Prisoners at Sobibor kill their guards and break for the forest
Alexander Pechersky, a Soviet Jewish officer posing as a carpenter, plans an escape that ends the camp's use as a killing center
Quick facts
- Location
- Sobibor death camp, occupied Poland
- Date
- 14 October 1943
- Leaders
- Leon Feldhendler and Alexander Pechersky
- SS killed in the revolt
- 11, including deputy commandant Johann Niemann
- Escaped
- About 300 of roughly 600 prisoners
- Survived the war
- About 50
- Aftermath
- Camp dismantled and never reopened as a killing center
What happened
On 14 October 1943, prisoners at the Sobibor death camp carried out a revolt planned by Leon Feldhendler, a member of the camp's prisoner resistance, and Alexander Sasha Pechersky, a Soviet Jewish Red Army lieutenant who had survived by convincing the SS he was a carpenter. Over the preceding weeks Pechersky worked out a plan to lure individual SS staff into workshops, one at a time before the 5 p.m. roll call, and kill them quietly with axes and knives to seize their weapons and uniforms; prisoners killed 11 SS staff this way, including deputy commandant Johann Niemann, lured to the tailor shop for a supposed suit fitting. With roughly 600 prisoners left in the camp, the plan was then to have disguised prisoners walk out the main gate, but the escape was discovered before it could unfold that cleanly, and prisoners instead broke through the wire and ran for a minefield surrounding the camp under gunfire. About 300 of the camp's prisoners got out; roughly 100 were recaptured in the manhunt that followed, and only about 50 survived to see the war's end. Those who remained in the camp were shot the next day, 15 October. German authorities dismantled Sobibor afterward and had the site plowed under and planted with pine trees to erase it.
Why it matters
Sobibor's revolt was the most successful armed uprising at any Nazi death camp and it worked: the camp closed for good rather than resuming operations, one of the very few times an act of prisoner resistance directly ended a killing center's function rather than simply delaying it.
How we know
Survivor testimony, including Pechersky's own postwar account and that of other escapees, together with postwar trials of surviving SS staff, corroborate both the planning and the numbers killed, escaped, and recaptured.
Sources
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Sobibor Uprising · Primary source (author-declared)encyclopedia.ushmm.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The National WWII Museum. Remembering the Sobibor Uprising · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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