Sobibor

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Today was day three of death camps. On the two hour bus ride there, we watched a movie on the uprising that took place there. It was a good movie but we were not able to finish it before we got there so we learned the fate of the characters while we were in the small museum (the movie was still good when we finished it even though we already knew the ending). Sobibor was another camp that was completely destroyed. The uprising took place on October 14, 1943. The prisoners had gotten sick of the way they were being treated and killed off so they started planning their escape. They had tried doing escapes in small numbers but they found that when this happened, people left at the camp were severely punished and large numbers of people were killed. They realized that it would have to be everyone escaping in order for it to be worthwhile. With a group of Russian POWs now at the camp, the prisoners were more confidant that they could be successful with their help so they started planning. Once there plan was final, they started killing S.S. officers at 4p.m. and had killed 11 of them along with some of the other guards at the camp by the time roll call took place. It was everyone for themselves as they took for the front gate where about 600 prisoners at the camp at this time; it is averaged that around 300 escaped that day and that about 50 of them survived the war. Sobibor was another camp that was completely leveled so all that was at the camp that we could see were two memorials (a stone column and a statue), a Remembrance Lane, and the mausoleum. The stone column stands where they believe that the gas chamber was and the statue is for the victims. The Remembrance Lane was really cool although we could not really see it due to the snow. It is a path between the trees that is lined with stones with the names of some of the victims that were murdered at the camp. The mausoleum is out in the middle of a forest that is covered in mass graves. We also couldn’t see the mausoleum due to the snow. While you couldn’t really see anything, there was an overwhelming sense of pain and sadness. I think this camp was one of the harder ones because it was a camp that I had not really heard of before I came on this trip so I did not have much previous knowledge.

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