One of the interesting things that I found when I consulted a map of the alleged German ‘extermination camp’ at Sobibor in Poland - which was a central part of Operation Reinhard and as it has been described ‘One Third of the Holocaust’ – is… well… the bowling alley next to the section of the camp housing the jewish inmates.
You can see this on the plan of Sobibor that has been published by the Majdanek Museum based on the ‘Holocaust Survivor’ testimony of Estera Raab (nee Terner) and Tomasz ‘Toivi’ Blatt: (1)
In the above image I have highlighted the location of the bowling alley and shown that it is indeed listed as… well… a bowling alley so that we can skip past the ‘they didn’t claim it was a bowling alley’ rhetorical counterarguments.
Now the problem then is not that Sobibor didn’t allegedly have a bowling alley, but rather who used that bowling alley?
This is in itself quite intuitive if we look at this map of Sobibor and understand how the camp was set up. To help in the above image I have circled the entrances/exits from the Vorlager – where the guards were – and Lager I – where the inmates were – which shows that the bowling alley is much closer to the entrance/exit to Lager I and is far away from the entrance/exit to the Vorlager.
This is odd if it was intended to be ‘for the guards’ as we can assume the ‘Holocaustian’ argument will be precisely because there is no need to put the bowling alley between the Vorlager and Lager I – there is plenty of space for it in the Vorlager as you can clearly see – unless there is another reason for putting it there.
You can see this more obviously when we look at how Lager I and the Vorlager are structured relative to the bowling alley:
Notice that the bowling alley is right next to the guard unit building of Sobibor (Building 16) plus also there is a guard tower – and presumably a machine gun – covering the entrance to Lager I but also the bowling alley, while the other guard towers next to the Painter’s Workshop (Building 29) and the Main Gate (labelled 1 next to Building 5) also cover the external barbed wire fence between Lager I and the Vorlager.
These are clearly there to stop escape attempts from this weak point in the camp, but why is the camp structured this way and why put the bowling alley between Lager I and the Vorlager?
The answer I think lies in the fact that the guard unit building (Building 16) overlooks the bowling alley given that in this building the SS guards would have been ready to mobilize and would have been able to guard the bowling alley next to (and also assist in any necessary use of weaponry from the windows to suppress an inmate revolt from Lager I or attempted escape via corridor between Lager I and the Vorlager where there is the least amount of obstacles to escape).
This then suggests that the guard unit building (Building 16) is in part guarding the bowling alley, which makes little sense if the bowling alley is being used by just the guards but makes perfect sense if the bowling alley is also being used by the inmates.
Further the fact that the bowling alley is placed – relative to Lager I – opposite the inmate dispensary, Lager I’s well and the tailor’s workshop plus gives plenty of space for inmates to stand at the barbed wire in Lager and watch the bowling alley. Goes to suggest that the bowling alley has also been placed where it is so that inmates can easily watch what is going on at the bowling alley, which also suggests that the location was designed precisely so that inmates could watch guards bowling but also, they could watch – and presumably support – inmates doing the same.
Despite the fact that the bowling alley isn’t mentioned by either the pro-Holocaust account of Sobibor (2) as well as the revisionist account of Sobibor. (3) It is frankly hard in my view to see how we can reach any conclusion other than that Sobibor’s bowling alley was for both the guards and the inmates based on where it is within the structure of the camp and also what is around it.
References
(1) https://www.majdanek.eu/media/files/news/1239/the_ss-sonderkommando_sobibor_plan.pdf
(2) Cf. Yitzhak Arad, 1987, ‘Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps’, 1st Edition, Indiana University Press: Bloomington
(3) Cf. Jurgen Graf, Thomas Kues, Carlo Mattogno, 2010, ‘Sobibor: Holocaust Propaganda and Reality’, 1st Edition, The Barnes Review: Washington D.C.