Sobibor Death Camp

Sobibor was the second death camp out of three camps. The camp was ran by Gobocnik as part of operation Rienhard. The location of the camp was in the Lublin District of Eastern Poland it was about a kilometer from the river Bug. Its general isolation and proximity to a railway is why they chose to construct the camp there in March of 1942. The staff of the camp consisted of about 20 SS men and about 100 Ukranian guards.

map of Sobibor

By April 1942 the gas chambers were ready to be tested by using 250 Jews from the Krychow Labor Camp. They were the first to be placed into the gas chambers, which proved them operational.

The camp was 400 by 600 meters in a rectangular shape and enclosed by a three-meter high barbed wire fence. Surrounding the camp was a minefield, which was made not only to keep prisoners from escaping, but also to keep people from approaching and contacting the prisoners. Sobibor was divided into four sections and a pre-camp where the Jews had worked and lived while they stayed in the camp. Lager 1 is where the Jews had worked and lived while they stayed in the camp. Lager 2 is where the camp prison workers sorted and stored goods. In the "barbersbarack" is where the prisoners got their hair cut when they arrived. In between Lager 2 and Lager 3 is where the landing strip was, where airplanes could land and take off when bringing prisoners in. Lager 3 is where the gas chambers were where the Jews had been gassed.

When the camp first started there were only three gas chambers, but later on they built three more because three weren't killing fast enough. Before they were gassed the prisoners were forced to strip down and were told that they were going to take showers.

They didn't know that when they arrived at the camp that they would be gassed. They were told it was so they could make a better living. Many Jews arrived in their best dress clothes because the Nazis told them that they were going to be resettled in the east for a better life.

The Eastern European Jews arrived in carts and were beaten along the way so they had an idea what was about to happen to them. When they arrived, camp prisoners wearing blue uniforms gave the new arriving Jews claim tickets for their bags. Some people even offered the workers tips.

As they waited in line to enter Lager 1, the SS would choose the stronger looking men, women, young boys and girls to be prison workers. The rest who weren't chosen, would enter through a gate that read "Sonderkommando Sobibor" (special unit Sobibor). If they had a disease or where sick than the prisoners would be taken away immediately and shot.

The prisoners who worked in Lager 3 had many jobs to take care of like making gold trinklets, boots, clothing, cleaning cars, feeding horses, sorting clothes, unloading and cleaning the trains, cutting wood, burning personal artifacts, cutting women's hair, and more.

The SS men and the Ukranian guards marched prisoners to work every day in columns, making them sing marching songs along the way. Prisoners were beaten just for being out of step or not singing. Sometimes they had to report after work at roll call to receive punishments for what they did during the day. While they were being hit they were forced to call out the number of hits, if they didn't shout loud enough or if they lost count then the punishment would start all over or they would be beaten to death. Everyone at roll call was forced to watch their fellow inmates be beaten to death.

Their were 150 women out of 600 men who worked at the camp. Many prisoners became couples and they had dancing parties while the prisoners got a few hours off work to relax every once in a while.

food delivering to Lager 3 was very risky. Many times the gates would open while the prisoners were still in there and the food takers would be taken in and never heard of again.

A line made of women and children then followed by men were walked down a path to Lager 3, as they walked down the path they saw signs on buildings that read "The Merry Flea" and "The Swallows Nest" and arrows pointing in different directions saying "Showers" and "Canteens". There were gardens planted along the path and many statues which made Sobibor not seem like a place of death but more like a park or a labor camp instead of a death camp.

Before they reached lager 2 they passed through buildings where they were asked to leave their handbags and take off all of their clothes. After they did that the victims entered a hallway type of sidewalk lined with barbed wire fences woven in and out of the trees. The Nazis called that pathway "The Himmlestrasse" (The Road to Heaven). The pathway was about 10 to 13 feet wide. Off to the side was a little sidewalk that led in a different direction where the women were told to go down there into the small building for a haircut.

From there, they were taken to Lager 3 for their showers. The unknowing victims came upon a large brick building with three separate doors leading into what appeared to be showers but were really gas chambers. 200 people at a time were pushed into them at a time, then the doors were then sealed shut. From the outside in a shed, an SS officer or a Ukranian guard would start the 200 horsepower 8 cylinder engine which produced the carbon monoxide gas that entered the room through pipes in the wall that were installed their just for that purpose. That way up to 600 people could be killed in about 20 minutes.

After letting the chambers air out, the prison workers would then drag the bodies out and put them in carts which was a very devastating job because many of the prisoners would find relatives in the piles of bodies on the ground. They would wheel them away and dump them in pits called massgraves .

The massgraves were 60m long 15m wide and 7m deep. After they were full, the workers were forced to wipe out all traces of extermination. They would burn the bodies out in the open air. This caused enormous thick clouds of smoke and produced a terrible odor which people could see and smell from many miles away. This prevented the camp from being kept a secret.

Death mound, were the bodies were burnt after the massgraves were full

The prisoners started a revolt on October 14 1943. They lured most of the Nazis in by setting traps then stabbed them with homemade knives and axes. They killed 12 out of 17 Nazi leaders that were at the camp. the escape started just before evening call when the gasmeister Bauer saw the body of one of the guards. Not every prisoner wanted to take part in the revolt. Only 365 prisoners tried to escape. The machine guns and mines killed 158 of the escapees. The others made it out safely into the woods although all but 47 were later caught and killed. The revolt was not as successful as planned. everyone who stayed behind was later gassed too.

Many of the guards liked to play games with the prisoners like sewing up the prisoners pant legs and putting rats down them. If the prisoner moved he would be beaten to death. Another one was to force the prisoner to drink a large glass of Vodka very quickly then eat several pounds of sausage. The SS men would force their mouth open and urinate then see how much he threw up and they would weigh the vomit and the SS man who got their prisoner to throw up the most would get a reward of some type.