Escape from Sobibor 1987

The film opens with a new trainload of Polish Jews arriving for processing at Sobibor, narrated by Howard K. Smith. The German Commandant greets the newcomers with a polished speech, presenting Sobibor as a work camp and trying to set a tone of routine. As officers move along the assembled lines, they select a small number of prisoners with specific trades—goldsmiths, seamstresses, shoemakers, and tailors—while the rest are sent to a different section where a constant plume of smoke signals the grim fate awaiting those who are not kept in the loop. The difference between appearance and reality becomes stark quickly: Sobibor is really a death camp, where the vast majority are exterminated in gas chambers and their bodies are cremated in large ovens. The survivors who are kept alive in the other part of the camp are assigned to sorting belongings, repairing shoes, recycling clothing, and melting down valuables to enrich the SS officers. Even for those kept alive, the daily reality is brutal—beatings and murders can occur without warning. Gustav Wagner stands out as the most ruthless and calculating of the German officers, wielding power with chilling cruelty.

When two prisoners escape from a work detail in the nearby forest, Wagner responds with terrifying, authoritarian resolve. He forces the remaining thirteen prisoners to each select one other prisoner to die with them, threatening that if they refuse, he will pick fifty. The result is a grim mass execution of twenty-six men, a brutal demonstration of the regime’s control and the fear that sustains it. The film then shifts to the camp’s broader leadership, where Leon Feldhendler emerges as the steadier, more strategic voice among the prisoners. He recognizes that the day will come when trains stop and Sobibor’s usefulness will end; at that moment, all the Jews still inside the camp will be murdered unless something changes. In response, he begins to organize a plan for escape—one that hinges on luring the SS officers and NCOs into the prisoners’ barracks and work huts, killing them quietly one by one, and then marching the remaining inmates out of the camp as if they have received a routine order. The addition of a second, crucial element comes with the arrival of Red Army prisoners who are Russian Jews. Led by Alexander ‘Sasha’ Pechersky and his men, their military experience becomes a valuable asset to the revolt, lending structure and discipline to the uprising that the inmates have long discussed in whispers.

With the plan forming, the camp’s dynamics shift as an opportunity presents itself. The Commandant leaves for several days, taking Wagner with him, a fortunate absence that removes the most dangerous obstacle from the upcoming actions. On 14 October 1943, the meticulously prepared plan moves into action: groups of prisoners lure SS officers and NCOs into traps, using knives and clubs to neutralize guards one by one. Eleven Germans are killed before chaos interrupts the operation; Karl Frenzel, an especially ruthless officer, survives a trap and, upon discovering a corpse, raises the alarm. The alarm disrupts the initial momentum, but the revolt continues, and the prisoners assemble on the parade ground. In a moment of resolve, Pechersky and Feldhendler urge the fighters and the others to flee, transforming the plan from a calculated set of takedowns into a full-scale breakout. The chaos that follows is devastating, with many prisoners trying to break through the perimeter while Ukrainian guards and guards in observation towers open fire, creating a deadly corridor of bullets. Despite these deadly obstacles, more than 300 prisoners manage to reach the forest and begin an arduous trek toward freedom, some armed with captured rifles.

As the escape unfolds, the film threads in the fates of those who survived long enough to bear witness. The newscaster narration by Howard K. Smith returns to recount the consequences of the uprising for those who fled, grounding the historical memory in personal stories. Of the roughly 300 who escaped Sobibor, only about 50 survive the rest of the war. [Alexander ‘Sasha’ Pechersky] returns to Soviet lines and rejoins the Red Army, continuing to fight alongside his fellow soldiers. [Leon Feldhendler] also survives the immediate aftermath, living to see the end of the war, but is killed shortly afterward in a clash with anti-Semitic Poles. The brutal arc of [Gustav Wagner] ends far from Sobibor—he escapes to Brazil, where his life ends in tragedy when he is found stabbed to death in 1980. In the wake of the uprising, Sobibor is bulldozed, and trees are planted on the site to erase any visible trace of the camp’s existence. The narrative closes on a stark reminder: the Sobibor revolt was the largest escape from a prison camp in Europe during World War II, leaving a lingering question about memory, justice, and the costs of resistance.