Sobibór extermination camp

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Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard, the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. It is also the name of the village outside which the camp was built, which is now part of Lublin Voivodship in Poland.

The Jews, including Jewish Soviet POWs, and possibly Gypsies were transported to Sobibór by rail, and suffocated in gas chambers that were fed with the exhaust of a petrol engine. At least 250,000 people were killed in Sobibór. A memorial and museum are at the site today.

1 The camp
2 The rebellion
3 Aftermath
4 References
5 External links

[edit] The camp

In May of 1942, Sobibor began gassing operations. Trains entered the railway station, and the Jews onboard were told they were in a transit camp, and were forced to undress and hand over their valuables. They were then led into the "Road to Heaven" which led to the gas chambers, where they were killed using the carbon monoxide released from the exhaust pipes of tanks.

SS-Oberscharführer Kurt Bolender described the way the gassing operations ran during his trial:

Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharführer Hermann Michel made a speech to them. On these occasions, he used to wear a white coat to give the impression he was a physician. Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection, so as to prevent the spread of diseases. After undressing, the Jews were taken through the "Tube", by an SS man leading the way, with five or six Ukrainians at the back hastening the Jews along. After the Jews entered the gas chambers, the Ukrainians closed the doors. The motor was switched on by the Ukrainian Emil Kostenko and by the German driver Erich Bauer from Berlin. After the gassing, the doors were opened and the corpses were removed by a group of Jewish workers.

The victims were mostly Jews, from Poland (especially Lublin and eastern Galicia - 145,000-150,000), the Czech Republic and Slovakia (31,000), Germany and Austria (10,000), France (4,000), Lithuania (14,000), and the Netherlands (34,313).

Dutch victims included 18-year-old Helga Deen, whose diary was discovered in 2004, and 14-year-old Ilse Wagner, a close friend of diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank. Although official estimates put the number of dead around 250,000, survivors from the camps like Esther Raab (whose life is dramatized in Richard Raschke's play, "Dear Esther") recall the Nazi celebration for the death of the millionth Sobibor Jew.

The camp was split into four sections:

Garrison Area: This included the main entrance gates and the railway platform where the victims were taken off the trains. The Commander's lodge was opposite the platform and was on the right side to the Guardhouse and on the left by the armoury.

Lager (Camp) 1: This was built directly west and behind the Garrison Area. It was made escape proof by extra barbed wire fences and a deep trench filled with water. The only opening was a gate leading into the area. This camp was the living barracks for Jewish prisoners and included a prisoner's kitchen. Each prisoner was given about 122 feet of sleeping space.

Lager (Camp) 2: This was a larger section and included an assortment of vital services for both the killing process and the everyday operation of the camp. Laboured by 400 prisoners, including women, Lager 2 contained the warehouses used for storing the objects taken from the dead victims, including hair, clothes, food, gold and all other valuables. This Lager also housed the main administration office. It was at Lager II that the Jews were prepared for their death. Here they undressed, women's hair was shaved, clothing searched and sorted and documents destroyed in the nearby furnace. The victim's final steps were taken on path framed by barbed wire. It was called Heavenly Way and led directly to the gas chambers.

Lager (Camp) 3: This was where the victims met their end. Located in the north-western part of the camp, there were only two ways to enter the camp from Lager II. The camp staff and personnel entered through a small plain gate. The entrance for the victims descended immediately into the gas chambers decorated with flowers and a Star of David.

[edit] The rebellion

Sobibór was the site of one of three successful rebellions by Jewish prisoners in a Nazi extermination camp — there was a similar revolt at Treblinka, and at Auschwitz-Birkenau two of the crematoria was blown up during an attempted revolt.

On October 14 1943, members of the Sobibór underground, led by POW Alexander Pechersky, succeeded in covertly killing 11 of German SS officers and a number of Ukrainian guards. Although their plan was to kill all the SS and walk out of the main gate of the camp, the killings were discovered and the inmates ran for their lives under fire. About half of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped. Only about 50 escapees survived the war, however. Some died on the mine fields surrounding the site, and some were recaptured and shot by the Germans in the next few days, but survivors' accounts also indicate that many of the escapees were killed by the Polish underground and civilians. Many of those that did survive were hidden from the Germans by other Poles, at the risk of their own lives.

The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 TV movie Escape from Sobibor. An award-winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann, entitled Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures. (The English title was Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m.)