(1987) On October 14th, 1943, the only mass escape from a Nazi death camp occurred at Sobibor, the most secret of the three Polish concentration camps, in eastern Poland. With narration by Howard K. Smith, Jack Gold directed this teleplay based on the nonfiction book by Richard Rauhke (along with an unpublished manuscript, "From the Ashes of Sobibor" by Thomas Blatt and Stansilaw Szmajzner's "Inferno in Sobibor").

Of the 600 prisoners, over 300 reached the forest and relative safety, including the principal characters Leon Feldhendler (Alan Arkin) and Lt Alexander "Sasha" Pechersky (Rutger Hauer).

Among the newcomers "welcomed" by inmates off the boxcars, as music plays from a phonograph, is a young, single woman Luka (Joanna Pacula), who receives advice to volunteer for a job when offered. The SS officers, of whom there are 16 in the camp in command of 125 Ukrainian guards, divide the fresh arrivals into two groups, males (14 and older) to one side, the children and women on the other. Anyone with skills to be a tailor, shoemaker, seamstress, or goldsmith is asked to step forward.

Informed that they have reached a labor camp where they will work hard but will be well fed and provided for, those not singled out for jobs are given instructions to proceed to the showers where their clothes will be disinfected to prevent the spread of diseases. Lacking a seamstress's skills, Luka gets lucky when she volunteers to care for the rabbit hutches.

Leon and Samuel (Emil Wolk) take Itzhak Lichtman (Jack Shepherd) into their confidence after explaining to him that his wife and four-year-old son have been gassed and incinerated along with the others. When Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (Jason Norman) reacts in outrage that his fellow Jews are playing music, dancing, and making love while his family has been murdered, Leon slams some sense into his head. "Every day will be an agony of conscience," says Leon, who lost his wife and child upon his arrival: "What is there to do but survive" and plot "for revenge?"

Some of the Jews have been given special privileges as kapos to supervise their fellow internees. After two men successfully escape, while thirteen are caught, the SS punish them by giving them a choice of each selecting someone else from the prisoners for execution or, if they refuse, being joined by fifty SS-selected victims. After everyone is forced to watch the machine-gunning of the 26 men, the order, "Everyone back to work," is given.

Realizing that another attempted escape by a small group, as Leon and Samuel had originally planned, would result in mass slaughter of those left behind, they decide on finding a strategy for everyone, otherwise no one goes. At the same time several Russian Jewish soldiers captured several hundred miles to the east arrive; Leon approaches their officer, Lt Pechersky, to determine if he can be trusted to join the conspiracy; Luka figures in as a decoy for Sasha's frequent visits.

When two of the SS officers depart for a few days, counting on the greed and punctuality of the Germans to be lured one by one into traps, Leon and Sasha decide to act. When the plan begins to disintegrate before all of the SS men can be eliminated, the leaders announce it is everyone for him/herself against the machine guns and minefields around the camp's perimeter.

At the conclusion the narrator provides brief accounts of the aftermath and whereabouts of some of the survivors. The soundtrack was more annoying than inspiring.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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