Prisoners of Sachsenhausen, 19 December 1938
Sachsenhausen
Russian built fake Nazi 'gas chamber'
at Sachsenhausen Although the War and
Nazism were over, Schirmer and a few fellow-prisoners were forced to construct a
gas chamber and execution room, to show the world what the Nazis had done.
After completion, at about the end of October 1945, Dipl.-Ing. Dörbeck
was brought before the political officer alone and received precise instructions
about the explanations he was to give to Soviet groups of visitors. He had to
say the following: This installation, which was built by the Nazis, served to
kill [Vernichtung] Jews and Soviet officer prisoners. Each day some 200 people
were gassed and about twenty-five were shot. This went on from 1943 till 1945
(April).
From about December 1945 until the
end of 1947 an average of two tours a week, each consisting of some thirty to
forty Soviet men, mostly soldiers and people from the GPU, and women, were
escorted by Dörbeck round the installation. There were often officers amongst
them who quite openly expressed doubts about the age of the installation because
they saw that the concrete was new, that there were no bullet holes from the
executions in the concrete wall and that the blood stains (red paint) were very
meagre and unconvincing......the number of victims of
the NKVD camp Sachsenhausen is known quite precisely. Schirmer reckons they
amounted to about 24,600 ('give or take a hundred').
Prisoners of Sachsenhausen, 19 December 1938