[6][7][8] On 14 October 1943, members of the Sobibor camp's underground resistance killed 11 German SS-Totenkopfverbände officers and a number of Sonderdienst Ukrainian and Volksdeutsche guards.

Other SS officers move along the assembled lines of prisoners, selecting a small number who have trade skills (such as goldsmiths, seamstresses, shoemakers, and tailors).

It is some time before the new prisoners realise that Sobibor is a death camp; all of the other Jews are exterminated in gas chambers, and their corpses are cremated in large ovens.

The small number of prisoners kept alive in the other part of the camp are charged with sorting the belongings taken from those who are murdered and then repairing the shoes, recycling the clothing, and melting down any silver or gold to make jewellery for the SS officers.

The Camp Kommandant leaves for several days, taking Wagner with him, which proves an advantage as the most sadistic of the SS officers will be absent.

Eleven Germans are killed, but one officer, Karl Frenzel, unwittingly evades his killers, discovers the corpse of one of his colleagues, and raises the alarm.

Other guards open fire with machine guns from observation towers, cutting many of the fleeing prisoners down, and other escapees are killed on the minefield surrounding the camp, over 300 Jews reach the forest and escape.

After the uprising, which was the largest escape from a prison camp of any kind in Europe during World War II, Sobibor was bulldozed to the ground, and trees were planted on the site to remove any sign of its existence.