October 14, 2013, was the 70th anniversary of an event that shook the Nazi party to its core. In east Poland, at Sobibor, the remote Nazi death camp, 300 Jewish prisoners staged a bloody break out. "Escape From A Nazi Death Camp" travels back to Sobibor with the last remaining survivors to reveal their extraordinary story of courage, desperation and determination. The film uses brutally honest drama-reconstruction and first-hand testimony to reveal the incredible escape story. The multi-layered plot unfolds like a movie—from the last-minute change to the escape plan forced by an unexpected arrival of a train load of SS soldiers, to the systematic luring of individual camp guards to separate locations and different deaths—yet every terrible and inspiring moment of this story is true.
Through the compelling accounts of Thomas “Toivi” Blatt, Philip Bialowitz, Selma Engel-Wijnberg and former Russian POW Semjon Rozenfled, the true horror of life in Sobibor emerges. Unlike Auschwitz and Dauchau, Sobibor was created purely for extermination. Within 17 months, a quarter of a million people arrived at the camp and were put to death almost immediately. A “lucky” few men and women were plucked from the crowds to work as prisoners in the camp as bakers, tailors, metalworkers and carpenters. However, being selected for this work meant only that one’s life was on loan. No one was supposed to leave Sobibor alive.
The idea to escape began in spring 1943, when prisoners began to hear rumors that Sobibor might be shut down. In June, a note discovered in the coat pocket of a recently exterminated prisoner revealed that when the Belzec death camp was closed, all its prisoners were put to death. Determined that they would not meet the same fate, the Sobibor inmates formed an “underground” group.
Led by Leon Feldhendler, former head of the Zolkiewka ghetto, and Russian POW Lieutenant Alexander “Sasha” Pechersky, the underground prisoners agreed to a large-scale organized escape. Dramatic re-creations transport viewers to the afternoon of October 14, 1943, as the prisoners’ audacious plot unfolds. In key locations around the camp, the program tracks the action minute-by-minute — from the first Nazi killed in the storeroom to the perilous ascent up the communication pole to sever the phone wires. By the end of the day, after two hours of covert action, more than a dozen Nazis and Ukrainian guards were killed and more than 300 prisoners escaped.
"Escape from Nazi Death Camp" was produced by Darlow Smithson Productions.
