Aktion Reinhard was the largest single massacre action of the Holocaust and lasted twenty-one months, from March 1942 to November 1943, carried out by the Nazi extermination machine. It was a substantial part of the overall plan for the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem - the Germans’ plan to physically liquidate all Jews of Europe.

Built in March 1942 as a part of Aktion Reinhard in the General Government in Poland Sobibor operated from May 1942 until October 1943 for only one purpose: to kill as many Jews including children as quickly as possible. No selections were made for work or death - victims were brought to the camp in cattle cars and all but a handful were gassed immediately after arrival.

Sign for the train station at Sobibor
USHMM Photo Archives

It was built during World War II near the small village of Sobibòr in the eastern sector of the Lublin district, close to a railroad line, far away from the civilized world and completely out of sight, highly secret and extremely deadly.

Sobibor's gas chambers killed an approximate total of 260,000 Jews during the Holocaust, including some 35,000 Dutch Jews, originally assigned to Auschwitz. Most came from Poland and from the occupied areas of the Soviet Union and Western Europe.

The revolt of the Jewish prisoners on October 14, 1943, put an end to the Sobibor camp. Only a few - about 60 - managed to survive and give evidence of the existence of Sobibor. 

The deathcamp was evacuated in the fall of 1943, the killing installations were destroyed, the terrain of the former extermination camp was ploughed up, trees were planted, and peaceful-looking farm steads constructed. No traces whatsoever were to remain which might bear witness to the atrocities committed in Sobibor ..