Before Operation Reinhard

Construction of Sobibór was ordered in late 1941 and began in March 1942 in the forests of the Lublin District, positioned on the Chełm–Włodawa rail line. Using the lessons learned from nearby Bełżec, the site was laid out larger, with guard barracks and administration integrated for tighter control. Civilian builders and later Jewish forced laborers—many from Włodawa (link to Włodawa)—carried out the construction. Shortly before opening, a T4 specialist unit installed the killing facilities. About forty Germans (many from the T4 network) and roughly 120 Trawniki guards, most of them Ukrainian, ran the camp; command passed from Franz Stangl to Franz Reichleitner in the late summer of 1942. The camp’s internal layout was divided into four main sections: the Vorlager (guards/administration), Lager I (workshops and prisoner barracks), Lager II (reception, seizure and sorting of property, animal pens), and Lager III (the concealed killing area reached via the fenced “Schlauch”). A fifth section, Lager IV, was added later for munitions work.

During Operation Reinhard

Deportations

Between May 1942 and October 1943, at least 180,000 people were murdered in Sobibór (older estimates place that number up to 250,000). The first phase (May–June 1942) was highly transport-intensive—about 1,500 victims daily. After a pause for railway repair in July–October 1942, killing resumed on an enlarged scale, now with six gas chambers (initially there were three). Victims came from the General Government—notably Zamość, Izbica, Chełm—and from across Europe: the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the Protectorate (Theresienstadt), Slovakia, France, Belarus, and the Baltic region. On May 11, 1942, a large transport from Zamość arrived after trains from Germany and the Protectorate. Witnesses along the line saw sealed freight cars from Poland and, from Western Europe, often passenger coaches with luggage—two faces of the same deception, captured in local drawings attributed to Józef Richter. At the station switch, trains were split; about twenty cars at a time were pushed into the fenced ramp area.

After arrival, men and women were separated; property was seized and recorded in Lager II. Deception was routine; orders were given to “bathe,” and sometimes soap was even provided. Carbon-monoxide engines fed the chambers; corpses were hauled out on a narrow-gauge lorry line to long, deep mass graves. Those unable to walk—the sick, the elderly, infants—were carted directly to death. Besides the gas chambers, shootings occurred at the edge of graves or near the chapel site. The “efficiency” of the system was visible even to bystanders. Screams behind the hedge and the rising blue smoke were described in accounts such as that of Aurelia Saworska and in testimonies from survivors such as Thomas “Toivi” Blatt and Kalmen Wewryk.

Life in the Camp

Daily life consisted of a combination of forced labor, hunger, violence, and radical uncertainty. Only a few hundred prisoners at any given time were selected to work: sorters, cobblers, metalworkers, goldsmiths, stable hands, track cleaners, and the Bahnhofskommando on the ramp; wood details cut timber under heavy guard. Movement between Lager I and II was sometimes possible; Lager III remained absolutely off limits—everyone knew what it meant. Selections also fed labor detachments elsewhere (e.g., water-works), from which the “unfit” were sent “back” to Sobibór to be killed. Conditions in the barracks were catastrophic: stacked bunks, filth, epidemics, and constant beatings; minor “infractions” could mean instant execution. Yet prisoners maintained fragile networks of mutual aid—and, slowly, plans to resist began to take shape.

The Uprising

By mid-1943, the number of transports had decreased, and a group of prisoners shaped by experience and chance coalesced. Leon Feldhendler, a Polish-Jewish organizer, joined forces with Alexander Pechersky, a Soviet POW deported from Minsk with other trained soldiers. Their plan—postponed from October 13 to 14, 1943—was to lure SS men to isolated spots with promises of new boots or coats and to kill them with axes and knives. The aim was to reach the main gate and avoid the surrounding minefield. Chaos erupted; shots were fired; prisoners cut fences and ran for the forest. Of roughly 600 inmates, about 365 reached the perimeter; nearly 200 made it into the woods, but only approximately 47 survived the war to give testimony. Around twelve SS men were killed.

After Operation Reinhard

What began as “useful labor” ended in annihilation: in the mass shootings of Operation “Harvest Festival” [Aktion Erntefest] on November 3, 1943, the Jewish prisoners of Majdanek and the Lublin labor camps were murdered—approximately 18,000 at Majdanek alone in a single day, the largest single-day shooting massacre of the Holocaust. Afterward, only isolated groups of Jewish prisoners were still brought to Majdanek, and the coordinated exploitation and systematic murder of Jewish laborers largely ceased.