A Dutch newspaper in 1950, page twelve in a three-line report. “Erich Bauer, a 50-year-old former SS officer, has been sentenced to death by a West Berlin court. He is accused of gassing hundreds of thousands of Jews.” In the report, the name of Sobibor is mangled to ‘Silobor’. The trial against one of the guards of the Sobibor extermination camp made little impression in the Dutch media at the time. But that changed completely in the years that followed.

In this episode, we follow among others the story of Samuel Lerer, who survived Sobibor and after the war recognized the ‘gasmeister’ of the extermination camp on the street in Berlin. We also look at the subsequent trials against camp guards who were tracked down in Brazil. Franz Stangl, who chose in his cell to talk to a journalist about his life as deputy commander of Sobibor and died of a heart attack in the cell after the last conversation.

And Demjanjuk. The trial with the most media attention, although Iwan Demjanjuk was no more than a small fish, a subordinate. Many people know his name from the Netflix series about his life ‘The Devil Next Door’. We follow Jules Schelvis during that trial, who acted as co-prosecutor and expert in the process.

We'd love to hear what you think of this episode: info@audiodroom.nl. For more information, visit the website of Stichting Sobibor (https://www.sobibor.org/).

Music written and performed by Mark Lobenstein (https://marklobenstein.com/?js_artist=mark_lobenstein).

Spoken word created and performed by Ben Oranje (https://benoranje.nl).

#Sobibor #WWII #history #Audiodroom #Holocaust #Jews #war #Westerbork #Amsterdam #ghetto #1943 #JulesSchelvis