SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

20 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
Throughout the camp’s existence, attempts were made to escape
from it; some of them were successful. In retaliation for these attempts,
the Germans executed many dozens of prisoners. During the
summer of 1943, in order to prevent escapes, and also as a safety
measure against attacks by partisans, the Germans planted mines
along the entire circumference of the camp. In July and August of
that year, an underground group was organized among the Jewish
prisoners in Sobibór under the leadership of Leon Feldhendler, who
had been chairman of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Zó�kiew, a
town in Eastern Galicia. The group’s aim was to organize an uprising
and a mass escape from the camp. In the second half of September,
Soviet Jewish Prisoners of War were brought to the camp from
Minsk; one of them was Lt. Aleksandr Pechersky. The underground
recruited him into its ranks and put him in command, with Feldhendler
as his deputy. The plan was for the prisoners to kill the SS men,
acquire weapons, and fight their way out of the camp. The uprising
broke out on October 14, 1943, and in its course eleven SS men and
several Ukrainians were killed. Some three hundred prisoners managed
to escape, but most of them were killed by their pursuers.
Those who had not joined the escape for various reasons and had
remained in the camp were all killed as well. At the end of the war,
about fifty Jews survived of those who had escaped during the uprising.
In the wake of the uprising the Germans decided to liquidate Sobibór,
abandoning the idea of turning it into a concentration camp.
By the end of 1943 no trace was left; the camp area was plowed under,
and crops were planted in its soil. A farm was put up in its
place, and one of the Ukrainian camp guards settled there. In the
summer of 1944 the area was liberated by the Soviet army and
troops of the Polish People’s Army (see Gwardia Ludowa). […]”
2.2. Sobibór as Described in Contemporary Documents
The description of the function and the history of the Sobibór camp,
which is found in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, relies exclusively
on testimony and on trial sentences which, in turn, are based entirely on
the accounts of eye witnesses (and on confessions by defendants). Contemporary
documents concerning Sobibór are rare and do not support