The Uprising
Sobibor was the site of one of two successful uprisings by Jewish prisoners in a Nazi extermination camp – there was a similar revolt at Treblinka on August 2, 1943. A revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 01944-10-07October 7, 1944 led to one of the crematoria being blown up, however nearly all the escapees were killed. Among the few who survived the Auschwitz revolt was Henryk Mandelbaum, who served as a tourist guide at the camp after the war.
Rumours that the camp would be shut down started circulating among its inmates in spring of 1943 after a drop in the number of incoming prisoner transports. Notes carried by survivors of the Belzec concentration camp, who had been transported to Sobibor only to be shot on the railway platform, hinted at what would happen if the camp were shut down. While the rumours were untrue (in fact, a decision was made to expand the camp in summer 1943), they led Polish-Jewish prisoners to organise an underground committee aimed at escape from the camp.
In September of 1943, the Sobibor underground was unexpectedly reinforced by the arrival of Soviet-Jewish POWs from Minsk; some of these were drafted into the underground so as to leverage their military experience. On October 14, 1943, members of the Sobibor underground, led by Polish-Jewish prisoner Leon Feldhendler and Soviet-Jewish POW Alexander Pechersky, succeeded in covertly killing eleven German SS officers and a number of camp 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 300 out of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped into the forests.
Only 50 to 70 escapees survived the war, however. Some died on the mine fields surrounding the site, and some were recaptured in a dragnet and executed by the Germans in the next few days. Most of those who did survive did so by hiding.
The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 British TV film Escape from Sobibor, directed by Jack Gold. An award-winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann, entitled Sobibor, 14 Octobre 1943, 16 Heures (Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m.').
Read more about this topic: Sobibor Extermination Camp
Famous quotes containing the word uprising:
“Even the most subjected person has moments of rage and resentment so intense that they respond, they act against. There is an inner uprising that leads to rebellion, however short- lived. It may be only momentary but it takes place. That space within oneself where resistance is possible remains.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“Ours is the old, old story of every uprising race or class or order. The work of elevation must be wrought by ourselves or not at all.”
—Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904)