Sobibor

Sobibor , another camp located in Poland , another camp not many people heared about .
Yet it was as leathal as any other camp .
It was in construction just about the same as other camps .
Jews and others arrived in the camp , were unloaded , were told this to be a transit camp and then send to the gaschambers .

The camp was build by Jewish slave labourers in March 1942 , in charge was Franz Stangl (also commander of Treblinka) and like most , it was divided again in barracks , administrative , extermination and burial grounds .
Started with 3 gaschambers using carbon monoxide gassing , later they added 3 more .

Sobibor deathcamp was the 2nd camp to become active in "aktion Reinhard"
As with others , it had SS men and Ukrainian SS volounteers active in te camps .
The standard nazi procedure was also here of use , men and women seperated , women with children directly to the gaschambers .
Also you had the path of death , or the tube , a small path between two barb wired fences with guards wich lead to the gaschambers .

The Jews who arrived here came from Lublin , Czechoslovakia , Germany and Austria . Later on survivors from other camps were send here .
The camp changed from commander in October 1942 , in control was Franz Reichsleiter , the killing went on ... .
At the end of it's existance , Sobibor even recieved French and Dutch Jews .

July 1943 , Heinrich Himmler visits the camp and wanted it to serve as a concentrationcamp from now on. This meant the death of much more Jews and even the 700 Jew slave workers .
This last drop was a drop to much for the inmates , they organise a resistance movement and worked out an escape plan .
The uprising started on 14 october 1943 , large groups of inmates stormed the SS guards and Ukrainian guards , killing 11 SS men and a number of Ukrainian guards .
300 Jews made their escape , dozens were killed by the surrounding minefield , many more of them were hunted down in the days after and shot on the spot .
50 of the 300 made it out safely and survived .

With the approach of the Red army , the nazi's destroyed the camp and like in Treblinka and Belzec made it into a farm and given to an Ukrainian guard in october 1943 .

Forward , forward ! For the fatherland , for Stalin !
Those were the cries wich started the breakout ...
HURRAAAH !
They began their rush to the guards and armory ...
But the dash towards the armory failed , machine gun fire blocked the way and killed with no mercy
Now they turned their attention to the maingates and stormed for them , the telephone lines were cut and the guards eliminated ...
They recieved some cover from fellow inmates who got their hands on weapons from the guards
A group of prisoners turned left and made a dash to the barbed wire , they cut it down but they knew they had to cross a minefield of 15 meters wide ...
Many inmates fell here , by mines and by machine gun fire
Peczorski ran to the officers house , cutted the barbed wire there and he indeed prooved to be right , that area wasn't mined ...
They had to cross an open space , clearly in sight of the guards and guardtowers .
100 meter , faster and faster , again another 100 meter passed , almost at the treelines , at the lines I stopped to catch my breath , inmates were slaughtered in the open space ...
They reached freedom and were saved from death ...