Sobibor was one of the major death camps established by the Nazis. It was first made in March of 1942. It was built near a village by a rail road station. Sobibor was near Chelm in Poland. This was a wooden and swampy area isolated in the middle of no where. The SS commander was Franz Stangl and he had 20 to 30 other Germans to assist him. They also had help from 90 to 120 Ukrainians. They were all experienced killers.
As the construction was completed and the camp was into process, Sobibor became a death camp to exterminate the innocent Jews. The date of this change was May of the same year when it was built, 1942.
In a form of a rectangle was how Sobibor was designed. It was 400 by 600 meters in size. The whole camp like other camps was surrounded by barbed wire fence which were three meters high. The tree branched surrounding the camp disguised the wires. Sobibor, the death factory, was well hidden. Their illegal killing program was hidden.
Close to about 100,000 Jews from the district of Lublin were deported to Sobibor. At Sobibor, Jews up to about 130,000 to 140,000 were gassed and murdered. From other ghettos, many other Jews were deported to Sobibor from the other death camp, Belzec. It was estimated that at least 250,000 to 300,000 people were murdered. Massive amounts of Jews were taken from the train station. The Jews would first march into a reception area and undress, take off any possessions, and women’s’ hair was shaved. Then would take a 492-foot path to the dreadful gas chambers.
On July 5, 1943, Hienrich Himmler personally demanded for Sobibor to close down. He felt that all their tasks were complete. A revolt broke on October 14, 1943. SS officers were killed, their weapons were taken away, and the Jews fought their way out of the camp. When this happened, 600 prisoners escaped, but some were caught by the German troops. They were turned in as Polish civilians. With the every few that escaped, many died from the coldness. Only 50 Sobibor prisoners survived.
Towards the end of 1943, Sobibor became isolated and later liberated by the Soviet army in summer of 1944. When the murdering by the Nazis were discovered, several guards were killed for their crimes. They were all put in trial, and each criminal accepted their punishment. Some officers even killed themselves.
Now the area of the camp was declared a national shrine by the Polish government and a memorial erected there.
Wigoder, Geoffrey. "Sobibor." The Holocaust. Volume 3. Danbury: Groiler Educational, 1997.