Lägervakters vittnesmål

Har någon av dessa vakter eller officerare gett någon "revisionistisk" version av berättelsen, som skulle kunna rentvå dem för de brott de anklagats för? Under rättegångarna? I väst? I öst? I exil? I intervjuer med "revisionister"? På sin dödsbädd? I sitt testamente?

Legend has it that the Italian mathematician, physicist and philosopher Galileo Galilei muttered this phrase after being forced to recant in 1633, before the Inquisition, his belief that the Earth moves around the Sun.
It is occasionally used in modern speech to indicate that although publicly someone who is in a knowledgeable position may discount or deny something, that doesn't stop it from being true.
At the time of Galileo's trial, the dominant view among theologians, philosophers and scientists was that the Earth is stationary, indeed the center of the universe. Galileo's adversaries brought the charge of heresy, then punishable by death, before the Inquisition. Since Galileo recanted, he was only put under house arrest until his death, nine years after the trial.
There is no contemporary evidence that Galileo muttered this expression at his trial; it would certainly have been highly imprudent for him to have done so. The earliest biography of Galileo, written by his disciple Vincenzio Viviani, does not mention this phrase, and depicts Galileo as having sincerely recanted. The legend first became widely published in Querelles Littéraires (1761), recounting a tale published by an Italian living in London in 1757 (124 years after the supposed utterance).[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove!

It is occasionally used in modern speech to indicate that although publicly someone who is in a knowledgeable position may discount or deny something, that doesn't stop it from being true.

Blatt: I don't care if he goes to prison or not -- the trial is what matters to me. I want the truth. The world should find out how it was at Sobibor. He should confess, because he knows so much. He's the last living perpetrator from Sobibor.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,624550,00.html

When asked the worst thing he remembered about Sobibor, Thomas Blatt replied that it was being forced to torture or kill other Jews.[…]
http://holocaust.hklaw.com/essays/1999/991.htm

No Man Knows Himself
[…]
http://holocaust.hklaw.com/essays/1999/991.htm

"Gas chambers? Yes I had heard something about gas chambers through the grapevine, overtime word of this got around. I wondered about the red glow and smoke and the rumours that these were the fires burning in the crematorium."

Som sagt går det att tänka sig att vissa av de vakter, som faktiskt har varit uppe i rättegång, i förhör erkänt saker de inte gjort.

Men som sagt har de haft hela livet på sig att bevisa sin oskuld vid något annat tillfälle - medan de varit på flykt i Sydamerika eller någon annanstans, i fängelset, eller efter att de muckat.

De har inte ens låtit sig intervjuas av någon "revisionist".

Frenzel was sent to Sobibor from Hadamar, a sanitarium where mentally ill Germans were gassed in the course of the euthanasia program. I mentioned Hadamar and asked how he felt killing Germans. His voice became angry. The tape ran out and so as not to jeopardize the interview, I did not insist on an answer.
I decided to ask less personal questions. Did he remember "Berliner"(Berliner was an Oberkapo, killed by the Jews for cruelty to his fellow prisoners). I asked if it was true that he gave permission to the Jews to kill him. He leaned back in his chair, like an executive, "Yes," he answered confidently, "when I think back hard, it was so. My Kapo from the Bahnhofkommando told me about Berliner, then I think I said 'Butcher him to death', or something similar." His tone was frighteningly casual, as if he were speaking of getting rid of rotten potatoes. In fact, he didn't do it because he was on the prisoners' side, but because he was furious that Berliner went above his head to SS Wagner.
I asked him about Cukerman (given over one hundred lashes, his body was left in a pool of blood). Yes, he remembered, he was the cook. There were five to eight kilos of meat missing, so he gave him a beating. "..Later the meat turned up and Cukerman's son said 'My father did nothing, it was me who had taken the meat.' So I gave them both twenty-five lashes. I want you to know I was always fair. I never punished unless they had done something wrong." I did not comment, but I was thinking he wasn't always so lenient. Another survivor testified in court that Frenzel caught his fifteen year old friend helping himself to a can of sardines and took him to the crematorium where he was shot.
I had another leading question. What had happened to the Dutch Jews? He immediately knew what I meant. Like a superior officer, he answered swiftly and to the point, "A Polish Kapo told me some Dutch Jews were organizing an escape, so I relayed it to Deputy Commandant Niemann and he ordered the seventy-two Jews to be executed." He failed to mention that he alone led them to be killed. And I could not help noting that his voice and bearing were more forceful now and there was a feeling of competence and pride about his work.
http://www.sobibor.info/confrontation.html

"What do you say," I asked him," when many Germans say it wasn't so, that it never happened?" He answered, "I say it's exactly true, it's not right to say it never happened." I asked further, "So why don't you go to a magazine or newspaper and say openly: 'I'm German, I was there in charge. I worked there, and it's true.'? He said that if he told them the way Jews were murdered, he would be afraid, like the Jew, Kornfeld. (Supposedly Kornfeld, a Sobibor survivor living in Brazil, had refused to testify against SS Wagner, for fear of reprisals against him).
http://www.sobibor.info/confrontation.html

Our interview was over.
So, repentant as he claims to be, he will not speak out. He is now a free man living at home (under the pretense of illness), even though his appeal was lost on September 12, l985 and he was given a life sentence once more.

Och så har vi alla de vakter som levt hela sina liv efter kriget på fri fot. Idag har nästan alla dött av hög ålder. Men ingen av dem har skrivit någon bok eller något brev där de avslöjat sammansvärjningen. De har inte ens låtit sig intervjuas av någon "revisionist".

The legend first became widely published in Querelles Littéraires (1761), recounting a tale published by an Italian living in London in 1757 (124 years after the supposed utterance).[1]
In 1911, the famous line was found on a Spanish painting owned by a Belgian family, dated 1643 or 1645. The painting is obviously ahistorical, since it depicts Galileo in a dungeon, but nonetheless proves that some variants of the "E pur si muove" legend had been circulating for over a century before it was published[2], perhaps even in his own lifetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove!