recall reading any testimonies from prisoner survivors (which are so few) or German or Unkrainian camp staff that mention any killings as you described. However this doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I know your question relates to the method of killing rather than the history of the Sobibor uprising but I thought you might like to know the very brief notes I made above to help set things in a little context!?

Interesting stuff, Mark1975. I don't know if your studies ever afforded you the opportunity to visit one of the camps, but if you can, you should. For very many years, particularly under communist rule, it was Polish Government policy, if not to deny the holocaust, then at least to ignore it. Since the fall of communism, and particularly in response to constant pressure from a Polish Pope, policy has changed. Auschwitz and Krakow, in particular, have recieved matched funding from the UN, after their identification as a World Heritage Sites, and considerable effort has been made at improving the facilities and the museum at Auschwitz, which also has an archive containing almost all of the holocaust documentation and material in Polish hands. Krakow, and in particular the Wawel Castle, have some very good museums and material on the German Occupation, when Hans Frank occupied Wawel Castle as Gaulieter of the "Central Government." And Oskar Schindler's "Deutsche Email Fabrik" factory is being restored as a museum, also.

I too, have read and studied fairly extensively, the history of the period, and I thought I knew what it was like. There is no substitute for being there, however. I had always assumed that stories of there being no birdsong in Auschwitz camp, or it being cold, even on sunny days, were just "old wives tales." They aren't. It is a remarkably spiritual place. I used to be a coach driver and I took tours there - I never once had a passenger who was completely unaffected by the place - reactions range from those who suddenly burst into tears when they are hit by the realisation of what the camp represents, to those who leave full of awe and amazement, describing the effect as being similar to the feeling that comes over you when visiting, say, a particularly magnificent cathedral - it suddenly makes you feel very small, in the great scheme of things. And, in some respects, it is the very mundane-ness and ordinary-ness of the place, which is most striking. You enter through the museum, where you see the photographs and the testaments and the huge piles of shoes, and dentures and boxes of hair - you know, in intimate detail, exactly what happened in this place - then you step in to the camp, with its neatly serried ranks of eminently practical military-style buildings, offices, the soldier's commissary, a barber's shop, a motor workshop, neatly laid paths and mown lawns - and an equally functional and practical industrial-scale crematorium. And that, of course, is what brings it all home to you - how can a rational, educated, civilised people, capable of building this quite normal and practical environment, have used it to try and systematically eradicate several entire races of people? (Jews, yes, but also Gypsies and, little realised in the west, a huge proportion of the, admittedly relatively few, German and Polish Muslims.) It is when that thought hits home that the true horror of the place really sinks in. It is cold in Auschwitz. And, if the birds sang while I was there, the blood rushing in my ears prevented me from hearing them.

(Sorry for banging on a bit, but I am one who believes that the holocaust must never be forgotten - not just to honour the dead, but to make sure it can never happen again. Schindler's List should be required watching in schools. I am continually horrified by the enourmous number of teenagers and young people I meet who simply have no concept of this period of our history.)

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