The Sobibor Escape: The Camp That No Longer Existed

On October 14, 1943, Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp carried out a mass escape led by Polish-Jewish officer Alexander Pechersky and Polish partisan Leon Feldhendler. They used axes and knives to silently kill 11 SS men — one by one luring them into rooms under false pretenses. When the escape was discovered ahead of schedule, 300 prisoners escaped through a minefield and wire fence. Of those who survived the war, 53 had survived. The camp was completely demolished by the Nazis and a farm was built over it. The village was so completely erased that the existence of Sobibor was not widely known until the 1960s.