Photos from Johann Niemann (Sobibor) collection

[Michal78]

One more of this book: Unknown, Niemann, Beckmann, Rost by Sorting Barrack

[Michal78]

Gustav Wagner and Niemann

[J. Duncan]

Looks like the end of a gun in the window behind
Wagner’s head..I ordered the book. Don’t know what to expect in it. I assume there are many photos that depict SS officers in relaxed poses
like above. Is it unique because there just aren’t many photos from that camp?

[Max Williams]

It's a figure standing there!

[J. Duncan]

Hmmm

[baroen]

I do also have the book a few weeks now. It's is an astonishing book. All the foto's of Sobibor are taken in the "good" parts of Sobibor, the living quarters of the SS and Trawniki. It really looks like a holiday-village. Most notable is that I've seen for the first time a few clear foto's of Reichleitner (except the well known vague foto that is commonly known). The text parts are very interesting too! Well, you have to know how to read in German. It gives an other image of for instance Niemann. He was really a driving force in particulary Sobibor but before that also in Belzec and the T4 institutions. He enjoyed his work! The foto on horseback says it all. I've been half through the texts now.

[baroen]

imrs-1.jpg

bmap21.jpg



Here's a photograph from the Niemann album alongside W. Rutherford's 2005 map of Sobibor (c. 1943). By my estimation, the photograph looks north east from a location roughly equivalent to the red square next to the number 11 on the map, which I assume is the location of a guard tower. The angle and elevation of the photograph suggests it was taken from the tower. We see the extreme south east corner of the camp, an area which, on Rutherford's map, corresponds to buildings 12, 13, and 5 through 9.

In the foreground is a guard hut: another is visible to the right of the gate on the right of the photo. The shack like structure in the left middle distance is labeled as a "storage hut" by Rutherford, and if that ID is right, then we see the extreme right hand gable end and wall of the SS accommodations at far left. The buildings in the distance are, right to left, speculatively identified as the Ukrainian jail, SS canteen and kitchen (perhaps two buildings rather than the L-shaped structure on Rutherford's map), perhaps the SS garage and, the commandant's house, the Schwalbennest.

No this foto is taken from the left corner of the camp away from the railline .The light(coloured) roof of the building is the station building of Sobibor, outside of the actuallly camp. If you look closely you can see the gate, flags, just in front of it.

[J. Duncan]

Thanks Baroen for the book description.
It should be interesting. I hope I can figure
out what’s what with maps people have provided.
Many on the forum are very adept with maps

[baroen]

Hmmm

It is just an anomaly in the foto, a reflection or something like that. There are some foto's of the funeral of Niemann in Chelm. They are very interesting too. On quite a few fotos you see Gottlieb Hering. Better foto's then I've seen before. Also Werner Blankenburg in his SA-Oberführer uniform and Dietrich Allers in an SA uniform, SS-Untersturmführer Gottfried Schwarz, Ernst Lerch etc. It is really quite something to see those man, from whom to the most, a few fotos existed in the public. And then the event of the funeral. They are mourning, giving all honour to those murderers who killed hundreds of people at a day. A very strange perspective to look at those fotos. In my opinion it shows so clear, like the total album, how accepted it was in the Nazi state to get rid of the jewish people.

[Andrey]

Hmmm

It is just an anomaly in the foto, a reflection or something like that. There are some foto's of the funeral of Niemann in Chelm. They are very interesting too. On quite a few fotos you see Gottlieb Hering. Better foto's then I've seen before. Also Werner Blankenburg in his SA-Oberführer uniform and Dietrich Allers in an SA uniform, SS-Untersturmführer Gottfried Schwarz, Ernst Lerch etc. It is really quite something to see those man, from whom to the most, a few fotos existed in the public. And then the event of the funeral. They are mourning, giving all honour to those murderers who killed hundreds of people at a day. A very strange perspective to look at those fotos. In my opinion it shows so clear, like the total album, how accepted it was in the Nazi state to get rid of the jewish people.

Do you seriously believe that only Jews were affected?
This is at least strange and fundamentally wrong...

Andrey.

[Max Williams]

For J. Duncan......
In the actual photograph, it is much clearer and the figure of (probably) a woman is more discernible.

For baroen......there was a large number of Red Army/partisan prisoners murdered at Sobibor.
Also, the figure identified as Ernst Lerch in the book (almost certainly by the Stuttgart University staff) is not him. The officer in the photographs holds the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer. By the date of the two photographs in October 1943, Lerch had been a SS-Sturmbannführer for 15 months. The decorations worn do not fit Lerch, and on close inspection, the Hauptsturmführer does not look like him. He has been misidentified because he is wearing spectacles and they assumed it was Lerch.
Regards,
Max.

[baroen]

Do you seriously believe that only Jews were affected?
This is at least strange and fundamentally wrong...

Andrey.

No I don't. Did I say that? No I didn't, although I was not exhaustively correct naming al categories of victims. That is because the Aktion Reinhard (e.g. Sobibor) camps were primarily set up to kill the the Jews. Yes there were other people killed, Roma gypsies for instance.

[trespasser07]

Photograph with them drinking (4th down on first set if pics) Reichleiter second from left behind Niemann and Bauer sat in centre. Unsure of the others.

Regards

[dicktone]

For anyone still interested in this thread, all of the photos from Niemann's album are now available via the USHMM site, here https://tinyurl.com/ybx3usea.

[itaiv40]

Thanks. Does anyone recognize these men?