Escape from Sobibor 1987

A fresh train arrives at Sobibor, and the German commandant maintains the grim pretense that the camp is a work camp. A handful of prisoners with trades are spared to help run things—sorting the victims’ belongings, repairing shoes, recycling clothing, and melting precious metals into jewellery for the SS—while the rest are moved to a harsher part of the camp where a constant pillar of smoke marks the crematorium. Leon Feldhendler [Alan Arkin] emerges as a measured, careful leader among the prisoners, recognizing that the system’s cruel utilitarian logic will eventually seal the fate of all who remain. Alexander ‘Sasha’ Pechersky [Rutger Hauer], a new arrival with a Red Army background, brings military discipline and a galvanized resolve, and together they begin to organize resistance in the shadow of brutal daily routine.

The camp’s brutality is overseen by the commandant and his most sadistic officers, including Gustav Wagner [Hartmut Becker] and Karl Frenzel [Kurt Raab], who oversee the guards and enforce terror with relentless precision. The prisoners understand that their only chance lies in a bold plan: use the trust built among the workers, lure the German guards into the prisoners’ barracks and work huts one by one, and kill them quietly so the rest can be disabled or overwhelmed. If the guards can be eliminated, the question becomes whether the prisoners can simply march out when the moment arrives, trusting the Ukrainian guards to remain oblivious without orders or a clear threat to raise the alarm. Sasha and Feldhendler marshal the dissent and the determination of their fellow inmates, and the revolt gains a new dimension when a fresh wave of Red Army prisoners arrives, their leaders and combat experience proving invaluable to the insurgents.

For a time, the camp’s commanding officers depart with Wagner, leaving the most brutal officers away from the day-to-day pressure. On 14 October 1943, the trap is sprung: the prisoners lure the officers into the traps, and two dozen are killed in the initial strikes. Eleven Germans fall before the mutiny seems to falter; when Karl Frenzel uncovers one of his men’s bodies and raises the alarm, the plan looks doomed. Yet Pechersky and Feldhendler urge the inmates to carry on, and the prisoners surge toward the perimeter to escape. Some seize rifles from guards and fire toward the Ukrainian posts, but machine-gun fire from the towers and the surrounding minefield cut a deadly swath through the escaping crowd. Still, more than 300 Jews break into the forest, joining a perilous, sprawling escape that becomes the largest breakout from a European WWII prison camp.

Newscaster Howard K. Smith [Howard K. Smith] narrates the fates that the survivors recount on screen, grounding the assault in real voices and memories. Of the roughly 300 who escaped, only about 50 survive to see the war’s end in 1945. Pechersky makes it back to Soviet lines and survives the conflict, while Feldhendler is killed soon after the war by anti-Semitic Poles. Wagner ultimately flees to Brazil, where he is stabbed to death in 1980. In the aftermath, Sobibor is bulldozed and trees planted on the site to erase the memory of what happened there, leaving behind the grim legacy of Europe’s largest escape from a prisoner camp during World War II.