Escape from Sobibor

A fresh trainload of Polish Jews arrives at Sobibor, and the German Commandant reassures them that they are entering a work camp. The deceptive calm sets the stage for the brutal reality that follows, as the camp's true purpose remains hidden from the newcomers.

SS officers pick a small number of prisoners with trades—goldsmiths, seamstresses, shoemakers, and tailors—for labor inside the camp. The rest are sent to a different section of Sobibor where a pillar of smoke rises day and night, signaling the planned extermination.

The prisoners realize Sobibor is a death camp where Jews are exterminated in gas chambers and cremated in large ovens. The grim truth starkly contrasts with the earlier assurances of labor-only confinement.

The spared skilled prisoners sort the belongings of murder victims, repair shoes, recycle clothing, and melt down precious metals to make jewelry for the SS. These tasks keep the camp's operations going and feed the guards’ wealth and power.

When two prisoners escape from a work detail, the most sadistic SS officer, Gustav Wagner, gives the remaining thirteen prisoners a cruel choice: select another prisoner to die with them, or he will kill fifty prisoners. The prisoners comply and he executes all twenty-six.

Leon Feldhendler, the prisoners’ leader, realises the camp’s usefulness will end once trains stop arriving and devises a plan for every prisoner to escape by luring SS officers into the barracks and huts one by one. After the killings are carried out, the remaining prisoners should assemble into columns and march out of Sobibor, hoping the Ukrainian guards will remain oblivious with no Germans to give orders or raise the alarm.

A new group of Red Army prisoners, led by Sasha Pechersky, arrives and willingly joins the revolt. Their military skills prove invaluable to the plan and its execution.

The camp commandant departs for several days with Gustav Wagner, ensuring the most sadistic officers are absent during the early stages of the revolt.

On 14 October 1943, officers and NCOs are lured into traps and killed with knives and clubs. The plan is discovered when Karl Frenzel finds a corpse and raises the alarm, triggering chaos among the guards.

Realising the escape is unravelling, the revolt escalates as prisoners rush for the perimeter fences. Some Jews wield captured rifles to shoot at Ukrainian guards, while others push toward the forest.

Machine gun fire from the observation towers kills many of the escaping prisoners, and others are killed in the surrounding minefield. The chaos ravages the camp as guards attempt to quell the breakout.

Over 300 Jews reach the forest and escape into the woods, beginning a broader march toward freedom beyond Sobibor’s borders.

Newscaster Howard K. Smith later narrates the fates of some survivors, highlighting the grim outcomes for many who escaped. Of the 300 who fled, only about 50 survive to see the end of the war in 1945.

Sasha Pechersky makes it back to Soviet lines and rejoins the Red Army, surviving the war.

Feldhendler is killed shortly after the war by anti-Semitic Poles, and Gustav Wagner escapes to Brazil where he is stabbed to death in 1980. The camp itself is bulldozed, and trees are planted on the site to remove any sign of its existence.