Sobibor, which opened in March , and its first commandant was Franz Stangl. Sobibor was shut down in October Built in remote woodland near the small village of Sobibor, the camp was near to a railroad line which facilitated the work that Sobibor was meant to carry out. Sobibor was also used to house Russian prisoners-of-war. Prior to that, they conducted some early experimental gassings to test the efficacy of the gas chambers.
Transports of 40 to 60 freight cars would arrive at the Sobibor railway station. Next, 20 cars at a time were taken to Camp I. There the camp guards ordered victims out of the trains and onto the platform. German SS and police officials announced that the deportees were to be sent to labor, but that first they were to bathe and undergo disinfection. The Germans ordered the Jews to abandon their belongings and to undress in the barracks.
Men were usually separated from women and small children. Finally, guards forced the Jewish prisoners to run through the "tube.
The women's hair was shorn in a special barracks inside the "tube. The people inside the gas chambers were killed. Arriving Jewish prisoners who were too ill, weak, or elderly to walk to the gas chambers were taken to Camp III and shot in an open pit.
Then, when all the people from the 20 rail cars had been killed, the whole process was repeated with the next set of cars. The process continued until the entire transport had been murdered. From each transport, camp officials chose a small handful of prisoners to supplement the forced labor supply at Sobibor.
They selected prisoners who appeared fit or skilled. Some of the prisoners selected to be forced laborers were forced to work in the killing area of Camp III. These groups were known as Sonderkommandos special detachments. They were tasked with removing bodies from the gas chambers and burying the victims in mass graves.
Other prisoners selected for temporary survival worked in the administration and reception areas. In the summer of , camp personnel deployed Jewish forced laborers from various locations in Lublin District to exhume the mass graves at Sobibor.
This measure aligned with the efforts of the Sonderkommando That detachment was tasked with excavating and destroying evidence of Nazi mass murder in the German-occupied east. In early , the Jewish prisoners became concerned as they sensed that killing operations in Sobibor were winding down.
They also learned that Belzec had been dismantled and all surviving prisoners liquidated. In response, the prisoners organized a resistance group in the late spring of The prisoners planned an uprising following the murder of key German camp officials.
On October 14, , with approximately prisoners left in the camp, those who knew the plan initiated the revolt. The prisoners killed 11 German personnel and a few Trawniki-trained guards.
Around prisoners succeeded in breaking out of the killing center that day. Approximately were caught in the dragnet that followed the uprising. Some 50 prisoners escaped Sobibor and survived the war. Railway transports were restored in September. At that time the last Jews from some places in the Lublin District were also deported to the camp. In March, four transports from France were directed there.
Initially, corpses were placed in mass graves in Camp III. In the late autumn of , the bodies began to be incinerated on special grills made from rail tracks. Among the victims, there were also few Romanies. Polish Jews constituted over a half of the victims. The others were citizens of various Reich-occupied European countries. In the summer of , a group of prisoners set up an underground committee aimed at offering resistance in case of the camp liquidation.
Preparations to a revolt gathered momentum when Germans selected a group of Jewish prisoners of war from Minsk. It was led by Leon Feldhendler. The uprising was launched on October 14, In the fighting, 11 SS men and a number of Ukrainian guards were killed. Three hundred Jews escaped, but dozens were killed in the mine field around the camp and dozens more were hunted down over subsequent days.
Following the revolt, the camp was liquidated in October and the site demolished and disguised as a farm. The Nazis also planted hundred of trees over the area. The number of survivors of Sobibor is still unknown and varies in different sources. Yad Vashem says about 50 of the Jews who escaped during the uprising survived.
As of March , four remained alive. In , researchers, archaeologists, and historians in Poland began excavating the Sobibor site in hopes of finding more clues about the camp and those killed within its fences. Over the next six years little useful information was found, however, in , Israeli archaeologist Yoram Haimi joined the investigation after he learned that two of his uncles had been murdered at the camp.
By August , Haimi and his team of workers had uncovered numerous artifacts believed to have been the last possessions of some prisoners. One finding inclduded an engraved metal identification tag bearing the name of Lea Judith de la Penha, a 6-year-old Jewish girl from Holland who Yad Vashem confirmed was murdered at the camp.
Haimi's most important discovery, however, has led to a better understanding of the entire Sobibor site. He determined its route by the poles that marked the path. From that, he determined where the gas chambers would have been located.
While far from finished in his research or excavation, Haimi understands the importance of uncovering more truth about the Holocaust , especially when the generation of survivors is quickly dwindling. In January , Haimi and his Polish colleague, Wojciech Mazurekm, uncovered nine open-air cremation pits and a cabin that housed Jews used for slave labor. About five feet below the cabin floor, they unearthed a man-made tunnel that led to the barbed wire around the camp - most likely used as an escape route.
An archeological dig concluded in September uncovered gas chambers where a quarter of a million Jews perished. This discovery was the culmination of eight years of excavation and exploration around the area of the death camp. Archeologists also uncovered numerous personal artifacts stolen and thrown away by the Nazis, including rings, coins from Palestine , perfume bottles, and Magen David necklaces.
The museum opened in October
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