Sobibor extermination camp Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the village of Sobibór , Lublin Voivodeship of the Nazi German General Government ( occupied Poland ) . The camp was part of Operation Reinhard and the official German name was SS - Sonderkommando Sobibór . Situated near the rural county ' s only major town of Włodawa ( called " Wolzek " by the Germans ) . Jews from Poland , France , Germany , the Netherlands , Czechoslovakia , and the Soviet Union , possibly as well as some non - Jewish Soviet POWs , were transported to Sobibór by rail and suffocated in gas chamber s fed by the exhaust of large petrol engines . One source states that up to 200 , 000 people were murdered at Sobibór . Sobibór survivor Thomas Blatt later wrote that " In the Hagen court proceedings against former Sobibór Nazis , Professor Wolfgang Scheffler , who served as an expert , estimated the total figure of murdered Jews at a minimum of 250 , 000 . " After a successful revolt on , about 600 prisoners made an escape attempt . Approximately half of them succeeded ; of these , about 50 evaded recapture . Shortly after the revolt , the Germans closed the camp , bulldozed the earth , and planted it over with pine trees to conceal its location . The site is now occupied by the Sobibór Museum , which displays a pyramid of ashes and crushed bones of the victims , collected from the cremation pits thereafter . The camp . Beginning in 1940 , the Nazis established 16 forced labor camp s in the Lublin district of Poland . The Lublin district was intended to become an agricultural center . Except for Krychów forced labor camp , these camps used existing structures – such as abandoned schools , factories , or farms – to imprison the laborers . Krychów was the largest of the 16 camps and had been built before World War II as a detention camp for Polish prisoners . In 1942 , Sobibór extermination camp was built near the forced labor camps . A northeasterly railroad branch line connected the area to the main railroad line through the town of Chełm ( " Kulm " in German ) . Camp construction began in March 1942 , at the same time that the Bełżec camp became operational for extermination . Workers employed for building the camp were local people from neighboring villages and towns , but the camp was primarily built by a Sonderkommando under the command of Richard Thomalla . The Sonderkommando was a group of about eighty Jews from ghettos within the vicinity of the camp . A squad of Ukrainians trained at Trawniki concentration camp guarded the Sonderkommando . Upon completion of construction , these Jews were shot . In mid - April 1942 , when the camp was nearly completed , experimental gassings took place . About twenty - five Jews from Krychów were brought there for this purpose . Christian Wirth , the commander of Bełżec and Inspector of Operation Reinhard , arrived in Sobibór to witness these gassings . " Reichsführer - SS " Heinrich Himmler appointed " SS - Obersturmführer " Franz Stangl as the first commandant of Sobibór . Stangl was Sobibor ' s commandant from April 28 to the end of August 1942 . According to Stangl , Odilo Globocnik initially stated that Sobibór was merely a supply camp for the army , and that the true nature of the camp became known to Stangl only when he discovered a gas chamber hidden in the woods . Globocnik told him that if the Jews " were not working hard enough " he was fully permitted to kill them and that Globocnik would send " new ones " . Stangl first studied the camp operations and management of Bełżec , which had already commenced extermination activity . He then accelerated the completion of Sobibór . Erich Fuchs , who spent time at the three Reinhard death camps of Sobibór , Treblinka and Bełżec , explained how the gassing operation at Sobibór began : On either 16 or 18 of May 1942 , Sobibór became fully operational and began mass gassing operations . Trains entered the railway station , and the Jews onboard were told they were in a transit camp , and were forced to undress and hand over their valuables . They were led along the long " Road to Heaven " ( " Himmelstrasse " ) to the gas chambers , where they were killed using carbon monoxide released from the exhaust pipes of tank engines . During his trial , " SS - Oberscharführer " Kurt Bolender described the gassing operations : Local Jews were delivered in absolute terror , amongst screaming and pounding . Foreign Jews , on the other hand were treated with hypocritical politeness . Passengers from Westerbork , Netherlands had a comfortable journey . There were Jewish doctors and nurses attending them and no shortage of food and medical supplies on the train . Sobibor didn ' t seem like a genuine threat . Victims included 18 - year - old Helga Deen , whose diary was discovered in 2004 ; the writer Else Feldmann ; gymnasts Helena Nordheim , Ans Polak and Jud Simons ; Gym Coach Gerrit Kleerekoper ; and magician Michel Velleman . Female prisoners were sometimes sexually abused before being murdered . For instance , two women from Austria , who were film or theater actresses , were gang raped by the SS men before being shot . Erich Bauer testified about this : The camp was split into four sections . Garrison Area : This included the main entrance gates and the railway platform where the victims were taken off the trains . The Commander ' s lodge was opposite the platform and was on the right side to the Guardhouse and on the left by the armoury . " Lager " ( Camp ) I : This was built directly west and behind the Garrison Area . It was made escape proof by extra barbed wire fences and a deep trench filled with water . The only opening was a gate leading into the area . This camp was the living barracks for Jewish prisoners and included a prisoners ' kitchen . Each prisoner was given about 12 square feet ( 1 . 1 square meters ) of sleeping space . " Lager " ( Camp ) II : This was a larger section and included an assortment of vital services for both the killing process and the everyday operation of the camp . 400 prisoners , including women , worked here . Lager II contained the warehouses used for storing the objects taken from the dead victims , including hair , clothes , food , gold and all other valuables . This Lager also housed the main administration office . It was at Lager II that the Jews were prepared for their death . Here they undressed , women ' s hair was shaved , clothing searched and sorted , and documents destroyed in the nearby furnace . The victims ' final steps were taken on a path framed by barbed wire . It was called the " Road to Heaven " and led directly to the gas chambers . " Lager " ( Camp ) III : This was where the victims were killed . Located in the north - western part of the camp , there were only two ways to enter the camp from Lager II . The camp staff and personnel entered through a small plain gate . The entrance for the victims descended immediately into the gas chambers and was decorated with flowers and a Star of David . In May , 2013 archaeologists , conducting excavations near Camp III , unearthed an escape tunnel , a crematorium , human skeletal remains , a substance that appears to be blood and the identification tag of a Jewish boy who was murdered in the camp . Camp guards . While the camp officers were German and Austrian SS members , the camp guards under their command were " Volksdeutsche " from Reichskommissariat Ukraine as well as Soviet POWs , primarily from Ukraine . Before they were sent as guards to the concentration camps , most of the Soviet POWs underwent special training at Trawniki . This was originally a holding center for Soviet POWs following Operation Barbarossa , whom the Sipo security police and the SD had designated either as potential collaborators or as dangerous persons . The " Stroop Report " listed a Trawniki " Sonderdienst " Guard Battalion as one assisting in the suppression of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . John Demjanjuk , a former Soviet POW , allegedly worked as a watchguard at Sobibór . On May 12 , 2011 , Demjanjuk , then 91 years old , was convicted by a German court of complicity in the murder of over 28 , 000 Jews whilst serving at Sobibór , and was sentenced to 5 years in jail . He died on March 17 , 2012 , while in a German nursing home awaiting appeal . As a result of his death prior to the appeal trial , he was declared " presumed innocent , " with his previous conviction invalidated . The uprising . Sobibór was the site of one of two successful uprisings by Jewish prisoners in a Nazi extermination camp ; there was a similar revolt at Treblinka on August 2 , 1943 . A revolt at Auschwitz - Birkenau on led to one of the crematoria being blown up , but nearly all the escapees were killed . Among the few who survived the Auschwitz revolt was Henryk Mandelbaum , who served as a tourist guide at the camp after the war . Rumours that the camp would be shut down started circulating among its inmates in spring of 1943 after a drop in the number of incoming prisoner transports . Notes carried by survivors of the Bełżec concentration camp , who had been transported to Sobibór only to be shot on the railway platform , hinted at what would happen if the camp were shut down . While the rumours were untrue ( in fact , a decision was made to expand the camp in summer 1943 ) , they led Polish - Jewish prisoners to organise an underground committee aimed at escape from the camp . In September 1943 , the Sobibór underground was unexpectedly reinforced by the arrival of Soviet - Jewish POWs from Minsk ; some of these were drafted into the underground so as to leverage their military experience . On October 14 , 1943 , members of the Sobibór underground , led by Polish - Jewish prisoner Leon Feldhendler and Soviet - Jewish POW Alexander Pechersky , succeeded in covertly killing eleven German SS officers and a number of camp guards . Although their plan was to kill all the SS and walk out of the main gate of the camp , the killings were discovered and the inmates ran for their lives under fire . About 300 out of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped into the forests . Only 50 to 70 escapees survived the war , however . Some died on the mine field s surrounding the site , and some were recaptured in a dragnet and executed by the Germans in the next few days . Most of those who did survive did so by hiding . Within days after the uprising , the SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the camp closed , dismantled and planted with trees . Aftermath . Within days after the uprising , the SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the camp closed , dismantled and planted with trees . Karl Frenzel , third in command at the camp and commandant of Sobibór ' s Lager I , was convicted of war crime s in 1966 and sentenced to life . He was released after sixteen years on appeal and because of his health . Blatt interviewed him in 1983 and taped it . Frenzel , who was at the camp from its inception to its closure , said the following about the prisoners killed at Sobibór : Due to Frenzel ' s testimony , Blatt convinced the Polish government to change the memorial plaque at the site . It had read , " HERE THE NAZIS KILLED 250 , 000 RUSSIAN PRISONERS OF WAR , JEWS , POLES AND GYPSIES . " Now it reads , " AT THIS SITE , BETWEEN THE YEARS 1942 AND 1943 , THERE EXISTED A NAZI DEATH CAMP WHERE 250 , 000 JEWS and APPROXIMATELY 1 , 000 POLES WERE MURDERED . " The new plaque continues with language to note the revolt and escape of Jews from the camp . Franz Stangl , chief commandant of Sobibor and later of Treblinka , fled to Syria . Following problems with his employer taking too much interest in his adolescent daughter , Stangl moved with his family to Brazil in the 1950s . He worked in a car factory ( German manufacturer , Volkswagen ) and was registered with the Austrian consulate under his own name . He was eventually caught , tried and convicted , and sentenced to life imprisonment . In 1971 he died in prison in Düsseldorf , a few hours after concluding a series of interviews with the British historian Gitta Sereny . Gustav Wagner , the deputy Sobibór commander , was on leave on the day of uprising ( survivors such as Thomas Blatt say that the revolt would not have succeeded had he been present ) . Wagner was arrested in 1978 in Brazil . He was identified by Stanisław Szmajzner , a Sobibór escapee , who greeted him with the words , " Hallo Gustl . " Wagner replied that he remembered Szmajzner and that he had saved him and his three brothers . The court of first instance agreed to his extradition to Germany but , on appeal , this extradition was overturned . In 1980 , Wagner committed suicide , but the circumstances are controversial . John Demjanjuk , alleged to be one of the guards , was temporarily convicted by a German lower court as an accessory to the murder of 28 , 060 Jews and sentenced to 5 years in prison on May 12 , 2011 . He was released pending appeal and died in a German nursing home on March 17 , 2012 , aged 91 , while awaiting the hearing . As a result of his death , before the German Appellate Court could try his case , the German Munich District Court declared that Demjanjuk was " presumed innocent , " that the previous interim conviction was invalidated , and that he had no criminal record . Erich Bauer , commander of Camp III and gas chamber executioner , explained the perpetrators ' sense of teamwork in order to reach an atrocious result : Dramatizations and recorded memories of the camp . The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 British TV film " Escape from Sobibor " , directed by Jack Gold . An award - winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann , entitled " Sobibor , 14 Octobre 1943 , 16 Heures " ( " Sobibor , Oct . 14 , 1943 , 4 p . m . ) . < br > < br > One of the survivors , Regina Zielinski , has recorded her memories of the camp , and the escape in a conversation with Phillip Adams together with Elliot Perlman , in 2013 . Memorial . Following the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the revolt in 2003 , the grounds of the former death camp received a grant largely funded by the Dutch government to improve the site . New walkways were introduced with signs indicating points of interest , but close to the burial pits , bone fragments still litter the area . In the forest outside the camp is a statue honoring the fighters of Sobibor .