I’d like to start this piece by saying sorry to all my readers who may have noticed a distinct absence of Friday night movies recently. This is because I have been extremely busy, both with research work and dealing with some building problems in my home.
Tonight’s movie is a harrowing true-life tale of how inmates of the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in German-occupied Eastern Poland staged a dramatic escape, which so unnerved the Nazis that after the breakout they closed down this particular death camp. The reason I’m featuring this film is because even though the prisoners lived with the constant threat of death and the knowledge that their relatives with whom they had arrived had been murdered, they didn’t give up hope. Those who managed to escape defiantly ‘chose life’ over capitulation and despair.
This film is a reminder that even at the darkest times in human history, when all appears lost, there are still brave people who will fight. Watching this film brought the words of Psalm 23 very much to the front of my mind. Those who were imprisoned in Sobibor, and other death and concentration camps, really did walk in the valley of the shadow of death and the fear of evil was on every man and woman.
250,000 people are said by historians to have been murdered at Sobibor and those lives which were cruelly and unnecessarily cut short, should not ever be forgotten. But tonight we remember the 600 people who broke out of the camp, knowing that they would be murdered when they were no longer of use to the Nazis. Of these 600 people, which was a tiny fraction of the total number who were killed at Sobibor and an even smaller fraction of those murdered during the Shoah, 300 initially survived the escape although many were later rounded up by the Nazis and killed.
Out of the 600 who attempted to escape, approximately 50/70 individuals survived the War and bore witness to the horrors that had occurred at Sobibor.
This film stars one of my favourite actors Rutger Hauer, who many people will remember from Blade Runner. Mr Hauer plays a Jewish Russian soldier who has been made a prisoner of war after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. It was the arrival at Sobibor of well-trained Russian POW’s which galvanised the other prisoners to attempt to escape. Although this film was one made for TV in 1987, it doesn’t suffer from the poor production values of so many TV movies of the 70’s and 80’s. It is an excellent example of a historical story told in a sensitive and gripping way. I cannot help but identify with the prisoners and will them to success as they stab, club and chop their way through the Nazis running the camp.
This film is well worth watching. If you are not aware of the details of this historical period, or the all pervasive evil that was imposed on Europe by the Nazis, then this will be a good introduction.
Watch this film, remember the dead and celebrate the courage and resolve of those who fought for their very survival. Escape from Sobibor is a sober reminder that the veneer of civilisation that we all perceive as having deep roots, is in reality only tissue-thin. We all stand on a crust of civilisation and we should realise that, at almost any time, this crust can break and thrust humanity into an abyss of death, destruction and horror.
As a fan of Mr Rutger Hauer, this is a very good pick indeed.. 😉
He is indeed a brilliant actor.
Some of the accounts were almost impossible to believe. Seriously conflicting statements and the collapse of post-war trials, discredited the worst of the allegations.
Escape from Sobibor is well worth a second or even third, viewing.
Some of the accounts of the brutality in the death camps seemed to the initial hearers of the words of survivors to be so fantastical and so horrific as to be almost unbelievable. It was only with the examination of Nazi documents the questioning of war criminals and archeaological excavations of death camp sites that the numbers started to firm up. As regards Sobibor, the post war trials estimated that at a bare minimum 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor.
Escape from Sobibor is indeed a fabulous film.
FF 300 initially survived the escape although many were later rounded up by the Nazis and killed. FF
I will see that later this evening. But having read many of the accounts of this escape, and of the camp*, what I BET will not be mentioned is that fact that most of the escapees were captured and turned over to the SS by POLES!
(*See; Sobibor, the forgotten revolt. Thomas Toivi Blatt. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Yitzhak Arad.)
Furor, the film indeed does make it clear that it was not just the Germans who were the criminals with regards to rounding up the Sobibor escapees. Some were murdered or turned in by Poles and the part played by the Ukranians for example in the Shoah should not be forgotten.