Sobibor Extermination Camp

Sobibor Extermination Camp

Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the village of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland. The camp was part of Operation Reinhard and the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. Situated near the rural county's only major town of Włodawa (called Wolzek by the Germans). Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union, possibly as well as some non-Jewish Soviet POWs, were transported to Sobibor by rail and suffocated in gas chambers fed by the exhaust of large petrol engines. One source states that up to 200,000 people were killed at Sobibor. Sobibor survivor Thomas Blatt later wrote that "In the Hagen court proceedings against former Sobibor Nazis, Professor Wolfgang Scheffler, who served as an expert, estimated the total figure of murdered Jews at a minimum of 250,000."

After a successful revolt on 01943-10-14October 14, 1943, about half of the 600 prisoners in Sobibor escaped; of these, about 50 evaded recapture. Shortly after the revolt, the Germans closed the camp, bulldozed the earth, and planted it over with pine trees to conceal its location. A memorial and museum have been constructed at the site.

Escape from Sobibor, a film about life in the camp based on the book of the same name, won the 1987 Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film.