Escape from Sobibor
The extermination camps in Eastern Poland, including Sobibor, Treblinka II, and Belzec were part of the first phase of the Final Solution, or plan to eliminate the Jews of Europe. In all of these camps, the vast majority of those who arrived were dead within minutes, or a few hours, at most. At Sobibor, a group of 600 Jews were kept alive at the camp to do the work the Nazis required. As at Treblinka, the Sonderkommandos had, by 1943, realized that their lives were likely to end, and action was the only option. They planned a mass outbreak, but had little hope of survival. Instead, they hoped to take the camp down with them.
On October 14, 1943, at 4:00 PM in the afternoon, a small, organized group killed nine SS guards and several Ukrainian guards before afternoon roll call. The majority of the prisoners had no knowledge of what was happening. When the first dead SS guard was found, the leader of the outbreak, a Jewish Red Army officer, Alexander Pechersky, jumped onto a table and yelled, “Those of you who survive, bear witness, let the world know what has happened here.”
There was an open span of 140 meters between the camp and the forest, which offered the possibility of survival. Of the 550 men in camp, 400 ran. Around 80 of those were killed before reaching the forest, and another 170 killed in the forest. In total, 58 of the escapees from Sobibor survived the war, and they did bear witness, with one, Thomas Blatt, providing testimony at the war crimes trial of Jan Demanjuk in 2009.