Col#300- 10/16/26
SOBIBOR
By
Richard Davis
In a peaceful forest in eastern Poland, not far from the Belarus border, descendants of survivors of one the Nazi extermination camps gathered on October 14 to preserve the memory of what happened at Sobibor in 1943.
In the summer of 1942 Jews began to be transported by train to Sobibor to be murdered. When they arrived, they were told that they were to be in transit to another place. Within a few hours of getting off the train most were dead.
Men and women were separated. They were asked to label their suitcases. They were ordered to strip naked and were marched a few hundred yards outside to the north end of the camp where they were herded into gas chambers.
The Nazis did not want to buy Zyklon B gas that was used in other places because of the expense, so they rigged up large engine from tractors and old armored vehicles and directed the carbon monoxide into to death chambers.
From the summer of 1942 until October 1943, it is estimated that between 170,000 to 250,000 Jews were gassed. The exact number will never be known but most historians believe the number to be closer to 250,000.
This story, horrific as it is, would not be unique except for the fact that Sobibor is the only camp where there was a partially successful mass escape. The story of how this was planned and carried out is well documented.
Alexander Perchersky spread the word among the 600 resident prisoners who ran day to day operations at the camp for the Nazis, of the plan to escape. It required timed execution of Nazi soldiers by the core group of Jewish leaders. The plan had a few glitches, but the stage was set for prisoners to run through a minefield at the edge of the forest to freedom.
Of the 600 prisoners in Sobibor, 300 made it to safety on October 14. Of those 300, 60 survived the war to tell their stories. It is their relatives who gathered at what is now the Sobibor Museum on October 14, 2026, 83 years after one of the least known dramas of the Holocaust.
My wife and I visited the museum a week before the ceremony. The seemingly gentle field where the minefield was is a picture that will forever be in my memory. No one knew where the mines were as they ran while Nazis fired machine guns at them. Bodies fell and people ran.
One of the successful escapees made it because he followed the bodies that were strewn in front of him, knowing that there was little likelihood of another mine being in his path. Most of the other successful escapees were simply lucky.
Just beyond the area where the gas chambers were, there is now a large field covered with thousands of rocks to honor the lives lost at Sobibor. Prisoners had to remove bodies from the chambers and bring them to be cremated. The ashes were piled in a field behind the chambers.
As we stood at the edge of the rock-covered field I began to cry. It seemed like such a feeble emotion compared to what over 250,000 of my descendants must have felt as they gasped for air taking their final breaths, betrayed by people who had willingly become the most evil of former human beings.
The heroism of the 300 who ran for their lives needs to be brought to light, especially as the world is moving too far in the direction of evil. The story of Sobibor, grim as it is, can offer hope in a world being controlled more and more by people who have lost their moral compass.
In 1987 the movie, Escape from Sobibor , starring Alan Arkin provided an accurate depiction of what happened in that forest in eastern Poland. Books have been written and accounts of survivors remain important documents.
Hope is attainable in a world gone mad if we learn to embrace it.
