Nederlands Holocaust in Europe Sobibor

Extermination camp

Just like Belzec and Treblinka, Sobibor was set up primarily to facilitate an efficient murder system for a large number of people.  Nearly all the victims who arrived in Sobibor by train were gassed immediately. The gassing was conducted according to a standard procedure. SS personnel and Ukrainian guards waited with whips in their hands for the Jews to arrive and drove them off the trains.  The next step was 'disinfection': The victims had to undress in a barrack and leave all their possessions in a designated area. Afterwards, the naked and terrified people had to walk along a narrow path - cynically called by the nazis Himmelstraße (the Road to Heaven) - that led them into the gas chambers. The women first had to go into a barrack to have their hair cut. Afterwards all the victims were pushed into the gas chamber, the doors were sealed hermetically and gassing with carbon monoxide began.  Just as in Auschwitz, certain prisoners were selected for removing the bodies from the gas chambers and burying the victims in mass graves. These 'work Jews' also had to clean the trains that brought the victims and to sort the belongings that the victims left behind, which was transported to Germany (including bales of women's hair).

  1. Sobibor Station
mass murder
perpetrators and victims
after 1945
guest book
operation reinhard
extermination camp
the end
the search for perpetrators