S.S. Obersturm Fuher was in charge of the building of Sobibor.  He was shortly fired and S.S. Stangl was then put in charge.  Sobibor was in a rectangular shape with a three meter fence surrounding it, there was a barb-wire on top to minimize the thought of escaping.  Sobibor was the second death camp in the Riehard Program. It was in a low populated area called Sobibor.  That is how the camp got it' s name.  It was roughly 1300ft. by 2000ft. It had three lines of fences and watch towers every three hundred feet.  It was finally finished in 1942. Sobibors original  gas chambers were made out of brick with a concrete floor. The first practice extermination was in April 1942. They brought in 250 Jews and they killed them all.  After it was  perfected the mass murder of the Jews began.

The poison was from a diesel engine, the fumes where piped into the gas chambers threw the walls. The fumes were carbon monoxide.  There were three parts to the camp Sobibor.  The Administration area, that is where the offices and the sleeping quarters for the S.S.  The Reception Area was where the prisoners got off the trains.  In the Reception Area the S.S. might be nice to you or they might beat you up.  The Westerners were tricked into getting on the trains.  Some of them gave the guards money for taking their bags.  The Easterners got beat as soon as they stepped foot off the trains.  The guards thought that lessened the thought of a revolt.  The guards might sick dogs on them and let them rip them to pieces because they thought it was funny. The third area was the gas chamber that is where the prisoners got their hair shaved then they had to take off all their cloths and put them in the piles of clothes.  After that the prisoners got sent down the tube that led down to the gas chambers.

more about Sobibor                              pictures of  the Holocaust          Bibliography