Free Outrage by Robert K. Tanenbaum

and then replaced it in his wallet. “And you know what the strangest part of all is? We didn’t resist; we went along like so many sheep to the slaughter. People acted as if we were all going on vacation together. Families packed suitcases and dressed in their best traveling clothes. The vacation would last until the war wasover, our parents told each other, and then we would all go home.
    “We were sent to a camp near the Polish village and rail station for which it would be named. A quiet place in the country called Sobibor. It was isolated, surrounded by forests and swamps, lightly populated but strategically placed near the large Jewish populations in the Chelm and Lublin districts.
    “Construction of the Sobibor camp had begun in March 1942, and it was a model of German efficiency. It existed on a large rectangle of land, four hundred by six hundred meters in size, that was cleared and surrounded by triple lines of barbed wire fence, three meters high and under the watchful shadows of strategically placed guard towers. Tree branches were intertwined in the fences so that the casual passerby wouldn’t know what he or she was looking at.
    “The camp itself was divided into three areas, each also surrounded by barbed wire fencing and more guard towers. The first was the administrative area closest to the railroad station, with a platform that could accommodate twenty freight cars at a time. It could have been a train station like any other in Europe,” Sobelman recalled. “We were told it was merely a transit point and that we would be moving on shortly. Only they would not say where we were going.
    “This area also included the living quarters for the guards, SS soldiers, and Ukrainians who were forced to work in concentration camps, though in truth, many of them enjoyed their work; after all, their people had a long history of murdering Jews.
    “The first area was also where prisoners used as the camp’s labor force were housed, including the
Sonderkommandos
,whom I’ll return to in a moment,” Moishe said before continuing. “The second area, called Camp Two, was where the new arrivals were marched to be separated from their belongings and each other. The young children went with the women.”
    Sobelman spoke quietly as he struggled to form the words. “That was the last time I saw my mother and sister. They and the others were taken to a building where they were forced to undress before going into a special hut to have their heads shaved so that the Germans could make use of their hair.
    “Most of those who arrived on the train soon passed from Camp Two to Camp Three through a walkway two or three meters wide and surrounded on both sides by barbed wire. It, too, was covered with branches so that the prisoners could not see out or be seen by those outside. The Tube, as it was called, ran for 150 meters—that would be more than one and a half of your American football fields—toward a group of trees,” the old man recalled.
    “Behind the trees was a large, ugly brick building containing three rooms, each about twelve feet by twelve feet. Into these rooms naked, frightened Jews were driven—as many as a hundred and sixty people, sometimes more, at a time, all crammed together and unable to move as they listened to the sound of diesel engines starting outside and then smelled the exhaust being pumped into the rooms.”
    Sobelman looked at the boys. “I want you to close your eyes and imagine what I tell you,” he said. “Now, imagine that you are in one of those rooms. You cannot sit down or hide. You cannot smell the carbon monoxide in the fumes, but you knowit is there. So you and the others begin to panic. You fight and claw and climb over one another’s naked bodies, looking for an escape. But there is none and you know that you are going to die, and all you can do is scream and pray.”
    Moishe closed his eyes. “Ach, I still can hear the voices of the Hasidic women shouting the Shema Yisrael