Sobibor Death Camp  

The Sobibor extermination camp was located near Sobibor village, in the eastern part of the Lublin district of Poland, close to the Chelm - Wlodawa railway line. The Bug River (5 km away) today forms the border with the Ukraine.

In 1942 it was the border between the Generalgouvernement and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The area was swampy and is today as densely wooded as it was then.

The camp was the second death camp to be constructed as part of the Aktion Reinhard programme, and was built on similar lines to Belzec (the first Aktion Reinhard camp), following the lessons learned there.

In the early months of 1942 after a visit by a small aircraft that circled over the village, a train arrived at Sobibor. Two SS officers disembarked, construction engineers from the SS-Zentralbauleitung in Zamosc. They were Richard Thomalla, the construction expert for Aktion Reinhard, and construction supervisor Moser from Chelm.

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The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team