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135-483: Sobibor ( / ˈ s oʊ b ɪ b ɔːr / SOH -bi-bor ; Polish : Sobibór [sɔˈbibur] ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard . It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland . As an extermination camp rather than a concentration camp , Sobibor existed for

270-499: A / (spelled a ), / ɔ / (spelled o ) and / u / (spelled u and ó as separate letters). The nasal vowels are / ɛ w̃ / (spelled ę ) and / ɔ w̃ / (spelled ą ). Unlike Czech or Slovak, Polish does not retain phonemic vowel length — the letter ó , which formerly represented lengthened /ɔː/ in older forms of the language, is now vestigial and instead corresponds to /u/. The Polish consonant system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include

405-659: A 15-year-old goldsmith prodigy named Shlomo Szmajzner , who made them rings and monograms from gold extracted from the teeth of gas chamber victims. During post-war trials, SS officers from all of the Operation Reinhard camps claimed that they would have been executed if they had not participated in the murders. However, the judges in the Treblinka trial could not find any evidence of SS officers being executed for desertion, and at least one Sobibor officer ( Alfred Ittner ) successfully got himself transferred. Sobibor

540-506: A cement base at Sobibor in the presence of SS officers Floss , Bauer , Stangl , and Barbl , and connected the engine exhaust manifold to pipes leading to the gas chamber. In mid-April 1942, the Nazis conducted experimental gassings in the nearly finished camp. Christian Wirth , the commander of Bełżec and Inspector of Operation Reinhard , visited Sobibor to witness one of these gassings, which murdered thirty to forty Jewish women brought from

675-402: A comfortable journey. There were Jewish doctors and nurses attending them and no shortage of food or medical supplies on the train. To them, Sobibor did not seem like a genuine threat. Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )

810-465: A daily allowance of 18 ℛℳ, and special bonuses including a Judenmordzulage (Jew murder supplement). In all, an officer at Sobibor could earn 600 ℛℳ per month in pay. In addition to the official compensation, a job at Sobibor offered endless opportunities for the SS officers to covertly enrich themselves by exploiting the labour and stealing the possessions of their victims. In one case, the SS officers enslaved

945-771: A dialect of Polish. Many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of Silesian as a regional language in Poland . The law recognizing it as such was passed by the Sejm and Senate in April 2024, but has been vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in late May of 2024. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguists (e.g. Tomasz Kamusella , Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz ) assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether

1080-669: A few culturally and linguistically related tribes from the basins of the Vistula and Oder before eventually accepting baptism in 966. With Western Christianity , Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet , which made it possible to write down Polish, which until then had existed only as a spoken language . The closest relatives of Polish are the Elbe and Baltic Sea Lechitic dialects ( Polabian and Pomeranian varieties). All of them, except Kashubian , are extinct. The precursor to modern Polish

1215-457: A hair salon and a canteen. The Nazis paid great attention to the appearance of the Vorlager . It was neatly landscaped, with lawns and gardens, outdoor terraces, gravel-lined paths, and professionally painted signs. This idyllic appearance helped hide the nature of the camp from prisoners, who would arrive on the adjacent ramp. Survivor Jules Schelvis recalled feeling reassured upon arrival by

1350-520: A large number of branches in all of these areas) offers services available in Polish at all of their cash machines in addition to English and Spanish . According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England and Wales who consider Polish to be their "main" language. In Canada , there is a significant Polish Canadian population : There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to

1485-543: A lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue , Linguist List and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007,

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1620-402: A lower ranking kapo named Herbert Naftaniel. Naftaniel, nicknamed "Berliner", was promoted to Oberkapo and became a notorious figure in the camp. He viewed himself as German rather than Jewish, and began a reign of terror which came to an end shortly before the revolt, when a group of prisoners beat him to death with SS-Oberscharfuhrer Karl Frenzel 's permission. Despite these divisions in

1755-489: A mine field under heavy machine gun fire. About 300 prisoners made it out of the camp, of whom roughly 60 survived the war. After the revolt, the Nazis demolished most of the camp in order to hide their crimes from the advancing Red Army . In the first decades after World War II , the site was neglected and the camp had little presence in either popular or scholarly accounts of the Holocaust. It became better known after it

1890-454: A nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, ą in dąb ("oak") is pronounced [ɔm] , and ę in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced [ɛn] (the nasal assimilates to the following consonant). When followed by l or ł (for example przyjęli , przyjęły ), ę is pronounced as just e . When ę is at the end of the word it is often pronounced as just [ɛ] . Depending on

2025-509: A new connection to Lublin via Rejowiec and a layover yard with a bigengine-house. Following World War I , in 1918, Poland regained independence and control of the village. In 1921, Bełżec was visited by Marshal of Poland Józef Piłsudski . On 19 September 1939, during the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland which started World War II , it was the site of the Battle of Bełżec  [ pl ] between Poland and Germany. Afterwards,

2160-481: A personal betrayal. Stangl particularly objected to the implication that his habit of bringing Smajzner sausages on the sabbath had been a deliberate attempt to torment the starving teenager. Szmajzner himself was not sure of Stangl's intentions: "it's perfectly true that he seemed to like me... still, it was funny, wasn't it, that he always brought it on a Friday evening?" On either 16 or 18 May 1942, Sobibor became fully operational and began mass gassings. Trains entered

2295-504: A pharmacy, whose contents were also taken from victims' luggage. On the farm, Jewish prisoners raised chickens, pigs, geese, fruits and vegetables for consumption by the SS men. Outside the Erbhof , Lager II contained facilities where new arrivals were prepared before being murdered. It contained the sorting barracks and other buildings used for storing items taken from the victims, including clothes, food, hair, gold, and other valuables. At

2430-469: A prisoner revolt which took place on 14 October 1943. The plan for the revolt involved two phases. In the first phase, teams of prisoners were to discreetly assassinate each of the SS officers. In the second phase, all 600 prisoners would assemble for evening roll call and walk to freedom out the front gate. However, the plan was disrupted after only eleven SS men had been killed. The prisoners had to escape by climbing over barbed wire fences and running through

2565-402: A reversed diacritic hook called an ogonek . Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases . It has fixed penultimate stress and an abundance of palatal consonants . Contemporary Polish developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries). Among the major languages, it

2700-491: A single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), prze ze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable. The Polish alphabet derives from the Latin script but includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics . The Polish alphabet was one of three major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Western and some South Slavic languages,

2835-461: A special unit of Jewish prisoners was forced to assist in the extermination process. Its tasks included removing bodies, searching cavities for valuables, scrubbing blood and excrement from the gas chambers, and cremating the corpses. Because the prisoners who belonged to this unit were direct witnesses to genocide , they were strictly isolated from other prisoners and the SS would periodically liquidate those unit members who had not already succumbed to

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2970-578: A variety of other jobs. Many worked in the Lager II sorting barracks, where they were forced to comb through luggage left behind by gas chamber victims, repackaging valuable items as "charity gifts" for German civilians. These workers could also be called on to serve in the railway brigade which greeted new prisoners. The railway brigade was considered a relatively appealing job, since it gave famished workers access to luggage which often contained food. Younger prisoners commonly worked as putzers , cleaning for

3105-405: A verse by Jan Brzechwa ) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed'). Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel. The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede

3240-478: A vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/ , palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew'). Some loanwords , particularly from

3375-434: A water-filled trench. Lager II was a larger multi-purpose compound. One subsection called the " Erbhof " contained the administration building, as well as a small farm. The administration building was a pre-war structure previously used by the local Polish forestry service. As part of the camp, this building was adapted to provide accommodation for some SS officers, storage for goods stolen from victims' luggage, as well as

3510-462: A white coat to give the impression he was a physician . Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection , so as to prevent the spread of diseases. After undressing, the Jews were taken through the "Tube", by an SS man leading the way, with five or six Ukrainians at the back hastening the Jews along. After the Jews entered

3645-711: Is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script . It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2024, there were over 39.7 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union . Polish

3780-419: Is also spoken as a second language in eastern Germany , northern Czech Republic and Slovakia , western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in southeast Lithuania and Latvia . Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II , millions of Polish speakers can also be found in countries such as Canada , Argentina , Brazil , Israel , Australia ,

3915-427: Is most closely related to Slovak and Czech but differs in terms of pronunciation and general grammar. Additionally, Polish was profoundly influenced by Latin and other Romance languages like Italian and French as well as Germanic languages (most notably German ), which contributed to a large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures. Extensive usage of nonstandard dialects has also shaped

4050-447: Is possible to say ko goście zoba czy li? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are considered part of a "usable" norm of standard Polish - in contrast to the "model" ("high") norm. Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were

4185-595: Is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics , and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals. The traditional 32-letter Polish alphabet has nine additions ( ą , ć , ę , ł , ń , ó , ś , ź , ż ) to the letters of the basic 26-letter Latin alphabet , while removing three (x, q, v). Those three letters are at times included in an extended 35-letter alphabet. The traditional set comprises 23 consonants and 9 written vowels , including two nasal vowels ( ę , ą ) defined by

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4320-524: Is the Old Polish language . Ultimately, Polish descends from the unattested Proto-Slavic language. The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska , Latin : Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau ), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj ;

4455-529: Is the most widely-used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County , by 26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results, as Vilnius was part of Poland from 1922 until 1939. Polish is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. In Ukraine, it is most common in the western parts of Lviv and Volyn Oblasts , while in West Belarus it is used by the significant Polish minority, especially in

4590-430: The kropka (superior dot) over the letter ż , and the ogonek ("little tail") under the letters ą, ę . The letters q, v, x are used only in foreign words and names. Polish orthography is largely phonemic —there is a consistent correspondence between letters (or digraphs and trigraphs ) and phonemes (for exceptions see below). The letters of the alphabet and their normal phonemic values are listed in

4725-401: The ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound / ɕ / . The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s , e.g. sinus , sinologia , do re mi fa sol la si do , Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści , Sierioża , Siergiej , Singapur , singiel . In other loanwords

4860-596: The Brest and Grodno regions and in areas along the Lithuanian border. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries. In the United States , Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. According to the 2000 United States Census , 667,414 Americans of age five years and over reported Polish as

4995-587: The Final Solution were built there. Between 430,000 and 500,000 people are believed to have been murdered at the camp between March and December 1942. The victims were mostly Jews from various German-occupied countries, but also Romani people and Poles. In 1943, the Germans used Jewish forced laborers to dismantle the camp, and then deported them to the Sobibor extermination camp . During the operation of

5130-730: The Holocaust . The extermination of Europe's Jews did not originate as a single top-down decision, but was rather a patchwork of decisions made regarding particular occupied areas. Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Germans began implementing the Nisko Plan in which Jews were deported from ghettos across Europe to the forced labour camps which comprised the Lublin Reservation . Lublin District region

5265-509: The Jewish council about the camp and its purpose. Their warnings were met with disbelief. The first gas chambers at Sobibor were built following the model of those at Belzec, but without any furnaces. To provide the carbon monoxide gas, SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs acquired a heavy gasoline engine in Lemberg , disassembled from an armoured vehicle or a tractor. Fuchs installed the engine on

5400-666: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 's influence gave Polish the status of lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe . The process of standardization began in the 14th century and solidified in the 16th century during the Middle Polish era. Standard Polish was based on various dialectal features, with the Greater Poland dialect group serving as the base. After World War II , Standard Polish became

5535-592: The Sonderkommando prisoners who worked there. Lager IV (also called the Nordlager ) was added in July 1943, and was still under construction at the time of the revolt. Located in a heavily wooded area to the north of the other camps, it was being developed as a munitions depot for processing arms taken from Red Army soldiers. Because Sobibor was an extermination camp , the only prisoners who lived there were

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5670-522: The United Kingdom and the United States . Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. At the time, it was a collection of dialect groups with some mutual features, but much regional variation was present. Mieszko I , ruler of the Polans tribe from the Greater Poland region, united

5805-415: The Vorlager's "Tyrolean cottage-like barracks with their bright little curtains and geraniums on the windowsills". Lager I contained barracks and workshops for the prisoners. These workshops included a tailor's shop, a carpenter's shop, a mechanic's shop, a sign-painter's shop, and a bakery. Lager I was accessible only through the adjacent Vorlager , and its western boundary was made escape-proof with

5940-593: The Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich announced a plan for systematically murdering the Jews through a network of extermination camps. This plan was realized as Operation Reinhard . Nothing is known for certain about the early planning for Sobibor in particular. Some historians have speculated that planning began as early as 1940, on the basis of a railway map from that year which omits several major cities but includes Sobibór and Bełżec . The earliest hard evidence for Nazi interest in

6075-474: The classical languages , have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka ( /ˈfizɨka/ ) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation ,

6210-578: The flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) , as well as the expulsion of Ukrainians and Operation Vistula , the 1947 migration of Ukrainian minorities in the Recovered Territories in the west of the country, contributed to the country's linguistic homogeneity. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish ( język ogólnopolski ) appear relatively slight. Most of

6345-404: The standard language ; considerable colloquialisms and expressions were directly borrowed from German or Yiddish and subsequently adopted into the vernacular of Polish which is in everyday use. Historically, Polish was a lingua franca , important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe . In addition to being the official language of Poland, Polish

6480-417: The 100-metre (330 ft) long "Road to Heaven" ( Himmelstrasse ) to the gas chambers, where they were murdered using carbon monoxide released from the exhaust pipes of a tank engine. During his trial, SS- Oberscharführer Kurt Bolender described the killing operations as follows: Before the Jews undressed, SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Michel made a speech to them. On these occasions, he used to wear

6615-416: The 16th century, which is also regarded as the " Golden Age of Polish literature". The orthography was modified in the 19th century and in 1936. Tomasz Kamusella notes that "Polish is the oldest, non-ecclesiastical, written Slavic language with a continuous tradition of literacy and official use, which has lasted unbroken from the 16th century to this day." Polish evolved into the main sociolect of

6750-486: The 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto (91,810 speakers) and Montreal . The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II and Polish population transfers (1944–46) . Poles settled in the " Recovered Territories " in the west and north, which had previously been mostly German -speaking. Some Poles remained in

6885-589: The Eastern Front. The officer's compound in the camp had a canteen, a bowling alley, and a barber shop. The "officers' country club" was a short distance away, on nearby Perepsza Lake. Each SS man was allowed three weeks of leave every three months, which they could spend at Haus Schoberstein , an SS-owned resort in the Austrian town of Weissenbach on Lake Attersee . Moreover, the job could be lucrative: each officer received base pay of 58 ℛℳ per month, plus

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7020-583: The Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish"). The earliest treatise on Polish orthography was written by Jakub Parkosz  [ pl ] around 1470. The first printed book in Polish appeared in either 1508 or 1513, while the oldest Polish newspaper was established in 1661. Starting in the 1520s, large numbers of books in the Polish language were published, contributing to increased homogeneity of grammar and orthography. The writing system achieved its overall form in

7155-803: The Kingdom of Poland. In 1648 it was destroyed by the Cossacks , and during the Swedish invasion of Poland of 1655–1660, known as the Deluge , a battle was fought nearby between Poles led by Hetman Stefan Czarniecki and the Swedes. The village was annexed by Austria in the First Partition of Poland in 1772. It was regained by Poles in the Austro-Polish War of 1809, and included within

7290-826: The Museum and Memorial at the site of the Nazi German Belzec extermination camp , a memorial to Polish soldiers killed in the Battle of Bełżec during the German invasion of Poland in 1939, a monument to the victims of the attack of the Ukrainian nationalists on Polish civilians in 1944, and a memorial at the burial site of the Romani and Sinti victims of the Nazi German forced labour camp. Cultural heritage sites include

7425-446: The Nazis and the watchmen and attending to their needs. A particularly horrifying job was that of the "barbers" who cut the hair of women on their way to the gas chamber. This job was often forced upon young male prisoners in an attempt to humiliate both them and the naked women whose hair they were cutting. Armed watchmen supervised the process in order to ensure that barbers did not respond to victims' questions or pleas. In Lager III ,

7560-517: The Nazis' canteen: "We spit in it and washed our hands in it... Don't ask me what else we did to that soup... And they ate it." Prisoners found it difficult to forge personal relationships. This was in part due to the constant turnover in the camp population, but also to an atmosphere of mutual distrust which was often exacerbated by national or linguistic divisions. Dutch Jews were particularly subject to derision and suspicion because of their assimilated manners and limited Yiddish . German Jews faced

7695-457: The SS officers, Unterscharführer Johann Klier was known to be relatively humane, and several survivors testified on his behalf at his trial. In an interview with Richard Rashke , Esther Terner commented "I don't even know why he was in Sobibor ... even the other Nazis picked on him." Prisoners regarded the watchmen as the most dangerous among the Sobibor staff, their cruelty surpassing that of

7830-548: The SS officers. In the words of historian Marek Bem, "It can be said that the Ukrainian guards' cynicism was in no way inferior to the SS men's premeditation." However, some individual watchmen were sympathetic to the Jews, doing the minimum possible while on duty and even assisting with prisoners' escape attempts. In one documented instance, two watchmen named Victor Kisiljow and Wasyl Zischer escaped with six Jewish prisoners, but were betrayed and killed. Prisoners developed complex relationships with their tormenters. In order to avoid

7965-404: The SS was not unwavering. They played an active role in Sobibor's underground barter economy, and drank copiously despite being prohibited from doing so. The SS officers were wary of the watchmen, and limited their access to ammunition. Watchmen were also transferred frequently between different camps in order to prevent them from building up local contacts or knowledge of the surrounding area. After

8100-473: The SS, with their arms tied behind their backs. Others recount being forced to sing demeaning songs such as "I am a Jew with a big nose". Female prisoners were sexually abused on several occasions. For instance, at a postwar trial, Erich Bauer testified that two Austrian Jewish actresses, named Ruth and Gisela, were confined in an SS barracks and gang raped by SS-Oberscharfuhrer Kurt Bolender and SS-Oberscharfuhrer Gustav Wagner , among others. Unique among

8235-671: The Silesian language was recognized by ISO , and was attributed an ISO code of szl. Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include: Polish linguistics has been characterized by a strong strive towards promoting prescriptive ideas of language intervention and usage uniformity, along with normatively-oriented notions of language "correctness" (unusual by Western standards). Polish has six oral vowels (seven oral vowels in written form), which are all monophthongs , and two nasal vowels . The oral vowels are / i / (spelled i ), / ɨ / (spelled y and also transcribed as /ɘ/ or /ɪ/), / ɛ / (spelled e ), /

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8370-506: The camp on occasion. When Sobibor first opened, prisoners were regarded as expendable and shot at the first sign of illness or injury. After a few months, the SS grew concerned that the enormous death rate was limiting the camp's efficiency. In order to increase the continuity of its labour force and alleviate the need to constantly train new workers, the SS instituted a new policy allowing incapacitated prisoners three days to recover. Those still unable to work after three days were shot. Food in

8505-532: The camp personnel. The SS officers lived in cottages with colorful names such as Lustiger Floh (the Merry Flea), Schwalbennest (the Swallow's Nest), and Gottes Heimat (God's Own Home). They also had a canteen, a bowling alley, a hairdresser, and a dentist, all staffed by Jewish prisoners. The watchmen , drawn from Soviet POWs, had separate barracks, and their own separate recreational buildings, including

8640-495: The camp was extremely limited. As at other Lublin district camps, prisoners were given about 200 grams of bread for breakfast along with Ersatz coffee. Lunch was typically a thin soup sometimes with some potatoes or horse meat. Dinner could be once again simply coffee. Prisoners forced to live on these rations found their personalities changing due to hunger. Others supplemented these rations surreptitiously, for instance by helping themselves to food from victims' luggage while working in

8775-452: The camp's facilities to be constructed within its perimeter. The camp incorporated several pre-war buildings including a post office, a forester's lodge, a forestry tower, and a chapel. The forester's lodge became the camp administration building, while the post office was used as lodging for the SS (though not, as commonly reported, for the commandant). The former post office, located near the railroad tracks, still stands today. The SS adapted

8910-440: The camp, prisoners found ways to support each other. Sick and injured prisoners were given clandestine food as well as medicine and sanitary supplies stolen from the camp pharmacy. Healthy prisoners were expected to cover for sick prisoners who would otherwise be killed. The camp nurse Kurt Ticho developed a method of falsifying his records so that sick prisoners could take more than the allotted three day recovery period. Members of

9045-511: The camp, the Germans tried to hide its real purpose, and after it was liquidated, they planted a forest in its place. On 16 June 1944, near Bełżec, Ukrainian nationalists of the UPA carried out an attack on a train that left the local station for Lwów. In the attack, the Ukrainians massacred several dozen Polish men, women and children. A few people survived. The Polish underground Home Army

9180-624: The camp. Because of the expectation of imminent death, prisoners adopted a day-at-a-time outlook. Crying was rare and evenings were often spent enjoying whatever of life was left. As revolt organizer Leon Feldhendler recounted after the war, “The Jews only had one goal: carpe diem , and in this they simply went wild.” Prisoners sang and danced in the evenings and sexual or romantic relations were frequent. Some of these affairs were likely transactional or coerced, especially those between female prisoners and kapos , but others were driven by genuine bonds. Two couples that met in Sobibor were married after

9315-485: The cases mentioned above, the letter i if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents / j / , yet a palatalization of the previous consonant is always assumed. The reverse case, where the consonant remains unpalatalized but is followed by a palatalized consonant, is written by using j instead of i : for example, zjeść , "to eat up". The letters ą and ę , when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by

9450-481: The construction of a munitions depot known as Lager IV. Sobibor was surrounded by double barbed wire fences which were thatched with pine branches in order to block the view inside. At its southeast corner, it had two side-by-side gates; one for trains and another for foot traffic and vehicles. The site was divided into five compounds: the Vorlager and four Lagers numbered I–IV . The Vorlager (front compound) contained living quarters and recreational buildings for

9585-713: The corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij ; and in English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest ), written around 1280. The book is exhibited in the Archdiocesal Museum in Wrocław, and as of 2015 has been added to UNESCO 's " Memory of the World " list. The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of

9720-410: The dead, observing Jewish religious rites, and singing songs of resistance. However, some prisoners found small ways of materially fighting back. While working in the sorting shed, Saartje Wijnberg would surreptitiously damage fine items of clothing to prevent them from being sent to Germany. After the war, Esther Terner recounted what she and Zelda Metz did when they found an unattended pot of soup in

9855-479: The disappearance of yers . Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from

9990-430: The distinction between regular penultimate and exceptional antepenultimate stress. Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy , etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zro biłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zro bi libyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities ,

10125-626: The east end was a yard where new arrivals had their luggage taken from them and were forced to undress. This area was beautified with flower beds to hide the camp's purpose from newcomers. This yard led into the narrow enclosed path called the Himmelstrasse (road to heaven) or the Schlauch (tube), which led straight to the gas chambers in Lager III . The Himmelstrasse was covered on both sides by fences woven with pine branches. Lager III

10260-531: The eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth wrote Polish in the Arabic alphabet. The Cyrillic script is used to a certain extent today by Polish speakers in Western Belarus , especially for religious texts. The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent ) over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and through the letter in ł ;

10395-420: The end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where assimilation occurs). For details, see Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology. Most Polish words are paroxytones (that is, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions. Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from

10530-476: The entire country. Polish has traditionally been described as consisting of three to five main regional dialects: Silesian and Kashubian , spoken in Upper Silesia and Pomerania respectively, are thought of as either Polish dialects or distinct languages , depending on the criteria used. Kashubian contains a number of features not found elsewhere in Poland, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs.

10665-539: The expendable "drones" whose lives were entirely at the mercy of the SS, the privileged workers whose special jobs provided some relative comforts, and finally the artisans whose specialized knowledge made them indispensable and earned them preferential treatment. Moreover, as at other camps, the Nazis appointed kapos to keep their fellow prisoners in line. Kapos carried out a variety of supervisory duties and enforced their commands with whips. Kapos were involuntary appointees, and they varied widely in how they responded to

10800-422: The extermination process, unloading transports and escorting the victims into the gas chambers. Watchmen dressed in mixed-and-matched pieces of Nazi, Soviet, and Polish uniforms, often dyed black (giving rise to the term "blackies"). They received pay and rations similar to those of Waffen-SS, as well as a family allowance and holiday leave. Although the watchmen inspired terror among the prisoners, their loyalty to

10935-467: The following table. The following digraphs and trigraphs are used: Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the tables); this occurs at the end of words and in certain clusters, due to the neutralization mentioned in the Phonology section above. Occasionally also voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds in clusters. The spelling rule for

11070-549: The gas chambers, the Ukrainians closed the doors. The motor was switched on by the former Soviet soldier Emil Kostenko and by the German driver Erich Bauer from Berlin . After the gassing, the doors were opened, and the corpses were removed by the Sonderkommando members. Local Jews were delivered in absolute terror, many amongst them screaming and pounding. Foreign Jews, on the other hand were treated with deceitful politeness. Passengers from Westerbork , Netherlands, had

11205-425: The labour camp at Krychów . The initial construction of Sobibor was finished by summer 1942, and a steady stream of prisoners began thereafter. However, the SS camp was continuously expanded and renovated throughout its existence. After only a few months of operation, the wooden walls of the gas chambers had absorbed too much sweat, urine, blood, and excrement to be cleanable. Thus, the gas chambers were demolished in

11340-548: The language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English , 0.25% of the US population, and 6% of the Polish-American population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) were found in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740), and New Jersey (74,663). Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services (which has

11475-439: The letter y . The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first. Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent

11610-431: The middle aged and young speak vernaculars close to standard Polish, while the traditional dialects are preserved among older people in rural areas. First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional and social differences. The modern standard dialect , often termed as "correct Polish", is spoken or at least understood throughout

11745-445: The middle. Sundays were designated as half days, but this policy was not always observed. The prisoner population included many labourers with specialized skills such as goldsmithing, painting, gardening, or tailoring. While such prisoners were officially spared death only to support the camp's primary operations, much of their labour was in fact diverted for the SS officers' personal enrichment. Renowned Dutch Jewish painter Max van Dam

11880-526: The most extreme cruelties, many tried to ingratiate themselves with the SS officers, for instance by choosing maudlin German folk songs when ordered to sing. In other cases, prisoners found themselves unwillingly favored. SS-Oberscharfuhrer Karl Frenzel took a liking to Saartje Wijnberg , constantly smiling at her and teasingly referring to her and Chaim Engel as "bride and groom". He was protective towards her, excusing her from torturous work inflicted on other Dutch prisoners and sparing her when he liquidated

12015-460: The most widely spoken variant of Polish across the country, and most dialects stopped being the form of Polish spoken in villages. Poland is one of the most linguistically homogeneous European countries; nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their first language . Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in areas which were once administered or occupied by Poland, notably in neighboring Lithuania , Belarus , and Ukraine . Polish

12150-585: The name Tarzan . Be%C5%82%C5%BCec (village) During World War II , the village was the site of the Nazi German Belzec extermination camp . Bełżec was first mentioned in a document from 1515, after it was founded within territory of the village of Przeorsko, which in turn was founded in the 15th century by the Małdrzyk family. As of 1546, Bełżec was a private village of the Bełżecki noble family . Thanks to efforts of local nobleman Samuel Lipski, Bełżec

12285-649: The nobles in Poland–Lithuania in the 15th century. The history of Polish as a language of state governance begins in the 16th century in the Kingdom of Poland . Over the later centuries, Polish served as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , Congress Poland , the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , and as the administrative language in the Russian Empire 's Western Krai . The growth of

12420-673: The others being Czech orthography and Croatian orthography , the last of these being a 19th-century invention trying to make a compromise between the first two. Kashubian uses a Polish-based system, Slovak uses a Czech-based system, and Slovene follows the Croatian one; the Sorbian languages blend the Polish and the Czech ones. Historically, Poland's once diverse and multi-ethnic population utilized many forms of scripture to write Polish. For instance, Lipka Tatars and Muslims inhabiting

12555-401: The palatal sounds / ɕ / , / ʑ / , / tɕ / , / dʑ / and / ɲ / is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulfur") and

12690-539: The preexisting railroad infrastructure, adding an 800-meter railroad spur that ended inside the camp. This third set of tracks allowed regular rail traffic to continue uninterrupted while the camp unloaded transports of new prisoners. Some building materials were supplied by the SS Central Construction Office in Lublin, while others were procured from local sawmills and brickworks, as well as from

12825-520: The previously Polish-ruled territories in the east that were annexed by the USSR , resulting in the present-day Polish-speaking communities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, although many Poles were expelled from those areas to areas within Poland's new borders. To the east of Poland, the most significant Polish minority lives in a long strip along either side of the Lithuania - Belarus border. Meanwhile,

12960-437: The prisoner uprising, the SS feared that the watchmen would themselves revolt, and sent them all back to Trawniki under armed guard. Their fears proved correct, as the watchmen killed their SS escort and fled. Prisoners lived in constant fear of their captors. They were punished for transgressions as inconsequential as smoking a cigarette, resting while working, and showing insufficient enthusiasm when forced to sing. Punishment

13095-513: The prisoners, with the exception of Shlomo Szmajzner who recalled Stangl as a vain man who stood out for "his obvious pleasure in his work and his situation. None of the others—although they were, in different ways, so much worse than he—showed this to such an extent. He had this perpetual smile on his face." Stangl was transferred to Treblinka in August 1942, and his job at Sobibor was filled by SS-Obersturmführer Franz Reichleitner . Reichleitner

13230-418: The psychological pressures of their position. Oberkapo Moses Sturm was nicknamed "Mad Moisz" for his mercurial temperament. He would beat prisoners horrifically without provocation and then later apologize hysterically. He talked constantly of escape, sometimes merely berating the other prisoners for their passivity, other times attempting to formulate actionable plans. Sturm was executed after being betrayed by

13365-526: The railway brigade attempted to warn new arrivals of their impending murder but were met with incredulity. The most successful act of solidarity in the camp was the revolt on 14 October 1943, which was expressly planned so that all of the prisoners in the camp would have at least some chance of escape. Prisoners suffered from sleep deprivation, malnourishment, and the physical and emotional toll of grueling labour and constant beatings. Lice, skin infections, and respiratory infections were common, and typhoid swept

13500-548: The railway siding with the unloading platform, and the Jews on board were told they were in a transit camp. They were forced to hand over their valuables, were separated by sex and told to undress. The nude women and girls, recoiling in shame, were met by the Jewish workers who cut off their hair in a mere half a minute. Among the Friseur (barbers) was Toivi Blatt (age 15). The condemned prisoners, formed into groups, were led along

13635-584: The remains of demolished houses of Jews. The first group of workers who built the camp were primarily locals from neighbouring villages and towns. It is unknown to what extent these were Polish or Jewish forced labourers. After Thomalla's arrival, the Jewish council in nearby Włodawa was ordered to send 150 Jews to assist in the construction of the camp. These workers were constantly harassed as they worked, and were shot if they showed signs of exhaustion. Most were murdered upon completion of construction, but two escaped back to Włodawa , where they attempted to warn

13770-410: The roughly 600 slave labourers forced to assist in the operation of the camp. While survivors of Auschwitz use the term "selected" to mean being selected for murder, at Sobibor being "selected" meant being selected to live, at least temporarily. The harsh conditions in the camp took the lives of most new arrivals within a few months. Prisoners worked from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, with a short lunch break in

13905-540: The same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście , although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zro bi liśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobi li śmy ). These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of ko go zoba czy liście? ('whom did you see?') it

14040-613: The same suspicion as the Dutch, with the added implication that they might identify more with their captors than with their fellow prisoners. When social groups did form, they were generally based on family ties or shared nationality, and were completely closed off to outsiders. Chaim Engel even found himself shunned by fellow Polish Jews after he began a romantic relationship with Dutch-born Saartje Wijnberg . These divisions had dire consequences for many prisoners from Western Europe, who were not trusted with crucial information about goings-on in

14175-410: The series of affricate and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist): Neutralization occurs between voiced – voiceless consonant pairs in certain environments, at

14310-543: The short-lived Duchy of Warsaw . Following the duchy's dissolution in 1815, it fell again to the Austrian Partition of Poland, also known as Galicia , and was located on the border with the Russian Partition . In 1887, Bełżec was connected by rail to Lwów , one of the largest agglomerations in the region, via Rawa Ruska (now in western Ukraine). Bełżec became a full-fledged rail hub in 1916, with

14445-488: The sick barracks on 11 October 1943. She struggled with this attention and felt angry at herself when she noticed herself feeling grateful to him. At his trial, Frenzel declared "I actually do believe the Jews even liked me!" though both prisoners and other SS officers regarded him as exceptionally cruel and brutal. Similarly, camp commandant SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl "made a pet" of the 14 year old goldsmith Shlomo Szmajzner and regarded his post-war trial testimony as

14580-508: The site comes from the testimony of local Poles, who noticed in Autumn 1941 that SS officers were surveying the land opposite the train station. When a worker at the station cafeteria asked one of the SS men what was being built, he replied that she would soon see and that it would be "a good laugh." In March 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla took over construction work at Sobibor, which had begun at an unknown earlier date. Thomalla

14715-506: The six of standard Polish) and (in the northern dialects) phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the West Slavic languages . However, it was described by some linguists as lacking most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood. Many linguistic sources categorize Silesian as a regional language separate from Polish, while some consider Silesian to be

14850-670: The so-called Lublin reservation . In 1940, the Germans established two forced labour camps: for Jews, and for the Romani and Sinti . Polish people were also deported to forced labour in Bełżec. In 1941, the occupiers began the construction of the Bełżec extermination camp on the Kozielsk Hill some 500 metres (1,600 ft) from the railway station, at the site of the former forced labour camp for Jews. The first stationary gas chambers of

14985-415: The sole purpose of murdering Jews. The vast majority of prisoners were gassed within hours of arrival. Those not killed immediately were forced to assist in the operation of the camp, and few survived more than a few months. In total, some 170,000 to 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor, making it the fourth-deadliest Nazi camp after Auschwitz , Treblinka , and Belzec . The camp ceased operation after

15120-488: The sorting barracks or in the railway brigade. A barter system developed in the camp, which included not only prisoners but also the watchmen , who would serve as intermediaries between the Jews and local peasants, exchanging jewels and cash from the sorting barracks for food and liquor in exchange for a large cut. Most prisoners had little or no access to hygiene and sanitation. There were no showers in Lager I and clean water

15255-494: The stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet ( /uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/ , 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/ ) and derived adjective uniwersytecki ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/ ) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Loanwords generally become nativized to have penultimate stress. In psycholinguistic experiments, speakers of Polish have been demonstrated to be sensitive to

15390-414: The summer of 1942, and new larger ones were built made out of brick. Later that summer, the SS also embarked on a beautification project, instituting a more regular cleaning schedule for the barracks and stables, and expanding and landscaping the Vorlager to give it the appearance of a " Tyrolean village" much noted by later prisoners. When Sobibor ceased operations in mid-1943, the SS were part way through

15525-576: The summer of 1943, SS-Oberscharfuhrer Gustav Wagner and SS-Oberscharfuhrer Hubert Gomerski formed a penal brigade, consisting of prisoners who were forced to work while running. Prisoners were assigned to the penal brigade for a period of three days, but most died before their time was up. The SS exercised absolute authority over the prisoners and treated them as a source of entertainment. They forced prisoners to sing while working, while marching, and even during public executions. Some survivor testimonies recount prisoners performing mock cockfights for

15660-456: The village was occupied by Germany. It was located on the border of three new districts of the General Government of Poland created by Nazi Germany: Lublin District , Kraków District and District of Galicia (created on 1 September 1941 soon after Operation Barbarossa ) with the capital in Lwów. Approximately one million Polish Jews lived there during the Holocaust in occupied Poland in

15795-563: The vowel i is changed to y , e.g. Syria , Sybir , synchronizacja , Syrakuzy . The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling: Digraphs and trigraphs are used: Similar principles apply to / kʲ / , / ɡʲ / , / xʲ / and /lʲ/ , except that these can only occur before vowels, so the spellings are k, g, (c)h, l before i , and ki, gi, (c)hi, li otherwise. Most Polish speakers, however, do not consider palatalization of k, g, (c)h or l as creating new sounds. Except in

15930-444: The war. The Nazis allowed and even encouraged an atmosphere of merriment, going so far as to recruit prisoners for a choir at gunpoint. Many prisoners interpreted these efforts as attempts by the Nazis to keep the prisoners docile and to prevent them from thinking about escape. Prisoners had a pecking order largely determined by one's usefulness to the Germans. As survivor Toivi Blatt observed, there were three categories of prisoners:

16065-436: The way to the gas chambers. Before beginning work at Sobibor, they had met with Odilo Globočnik in Lublin and signed a confidentiality agreement. Over the course of its operation, roughly 100 SS officers served at Sobibor. When Sobibor first opened, its commandant was SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl , a meticulous organizer who worked to increase the efficiency of the extermination process. Stangl had little interaction with

16200-443: The word, the phoneme / x / can be spelt h or ch , the phoneme / ʐ / can be spelt ż or rz , and / u / can be spelt u or ó . In several cases it determines the meaning, for example: może ("maybe") and morze ("sea"). In occasional words, letters that normally form a digraph are pronounced separately. For example, rz represents /rz/ , not / ʐ / , in words like zamarzać ("freeze") and in

16335-588: The work's physical and psychological toll. Since no workers from Lager III survived, nothing is known about their lives or experiences. When construction of Lager IV began in the summer of 1943, the Nazis assembled a forest commando who worked there cutting timber for heat, cooking, as well as cremation pyres. Prisoners struggled with the fact that their labour made them complicit in mass murder , albeit indirectly and unwillingly. Many committed suicide. Others endured, finding ways to resist, if only symbolically. Common symbolic forms of resistance included praying for

16470-472: Was SS-Oberscharfuhrer Karl Frenzel , who oversaw Lager I and acted as the camp's "judicial authority". Kurt Bolender and Hubert Gomerski  [ de ] oversaw Lager III , the extermination area, while SS-Oberscharfuhrer Erich Bauer and SS-Scharführer Josef Vallaster typically directed the gassing procedure itself. The SS men considered their job appealing. At Sobibor, they could enjoy creature comforts not available to soldiers fighting on

16605-541: Was a former building contractor and committed Nazi whose service as an auxiliary police commander and adviser on Jewish forced labour had earned him a high-ranking position in Odilo Globočnik 's construction department. Having previously overseen the construction of Bełżec extermination camp , he applied lessons learned there to Sobibor. Thomalla allotted a much larger area for Sobibor than he had for Bełżec, allowing more room to maneuver as well as providing space for all of

16740-407: Was able to document the crime shortly after it happened. The Bełżec station was bombed by a Soviet warplane on 4 July 1944, setting fire to munitions and explosives from the German military cargo train. The ensuing explosions and fires consumed over 50 nearby buildings along with the train station itself. Several railway workers were killed. The historic train station was never rebuilt. A new station

16875-498: Was an alcoholic and a determined anti-semite who took little interest in what went on in the camp aside from the extermination process. SS- Untersturmführer Johann Niemann served as the camp's deputy commandant. Day-to-day operations were generally handled by SS-Oberscharfuhrer Gustav Wagner , the most feared and hated man in Sobibor. Prisoners regarded him as brutal, demanding, unpredictable, observant, and sadistic. They referred to him as "The Beast" and "Wolf". Reporting to Wagner

17010-499: Was chosen in particular for its inhospitable conditions. The Nisko Plan was abandoned in 1940, but many forced labour camps continued operations in the area, including Trawniki , Lipowa 7 , and Dorohucza . In 1941, the Nazis began experimenting with gassing Jews. In December 1941, SS officials at Chełmno conducted experiments using gas vans and the first mass gassings were conducted at Auschwitz concentration camp in January. At

17145-502: Was erected half a kilometre away in postwar Poland. On 21 July 1944 the village was liberated by the Polish Home Army . In 1971, Bełżec was visited by Primate of Poland Stefan Wyszyński and Cardinal Karol Wojtyła (future Pope John Paul II ). The Polish National road 17 and Voivodeship road 865 run through the village, and there is also a train station. There are several World War II memorials in Bełżec, including

17280-663: Was granted town rights by Polish King Sigismund III Vasa in 1607, however, it did not develop properly, and several decades later it was yet again referred to as a village. The King also established two annual fairs . The Grabie coat of arms of the Lipski family is the coat of arms of Bełżec. Administratively, the village was located in the Bełz County in the Bełz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of

17415-534: Was guarded by approximately 400 watchmen . Survivors often refer to them as blackies , Askaris , or Ukrainians (even though many were not Ukrainian). They were captured Soviet prisoners of war who had volunteered for the SS in order to escape the abominable conditions in Nazi POW camps. Watchmen were nominally guards, but they were also expected to supervise work details and perform manual labour including punishments and executions. They also took an active part in

17550-441: Was nominally kept as a sign painter, but the SS also forced him to paint landscapes, portraits, and hagiographic images of Hitler . Similarly, Shlomo Szmajzner was placed in charge of the machine shop in order to conceal his work making gold jewelry for SS officers. Prisoners with specialized skills were considered especially valuable and were afforded privileges not available to others. Those without specialized skills performed

17685-465: Was portrayed in the TV miniseries Holocaust (1978) and the film Escape from Sobibor (1987). The Sobibor Museum now stands at the site, which continues to be investigated by archaeologists. Photographs of the camp in operation were published in 2020 as part of the Sobibor perpetrator album . Sobibor was one of four extermination camps established as part of Operation Reinhard , the deadliest phase of

17820-439: Was scarce. Although clothing could be washed or replaced from the sorting barracks, the camp was so thoroughly infested that there was little point. However, some prisoners worked in areas of the camp such as the laundry which gave them occasional access to better hygiene. The personnel at Sobibor included a small cadre of German and Austrian SS officers, and a much larger group of watchmen , generally of Soviet origin. Sobibor

17955-725: Was staffed by a rotating group of eighteen to twenty-two German and Austrian SS officers. The SS officers were generally from lower-middle-class backgrounds, having previously worked as merchants, artisans, farmhands, nurses, and policemen. Almost all the Sobibor SS officers had previously served in Aktion T4 , the Nazi forced euthanasia program. In particular, a large contingent had previously served together at Hartheim Euthanasia Centre . Many practices developed at Hartheim were continued at Sobibor, including methods for deceiving victims on

18090-429: Was the extermination area. It was isolated from the rest of the camp, set back in a clearing in the forest and surrounded by its own thatched fence. Prisoners from Lager I were not allowed near it, and were killed if they were suspected of having seen inside. Due to a lack of eyewitness testimony, little is known about Lager III beyond the fact that it contained gas chambers, mass graves, and special separate housing for

18225-558: Was used not only to enforce the official camp rules, but also the guards' personal whims. The most common punishment was flogging. SS officers carried 80 centimeter whips which had been specially made by slave labour prisoners using leather taken from the luggage of gas chamber victims. Even when flogging was not in itself lethal, it would prove a death sentence if it left the recipient too injured to work. Many survivors remember an unusually large and aggressive St. Bernard named Barry that Kurt Bolender and Paul Groth would sic on prisoners. In

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