Museum and Memorial in Sobibór

Muzeum i Miejsce Pamięci w Sobiborze

The SS murdered hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews at the Sobibór extermination camp. In 1965, a monument was erected on the historic site; in 1993, a museum was opened. In October 2020, after years of archaeological research and construction works, a new memorial complex has been inaugurated.

History

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, SS Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) began to systematically murder the Jewish population behind the front lines. This marked the transition to the genocide of European Jewry in the German sphere of influence. In an operation codenamed »Aktion Reinhardt«, German authorities planned and prepared the murder of Jews in the Generalgouvernement – the Polish territories occupied by Germany but not incorporated into the German Reich. The SS established three extermination camps according to the same pattern in scarcely populated areas which were well-connected to the railway system: Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. The genocide took on unprecedented dimensions with the establishment of these camps, whose sole aim was to murder as many people as possible by poison gas.
Sobibór, located on the eastern border of the Distrikt Lublin in the Generalgouvernement, was the second death camp of »Aktion Reinhardt«, after Bełżec. Some of the members of the SS who helped perpetrate the mass murder at Sobibór had previously also been deployed at Bełżec. The camp personnel consisted of about 25 to 30 members of the SS and some 120 »Trawniki«, mostly Ukrainian guards. The industrial scale murder of Jews from the Distrikt Lublin was begun at the beginning of May 1942. The camp personnel employed deception and brutal terror to speed up the murder process. Ill and weak inmates were shot immediately upon arrival. All others were forced to give up their valuables and to undress. The victims were chased down the so-called »tube«, a narrow enclosed path which led to the gas chambers, all the while being yelled at and beaten by the guards. In the gas chambers they were asphyxiated with exhaust fumes from motor engines.

Sobibór, undated, The 1965 monument before the restructuring of the memorial site, Stiftung Denkmal

Sobibór, 2020, New buliding of the museum, Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku

Victims

Up to 250,000 Jews were murdered by members of the SS in Sobibór – the exact number is not known. Most of the victims came from the Generalgouvernement, but also from Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, the Soviet Union, France, and the Netherlands.
The SS selected a group of men from several transports for work in the »Sonderkommandos«. They had to sort the valuables of the murdered Jews, search their bodies for hidden objects and remove gold teeth, but they were also forced to clean the gas chambers and burn the victims' bodies.
In the spring of 1943, prisoners noticed that fewer and fewer transports were arriving at Sobibór, which they interpreted as a sign that the camp would soon be dissolved. They were afraid that they too – as witnesses to the crimes – would be murdered. When the last 600 inmates of the Bełżec death camp were murdered at Sobibór in June 1943, members of the Sonderkommando found messages in the victims' attire which confirmed their fears. They consequently began planning an uprising. They were supported by Soviet prisoners of war, who had since 1942 been deployed in nearby forests as forced labourers. The revolt was launched on October 14, 1943. The inmates killed several members of the SS and »Trawniki« guards. About 300 prisoners were able to flee; 47 of them survived to see the end of the war.
The uprising hastened the dismantlement of the Sobibór camp. The SS murdered the remaining prisoners. All of the buildings were torn down and a farmhouse was constructed on the site in order to disguise any remaining traces.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

After the Second World War, the history of the Sobibór death camp was for a long time unknown. There was no reminder of the mass murder at the former premises, which were now situated in a far-off part of Poland, in direct vicinity of the Soviet border. On occasion, the area was searched for valuables by looters.
The People's Republic of Poland only set up a first monument on the site in 1965. As was the case with many other memorials that were erected at central sites of the Holocaust in Poland during that time, there was no mention of the fact that the victims were Jewish.
In 1993, on the 50th anniversary of the camp revolt, a small museum was opened on the former camp premises. For a long time, it was a branch of the nearby Włodawa museum, later it belonged to the State Museum Majdanek until it was torn down in 2014.
Since Beginning in 2003, volunteers have had worked on realising the »Memorial avenue«, a joint project of the Stanislaw Hantz Bildungswerk in Kassel, the Sobibór memorial and the Sobibór Foundation (Dutch: Stichting Sobibór), established by a survivor of the revolt, Jules Schelvis (1921–2016) from Amsterdam. The avenue followeds the path that the victims had to take from the ramp at the train station to the gas chambers. Newly planted trees and memorial stones bearing the names of victims were liningline the path. The path eventually had to yield in later years because of the restructuring of the memorial site, however, the memorial stones have been preserved.
Between 2007 and 2014, an international team of archaeologists conducted research on the former premises of the death camp. For the first time, they could determine the exact location of the gas chambers and of the mass graves. Apart from human remains, the scientists unearthed personal objects that had belonged to victims of the camp.
In 2017, construction began on a new memorial centre including an exhibition building. Beside Poland, Israel, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Germany are were involved in the project. The new memorial was finally opened in October 2020. The path to the new building leads along the former »tube«. In the permanent exhibition entitled »SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. German Death Camp 1942-1943«, many objects found during excavations at the historical site are on display. The area where the mass graves were located has also been redesigned and covered with gravel. This area may no longer be entered by visitors.

no place given, undated, Alexander Pechersky (1909-1990), leader of the Sobibor camp uprising, Yad Vashem

Sobibór, undated, Detailed view of the sculpture »Prisoner with child«, Ronnie Golz

Possibilities

Museum with information and documentation centre, library, guided tours, films, discussion panels, educational programme

Open

April to October 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
November to March 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Closed on Mondays, national holidays and Yom Kippur

Contact

http://www.sobibor-memorial.eu

info@sobibor-memorial.eu

+48 (0)82 572 60 30

Żłobek 101
22-200 Włodawa

Sobibór, 2020, View of the new permanent exhibition, Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku

Sobibór, 2009, The former memorial avenue that has since then been removed, Thorbjörn Hoverberg

Sobibór, undated, Mausoleum before the restructuring of the memorial complex, Ronnie Golz

Sobibór, 2021, Train station of Sobibór village outside the former premises of the extermination camp, Stiftung Denkmal

Sobibór, 2021, Model of the former extermination camp in the permanent exhibition, Stiftung Denkmal

Sobibór, 2021, Display case with personal belongings in the permanent exhibition, Stiftung Denkmal

Sobibór, 2021, Personal belongings which were found during archeological surveys, Stiftung Denkmal

Sobibór, 2021, Remains of the barbed wire fence on the perimeters of the former extermination camp, Stiftung Denkmal

Sobibór, 2020, The area where the mass graves had been located are now covered with gravel, Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku

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