Stahlecker, Walter

At the beginning of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Walter Stahlecker (10 Oct. 1900 – 23 March 1942), SS Brigadeführer, was the head of Einsatzgruppe A operating in the Baltics and northern Russia. He is the author of two extended reports on the activities of his Einsatzgruppe, the so-called Stahlecker Reports. Stahlecker died as…

Stanek, Franciszek

Franciszek Stanek was a Polish employee at the Auschwitz railway station during the war. He was interrogated by the Soviets on 3 March 1945, during which he helped fill in the information gap caused by the lack of documents on transports by claiming vastly exaggerated numbers of deportation trains arriving at Auschwitz: 150 transports in…

Stangl, Franz

Franz Stangl (26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971), SS Hauptsturmführer at war’s end, worked various positions within the so-called Euthanasia Program from early 1940 until March 1942. After this, he was transferred to Aktion Reinhardt. He served as commandant of the Sobibór Camp from 28 April until 28 August 1942, when he was transferred…

Stark, Hans

Hans Stark (14 June 1921 – 29 March 1991), SS Oberscharführer, served at the Auschwitz Camp from Christmas 1940 to November 1942, with an extended furlough from Christmas 1941 until the end of March 1942. In June 1941, he joined the Political Department. In preparation of the Frankfurt Auschwitz show trial, he was interrogated on…

Stern, Ursula

Ursula Stern was an inmate of the Sobibór Camp. According to a deposition summarized and published by the Dutch Red Cross, Stern claimed that there was one gas chamber at this camp into which the gas was fed through showerheads. After the murder, the floors opened, and the bodies were discharged into a space below….

Steyuk, Yakov

Yakov Steyuk was a Ukrainian Jew interned in the Syretsky Camp, 5 km from Kiev. On 18 August 1943, he was taken from there to Babi Yar, a place where tens of thousands of Jews are said to have been shot and buried by the Germans in mass graves in late September 1941 (see the…

Strawczyński, Oskar

Oskar Strawczyński was a Polish Jew deported to the Treblinka Camp, where he claims to have arrived on 5 October 1942. He was interviewed about his experiences on 7 October 1945. His knowledge about the claimed exterminations occurring at that camp are all from hearsay: “From the accounts of Hersz Jabłkowski, who was a blacksmith…

Streicher, Julius

Julius Streicher (12 Feb. 1885 – 16 Oct. 1946), a German newspaper publisher and National-Socialist politician, is most famous for his tabloid newspaper Der Stürmer – which translates to “The Striker” or “The Attacker.” This periodical is today most-renowned for its radical and at times vulgar anti-Jewish articles and cartoons. To this day, these cartoons…

Strummer, Deli

Adele “Deli” Strummer (née Aufrichtig, 2 May 1922 – 25 July 2016) was an Austrian Jewess who was deported to Theresienstadt in 1943, then a while later for eight days to Auschwitz, from where she was sent to a labor-subcamp of the Flossenbürg Camp. Toward the end of the war, she was evacuated to the…

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Stutthof

Just one day after the outbreak of open hostilities between Germany and Poland, the German authorities established a detention camp near the town of Stutthof, some 20 miles east of the City of Danzig, meant to contain anti-German Polish political activists. This region had been separated from Germany after the First World War and was…

Suchomel, Franz

Franz Suchomel (3 Dec. 1907 – 18 Dec. 1979), SS Unterscharführer, became a photographer at the Hadamar euthanasia institution in March 1941. In August, he was transferred to the Treblinka Camp, were he confiscated and inventoried the property brought in by Jewish deportees. In October 1943, he was briefly posted to the Sobibór Camp while…

Sułkowski, Jan

Jan Sułkowski was a Polish Jew who claimed to have been interned at the Treblinka Camp. He claimed in a post-war deposition published in 1948 that one way of murdering Jews at the camp consisted of forcing them to climb up a “death bridge,” a scaffold built for that purpose, then shoot them down as…

Survivors

Psychology In Western societies, Holocaust survivors are revered as martyrs and saints. Challenging their claims is a sacrilege; in fact, it can even be a crime in many countries. Survivors have joined their own organizations, and are supported by both NGOs and by many governments to pursue their various financial, political and societal interests. They…

Süss, Franz

Franz Süss (or Szüsz, born 12 April 1902) was a Slovak Jew deported to Auschwitz in late May 1942, where he claims to have been assigned to the Sonderkommando. He made a deposition in 1964, the protocol of which was filed in Israel at the Yad Vashem Archives. Süss’s account is one of the very…

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Swimming Pool

Attentive observers have noted items or facilities at the so-called death camps that seem entirely inappropriate, and which in fact suggest a much-more benign usage of those camps. The brothel at the Auschwitz Main Camp is one such item, and the “zoo” at Treblinka is another. Then we have the barber shop, dentist, and shoemaker…

Szajn-Lewin, Eugenia

Eugenia Szajn-Lewin (1909 – 1944) was a Jewish journalist who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto and kept a diary of important events during this time. She was killed during the Warsaw uprising in 1944. On the rumors circulating about Treblinka, she wrote in her diary in late 1942 (Szajn-Lewin, pp. 83f.): “The worst thing is…

Szende, Stefan

Stefan (István) Szende (10 April 1901 – 5 May 1985) was a bilingual Austro-Hungarian Jew who started a moderate political career in Berlin as a Socialist just prior to Hitler’s ascension to power. He was eventually arrested in late 1933 for continuing a socialist party, then tried and sentenced to two years imprisonment for this…

Szlamek Report

The so-called Szlamek Report is a text written in 1942 by Jewish underground fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, and deposited there in the ghetto’s unofficial archive, where it was found after the war. The text describes in diary form alleged experiences made at the Chełmno Camp during a fictitious inmate’s stay there for ten days….

Szmajzner, Stanisław

Stanisław Szmajzner was an inmate of the Sobibór Camp. In 1966, he was interrogated by the German judiciary, when he claimed that exhaust gases were used at Sobibór only initially for mass gassing, but were later replaced with Zyklon B. He elaborated more on this in his 1968 Portuguese book titled Inferno em Sobibór. He…

Szperling, Henike

In 1947, the “eyewitness account” of Henike Szperling about his stay at the Treblinka Camp was published in a Jewish historical journal. Szperling claimed to have been deported there in September 1942. He was deployed in the part of the camp where no extermination activities occurred, working in a unit sorting clothes. On 2 August…

Tabeau, Jerzy

Jerzy Tabeau (born Wesołowski, 18 Dec. 1918 – 11 May 2002) was a Polish medical student who joined the Polish underground army in 1939. He was arrested in March 1942 and sent to Auschwitz Main Camp, where he fell ill with pneumonia but was nursed back to health in the inmate infirmary. After that, he…

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