Sobibor Uprising (1943): Revolt and Escape from a Death Camp

The Sobibor uprising of 14 October 1943 was a revolt by Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland. Led by Leon Feldhendler and Alexander Pechersky, prisoners killed SS men and guards and about 300 of them escaped, in one of the largest successful prisoner revolts of the Holocaust.

Most escapees did not live to see liberation, but the revolt led the Nazis to close the camp, and its survivors became important witnesses to the crimes committed there.

Background

Sobibor was one of three death camps built in 1942 under Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of occupied Poland, alongside Belzec and Treblinka. It stood in a remote, forested area near the village of Sobibór and the Bug River, close to today’s border with Ukraine and Belarus.

Gassing began in spring 1942. Victims arrived by rail from Poland, the Netherlands, France, Slovakia, Germany, Austria and the occupied Soviet territories. Estimates of the number murdered range from about 170,000 to 250,000, almost all of them Jews.

A small number of prisoners, several hundred at any time, were kept alive to work: sorting victims’ belongings, maintaining the camp and serving the SS. By 1943 they knew the transports were slowing, and they feared they would soon be killed too. The revolts in the Warsaw Ghetto in April and at Treblinka in August 1943 strengthened their resolve.

Planning the revolt

Leon Feldhendler, the son of a rabbi from Żółkiewka, led an underground group of prisoners that discussed escape but lacked military experience. On 23 September 1943 a transport from Minsk brought Jewish Red Army prisoners of war, among them Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky.

Feldhendler and Pechersky worked together over about three weeks. Their plan was to lure SS men one by one into workshops and storerooms on pretexts, such as fitting new leather coats or boots, and kill them silently with axes and knives. With most of the SS staff dead, the prisoners would gather at the evening roll call and break out together.

The timing was helped by the absence on leave of several senior SS men, including the camp commandant Franz Reichleitner and his notorious deputy Gustav Wagner.

14 October 1943

During the afternoon the plan began. Prisoners killed about eleven SS men in quick succession, including the acting commandant, SS-Untersturmführer Johann Niemann, along with several Ukrainian auxiliary guards known as Trawniki men. Telephone lines were cut.

Before every SS man could be killed, the alarm was raised. Guards opened fire, and prisoners rushed the fences. Many were shot or killed by mines laid around the perimeter. Of roughly 600 prisoners in the main camp, about 300 escaped into the forests. Prisoners in the separate extermination area did not learn of the plan in time and were later killed.

After the escape

German police, soldiers and auxiliaries hunted the escapees for days, and many were caught. Others were killed by hostile local people, armed groups or in later fighting. Pechersky and a group of Soviet prisoners crossed the Bug River and joined partisans. Feldhendler survived in hiding but was killed in Lublin in April 1945.

Historians estimate that about 50 to 60 escapees lived to see the end of the war. Among them was the teenager Thomas (Toivi) Blatt, who later wrote and spoke widely about Sobibor.

Pechersky’s later life was difficult. Back in the Red Army he was sent to a penal battalion, as Soviet authorities distrusted former prisoners of war, and he was seriously wounded. For decades the Soviet state gave little recognition to his role, and he was not allowed to travel abroad to testify at trials in the West.

Himmler ordered the camp shut. The remaining prisoners were shot, the buildings demolished and the site planted with trees and given the appearance of a farm.

Key people

• Alexander Pechersky (1909–1990), Soviet-Jewish officer and the revolt’s military leader.
• Leon Feldhendler (1910–1945), leader of the prisoners’ underground.
• Johann Niemann (1913–1943), SS officer killed in the revolt.
• Thomas Blatt (1927–2015), escapee and later witness and author.

Timeline

• 1942, spring: Mass gassing begins at Sobibor.
• 1943, 19 April: The Warsaw Ghetto uprising begins.
• 1943, 2 August: Prisoners revolt at Treblinka.
• 1943, 23 September: Pechersky arrives with Soviet Jewish prisoners of war.
• 1943, 14 October: The Sobibor uprising and mass escape.
• 1943, late October–November: The camp is dismantled.
• 1965–1966: Former SS staff are tried at Hagen in West Germany.

Legacy

Survivors gave testimony in post-war trials, including the Hagen trial of former camp staff in the 1960s. The revolt was dramatised in the 1987 television film Escape from Sobibor. Excavations at the site since 2007 have uncovered the foundations of the gas chambers, a new museum opened in 2020, and the memorial site has since been redesigned.

Why it matters

The Sobibor uprising showed that even in a death camp, prisoners could organise and resist. It saved dozens of lives, ended killing at the camp and preserved the voices of witnesses to one of the Holocaust’s deadliest sites.