Timeline

  • BEGINING THE CONSTRUCTION OF SS-SONDERKOMMANDO SOBIBOR

    In the spring of 1942, the Germans ordered the Jewish council (Judenrat) in Włodawa to provide 150 labourers for the planned construction works near the train station in Sobibór. They began at the turn of March and April, and took around two months. Sparsely populated land west from the Chełm-Włodawa railway line was selected as the future camp location. It was a boggy area enclosed with dense forests.
    The camp was divided into several parts. The camp foreground (Vorlager) located directly near the railway ramp contained the buildings for the SS garrison and the sentry guards. Lager I included barracks for prisoners selected from among the deportees and exploited for labour. Lager II included warehouses for the property looted from the victims, and various facilities related to the overall needs of the camp. Lager III was the strictly isolated part with the gas chambers and mass graves.

  • ARRIVAL OF THE CAMP GARRISON

    The camp was supervised by its commandant, with a staff of 20-30 German and Austrian SS-men, and the sentry guards under his command. The sentry garrison comprised around 120 watchmen recruited from among the former Soviet POWs, who were trained at a special facility in Trawniki.
    SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Stangl became the camp commandant in late April 1942. He held this position until August, when he was transferred to Treblinka. Stangl was replaced by SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Reichleitner, who served as the commandant towards the end of the camp’s operation. They were both Austrians, who had earlier participated in the “T4” forced euthanasia mass murder programme.

  • FIRST TRANSPORTS FROM OCCUPIED POLAND

    From early May 1942, the first transports from the Lublin region arrived at the camp. They were sent from the Puławy, Krasnystaw, Chełm, Zamość, and a month later also Hrubieszów counties. The victims were brought in cattle cars, each loaded with 70-100 deportees.

  • FIRST TRANSPORTS OF FOREIGN JEWS

    In the spring of 1942, the first trains with Slovak, Czech, German, and Austrian Jews arrived at the camp. In mid-June, at least 10 transports from Slovakia were sent to Sobibór, mostly from Žilina, Poprad, and Bratislava.

  • RAILWAY LINE MAINTENANCE PAUSES TRAIN TRANSPORTS

    Due to the maintenance works conducted at the Lublin-Chełm railway line, the camp received fewer transports. Still, many victims were brought by trucks and carts or were herded into the camp on foot from the nearby villages.

  • CAMP REDEVELOPMENT

    Redevelopment works were held until the very end of the camp’s operation. Eventually, it covered the area of 60 hectares, which makes it the largest of the operation “Reinhardt” camps. The Germans used the temporary pause in the transports to improve the camp infrastructure. The railway ramp was expanded, additional barracks were erected (barbers’ barracks as well as other workshops and warehouses), new facilities including a mess and a bowling alley to cater for the needs of the SS-men. The gas chamber building disguised as a bathhouse was also expanded. Initially it held three chambers and an annex for a petrol engine, which generated exhaust fumes used for mass murder. Between June and September 1942, the building was expanded with additional chambers (reaching 8 in total), which doubled its mass murder capacity. As a result of those alterations, approximately 500 people could be murdered at the same time within a span of around 20 minutes.

  • CREATION OF THE FIELD CREMATORIA

    Initially victims’ bodies were buried in mass graves within the Lager III area. In late 1942, however, the process of burning bodies began and it continued towards the end of the camp’s operation. Corpses were burned at field open-air crematoria and railway tracks were used to build incineration grates.