The Hidden Horror of Sobibor Extermination Camp

Auschwitz and Birkenau are names of concentration camps, that are firmly anchored in our memory, while the name Sobibor fell into oblivion.

Sobibor extermination camp was established by the Nazis in eastern Poland in 1942, with the aim of "efficiently" murdering Polish Jews and Roma. Sobibor, like the Belzec und Treblinka extermination camps, was part of "Aktion Reinhard," considered by many researchers and historians to be the "core of the Holocaust." The murder of at least 450,000 people in Belzec, approximately 185,000 people in Sobibor, and 780,863 people in Treblinka shows the central importance of these three camps and the dimension of this almost incomprehensible crime. Until recently there were no pictorial records from Sobibor because the Nazis had destroyed the camps in order to cover the traces of their crimes forever.

This changed abruptly with the groundbreaking discovery of a photo collection of the deputy camp director Johann Niemann in 2020. These photos, holocaust archaeology, and eyewitness accounts ensure that the Shoa is remembered, even after the death of the last survivors.