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Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
built and operated by
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
as part of
Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...
. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
region of
German-occupied Poland German-occupied Poland during World War II consisted of two major parts with different types of administration. The Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany following the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II—nearly a quarter of the ...
. As an extermination camp rather than a
concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
, Sobibor existed for the sole purpose of murdering Jews. The vast majority of prisoners were gassed within hours of arrival. Those not killed immediately were forced to assist in the operation of the camp, and few survived more than a few months. In total, some 170,000 to 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor, making it the fourth-deadliest Nazi camp after
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
,
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
, and Belzec. The camp ceased operations after a prisoner revolt which took place on 14 October 1943. The plan for the revolt involved two phases. In the first phase, teams of prisoners were to discreetly assassinate each of the SS officers. In the second phase, all 600 prisoners would assemble for evening roll call and walk to freedom out the front gate. However, the plan was disrupted after only eleven SS men had been killed. The prisoners had to escape by climbing over barbed wire fences and running through a mine field under heavy machine gun fire. About 300 prisoners made it out of the camp, of whom roughly 60 survived the war. After the revolt, the Nazis demolished most of the camp in order to hide their crimes from the advancing
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
. In the first decades after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the site was neglected and the camp had little presence in either popular or scholarly accounts of the Holocaust. It became better known after it was portrayed in the TV miniseries ''
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
'' (1978) and the film ''
Escape from Sobibor ''Escape from Sobibor'' is a 1987 British television film which aired on ITV and CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination cam ...
'' (1987). The
Sobibor Museum Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...
now stands at the site, which continues to be investigated by archaeologists. Photographs of the camp in operation were published in 2020 as part of the
Sobibor perpetrator album The Sobibor perpetrator album contains sixty-two pictures of Sobibor extermination camp during its operation, taken by the SS Holocaust perpetrators employed there. It belonged to deputy commander Johann Niemann, who was killed in the Sobibor upri ...
.


Background


Operation Reinhard

Sobibor was one of four extermination camps established as part of
Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...
, the deadliest phase of the
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. The extermination of Europe's Jews did not originate as a single top-down decision, but was rather a patchwork of decisions made regarding particular occupied areas. Following the
invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
in September 1939, the Germans began implementing the
Nisko Plan The Nisko Plan was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany, the plan was cancelled in early 1940. The idea for the expulsion and resettlement of the Je ...
in which Jews were deported from
ghettos A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
across Europe to the forced labour camps which comprised the ''Lublin Reservation''.
Lublin District Lublin District (german: Distrikt Lublin) was one of the first four Nazi districts of the General Governorate region of German-occupied Poland during World War II, along with Warsaw District, Radom District, and Kraków District. On the south a ...
region was chosen in particular for its inhospitable conditions.
Leni Yahil Leni Yahil (1912–2007), née Leni Westphal, was a German-born Israeli historian, specializing in the Holocaust and Danish Jewry. Early life Leni was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1912, and was raised in Potsdam, Germany. She was a sixth-g ...
, Ina Friedman, Ḥayah Galai
''The Holocaust: the fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945''
Oxford University Press US, 1991, pp. 160–161, 204;
The Nisko Plan was abandoned in 1940,Nicosia and Niewyk, ''The Columbian Guide to the Holocaust'', 154. but many forced labour camps continued operations in the area, including
Trawniki Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regio ...
, Lipowa 7, and
Dorohucza Dorohucza is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Trawniki, within Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately east of Świdnik and east of the regional capital Lublin. The village has a populatio ...
. In 1941, the Nazis began experimenting with gassing Jews. In December 1941, SS officials at
Chełmno Chełmno (; older en, Culm; formerly ) is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 18,915 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of the Chełmno County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship. Due to its regional importan ...
conducted experiments using
gas vans A gas van or gas wagon (russian: душегубка, ''dushegubka'', literally "soul killer"; german: Gaswagen) was a truck reequipped as a mobile gas chamber. During the World War II Holocaust, Nazi Germany developed and used gas vans on a large ...
and the first mass gassings were conducted at
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
in January. At the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942,
Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
announced a plan for systematically murdering the Jews through a network of extermination camps. This plan was realized as
Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...
. Nothing is known for certain about the early planning for Sobibor in particular. Some historians have speculated that planning began as early as 1940, on the basis of a railway map from that year which omits several major cities but includes
Sobibór Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...
and Bełżec. The earliest hard evidence for Nazi interest in the site comes from the testimony of local Poles, who noticed in Autumn 1941 that SS officers were surveying the land opposite the train station. When a worker at the station cafeteria asked one of the SS men what was being built, he replied that she would soon see and that it would be "a good laugh."


Camp construction

In March 1942 '' SS-Hauptsturmführer''
Richard Thomalla Richard Thomalla (; 23 October 1903 – 12 May 1945) was a war criminal and SS commander of Nazi Germany. A civil engineer by profession, he was head of the SS Central Building Administration at Lublin reservation in occupied Poland. Thomalla wa ...
took over construction work at Sobibor, which had begun at an unknown earlier date. Thomalla was a former building contractor and committed Nazi whose service as an auxiliary police commander and adviser on Jewish forced labour had earned him a high-ranking position in
Odilo Globočnik Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was an Austrian Nazi and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. He was an official of the Nazi Party and later a high-ranking leader of the SS. Globocnik had a leading role in Operation Re ...
's construction department. Having previously overseen the construction of
Bełżec extermination camp Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total ...
, he applied lessons learned there to Sobibor. Thomalla allotted a much larger area for Sobibor than he had for Bełżec, allowing more room to maneuver as well as providing space for all of the camp's facilities to be constructed within its perimeter. The camp incorporated several pre-war buildings including a post office, a forester's lodge, a forestry tower, and a chapel. The forester's lodge became the camp administration building, while the post office was used as lodging for the SS (though not, as commonly reported, for the commandant). The former post office, located near the railroad tracks, still stands today. The SS adapted the preexisting railroad infrastructure, adding an 800-meter railroad spur that ended inside the camp. This third set of tracks allowed regular rail traffic to continue uninterrupted while the camp unloaded transports of new prisoners. Some building materials were supplied by the SS Central Construction Office in Lublin, while others were procured from local sawmills and brickworks, as well as from the remains of demolished houses of Jews. The first group of workers who built the camp were primarily locals from neighbouring villages and towns. It is unknown to what extent these were Polish or Jewish forced labourers. After Thomalla's arrival, the
Jewish council A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every com ...
in nearby
Włodawa Włodawa (; yi, וולאָדאַווע, Vlodave; ua, Володава, Volodava) is a town in eastern Poland on the Bug River, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. It is the seat of Włodawa County, situated in the Lublin Voivodeship ...
was ordered to send 150 Jews to assist in the construction of the camp. These workers were constantly harassed as they worked, and were shot if they showed signs of exhaustion. Most were murdered upon completion of construction, but two escaped back to
Włodawa Włodawa (; yi, וולאָדאַווע, Vlodave; ua, Володава, Volodava) is a town in eastern Poland on the Bug River, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. It is the seat of Włodawa County, situated in the Lublin Voivodeship ...
, where they attempted to warn the
Jewish council A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every com ...
about the camp and its purpose. Their warnings were met with disbelief. The first gas chambers at Sobibor were built following the model of those at Belzec, but without any furnaces. To provide the
carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...
gas, ''SS-Scharführer'' Erich Fuchs acquired a heavy gasoline engine in
Lemberg Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...
, disassembled from an armoured vehicle or a tractor. Fuchs installed the engine on a cement base at Sobibor in the presence of SS officers
Floss Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
, Bauer, Stangl, and Barbl, and connected the engine exhaust manifold to pipes leading to the gas chamber. In mid-April 1942, the Nazis conducted experimental gassings in the nearly finished camp.
Christian Wirth ), Christian the CruelZenter, Christian and Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). '' Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' (pg. 1053), New York: Macmillan; , allegiance = , branch = Schutzstaffel , serviceyears = , rank = Sturmbannführer (Major) , ...
, the commander of Bełżec and Inspector of
Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...
, visited Sobibor to witness one of these gassings, which murdered thirty to forty Jewish women brought from the labour camp at Krychów. The initial construction of Sobibor was finished by summer 1942, and a steady stream of prisoners began thereafter. However, the SS camp was continuously expanded and renovated throughout its existence. After only a few months of operation, the wooden walls of the gas chambers had absorbed too much sweat, urine, blood, and excrement to be cleanable. Thus, the gas chambers were demolished in the summer of 1942, and new larger ones were built made out of brick. Later that summer, the SS also embarked on a beautification project, instituting a more regular cleaning schedule for the barracks and stables, and expanding and landscaping the ''Vorlager'' to give it the appearance of a " Tyrolean village" much noted by later prisoners. When Sobibor ceased operations in mid-1943, the SS were part way through the construction of a munitions depot known as Lager IV.


Layout

Sobibor was surrounded by double barbed wire fences which were thatched with pine branches in order to block the view inside. At its southeast corner, it had two side-by-side gates; one for trains and another for foot traffic and vehicles. The site was divided into five compounds: the ''Vorlager'' and four ''Lagers'' numbered ''I-IV''. The ''Vorlager'' (front compound) contained living quarters and recreational buildings for the camp personnel. The SS officers lived in cottages with colorful names such as ''Lustiger Floh'' (the Merry Flea), ''Schwalbennest'' (the Swallow's Nest), and ''Gottes Heimat'' (God's Own Home). They also had a canteen, a bowling alley, a hairdresser, and a dentist, all staffed by Jewish prisoners. The
watchmen ''Watchmen'' is an American comic book Limited series (comics), maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins (comics), John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 a ...
, drawn from Soviet POWs, had separate barracks, and their own separate recreational buildings, including a hair salon and a canteen. The Nazis paid great attention to the appearance of the ''Vorlager''. It was neatly landscaped, with lawns and gardens, outdoor terraces, gravel-lined paths, and professionally painted signs. This idyllic appearance helped hide the nature of the camp from prisoners, who would arrive on the adjacent ramp. Survivor
Jules Schelvis Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor among the 3,005 people on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, hav ...
recalled feeling reassured upon arrival by the ''Vorlager's'' "Tyrolean cottage-like barracks with their bright little curtains and geraniums on the windowsills". ''Lager I'' contained barracks and workshops for the prisoners. These workshops included a tailor's shop, a carpenter's shop, a mechanic's shop, a sign-painter's shop, and a bakery. ''Lager I'' was accessible only through the adjacent ''Vorlager'', and its western boundary was made escape-proof with a water-filled trench. ''Lager II'' was a larger multi-purpose compound. One subsection called the " ''Erbhof''" contained the administration building, as well as a small farm. The administration building was a pre-war structure previously used by the local Polish forestry service. As part of the camp, this building was adapted to provide accommodation for some SS officers, storage for goods stolen from victims' luggage, as well as a pharmacy, whose contents were also taken from victims' luggage. On the farm, Jewish prisoners raised chickens, pigs, geese, fruits and vegetables for consumption by the SS men. Outside the ''Erbhof'', ''Lager II'' contained facilities where new arrivals were prepared before being murdered. It contained the sorting barracks and other buildings used for storing items taken from the victims, including clothes, food, hair, gold, and other valuables. At the east end was a yard where new arrivals had their luggage taken from them and were forced to undress. This area was beautified with flower beds to hide the camp's purpose from newcomers. This yard led into the narrow enclosed path called the ''Himmelstrasse'' (road to heaven) or the ''Schlauch'' (tube), which led straight to the gas chambers in ''Lager III''. The ''Himmelstrasse'' was covered on both sides by fences woven with pine branches. ''Lager III'' was the extermination area. It was isolated from the rest of the camp, set back in a clearing in the forest and surrounded by its own thatched fence. Prisoners from ''Lager I'' were not allowed near it, and were killed if they were suspected of having seen inside. Due to a lack of eyewitness testimony, little is known about ''Lager III'' beyond the fact that it contained gas chambers, mass graves, and special separate housing for the Sonderkommando prisoners who worked there. ''Lager IV'' (also called the ''Nordlager'') was added in July 1943, and was still under construction at the time of the revolt. Located in a heavily wooded area to the north of the other camps, it was being developed as a munitions depot for processing arms taken from Red Army soldiers.


Life in the camp


Prisoner life

Because Sobibor was an
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
, the only prisoners who lived there were the roughly 600 slave labourers forced to assist in the operation of the camp. While survivors of
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
use the term "selected" to mean being selected for murder, at Sobibor being "selected" meant being selected to live, at least temporarily. The harsh conditions in the camp took the lives of most new arrivals within a few months.


Work

Prisoners worked from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, with a short lunch break in the middle. Sundays were designated as half days, but this policy was not always observed. The prisoner population included many labourers with specialized skills such as goldsmithing, painting, gardening, or tailoring. While such prisoners were officially spared death only to support the camp's primary operations, much of their labour was in fact diverted for the SS officers' personal enrichment. Renowned
Dutch Jewish The history of the Jews in the Netherlands began largely in the 16th century when they began to settle in Amsterdam and other cities. It has continued to the present. During the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in May 1940, the J ...
painter Max van Dam was nominally kept as a sign painter, but the SS also forced him to paint landscapes, portraits, and
hagiographic A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might ...
images of
Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
. Similarly,
Shlomo Szmajzner Shlomo (, Polish: Szlomo, Szlama, Szlamek, Szloma), meaning "peaceable", is a common Hebrew name, Hebrew male given name. The following individuals are often referred to only by the name Shlomo: * Solomon, king of ancient Israel, according to vari ...
was placed in charge of the machine shop in order to conceal his work making gold jewelry for SS officers. Prisoners with specialized skills were considered especially valuable and were afforded privileges not available to others. Those without specialized skills performed a variety of other jobs. Many worked in the ''Lager II'' sorting barracks, where they were forced to comb through luggage left behind by gas chamber victims, repackaging valuable items as "charity gifts" for German civilians. These workers could also be called on to serve in the railway brigade which greeted new prisoners. The railway brigade was considered a relatively appealing job, since it gave famished workers access to luggage which often contained food. Younger prisoners commonly worked as ''putzers'', cleaning for the Nazis and the watchmen and attending to their needs. A particularly horrifying job was that of the "barbers" who cut the hair of women on their way to the gas chamber. This job was often forced upon young male prisoners in an attempt to humiliate both them and the naked women whose hair they were cutting. Armed watchmen supervised the process in order to ensure that barbers did not respond to victims' questions or pleas. In ''Lager III'', a special unit of Jewish prisoners was forced to assist in the extermination process. Its tasks included removing bodies, searching cavities for valuables, scrubbing blood and excrement from the gas chambers, and cremating the corpses. Because the prisoners who belonged to this unit were direct witnesses to
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
, they were strictly isolated from other prisoners and the SS would periodically liquidate those unit members who had not already succumbed to the work's physical and psychological toll. Since no workers from ''Lager III'' survived, nothing is known about their lives or experiences. When construction of ''Lager IV'' began in the summer of 1943, the Nazis assembled a forest commando who worked there cutting timber for heat, cooking, as well as cremation pyres. Prisoners struggled with the fact that their labour made them complicit in
mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...
, albeit indirectly and unwillingly. Many committed suicide. Others endured, finding ways to resist, if only symbolically. Common symbolic forms of resistance included praying for the dead, observing Jewish religious rites, and singing songs of resistance. However, some prisoners found small ways of materially fighting back. While working in the sorting shed,
Saartje Wijnberg Selma Engel-Wijnberg (born Saartje "Selme" Wijnberg; 15 May 1922 – 4 December 2018) was one of only two Dutch Jewish Holocaust survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp. She escaped during the 1943 uprising, hid in Poland, and survived the w ...
would surreptitiously damage fine items of clothing to prevent them from being sent to Germany. After the war, Esther Terner recounted what she and Zelda Metz did when they found an unattended pot of soup in the Nazis' canteen: "We spit in it and washed our hands in it... Don't ask me what else we did to that soup... And they ate it."


Social relations

Prisoners found it difficult to forge personal relationships. This was in part due to the constant turnover in the camp population, but also to an atmosphere of mutual distrust which was often exacerbated by national or linguistic divisions.
Dutch Jew The history of the Jews in the Netherlands began largely in the 16th century when they began to settle in Amsterdam and other cities. It has continued to the present. During the Netherlands in World War II, occupation of the Netherlands by Naz ...
s were particularly subject to derision and suspicion because of their assimilated manners and limited
Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
.
German Jew The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...
s faced the same suspicion as the Dutch, with the added implication that they might identify more with their captors than with their fellow prisoners. When social groups did form, they were generally based on family ties or shared nationality, and were completely closed off to outsiders.
Chaim Engel The name ''Haim'' can be a first name or surname originating in the Hebrew language, or deriving from the Old German name '' Haimo''. Hebrew etymology Chayyim ( he, חַיִּים ', Classical Hebrew: , Israeli Hebrew: ), also transcribed ''Ha ...
even found himself shunned by fellow Polish Jews after he began a romantic relationship with Dutch-born
Saartje Wijnberg Selma Engel-Wijnberg (born Saartje "Selme" Wijnberg; 15 May 1922 – 4 December 2018) was one of only two Dutch Jewish Holocaust survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp. She escaped during the 1943 uprising, hid in Poland, and survived the w ...
. These divisions had dire consequences for many prisoners from Western Europe, who were not trusted with crucial information about goings-on in the camp. Because of the expectation of imminent death, prisoners adopted a day-at-a-time outlook. Crying was rare and evenings were often spent enjoying whatever of life was left. As revolt organizer
Leon Feldhendler Leon Felhendler (Lejb Felhendler) (1 June 1910 – 6 April 1945) was a Polish resistance fighter known for his role in organizing the 1943 prisoner uprising at Sobibor extermination camp together with Alexander Pechersky. Prewar life Felhendler ...
recounted after the war, “The Jews only had one goal: ''carpe diem'', and in this they simply went wild.” Prisoners sang and danced in the evenings and sexual or romantic relations were frequent. Some of these affairs were likely transactional or coerced, especially those between female prisoners and ''kapos'', but others were driven by genuine bonds. Two couples that met in Sobibor were married after the war. The Nazis allowed and even encouraged an atmosphere of merriment, going so far as to recruit prisoners for a choir at gunpoint. Many prisoners interpreted these efforts as attempts by the Nazis to keep the prisoners docile and to prevent them from thinking about escape. Prisoners had a pecking order largely determined by one's usefulness to the Germans. As survivor Toivi Blatt observed, there were three categories of prisoners: the expendable "drones" whose lives were entirely at the mercy of the SS, the privileged workers whose special jobs provided some relative comforts, and finally the artisans whose specialized knowledge made them indispensable and earned them preferential treatment. Moreover, as at other camps, the Nazis appointed ''kapos'' to keep their fellow prisoners in line. ''Kapos'' carried out a variety of supervisory duties and enforced their commands with whips. ''Kapos'' were involuntary appointees, and they varied widely in how they responded to the psychological pressures of their position. ''Oberkapo'' Moses Sturm was nicknamed "Mad Moisz" for his mercurial temperament. He would beat prisoners horrifically without provocation and then later apologize hysterically. He talked constantly of escape, sometimes merely berating the other prisoners for their passivity, other times attempting to formulate actionable plans. Sturm was executed after being betrayed by a lower ranking ''kapo'' named Herbert Naftaniel. Naftaniel, nicknamed "Berliner", was promoted to ''Oberkapo'' and became a notorious figure in the camp. He viewed himself as German rather than Jewish, and began a reign of terror which came to an end shortly before the revolt, when a group of prisoners beat him to death with ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Karl Frenzel's permission. Despite these divisions in the camp, prisoners found ways to support each other. Sick and injured prisoners were given clandestine food as well as medicine and sanitary supplies stolen from the camp pharmacy. Healthy prisoners were expected to cover for sick prisoners who would otherwise be killed. The camp nurse Kurt Ticho developed a method of falsifying his records so that sick prisoners could take more than the allotted three day recovery period. Members of the railway brigade attempted to warn new arrivals of their impending murder but were met with incredulity. The most successful act of solidarity in the camp was the revolt on 14 October 1943, which was expressly planned so that all of the prisoners in the camp would have at least some chance of escape.


Health and living conditions

Prisoners suffered from sleep deprivation, malnourishment, and the physical and emotional toll of grueling labour and constant beatings. Lice, skin infections, and respiratory infections were common, and
typhoid Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
swept the camp on occasion. When Sobibor first opened, prisoners were regarded as expendable and shot at the first sign of illness or injury. After a few months, the SS grew concerned that the enormous death rate was limiting the camp's efficiency. In order to increase the continuity of its labour force and alleviate the need to constantly train new workers, the SS instituted a new policy allowing incapacitated prisoners three days to recover. Those still unable to work after three days were shot. Food in the camp was extremely limited. As at other Lublin district camps, prisoners were given about 200 grams of bread for breakfast along with Ersatz coffee. Lunch was typically a thin soup sometimes with some potatoes or horse meat. Dinner could be once again simply coffee. Prisoners forced to live on these rations found their personalities changing due to hunger. Others supplemented these rations surreptitiously, for instance by helping themselves to food from victims' luggage while working in the sorting barracks or in the railway brigade. A barter system developed in the camp, which included not only prisoners but also the
watchmen ''Watchmen'' is an American comic book Limited series (comics), maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins (comics), John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 a ...
, who would serve as intermediaries between the Jews and local peasants, exchanging jewels and cash from the sorting barracks for food and liquor in exchange for a large cut. Most prisoners had little or no access to hygiene and sanitation. There were no showers in ''Lager I'' and clean water was scarce. Although clothing could be washed or replaced from the sorting barracks, the camp was so thoroughly infested that there was little point. However, some prisoners worked in areas of the camp such as the laundry which gave them occasional access to better hygiene.


Camp personnel

The personnel at Sobibor included a small cadre of German and Austrian SS officers, and a much larger group of ''watchmen'', generally of Soviet origin.


SS garrison

Sobibor was staffed by a rotating group of eighteen to twenty-two
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
and
Austrian Austrian may refer to: * Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent ** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law * Austrian German dialect * Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...
SS officers. The SS officers were generally from lower-middle-class backgrounds, having previously worked as merchants, artisans, farmhands, nurses, and policemen. Almost all the Sobibor SS officers had previously served in
Aktion T4 (German, ) was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of 4, a street address of ...
, the Nazi forced euthanasia program. In particular, a large contingent had previously served together at
Hartheim Euthanasia Centre The Hartheim killing centre (german: NS-Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, sometimes translated as "Hartheim killing facility" or "Hartheim euthanasia centre") was a killing facility involved in the Nazi programme known as ''Aktion T4'', in which German ...
. Many practices developed at Hartheim were continued at Sobibor, including methods for deceiving victims on the way to the gas chambers. Before beginning work at Sobibor, they had met with
Odilo Globočnik Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was an Austrian Nazi and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. He was an official of the Nazi Party and later a high-ranking leader of the SS. Globocnik had a leading role in Operation Re ...
in Lublin and signed a confidentiality agreement. Over the course of its operation, roughly 100 SS officers served at Sobibor. When Sobibor first opened, its commandant was ''SS-Obersturmführer'' Franz Stangl, a meticulous organizer who worked to increase the efficiency of the extermination process. Stangl had little interaction with the prisoners, with the exception of
Shlomo Szmajzner Shlomo (, Polish: Szlomo, Szlama, Szlamek, Szloma), meaning "peaceable", is a common Hebrew name, Hebrew male given name. The following individuals are often referred to only by the name Shlomo: * Solomon, king of ancient Israel, according to vari ...
who recalled Stangl as a vain man who stood out for "his obvious pleasure in his work and his situation. None of the others—although they were, in different ways, so much worse than he—showed this to such an extent. He had this perpetual smile on his face." Stangl was transferred to
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
in August 1942, and his job at Sobibor was filled by ''SS-Obersturmführer'' Franz Reichleitner. Reichleitner was an alcoholic and a determined anti-semite who took little interest in what went on in the camp aside from the extermination process. SS-''Untersturmführer'' Johann Niemann served as the camp's deputy commandant. Day-to-day operations were generally handled by ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Gustav Wagner, the most feared and hated man in Sobibor. Prisoners regarded him as brutal, demanding, unpredictable, observant, and sadistic. They referred to him as "The Beast" and "Wolf". Reporting to Wagner was ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Karl Frenzel, who oversaw ''Lager I'' and acted as the camp's "judicial authority".
Kurt Bolender Heinz Kurt Bolender (21 May 1912 – 10 October 1966) was an SS sergeant during the Nazi era. In 1942, he operated the gas chambers at Sobibór extermination camp, perpetrating acts of genocide against Jews and Romani people during Operati ...
and oversaw ''Lager III'', the extermination area, while ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Erich Bauer and ''SS-Scharführer'' Josef Vallaster typically directed the gassing procedure itself. The SS men considered their job appealing. At Sobibor, they could enjoy creature comforts not available to soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front. The officer's compound in the camp had a canteen, a bowling alley, and a barber shop. The "officers' country club" was a short distance away, on nearby Perepsza Lake. Each SS man was allowed three weeks of leave every three months, which they could spend at ''Haus Schoberstein'', an SS-owned resort in the Austrian town of Weissenbach on
Lake Attersee Attersee, also known as Kammersee, English sometimes Lake Atter, is the largest lake of the Salzkammergut region in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. It is Austria's third largest lake by area, surpassed only by Lake Constance and Lake Neusied ...
. Moreover, the job could be lucrative: each officer received base pay of 58 ℛℳ per month, plus a daily allowance of 18 ℛℳ, and special bonuses including a ''Judenmordzulage'' (Jew murder supplement). In all, an officer at Sobibor could earn 600 ℛℳ per month in pay. In addition to the official compensation, a job at Sobibor offered endless opportunities for the SS officers to covertly enrich themselves by exploiting the labour and stealing the possessions of their victims. In one case, the SS officers enslaved a 15-year-old goldsmith prodigy named
Shlomo Szmajzner Shlomo (, Polish: Szlomo, Szlama, Szlamek, Szloma), meaning "peaceable", is a common Hebrew name, Hebrew male given name. The following individuals are often referred to only by the name Shlomo: * Solomon, king of ancient Israel, according to vari ...
, who made them rings and monograms from gold extracted from the teeth of gas chamber victims. During post-war trials, SS officers from all of the Operation Reinhard camps claimed that they would have been executed if they had not participated in the murders. However, the judges in the Treblinka trial could not find any evidence of SS officers being executed for desertion, and at least one Sobibor officer (
Alfred Ittner Alfred Ittner (13 January 1907 – 3 November 1976) was an SS functionary of Nazi Germany who served at the Sobibór extermination camp. Ittner joined the Nazi Party in February 1927, with the membership number 30,805. He subsequently joined the ...
) successfully got himself transferred.


Watchmen

Sobibor was guarded by approximately 400
watchmen ''Watchmen'' is an American comic book Limited series (comics), maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins (comics), John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 a ...
. Survivors often refer to them as ''blackies'', ''Askaris'', or ''Ukrainians'' (even though many were not Ukrainian). They were captured Soviet prisoners of war who had volunteered for the SS in order to escape the abominable conditions in Nazi POW camps. Watchmen were nominally guards, but they were also expected to supervise work details and perform manual labour including punishments and executions. They also took an active part in the extermination process, unloading transports and escorting the victims into the gas chambers. Watchmen dressed in mixed-and-matched pieces of Nazi, Soviet, and Polish uniforms, often dyed black (giving rise to the term "blackies"). They received pay and rations similar to those of Waffen-SS, as well as a family allowance and holiday leave. Although the watchmen inspired terror among the prisoners, their loyalty to the SS was not unwavering. They played an active role in Sobibor's underground barter economy, and drank copiously despite being prohibited from doing so. The SS officers were wary of the watchmen, and limited their access to ammunition. Watchmen were also transferred frequently between different camps in order to prevent them from building up local contacts or knowledge of the surrounding area. After the prisoner uprising, the SS feared that the watchmen would themselves revolt, and sent them all back to
Trawniki Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regio ...
under armed guard. Their fears proved correct, as the watchmen killed their SS escort and fled.


Interactions between prisoners and perpetrators

Prisoners lived in constant fear of their captors. They were punished for transgressions as inconsequential as smoking a cigarette, resting while working, and showing insufficient enthusiasm when forced to sing. Punishment was used not only to enforce the official camp rules, but also the guards' personal whims. The most common punishment was flogging. SS officers carried 80 centimeter whips which had been specially made by slave labour prisoners using leather taken from the luggage of gas chamber victims. Even when flogging was not in itself lethal, it would prove a death sentence if it left the recipient too injured to work. Many survivors remember an unusually large and aggressive St. Bernard named Barry that
Kurt Bolender Heinz Kurt Bolender (21 May 1912 – 10 October 1966) was an SS sergeant during the Nazi era. In 1942, he operated the gas chambers at Sobibór extermination camp, perpetrating acts of genocide against Jews and Romani people during Operati ...
and Paul Groth would sic on prisoners. In the summer of 1943, ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Gustav Wagner and ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Hubert Gomerski formed a penal brigade, consisting of prisoners who were forced to work while running. Prisoners were assigned to the penal brigade for a period of three days, but most died before their time was up. The SS exercised absolute authority over the prisoners and treated them as a source of entertainment. They forced prisoners to sing while working, while marching, and even during public executions. Some survivor testimonies recount prisoners performing mock
cockfights A cockfight is a blood sport, held in a ring called a cockpit. The history of raising fowl for fighting goes back 6,000 years. The first documented use of the ''word'' gamecock, denoting use of the cock as to a " game", a sport, pastime or ent ...
for the SS, with their arms tied behind their backs. Others recount being forced to sing demeaning songs such as "I am a Jew with a big nose". Female prisoners were sexually abused on several occasions. For instance, at a postwar trial,
Erich Bauer Erich Bauer (26 March 1900 – 4 February 1980), sometimes referred to as "Gasmeister", was a low-level commander in the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) of Nazi Germany and a Holocaust perpetrator. He participated in Action T4 program and later in Operati ...
testified that two Austrian Jewish actresses, named Ruth and Gisela, were confined in an SS barracks and gang raped by ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Kurt Bolender and ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Gustav Wagner, among others. Unique among the SS officers, ''Unterscharführer'' Johann Klier was known to be relatively humane, and several survivors testified on his behalf at his trial. In an interview with
Richard Rashke Richard L. Rashke (born 1936) is an American journalist, teacher and author, who has written non-fiction books, as well as plays and screenplays. He is especially known for his history, ''Escape from Sobibor,'' first published in 1982, an account ...
, Esther Terner commented "I don't even know why he was in Sobibor ... even the other Nazis picked on him." Prisoners regarded the watchmen as the most dangerous among the Sobibor staff, their cruelty surpassing that of the SS officers. In the words of historian Marek Bem, "It can be said that the Ukrainian guards' cynicism was in no way inferior to the SS men's premeditation." However, some individual watchmen were sympathetic to the Jews, doing the minimum possible while on duty and even assisting with prisoners' escape attempts. In one documented instance, two watchmen named Victor Kisiljow and Wasyl Zischer escaped with six Jewish prisoners, but were betrayed and killed. Prisoners developed complex relationships with their tormenters. In order to avoid the most extreme cruelties, many tried to ingratiate themselves with the SS officers, for instance by choosing maudlin German folk songs when ordered to sing. In other cases, prisoners found themselves unwillingly favored. ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Karl Frenzel took a liking to
Saartje Wijnberg Selma Engel-Wijnberg (born Saartje "Selme" Wijnberg; 15 May 1922 – 4 December 2018) was one of only two Dutch Jewish Holocaust survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp. She escaped during the 1943 uprising, hid in Poland, and survived the w ...
, constantly smiling at her and teasingly referring to her and
Chaim Engel The name ''Haim'' can be a first name or surname originating in the Hebrew language, or deriving from the Old German name '' Haimo''. Hebrew etymology Chayyim ( he, חַיִּים ', Classical Hebrew: , Israeli Hebrew: ), also transcribed ''Ha ...
as "bride and groom". He was protective towards her, excusing her from torturous work inflicted on other Dutch prisoners and sparing her when he liquidated the sick barracks on 11 October 1943. She struggled with this attention and felt angry at herself when she noticed herself feeling grateful to him. At his trial, Frenzel declared "I actually do believe the Jews even liked me!" though both prisoners and other SS officers regarded him as exceptionally cruel and brutal. Similarly, camp commandant ''SS-Obersturmführer'' Franz Stangl "made a pet" of the 14 year old goldsmith
Shlomo Szmajzner Shlomo (, Polish: Szlomo, Szlama, Szlamek, Szloma), meaning "peaceable", is a common Hebrew name, Hebrew male given name. The following individuals are often referred to only by the name Shlomo: * Solomon, king of ancient Israel, according to vari ...
and regarded his post-war trial testimony as a personal betrayal. Stangl particularly objected to the implication that his habit of bringing Smajzner sausages on the sabbath had been a deliberate attempt to torment the starving teenager. Szmajzner himself was not sure of Stangl's intentions: "it's perfectly true that he seemed to like me... still, it was funny, wasn't it, that he always brought it on a Friday evening?"


Extermination


Killing process

On either 16 or 18 May 1942, Sobibor became fully operational and began mass gassings. Trains entered the railway siding with the unloading platform, and the Jews on board were told they were in a transit camp. They were forced to hand over their valuables, were separated by sex and told to undress. The nude women and girls, recoiling in shame, were met by the Jewish workers who cut off their hair in a mere half a minute. Among the ''Friseur'' (barbers) was Toivi Blatt (age 15). The condemned prisoners, formed into groups, were led along the long "Road to Heaven" (''Himmelstrasse'') to the gas chambers, where they were murdered using
carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...
released from the exhaust pipes of a
tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engin ...
engine.Schelvis 2007, p. 100: ''Testimony o
''SS-Scharführer'' Erich Fuchs
about his own installation of the (at least) 200 HP, V-shaped, 8 cylinder, water-cooled petrol engine at Sobibor.''
During his trial, ''SS-
Oberscharführer __NOTOC__ ''Oberscharführer'' (, ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between 1932 and 1945. ''Oberscharführer'' was first used as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions ...
''
Kurt Bolender Heinz Kurt Bolender (21 May 1912 – 10 October 1966) was an SS sergeant during the Nazi era. In 1942, he operated the gas chambers at Sobibór extermination camp, perpetrating acts of genocide against Jews and Romani people during Operati ...
described the killing operations as follows: Local Jews were delivered in absolute terror, many amongst them screaming and pounding. Foreign Jews, on the other hand were treated with deceitful politeness. Passengers from
Westerbork Camp Westerbork ( nl, Kamp Westerbork, german: Durchgangslager Westerbork, Drents: ''Börker Kamp; Kamp Westerbörk'' ), also known as Westerbork transit camp, was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands, ...
, Netherlands, had a comfortable journey. There were Jewish doctors and nurses attending them and no shortage of food or medical supplies on the train. To them, Sobibor did not seem like a genuine threat. The non-Polish victims included 18-year-old
Helga Deen Helga Deen (6 April 1925 – 16 July 1943) was a Jewish diarist whose diary was discovered in 2004, which describes her stay in a Dutch prison camp, '' Kamp Vught'', where she was brought during World War II at the age of 18. Biography Deen was ...
from the Netherlands, whose diary was discovered in 2004; the writer Else Feldmann from Austria; Dutch Olympic gold medalist gymnasts
Helena Nordheim Helena "Lea" Nordheim (1 August 1903 – 2 July 1943) was a Dutch gymnast. She won the gold medal as a member of the Dutch gymnastics team at the 1928 Summer Olympics in her native Amsterdam. With her team, she was inducted into the Internationa ...
, Ans Polak, and
Jud Simons Judikje "Jud" Simons (20 August 1904 – 20 March 1943) was a Dutch gymnast who competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics. In 1928 she won the gold medal as member of the Dutch gymnastics team. The team was inducted into the International Jewish ...
; gym coach
Gerrit Kleerekoper Gerrit Kleerekoper (15 February 1897 – 2 July 1943) was a Jewish-Dutch gymnastics coach. He was married with two children and worked as a diamond cutter. He led the Dutch women gymnastics team to win the gold medal at the 1928 Olympic Games in ...
; and magician Michel Velleman. After the killing in the gas chambers, the corpses were collected by ''Sonderkommandos'' and taken to mass graves or cremated in the open air.Matt Lebovi
"70 years after revolt, Sobibor secrets are yet to be unearthed"
''
Times of Israel ''The Times of Israel'' is an Israeli multi-language online newspaper that was launched in 2012. It was co-founded by Israeli journalist David Horovitz, who is also the founding editor, and American billionaire investor Seth Klarman.
'' 14 October 2013. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
The burial pits were long, wide, and deep, with sloping sandy walls in order to facilitate the burying of corpses.


Death toll

Between 170,000 and 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor. The precise death toll is unknown, since no complete record survives. The most commonly cited figure of 250,000 was first proposed in 1947 by a Polish judge named
Zbigniew Łukaszewicz Zbigniew () is a Polish language, Polish masculine given name, originally Zbygniew . This Slavic names, West Slavic name is derived from the Polish elements ''Zby-'' (from ''zbyć, zbyć się, or pozbyć się'', meaning "to dispel", "to get rid of" ...
, who interviewed survivors, railwaymen, and external witnesses to estimate of the frequency and capacity of the transports. Later research has reached the same figure drawing on more specific documentation, although other recent studies have given lower estimates such as
Jules Schelvis Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor among the 3,005 people on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, hav ...
's figure of 170,165. According to historian Marek Bem, "The range of scientific research into this question shows how rudimentary our current knowledge is of the number of victims of this extermination camp." One major source which can be used to estimate the death toll is the
Höfle Telegram The Höfle Telegram (or Hoefle Telegram) is a cryptic one-page document, discovered in 2000 among the declassified World War II archives of the Public Record Office in Kew, England. The document consists of several radio telegrams in translatio ...
, a collection of SS cables which give precise numbers of "recorded arrivals" at each of the
Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...
camps prior to 31 December 1942. Identical numbers are found in the
Korherr Report The Korherr Report is a 16-page document on the progress of the Holocaust in German-controlled Europe. It was delivered to Heinrich Himmler on March 23, 1943, by the chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the '' SS'' and professional statis ...
, another surviving Nazi document. These sources both report 101,370 arrivals at Sobibor during the year 1942, but the meaning of this figure is open to interpretation. Some scholars, such as Bem, suggest that it refers only to Jews arriving from within the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
. However, others such as
Jules Schelvis Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor among the 3,005 people on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, hav ...
take it as a record of the total arrivals during that year and thus combine it with an estimate of the killings in 1943 to reach a total estimate. Other key sources of information include records of particular transports sent to Sobibor. In some cases, this information is detailed and systematic. For instance, the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies archive contains precise records of each transport sent to Sobibor from the Netherlands, totaling 34,313 individuals. In other cases, transports are only known through incidental evidence, such as when one of its passengers was among the survivors. Many of the difficulties in reaching a firm death toll arise from the incompleteness of surviving evidence. Records of deportations are more likely to exist when they took place by train, meaning that estimates likely undercount the number of prisoners brought on trucks, horse-drawn carts, or by foot. Moreover, even records of trains appear to contain gaps. For example, while a letter from
Albert Ganzenmüller Albert Ganzenmüller (born 25 February 1905 in Passau – died 20 March 1996 in Munich) was a German Nazi and, as the Under-secretary of State at the Reich Transport Ministry ''()'', was involved in the deportation of German Jews. Career Albe ...
to
Karl Wolff Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff (13 May 1900 – 17 July 1984) was a German SS functionary who served as Chief of Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS (Heinrich Himmler) and an SS liaison to Adolf Hitler during World War II. He ended the war as the Supre ...
mentions past trains from
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
to
Sobibor Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As an ...
, no itineraries survive. On the other hand, estimates may count small numbers of individuals as Sobibor victims who in fact died elsewhere, or conceivably even survived. This is because small groups of new arrivals were occasionally selected to work in one of the nearby labour camps, rather than being gassed immediately as was the norm. For instance, when
Jules Schelvis Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor among the 3,005 people on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, hav ...
was deported to Sobibor on a transport carrying 3,005 Dutch Jews, he was one of 81 men selected to work in
Dorohucza Dorohucza is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Trawniki, within Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately east of Świdnik and east of the regional capital Lublin. The village has a populatio ...
, and the only one to survive. Although these instances were rare and some are documented well enough to be accounted for, they could still have a small cumulative effect on estimates of the death toll. Other figures have been given which differ from what is indicated by reliable historical evidence. Numbers as high as 3 million appear in reports requested immediately after the war by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. During the
Sobibor trial The Sobibor trial was a 1965–66 judicial trial in the West German prosecution of SS officers who had worked at Sobibor extermination camp; it was held in Hagen. It was one of a series of similar war crime trials held during the early and mid-196 ...
s in the 1960s, the judges adopted a figure of 152,000 victims, though they stressed that this was not a complete estimate but rather a minimum limited by the procedural rules concerning evidence. Survivors have suggested numbers of victims significantly higher than what historians accept. Many recall a camp rumour that
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
's visit in February 1943 was intended to celebrate the millionth victim, and others suggest figures even higher. Bem suggests that survivors' estimates disagree with the record because they reflect "the state of their emotions back then, as well as the drama and the scale of tragedy which happened in Sobibor". Another high figure comes from one of the perpetrators, ''SS-Oberscharfuhrer'' Erich Bauer, who recalled his colleagues expressing regret that Sobibor "came last" in the competition among the Operation Reinhard camps, having claimed only 350,000 lives.


Uprising

On the afternoon of 14 October 1943, members of the Sobibor underground covertly killed eleven of the on-duty SS men and then led roughly 300 prisoners to freedom. This revolt was one of three uprisings by Jewish prisoners in extermination camps, the others being those at
Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
on 2 August 1943 and at
Auschwitz-Birkenau Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
on 7 October 1944.


Lead up

In the summer of 1943, rumors began to circulate that Sobibor would soon cease operations. The prisoners understood that this would mean certain death for them all, since the final cohort of Bełżec prisoners had been murdered at Sobibor after dismantling their own camp. The Sobibor prisoners knew this since the Bełżec prisoners had sewn messages into their clothing:
We worked at Bełżec for one year and did not know where we would be sent next. They said it would be Germany... Now we are in Sobibór and know what to expect. Be aware that you will be killed also! Avenge us!
An escape committee formed in response to these rumors. Their leader was
Leon Feldhendler Leon Felhendler (Lejb Felhendler) (1 June 1910 – 6 April 1945) was a Polish resistance fighter known for his role in organizing the 1943 prisoner uprising at Sobibor extermination camp together with Alexander Pechersky. Prewar life Felhendler ...
, a former member of the
judenrat A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every com ...
in
Żółkiewka Żółkiewka (formerly German ''Pilgramshain'') is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Strzegom, within Świdnica County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. Prior to 1945 it was in Germany Germany,, of ...
. His job in the sorting barracks gave him access to additional food, sparing him from the hunger which robbed other workers of their mental acuity. However, the escape committee made minimal progress that summer. In light of previous betrayals and the ever-looming threat of collective punishment, they needed to keep their discussions limited to roughly seven Polish Jews, but this insularity severely limited their capacity to form a plan, since none of their members had the military or strategic experience necessary to carry out a mass escape. By late September, their discussions had stalled. On 22 September, the situation changed dramatically when roughly twenty Jewish
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
POWs arrived at Sobibor on a transport from the
Minsk Ghetto The Minsk Ghetto was created soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest in Belorussian SSR, and the largest in the German-occupied territory of the Soviet Union.Donald L. Niewyk, Francis R. Nicosia, ''The Co ...
and were selected for labour. Among them was
Alexander Pechersky Alexander 'Sasha' Pechersky (russian: Алекса́ндр Аро́нович Пече́рский; 22 February 1909 – 19 January 1990) was one of the organizers, and the leader, of the most successful uprising and mass-escape of Jews from a Naz ...
, an actor, songwriter, and political commissar who would go on to lead the revolt. The members of the escape committee approached the newly-arrived Russians with excitement, but also caution. On one hand, the Russians were soldiers and thus had the expertise to pull off an escape. But on the other hand, it was not clear whether there was sufficient mutual trust. Feldhendler introduced himself to Pechersky using the alias "Baruch" and kept an eye on him for his first several days in the camp. In those days, Pechersky distinguished himself by not only standing up to the SS officers, but by showing discretion in how he did so. Feldhendler invited Pechersky to share news from outside the camp at a meeting in the women's barracks. Feldhendler was initially shocked to discover Pechersky's limited ability to speak Yiddish, the common language of Eastern European Jews. However, the two were able to communicate in Russian, and Pechersky agreed to attend. At the meeting, Pechersky gave a speech and took questions while his friend Solomon Leitman translated into Yiddish. (Leitman was a Polish Jew who had befriended Pechersky in the Minsk Ghetto.) Feldhendler and the other members of the escape committee were concerned about Pechersky's blatant communist propaganda, but were nonetheless impressed by him. They were particularly struck by Pechersky's response to a question about whether
Soviet partisans Soviet partisans were members of resistance movements that fought a guerrilla war against Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Soviet-occupied territories of interwar Poland in 1941–45 and eastern Finland. The ...
would liberate the camp: "No one can do our work for us." Over the next few weeks, Pechersky met regularly with the escape committee. These meetings were held in the women's barracks under the pretext of him having an affair with a woman known as "Luka". Pechersky and Feldhendler agreed that the revolt would allow all 600 prisoners at least some chance of escape, though they later concluded that they would not be able to include the over fifty '' sonderkommando'' workers who were kept under strict isolation in ''Lager III''. At first, Pechersky and Leitman discussed a plan to dig a tunnel from the carpenter's workshop in ''Lager I'', which was close to the south fence. This idea was abandoned as too difficult. If the tunnel was too deep, it would hit the high water table and flood. Too shallow, and it would detonate one of the mines surrounding the camp. Furthermore, the organizers doubted that they could get all 600 prisoners through the tunnel without getting caught. The ultimate idea for the revolt came to Pechersky while he was assigned to the forest brigade, chopping wood near ''Lager III''. While working, he heard the sound of a child in the gas chamber screaming "Mama! Mama!". Overcome with his feeling of powerlessness and reminded of his own daughter Elsa, he decided that the plan could not be a mere escape. Rather, it would have to be a revolt. Over the next week, Pechersky and Leitman developed what became the ultimate plan.


Revolt

The revolt began late in the afternoon on 14 October 1943. The plan consisted of two phases. In the first phase, the prisoners would lure the SS officers to secluded locations around the camp and kill them. These covert killings would take place in the hour before evening roll call. The second phase would begin at evening roll call, after all the prisoners had assembled in the ''Lager I'' roll call yard. The ''kapos'' would announce that the SS had ordered a special work detail in the forest outside the camp, and the entire group would calmly march to freedom out the front gate. If the watchmen found this unusual, they would not be able to confirm their suspicions or coordinate a response since the SS men would be dead.


Covert killings

At 4:00 pm, Deputy Commandant SS-Untersturmführer Johann Niemann rode up to the ''Lager I'' tailor's barracks on his horse. Earlier in the day, the head tailor had scheduled an appointment with him to be fitted for a leather jacket taken from a murdered Jew. The conspirators had prioritized Niemann's execution, since he was acting commandant while Commandant Reichleitner was on leave. Even if the rest of the plan failed, they anticipated that Niemann's death alone would cause enough chaos to allow some chance of escape. While admiring the jacket, Niemann spotted one of the Russian prisoners standing by with an axe. Niemann asked what he was doing there, but was satisfied with the head tailor's explanation that he was simply there to repair a table. At the tailor's request, Niemann removed his pistol holster and put on the jacket. The tailor asked Niemann to turn around, ostensibly to check if any alterations were needed in the back. When Niemann complied, two prisoners crept up behind him with axes and split his head open. Niemann's body was shoved under a table and his blood was covered up with sawdust.Erenburg, Grossman. ''Black Book: Uprising in Sobibor (in Russian)''
Retrieved on 2009-04-21
Over the next hour, one SS officer was killed roughly every six minutes. Other than Niemann, those killed in ''Lager I'' included SS-Unterscharführer Josef Vallaster, SS-Oberscharführer Siegfried Graetschus, Sturmführer Ivan Klatt, SS-Unterscharführer Friedrich Gaulstich, and SS-Unterscharführer Fritz Konrad. Those killed in ''Lager II'' included SS-Scharführer Josef Wolf and SS-Oberscharführer Rudolf Beckmann. Unterscharführer Walter Ryba was killed in the ''Vorlager''. Other officers killed include Max Bree, Anton Nowak, Thomas Steffl, Ernst Stengelin. The details of many of these killings are unknown. The conspirators had originally planned to kill SS-Oberscharführer Rudolf Beckmann in a ''Lager II'' storage barracks, but on his way to the appointment, Beckmann had suddenly turned around and headed back to the administration building.
Chaim Engel The name ''Haim'' can be a first name or surname originating in the Hebrew language, or deriving from the Old German name '' Haimo''. Hebrew etymology Chayyim ( he, חַיִּים ', Classical Hebrew: , Israeli Hebrew: ), also transcribed ''Ha ...
volunteered to kill Beckmann in his office, after overhearing Feldhendler discussing the situation with ''Kapo'' Hersh Pozyczki, the younger brother of ''Oberkapo'' Pozyczki. Engel and the younger Pozyczki went together to the administration building, and Engel stabbed Beckmann while Pozyczki restrained him. When Engel stabbed Beckmann, he shouted "For my father! For my brother! For all the Jews!" Beckmann struggled as Engel stabbed him, causing Engel's knife to slip and cut his own hand. Once Beckmann was dead, the two prisoners pushed his body under the desk, not having time to better hide him or clean up. While the killings proceeded, Szlomo Szmajzner went to the ''Vorlager'' to acquire additional guns from the watchmens' barracks. During the last organizational meeting, on 12 October, he had offered to do so himself. As the camp machinist, Smajzner was often called to the ''Vorlager'' to clean and repair the stoves there, so he was able to enter the barracks carrying a replacement stovepipe over his shoulder. He entered the watchmens' barracks and helped himself to six rifles and ammunition. However, he could only fit two of the rifles inside the stovepipe, so he wrapped the others in a blanket. Once he was ready to go, he decided that it might be safer to hunker down in the ''Vorlager'' and not return to ''Lager I'' until the bugle call. That way, it would seem like he had been acting alone if he was caught. Just before the bugle at 5:00 pm, he found two child prisoners and ordered them to carry the blanket with the rifles. They were scared, so he forced them to do it at knifepoint. After the bugle call, he delivered the rifles to the Russians, but demanded that they let him keep one for himself.


Breakout

As roll call drew closer, Pechersky became increasingly concerned that the revolt would soon be discovered. He was surprised that the plan had succeeded so far, but nonetheless several killings had not gone as intended. In particular, while his plan had required that the SS men be killed discreetly, an impulsive prisoner had killed Unterscharführer Walter Ryba in the outdoor ''Vorlager'' garage. Pechersky considered beginning the breakout early, but was reluctant to do so while SS-Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel was still alive. Frenzel, regarded as one of the most dangerous officers in the camp, had dallied in the shower and was late for his appointment in the carpenter's shop. Close to 5:00 pm, Pechersky and Leitman finally decided to give up on Frenzel and sent the bugler Judah to climb the forester's tower and blow the bugle announcing the end of the workday. At this point, many prisoners in ''Lager I'' had already left their jobs and were standing around in the roll call yard or hiding in the adjacent buildings. In ''Lager II'', the prisoners were confused by the early bugle call and gathered haphazardly for the march back to ''Lager I''. Feldhendler was concerned that their unusual and disorderly lineup would attract attention from the guards, so he decided to lead the march on his own. He lined them up and they marched, singing the German sentimental tune "
Es war ein Edelweiss Es war ein Edelweiss ( en, italic=no, "It Was an Edelweiss") is a march (music), march, with music and lyrics composed by Herms Niel in 1941 for the German Army (Wehrmacht), German Army. Lyrics and Translation See also * Nazi songs * Erika ...
". As the prisoners gathered in the roll call yard, rumours about the revolt began to spread among them. When a watchman prodded them to line up faster, a group of prisoners shouted "don't you know the war is over" and killed him out in the open, to the shock of many others. Realizing that the yard had become a powder keg, Pechersky attempted to inform the group of what was going on. Blatt recalled Pechersky's speech as follows: As the prisoners began to disperse, they heard shots from ''Lager II''. These shots were fired by SS-Oberscharführer Erich Bauer, who had returned from
Chełm Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...
with a truck full of vodka. Just before the bugle sounded, Bauer had ordered two child prisoners to unload the vodka and carry it into the storeroom in the administration building where Beckmann had been killed. At approximately the moment when Pechersky was making his speech in ''Lager I'', a watchman ran over to Bauer shouting "Ein deutsch kaput!" Thinking that the children were responsible, Bauer fired his pistol, killing one of the children but missing the other. When the prisoners in ''Lager I'' heard these shots, they ran in every direction. A group of them dragged a watchman off his bicycle and killed him. Many prisoners had to make a split-second decision without knowing exactly what was going on. The plan had been kept on a need-to-know basis, so even those who were aware of the revolt knew few details. Pechersky and Feldhendler ran around the yard trying to shepherd prisoners out, but around 175 nonetheless stayed back. As the crowd surged forward, there was a moment of confusion in which the watchmen in the towers did not react. Itzhak Lichtman reported seeing some of the remaining SS men hiding, perhaps thinking that the camp was being attacked by partisans. After a moment, the watchmen began shooting into the crowd, and some of the prisoners shot with the rifles procured by Szmajzner and with pistols taken from dead SS officers. Szmajzner hit a watchman in a tower, later recalling "I did not do that; God did." One group of prisoners ran behind the carpenters shop. The carpenters had left ladders, pliers, and axes lying in the weeds next to the south fence, as a backup plan in case the main gate in the ''Vorlager'' proved inaccessible. These prisoners scaled the fence, traversed the ditch, and began running through the minefield towards the forest. As they ran, the mines exploded, killing some of the escapees and attracting the attention of the watchmen in the towers who began shooting. Esther Raab felt a bullet graze her head above her right ear. She kept running, but felt herself losing strength. She reached out to hold onto a woman running next to her, but the woman pushed her off and shouted "leave me alone!" A larger group of prisoners headed for the ''Vorlager''. These prisoners tried to escape through the main gate or over the south fence, while a group of Soviet prisoners attempted to raid the armoury. There, they were met with Frenzel, who at this point had gotten out of the shower and was getting himself a pre-roll call drink in the canteen. Attracted by the commotion, Frenzel had grabbed a machine gun and run outside. Seeing the crowd of prisoners heading to the main gate, he opened fire, spraying the crowd of prisoners. Pechersky fired at Frenzel using Vallaster's pistol but missed. A group of prisoners attempted to rush the main gate, but were met with another SS officer there shooting into the crowd. Some scattered, but others were pushed forward by the force of those behind them. They trampled the main gate and flooded out. Others in the ''Vorlager'' tried to escape over the barbed wire behind the SS officers' barracks, correctly guessing that there would be fewer mines there. Many prisoners who attempted to get out this way got stuck on the barbed wire. Among these prisoners was Thomas Blatt, who survived because the fence collapsed on top of him. As he lay on the ground, he saw the prisoners in front of him blown up as they crossed the minefield. Blatt freed himself by slipping out of his coat which was stuck on the barbed wire and running across the exploded mines and into the forest. Roughly 300 prisoners escaped to the forest.


Aftermath

Immediately after the escape, in the forest, a group of fifty prisoners followed Pechersky. After a few days, Pechersky and seven other Russian POWs left, claiming that they would return with food. However, they instead left to cross the
Bug River uk, Західний Буг be, Захо́дні Буг , name_etymology = , image = Wyszkow_Bug.jpg , image_size = 250 , image_caption = Bug River in the vicinity of Wyszków, Poland , map = Vi ...
and make contact with the partisans. After Pechersky did not return, the remaining prisoners split into smaller groups and sought separate ways. In 1980, Blatt asked Pechersky why he abandoned the other survivors. Pechersky answered, Dutch historian and Sobibor survivor
Jules Schelvis Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor among the 3,005 people on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, hav ...
estimates that 158 inmates perished in the Sobibor revolt, killed by the guards or in the minefield surrounding the camp. A further 107 were killed either by the SS, ''Wehrmacht'', or '' Orpo'' police units pursuing them. Some 53 insurgents died of other causes between the day of the revolt and 8 May 1945. There were 58 known survivors, 48 male and 10 female, from among the ''Arbeitshäftlinge'' prisoners performing slave-labour for the daily operation of Sobibor. Their time in the camp ranged from several weeks to almost two years.


Liquidation and demolition

Once the shooting stopped, the surviving SS secured the camp. They held the remaining prisoners in ''Lager I'' at gunpoint and executed those found hiding in other areas of the camp. They searched for Niemann, who had been left in charge of the camp while Commandant Reichleitner was on holiday. After the sun set, the search continued in the dark, since the prisoners had cut the powerlines. Around 8:00 pm, Niemann's corpse was found in the tailor's barracks and Frenzel assumed command. His first undertaking was to summon reinforcements, thinking that the remaining prisoners would resist and worried that the escapees might launch a second attack. After discovering that the prisoners had cut the phone lines, he went to use the phone at the Sobibór train station, located a few metres outside the camp. He called multiple SS outposts in
Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...
and Chełm, as well as a nearby battalion of ''Wehrmacht'' soldiers. Reinforcements were delayed by bureaucratic confusion as well as the railway lines having been blown up by partisans. However, a group of SS officials arrived later that night, including
Gottlieb Hering __NOTOC__ Gottlieb Hering (2 June 1887 – 9 October 1945) was an SS commander of Nazi Germany. He served in Action T4 and later as the second and last commandant of Bełżec extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. Hering directly perpetr ...
and
Christian Wirth ), Christian the CruelZenter, Christian and Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). '' Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' (pg. 1053), New York: Macmillan; , allegiance = , branch = Schutzstaffel , serviceyears = , rank = Sturmbannführer (Major) , ...
. Wirth ordered
Erich Bauer Erich Bauer (26 March 1900 – 4 February 1980), sometimes referred to as "Gasmeister", was a low-level commander in the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) of Nazi Germany and a Holocaust perpetrator. He participated in Action T4 program and later in Operati ...
to go to summon the ''Sicherheitspolizei'' from Chełm in person, since Frenzel had been unable to reach them by phone. Bauer balked, afraid that he would be attacked on the way. During the night, the SS combed the camp for hiding prisoners. Many were armed and fought back. Jakub Biskubicz, the ''putzer'' who Bauer had shot at during the revolt, witnessed this part of the search before escaping:

Until midnight I lay on the earth. I could hear shouts and screams from all directions. At midnight, I heard shooting close to me and the voices of Germans say: "Nobody is here." They left... I reached 'Lager''IV. I saw the open door of a watchtower. Nobody was around. I climbed the ladder of the tower and jumped outside over the fences and mines. I fell on the railway and escaped to the forest.

Early the next day, 15 October, the Sobibor SS were joined by numerous SS including
Hermann Höfle Hermann Julius Höfle, also Hans (or) Hermann Hoefle ((; 19 June 1911 – 21 August 1962), was an Austrians, Austrian-born SS commander and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. He was deputy to Odilo Globočnik in the ''Aktion Reinhard'' p ...
, as well as eighty ''Wehrmacht'' soldiers. They marched the remaining 159 prisoners to ''Lager III'' and shot them. The Nazis launched a manhunt, worried that the advancing Red Army would find the Polish countryside scattered with witnesses to their crimes. SS officers, ''Wehrmacht'' soldiers, and ''
Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...
'' airplanes swept the surrounding area, while locals were offered bounties for assisting. Several SS officers involved in the manhunt were put up for medals for their "incisive action". Surviving German documents show that 59 escapees were caught in the nearby villages of
Sobibór Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...
and Różanka on 17 and 18 October. The Germans recovered weapons from them, including a hand grenade. A few days later, on 21 October, another five Jews were killed by ''Wehrmacht'' soldiers near Adampol and an additional eight in
Sawin Sawin (; uk, Савин) is a settlement in Chełm County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Sawin. It lies approximately north of Chełm and east of the regional capital ...
. In all, records indicate that at least 107 escapees were killed specifically by the Germans, while another 23 are known to have been killed by non-Germans.
Jules Schelvis Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor among the 3,005 people on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, hav ...
estimates that roughly 30 died in other ways before the end of the war. On 19 October, SS chief Himmler ordered that the camp be closed. Jewish slave labourers were sent to Sobibor from
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
in order to dismantle the camp. They demolished the gas chambers and most of the camp buildings, but left behind several barracks for future use by '' Baudienst''. The work was finished by the end of the October, and all of the Jews brought from Treblinka were shot between 1 November and 10 November.


Aftermath


Survivors

Several thousand deportees to Sobibor were spared the gas chambers because they were transferred to slave-labour camps in the
Lublin reservation The Nisko Plan was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany, the plan was cancelled in early 1940. The idea for the expulsion and resettlement of the Jews ...
, upon arriving at Sobibor. These people spent several hours at Sobibor and were transferred almost immediately to slave-labour projects including
Majdanek Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...
and the
Lublin airfield camp The Lublin airfield camp was a Nazi forced labor concentration camp, primarily for Jews, at the airfield in Lublin, Poland during 1942–1943, with its prehistory starting from 1939. It also employed and detained (non-Jewish) Polish women. ...
, where materials looted from the gassed victims were prepared for shipment to Germany. Other forced labour camps included Krychów,
Dorohucza Dorohucza is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Trawniki, within Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately east of Świdnik and east of the regional capital Lublin. The village has a populatio ...
, and
Trawniki Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regio ...
. Most of these prisoners were murdered in the November 1943 massacre
Operation Harvest Festival Operation Harvest Festival (german: Aktion Erntefest) was the murder of up to 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps by the SS, the Order Police battalions, and the Ukrainian ''Sonderdienst'' on 3–4 Novembe ...
, or perished in other ways before the end of the war. Of the 34,313 Jews deported to Sobibor from the Netherlands according to train schedules, 18 are known to have survived the war. In June 2019 the last known survivor of the revolt, Simjon Rosenfeld, who was born in
Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, died at a retirement home near
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
, Israel, aged 96.


Trials

Most perpetrators of Operation Reinhard were never brought to trial. However, there were several Sobibor trials after the war. ''SS-Oberscharführer'' Erich Bauer was the first SS officer from Sobibor to be tried. Bauer was arrested in 1946 when two former Jewish prisoners from Sobibor, Samuel Lerer and Esther Terner, recognized him at a fairground in the
Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it ha ...
neighborhood of
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. On 8 May 1950, Bauer was sentenced to death for
crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
, though his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment due to West Germany's abolition of capital punishment. Dick de Mildt. ''In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide'', pp. 381–383. Brill, 1996. Klee, Ernst, Dressen, Willi, Riess, Volker ''The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders''. . Terner testified against Bauer, and later recalled thinking "This ''nothing'' had such power?" The second Sobibor trials occurred shortly after, against Hubert Gomerski and Johann Klier. Gomerski was given a life sentence while Johann Klier was acquitted, in part due to favorable testimony from Terner. The third Sobibor trials were the Hagen Trials, which took place in
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
. The twelve defendants included
Karl Frenzel Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel
(20 August 1911 – 2 September 1996) was an Kurt Bolender Heinz Kurt Bolender (21 May 1912 – 10 October 1966) was an SS sergeant during the Nazi era. In 1942, he operated the gas chambers at Sobibór extermination camp, perpetrating acts of genocide against Jews and Romani people during Operati ...
. Frenzel was sentenced to life imprisonment for personally killing 6 Jews and participating in the mass murder of an additional 150,000. Bolender committed suicide before sentencing. Five other defendants were given sentences of less than eight years, and the rest were acquitted. In the 1970s and 1980s, several SS men were retried. Gomerski was ultimately freed on procedural grounds since he was deemed too ill to participate in the proceedings. Subsequently, Frenzel's life sentence was upheld after a retrial in which Gomerski testified. In the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, there were several rounds of trials against Soviet citizens who had served at Sobibor as
watchmen ''Watchmen'' is an American comic book Limited series (comics), maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins (comics), John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 a ...
. In April 1963, a court in
Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...
convicted eleven former watchmen, sentencing ten to death and one to 15 years in prison. In June 1965, more watchmen from Sobibor were convicted in Kiev. Another six were put to death in
Krasnodar Krasnodar (; rus, Краснода́р, p=krəsnɐˈdar; ady, Краснодар), formerly Yekaterinodar (until 1920), is the largest city and the administrative centre of Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The city stands on the Kuban River in southern ...
. In May 2011,
John Demjanjuk John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, M ...
was convicted for being an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews while serving as a watchman at Sobibor. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released pending appeal. He died in a German nursing home on 17 March 2012, aged 91, while awaiting the hearing.


The site

The Germans were driven out of the area in July 1944. In August, Lieutenant Colonel Semion Volsky of the Red Army photographed the site and prepared a report which is on file in the
Central Archives of the Russian Ministry of Defence The Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (russian: Центральный архив Министерства обороны Российской Федерации (ЦАМО РФ); TsAMO RF) are located in Podols ...
. After the end of the German occupation, the camp's remaining barracks were briefly used to house Ukrainian civilians waiting to be resettled. These deportees dismantled several remaining buildings for use as firewood. Parts of the Vorlager were subsequently sold to private individuals, though most of the camp site was returned to the Polish forestry administration. A September 1945 report by Polish authorities noted that locals had dismantled most of the remaining camp buildings, reusing parts of them in their own houses. This report was corroborated in 2010 when a resident of nearby Żłobek Duży discovered unusual woodwork during a renovation project. Knowing that the previous owner of the house had worked near the camp, they alerted researchers from the Sobibor Museum who concluded that the woodwork was taken from the exterior of a camp barracks.Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Główna Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu) is a governmental agency created in 1945 in Poland. It is tasked with investigating German atrocities a ...
studied the site in 1945, they found trenches dug by treasure-seekers, who had left the surface strewn with ashes and human remains. Grave-digging continued in the area, despite several prosecutions in the 1960s. In the first twenty years after the war, the site of the camp was practically deserted. A journalist visiting the site in the early 1950s reported "there is nothing left in Sobibor". When
Gitta Sereny Gitta Sereny, CBE (13 March 192114 June 2012) was an Austrian-British biographer, historian, and investigative journalist who came to be known for her interviews and profiles of infamous figures, including Mary Bell, who was convicted in 1968 of ...
visited the site in March 1972, she initially drove past it without realizing. She later commented that she was struck by "the quiet, the loneliness, above all the vastness of the place, which left everything to the imagination" The first monuments to Sobibor victims were erected on the site in 1965. Installed by the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, these consisted of a memorial wall, an obelisk symbolizing the gas chambers, a sculpture of a mother and her child, and a mausoleum called the "Memory Mound". The memorial wall originally listed Jews as just one of the groups persecuted at Sobibor, but the plaque was revised in 1993 to reflect the general historical consensus that all or nearly all victims of Sobibor were Jews. In 1993, the Włodawa Museum took over the memorial from the forestry administration. They established the
Sobibór Museum The Sobibór Museum or the Museum of the Former Sobibór Nazi Death Camp ( pl, Muzeum Byłego Hitlerowskiego Obozu Zagłady w Sobiborze), is a Polish state-owned museum devoted to remembering the atrocities committed at the former Sobibor extermina ...
which opened on 14 October 1993, the 50th anniversary of the revolt. The museum was housed in a post-war building within the former site of Lager II, which had previously served as a kindergarten. In 2012, the memorial changed hands once again, this time falling under the control of the
Majdanek State Museum The Majdanek State Museum ( pl, Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku) is a memorial museum and education centre founded in the fall of 1944 on the grounds of the Nazi Germany Majdanek death camp located in Lublin, Poland. It was the first museum of its ...
, who held a design competition sponsored by the governments of Poland, Israel, the Netherlands and Slovakia. In 2018, the mass graves in the former area of Lager III were covered with white stones, and construction began on a new museum building. However, most of the area of the site is still either privately owned or under the control of the forestry administration, and the camp's arrival ramp was used for loading lumber as recently as 2015. Since the forestry tower was demolished in 2004 (after decaying nearly to the point of collapse), the only remaining building from the camp is the green post office. This building is privately owned.


Research

In the immediate aftermath of the war, several investigations were carried out. Starting in 1945, the
Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Główna Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu) is a governmental agency created in 1945 in Poland. It is tasked with investigating German atrocities a ...
and
Central Committee of Polish Jews The Central Committee of Polish Jews also referred to as the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and abbreviated CKŻP, ( pl, Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, yi, צענטראלער קאמיטעט פון די יידן אין פוילן, trans ...
investigated Sobibor, interviewing witnesses and surveying the site. In 1946, Nachman Blumental published a study entitled "The Death Camp – Sobibór" in 1946, which drew on work by the other investigations, and information about Sobibor was gathered for ''
The Black Book of Polish Jewry ''The Black Book of Polish Jewry'' is a 400-page report about the progress of the Holocaust in Poland published in 1943 during World War II by the American Federation for Polish Jews in cooperation with the Association of Jewish Refugees and Immi ...
''. Until the 1990s, little was known about the physical site of the camp beyond what survivors and perpetrators could recall. Archaeological investigations at Sobibor began in the 1990s. In 2001, a team led by Andrzej Kola from
Nicolaus Copernicus University Nicolaus is a masculine given name. It is a Latin, Greek and German form of Nicholas. Nicolaus may refer to: In science: * Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer who provided the first modern formulation of a heliocentric theory of the solar syst ...
in
Toruń )'' , image_skyline = , image_caption = , image_flag = POL Toruń flag.svg , image_shield = POL Toruń COA.svg , nickname = City of Angels, Gingerbread city, Copernicus Town , pushpin_map = Kuyavian-Pom ...
investigated the former area of ''Lager III'', finding seven pits with a total volume of roughly 19,000 cubic meters. While some of these pits appear to have been mass graves, others may have been used for open air cremation. The team also found pieces of barbed wire embedded in trees, which they identified as remnants of the camp's perimeter fence. Thus, they were able to partially map out the perimeter of the former camp site, which had not previously been known. In 2007, two archaeologists named Wojciech Mazurek and Yoram Haimi began to conduct small-scale investigations. Since 2013, the camp has been excavated by a joint team of Polish, Israeli, Slovak, and Dutch archeologists led by Mazurek, Haimi, and Ivar Schute. In accordance with
Jewish law ''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also Romanization of Hebrew, transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Judaism, Jewish religious laws which is derived from the Torah, written and Oral Tora ...
, these excavations avoided mass graves and were supervised by Polish rabbis. Their discovery of the foundations of the gas chambers, in 2014, attracted worldwide media attention. Between 2011 and 2015, thousands of personal items belonging to victims were uncovered by the teams. At the ramp, large dumps of household items, including "glasses, combs, cutlery, plates, watches, coins, razors, thimbles, scissors, toothpaste" were found, but few valuables; Schute suggests that these items are indicative of victims' hopes to survive as forced labourers. In Lager III, the extermination area, household items were not found but "gold fillings, dentures, pendants, earrings, and a gold ring" were. Schute notes that such objects could have been concealed by naked individuals, and argues that it is evidence for the "processing" of bodies at this location. In 2020, the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
acquired a collection of photographs and documents from the descendants of
Johann Niemann Johann Niemann (4 August 1913 – 14 October 1943) was a German SS and Holocaust perpetrator who was deputy commandant of Sobibor extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. He also served as a ''Leichenverbrenner'' (corpse cremator) at Gra ...
. These photos show daily life amongst the camp staff. Many show the perpetrators drinking, playing music, and playing chess with one another. These photos are significant because there had previously only been two known photographs of Sobibor during its operation. These materials have been published in a German language book and ebook by
Metropol Verlag The Metropol Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1988 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading publishers on the Nazi era and the history of the GDR. The company was founded in West Berlin by Friedrich Veitl. Together w ...
entitled ''Fotos aus Sobibor''. The photos received voluminous press coverage because two of them appear to show
John Demjanjuk John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, M ...
in the camp.


Dramatisations

The mechanics of Sobibor death camp were the subject of interviews filmed on location for the 1985 documentary film ''Shoah'' by
Claude Lanzmann Claude Lanzmann (; 27 November 1925 – 5 July 2018) was a French filmmaker known for the Holocaust documentary film '' Shoah'' (1985). Early life Lanzmann was born on 27 November 1925 in Paris, France, the son of Paulette () and Armand Lanzmann. ...
. In 2001, Lanzmann combined unused interviews with survivor
Yehuda Lerner Judah or Yehuda is the name of a biblical patriarch, Judah (son of Jacob). It may also refer to: Historical ethnic, political and geographic terms * Tribe of Judah, one of the twelve Tribes of Israel; their allotment corresponds to Judah or Jud ...
shot during the making of ''Shoah'', along with new footage of Lerner, to tell the story of the revolt and escape in his followup documentary '' Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.'' A highly fictionalized version of the Sobibor revolt was depicted in the 1978 American TV miniseries ''Holocaust''. The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 British TV film ''
Escape from Sobibor ''Escape from Sobibor'' is a 1987 British television film which aired on ITV and CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination cam ...
'', directed by
Jack Gold Jacob M. "Jack" Gold (28 June 1930 – 9 August 2015) was a British film and television director. He was part of the Kitchen sink realism, British realist tradition which followed the Free Cinema movement. Career Jacob M. Gold was born in ...
and adapted from the book by
Richard Rashke Richard L. Rashke (born 1936) is an American journalist, teacher and author, who has written non-fiction books, as well as plays and screenplays. He is especially known for his history, ''Escape from Sobibor,'' first published in 1982, an account ...
. The film's consultants included survivors
Thomas Blatt Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (born Tomasz Blatt; April 15, 1927 – October 31, 2015) was a Holocaust survivor, writer of mémoires, and public speaker, who at the age of 16 escaped from the Sobibór extermination camp during the uprising staged by the ...
,
Shlomo Szmajzner Shlomo (, Polish: Szlomo, Szlama, Szlamek, Szloma), meaning "peaceable", is a common Hebrew name, Hebrew male given name. The following individuals are often referred to only by the name Shlomo: * Solomon, king of ancient Israel, according to vari ...
, and
Esther Raab Esther Raab ( he, אסתר ראב; April 25, 1894 – September 4, 1981) was a Hebrew author of prose and poetry, known as "the first Sabra poet", due to her eminence as the first Israeli woman poet and for the prominence of her native landsc ...
. More recently, the revolt was depicted in the 2018 Russian movie ''
Sobibor Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As an ...
'', directed by
Konstantin Khabensky Konstantin Yurievich Khabensky, PAR (russian: link=no, Константин Юрьевич Хабенский; born 11 January 1972) is a Russian actor of stage and film, director and philanthropist. From 1997 he was part of the Saint Petersbu ...
. The movie presents Sasha Pechersky as a Russian patriotic figure, a depiction criticized by
Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by ...
among others.


Notes


References

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Further reading

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External links


Stichting Sobibor
the Dutch Sobibor Foundation
Collection of interviews
from
NIOD The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Dutch: ''NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies'') is an organisation in the Netherlands which maintains archives and carries out historical studies into the Second Wo ...

Sobibor Museum

Nooit Voltooid Verleden
Archaeological and testimonial documents


Kurt Ticho testimony

Toivi Blatt testimony

Esther Raab testimony
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sobibor extermination camp Buildings and structures completed in 1943 1942 in Poland 1943 in Poland 1943 disestablishments Jewish resistance during the Holocaust Prison uprisings German extermination camps in Poland Nazi war crimes in Poland Registered museums in Poland The Holocaust World War II sites in Poland World War II sites of Nazi Germany The Holocaust in Poland Jewish Nazi German history Mass murder in 1943 1943 in Judaism