Talk:Sobibor extermination camp

Chain of Command subtitles

Under Sobibor extermination camp#Chain of Command, the first five sub-titles are of the form "job, Germans and Austrians" (e.g. "Commandant, Germans and Austrians"). This is ambiguous, and could mean a list of three things, or that the job was done by Germans and Austrians (which is what I suspect is meant). I'd like to change the format to "job (Germans and Austrians)". Comments, objections? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 07:29, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

For some reason, the trial of John Demjanjuk has been repeated twice here. Valleyspring (talk) 05:57, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Libodenko Wartownick? I doubt the surname is real - Wartownik is a Polish word meaning "sentry" or "guard", "watchman". Treating this word as a surname sounds odd.

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:15, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

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Sobibor extermination camp → Sobibór extermination camp – Is the name of this camp Sobibor or Sobibór? Shouldn't we try to be uniform about it? --Relisted. EdJohnston (talk) 01:19, 1 April 2014 (UTC) Hoops gza (talk) 20:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• Support Comment (see below). The current name comes from the German Vernichtungslager Sobibor, but the actual placename was and still is Sobibór; that's how we find it on a map of Poland. Auschwitz is an exception, because it was a complex of camps spanning dozens of nearby locations, as oppose to Chełmno extermination camp for example (note the Polish spelling, in German it was called Kulmhof). Poeticbent talk 20:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

We can also go the other way around and keep the German spelling of all camps in Poland: i.e. Auschwitz, Sobibor, Belzec (not Bełżec), but then it would only make sense to rename the camps in other languages as well, for example the Sajmište concentration camp on the outskirts of Belgrade, renamed to Semlin concentration camp from the German Judenlager Semlin (officially), etc. Poeticbent talk 21:16, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment The second sentence in this article's lead states that "the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibór" (unsourced).Hoops gza (talk) 21:22, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
• Comment The move request isn't really a request. Once the correct title has been established, then this should be moved, if applicable. Both the German and Polish article are spelt Sobibor not Sobibór.Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:43, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

In the German Wiki we have "Vernichtungslager Belzec" and in the Polish Wiki "death camp (obóz zagłady) in Bełżec" so they are not spelt consistently there. Poeticbent talk 13:29, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. Other languages have no direct bearing on the article name. The only relevant question is how the name is most commonly spelled in English. While Google Ngrams aren't always perfect, the evidence here says that it isn't even close [1]. Moving would be an error. 172.9.22.150 (talk) 15:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, the results are quite compelling: about 49,100 results for "Sobibor", and about 2,840 results for "Sobibór". Perhaps we should run a similar test on all of the above names, what do you think? Poeticbent talk 18:15, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

No, since the Google Book Search OCR doesn't recognize diacritical marks, that approach in not useful. If you click through to the book hits for Sobibor, you find one with accent out of the first few. There are a few in the ngram with accents, because not all data comes via OCR. Dicklyon (talk) 02:23, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Per Dicklyon, and also Poeticbent I don't understand your search above. Surely we need to search in English books which can/do have full fonts for Polish names, like Wikipedia can and does, and then see if they drop the u (I assume everyone realises that ó indicates a u-sound in Polish not an accented o), only then can we claim that reliable sources are giving the camp a special "English" name. But as it stands a look through Google Books shows that full-font English books are all spelling the camp as it is pronounced in Polish. e.g. Heberer Children During the Holocaust Page 172, Niewyk The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust Page 208 and so on. Not a single reliable-for-spelling source seems to be spelling the camp differently from the village. So why should we? In ictu oculi (talk) 22:36, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Re: search from above. Please click on the link.[2] You will see the two lines; at the end of the first one is "sobibor" (hotlinked), and at the end of the second line is "sobibór". Open them in separate tabs if you want. The trick is that the "sobibór" link (with diacritic) displays the results in Google transliterated as "sobib%C3%B3r" so no other results could show up. Poeticbent talk 04:51, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Poeticbent, how does this relate to my comment? So some English books are equipped with full fonts and some aren't. So what exactly? Wikipedia is equipped with full fonts and uses them. I repeat the question, why should we deliberately misspell (or underspell) a Polish place name? In ictu oculi (talk) 22:37, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

In the opening line you said you don't understand that search, which btw wasn't mine. I explained its unique nature, that's all. But we also have a WP: Common name policy/guideline here which says (quote): "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources..." that's why I remain undecided. Poeticbent talk 00:35, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the policy; we're not calling it Sobibór in anyway because it's an "official name", but because it's wikipedia's policies & guidelines to use diacritics in such cases. ^walk victor falk ^talk 00:54, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Exactly as Victor says. The guideline Poeticbent you are citing specifically gives a French president with a cedilla as an example that common name does not relate to fonts/MOS issues. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:46, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, I hear you. I changed my vote back to support, but we need to deal with Bełżec as well, if this is going to fly. Poeticbent talk 12:40, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Let's forestall that. I have restored that to 2009-2012 title per WP:AT Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles and WP:COMMONNAME in English sources such as Dan Stone. You're correct that there's no reason why it should be different. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:30, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• Support - per WP:AT Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. the fact that it is Sobibór "extermination camp" (small 'e', small 'c') shows that this is simply a descriptive title. We therefore do not have to worry about the German names, nor try and create an "English" name for a Polish village. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:21, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

• Support per In ictu oculi. Wikipedia articles commonly include diacritics in such cases, pergeographical naming conventions. ^walk victor falk ^talk 07:17, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
• Comment - If this page is renamed, then its category tree should be nominated for speedy renaming, which is perfectly fine. But what about the navbox for this camp? Is there a bot that can change the text on each page on which the navbox appears?Hoops gza (talk) 23:34, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Semion Rozenfeld

Semion Rozenfeld was one of the Russian-Jewish soldiers who escaped. He rejoined the Russian army and took Berlin, defeating Germany and ending that countries involvement in World War II. Will someone please add him to this article?

http://www.pbs.org/program/escape-nazi-death-camp/ http://www.longshadowofsobibor.com/interview/semion-rozenfeld

-Teetotaler 21 May, 2014 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.62.129.34 (talk) 18:28, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Article Update

I have updated the article with new information about the location of the gas chambers. But clearly this article should be arranged with perhaps a separate "Archaeological" section. See this article to get a better idea of the rather extensive work that is presently taking place. Also, evidence is suggesting that more than 250,000 were killed there - the finding of the gas chamber could clarify this further. Furthermore, this article could describe the "road to heaven" better, especially in light of this new evidence that has been found. Nodekeeper (talk) 12:13, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

For more a more detailed Archaeological (earlier ca. 2008) survey before the last link, This has quite detailed information. (Scroll Down) The place where they found the chambers is not far from where the large 60's era monument was erected. In this picture ca. 2007 it would be in the small (paved) clearing to the left of the larger field. What the paper/article mentions is that the green shading of grass belies the location mass graves outside of the central circular mound. I invite other editors to keep watch for a more recent similar overhead picture esp. one that could be used in the article. Nodekeeper (talk) 13:14, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Commanders and Chain of command

The 2 sections on commanders (previously "Aftermath") and "Chain of command" should be merged somehow. Not sure how though :) Peteruetz (talk) 18:57, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Ngram Viewer

Ngram Search in Google Books reveals that between 1940 and 2008 the use of placename Sobibor in English literature (without the Polish diacritic) which peaked in 1986 has declined considerably in the last decade. In the same timeframe the use of Sobibór (with the diacritic) remained low by comparison nevertheless. There's no comparative data of anykind after 2008 in Ngram Viewer.[3]

Blatt as source of over 40 citations

Much emphasis is put in this article on the first-person account of Thomas Toivi Blatt born in 1927. Blatt was chopping off women's hair at the Camp II Vorlager at the age of 15, and escaped during the uprising of October 1943, whilst supposedly possessing intricate knowledge of the Alexander Pechersky's thoughts and ideas. After the Soviet takeover of Poland, Blatt was wearing the uniform of a functionary either of the dreaded Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (NKVD-UB) or the political propaganda division of the communist army – as the collar-patch in his portrait featured at Blatt's biography indicates. It is a known fact that both formations engaged in extrajudicial killings of the cursed soldiers. However, there's nothing in his biography about this decade.

Blatt left Poland immediately after the anti-Stalinist Polish October of 1956–57. Over twenty years later he flew from Los Angeles to Rostov and met Pechersky in person. Pechersky was in his seventies in 1980 and spoke Russian. They didn't use translators during their interviews; and no tapes of the Pechersky's recollections were made on a tape-recorder either. Nevertheless, their meeting in the Soviet Union resulted in two nonfiction books: The Forgotten Revolt and From The Ashes of Sobibor (with French, German, and Polish translations), along with feature film Escape From Sobibor of 1987 with landslide revenues. The problems with our article trying to state things about Sobibor as facts in Wikipedia's editorial voice go even deeper. The presence of the Soviet POWs at Sobibor drew considerable interest from the Soviet NKVD after World War Two, and greatly impacted on the western court proceedings. Pechersky was prevented by the Soviet government from testifying in multiple international trials related to Sobibor and repeatedly refused the permission to exit the country. Due to his absence at the trials, no independent testimony from Pechersky exists. All information was filtered by the Soviet political apparatus.

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For all intents, Thomas Blatt is a primary source, not a secondary one. There are over 40 citations from Blatt featured in this article, originating from Sobibor - The Forgotten Revolt. Among the more recommended and readily available third-party sources there is also Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp by Jules Schelvis released in 2014, and the Escape from Sobibor: Revised and Updated Edition by Richard Rashke from 2012. Rashke interviewed 18 Sobibor survivors, including Blatt, and structured his book around those recolections. In his Introduction Rashke wrote: "there were some contradictions because survivors either embellished details over the years, and then accepted the exaggerations as facts, or confused rumors with reality." Poeticbent talk 19:27, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Concur with the sentiment expressed. The citations should be attributed to Blatt, and where available secondary sources would be preferred. If you'd be willing to review and update, that would be great. K.e.coffman (talk) 19:39, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks K.e.coffman, I will get down to it without further ado. Poeticbent talk 05:38, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

POWs in the lead

Come on, people, the article talks about the Soviet prisoners of war in the uprising section. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 19:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

The article as it is now, indicating that this was an extermination camp for Jews (and that some of those Jews were Soviet POWs), is fine. What I objected to was the previous attempt to deceptively present this as a camp for Jews AND Soviet POws. Compare and contrast : "Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union (including Soviet POWs)" [current], vs. "Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, as well as Soviet POWs," [previous deception]. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 13:25, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Not quite, No Cal or whoever. You have a couple of hundred edits, quite a few specializing in reverting my work, and turned up here where you have never edited to revert a quite uncontroversial adjustment I made. You even reverted out a second edit I made to meet possible objections, and now state that you think what you cancelled is 'fine'. In now underwriting the reformulation I made, you are tacitly admitting you were reverting at sight because of the handle of the editor who did it, not on the merits of the edit itself. Duly noted.Nishidani (talk) 17:54, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Your original edit was deceptive, and I rightly reverted it. Your second one is acceptable, and I originally reverted it only because I was misled by your edit summary which stated "Undid revision 734928417 by Firkin Flying Fox (talk) That some of the Soviet Jews were Red Army POWs is a common knowledge" , when you in fact did not revert me, but changed your original misleading edit. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 20:47, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

And, this tactic of trying to silence people who disagree with you by alleging they are sock-puppets of the evil No Cal or whatever is getting old. It was checked twice already, so give it a rest. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 20:50, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Digging yourself a deeper hole. If you have so few edits, and consistently pop up on pages just after I edit them again, to revert, that's one signal, loud and clear, that there's something odd going on. One doesn't revert on the basis of an edit summary - you should revert after you examine the merits of the content edited. I'm not trying to silence you. I've made no complaint. I know more or less you are a throwaway account by a banned user, probably No Cal, but I don't really care. It doesn't worry me. I generally don't allow what I quietly note to disturb my editing. Nishidani (talk) 21:19, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Still trying to deflect attention from your deceptive editing, I see. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 22:27, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani—"Comment on content, not on the contributor." (WP:TPYES). Bus stop (talk) 23:49, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Sure, so give me your informed view of the merits of the content FFF tried to cancel.Nishidani (talk) 06:25, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

faulty & "dangerous" external links

code 404 (does not exist): http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/resources/sobibor.asp?WT.mc_id=wiki http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/sobibor_excavations.asp?WT.mc_id=wiki

blocked by firefox & panda anti-virus pro: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.net/ar/sobibor.html

The problems identified have now been fixed. Uglemat (talk) 17:20, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Apologies for the rollback, now corrected. The difference in the .NET and .ORG TLDs slipped by me. Thanks for thinking to check up on the difference!

Cadar (talk) 20:35, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

No worries! :) Uglemat (talk) 20:38, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 14 March 2019

Sobibór extermination camp → Sobibor extermination camp – Please see Google nGram, showing a clear trend in recent decades to use "death camp" qualifier: [4]. I don't think that diacritic is needed either, as this was not a Polish death camp, and most Holocaust literature appears to use the name without. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:44, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Updated to Sobibor extermination camp, per discussion below. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:39, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose both the deliberate misspelling of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship, and the change of Book source name to death camp In ictu oculi (talk) 11:04, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: But how did the Germans spell it? This is their camp. Auschwitz is not a misspelling of Oświęcim. The German Wiki distinguishes between the village and the camp this way. Srnec (talk) 00:23, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

We don't have a policy of Germanizing all the places the Nazis committed atrocities; Auschwitz is evidently an exception and has a very different spelling. Wheras Sobibór is a the same name in German where Germanizing by removing the accent serves no distinct purpose. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:00, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support death camp - three of the sources used in the article itself use "death camp" including Arad's work (which has been updated to a new edition, by the way). Note on the diacritic that the USHMM uses the non-diacritic version, as does Arad's work on the three Reinhard camps. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:50, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

See WP:RS. Neither of these are reliable sources for the spelling of Polish names. Yitzhak Arad's book does not use full fonts, and USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.) website like wise is a not full font source which simplifies all European place and person names down into non-Unicode equivalents. English Books which doe have full fonts spell the place name correctly. We should also remember that not all American and Israeli sources are capable of writing Polish accents or know what they mean and how they change the pronunciation. But here on Wikipedia our editors do. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:31, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

The premise of this RM is that the WP:COMMONNAME is "Sobibor [death camp]" (without the diacritic). In any case, this was not a Polish camp, so the name of the nearby Polish place name is not really relevant to the name of the article on the camp. --K.e.coffman (talk) 23:51, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Then premise of your RM is wrong if you understand that WP:COMMONNAME means removing fonts. We don't do this on en.wp. And to claim that Sobibór extermination camp and Sobibór itself should be written differently flies in the face of normal WP:CONSISTENCY In ictu oculi (talk) 08:46, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support the form "Sobibor", rather than "Sobibór", per nomination. This nomination is attempting to establish a consensus that is different from the inconclusive consensus that resulted in the move of the main header five years ago, in April 2014, at "Requested move" above. Since this is an article about the German camp Sobibor and not about the Polish village Sobibór, the main title header should be the same as the one in German Wikipedia. The English-speaking world has been using German names for the camps and Polish names for the localities where the camps were situated. Thus "Auschwitz" for the camp and "Oświęcim" for the town, "Kulmhof" for the camp and "Chełmno" for the village, "Belzec" for the camp and "Bełżec" for the village, etc. As for the term "death camp", the entries in Category:German extermination camps in Poland, are using either "extermination camp" or "concentration camp". —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 02:03, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Nom's comment: I'm somewhat neutral on "death camp" vs "extermination camp". However, I feel that "Sobibor" should be changed, as this was not a "Polish" death camp. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:58, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support removing the accent so long as that conforms to German usage (as it appears to), but Oppose a move to "death camp" because no other death camp is under such a name. Why should some death camps be called death camps and some called extermination camps? Without a rationale for inconsistency, we should be consistent. Srnec (talk) 00:21, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

If we're reopening the diacritic war to Germanize all East European locations affected by German genocide against Jews, gypsies and Slavs we need to have a consistent Germanization (note I did not type "Aryanization") policy for titles List of survivors of Sobibór etc. will need to change too and many others. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:50, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Not German names for the places, but for the camps. That said, I see now that we do not do this (save for Auschwitz) and so have struck my support. If this move goes through, the Sobibór trial, List of survivors of Sobibór and List of survivors of Sobibór would have to be moved. But no evidence has been provided for treating Sobibór differently from Chełmno. Srnec (talk) 12:43, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

The Sobibor, Kulmhof and Belzec German extermination camps should not, in fact, be treated differently from Auschwitz and should appear in their German forms. Those article titles will be submitted for renaming while associated titles such as Sobibór trial, List of survivors of Sobibór and similarly styled main title headers of articles for other camps will be handled by mass renaming submissions. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 20:04, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

A triple nomination, which may be combined with this nomination, has been submitted at Talk:Sobibór trial#Requested move 21 March 2019. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 20:51, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• @BrownHairedGirl: the proposed move to German spelling of this place name is a reversal of previous RM 2014 which you closed. In ictu oculi (talk) 21:56, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

• @In ictu oculi: Thanks for the ping. AS you noted, I closed the 2014 RM on the basis of the consensus of the small turnout then. I have not tried to form a substantive view of my own. Consensus can change, so a more widely-attended discussion five years later created a clear consensus to overturn that outcome, so be it. However, I the discussion so far does not seem to be significantly more widely attended, and I also don't see any attempt to notify the participants in the 2014 RM.

However, reading the current discussion I am struck by your comment on whether to Germanize the spelling of entities in Nazi-occuppied Poland which are known for their association with Germany — or, as in this case, created by Germany.

It seems to me that point needs a wider consensus, rather than being decided on a solely ad hoc basis. A wider consensus may involve some hard rules or some general principles with scope for exceptions. But either way, it seems to me to be something which needs a group nomination of all related pages, or preferably at an RFC. The subsequent opening by @Roman Spinner of Talk:Sobibór trial#Requested_move_21_March_2019 in parallel with this one creates a split discussion on the same point of principle, which is very unhelpful to consensus formation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:19, 23 March 2019 (UTC)