Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1987


Escape from Sobibor

Buy Escape from Sobibor now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'Escape from Sobibor' is a 1987 British television film which aired on ITV and CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination camps (uprisings also took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka). The film was directed by Jack Gold and shot in Avala, Yugoslavia (now Serbia). The full 176-minute version shown in the UKRunning to 169 minutes with PAL speed-up. on 10 May 1987 was pre-empted by a 143-minute version shown in the United States on 12 April 1987.

The script, by Reginald Rose, was based on Richard Rashke's 1983 book of the same name, along with a manuscript by Thomas Blatt, "From the Ashes of Sobibor", and a book by Stanisaw Szmajzner, 'Inferno in Sobibor'. Alan Arkin, Joanna Pacua, and Rutger Hauer were the primary stars of the film. The film received a Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film (The film tied with 'Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story'.) and Hauer received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Supporting RoleTelevision Film or Miniseries. Esther Raab was a camp survivor who had assisted Rashke with his book and served as a technical consultant.

Background



On 14 October 1943, members of the Sobibor camp's underground resistance succeeded in covertly killing 11 German 'SS-Totenkopfverbnde' officers and a number of 'Sonderdienst' Ukrainian and 'Volksdeutsche' guards. Of the 600 inmates in the camp, roughly 300 escaped, although all but 5070 were later re-captured and killed. After the escape, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the death camp closed. It was dismantled, bulldozed under the earth, and planted over with trees to cover it up.

Plot



The film begins with a new trainload of Polish Jews arriving for processing at Sobibor. The German Commandant gives them a welcome speech, assuring the new arrivals that the place is a work camp. Other SS officers move along the assembled lines of prisoners, selecting a small number who have trade skills (such as goldsmiths, seamstresses, shoemakers, and tailors). The remaining prisoners are sent away to a different part of the camp from which a pillar of smoke rises day and night. It is some time before the new prisoners realise that Sobibor is a death camp; all of the other Jews are exterminated in gas chambers, and their corpses are cremated in large ovens. The small number of prisoners kept alive in the other part of the camp are charged with sorting the belongings taken from those who are murdered and then repairing the shoes, recycling the clothing, and melting down any silver or gold to make jewellery for the SS officers. Despite their usefulness, these surviving prisoners' existence is precarious; beatings and murders can occur at any time.

Gustav Wagner is the most clever and sadistic of the German officers. When two prisoners escape from a work detail in the nearby forest, Wagner forces the remaining thirteen prisoners of the work gang to each select one other prisoner to die with them (under the threat that if they refuse, he will select fifty) and then executes all twenty six.

The leader of the prisoners, Leon Feldhendler, realises that when the trains eventually stop coming, the camp will have outlived its usefulness, and all the remaining Jews will be murdered. He devises a plan for every prisoner to escape, by luring the SS officers and NCOs into the prisoners' barracks and work huts one by one and killing them as quietly as possible. Once all the Germans are dead, the prisoners will assemble into columns and simply march out of the camp as if they have been ordered to, and it is hoped that the Ukrainian Guards, not knowing what is going on, and with no Germans left alive to give orders or raise the alarm, will not interfere. A new group of prisoners arrives: Russian Jews who were soldiers with the Soviet army. Their leader, Sasha Pechersky, and his men, willingly join the revolt, their military skills proving invaluable.

The Camp Kommandant leaves for several days, taking Wagner with him, which proves an advantage as the most sadistic of the SS officers will be absent. On 14 October 1943, the plan goes into action. One by one, SS officers and NCOs are lured into traps set by groups of prisoners armed with knives and clubs. Eleven Germans are killed, but one officer, Karl Frenzel, unwittingly evades his killers, discovers the corpse of one of his colleagues, and raises the alarm. By now, the prisoners have assembled on the parade ground and, realising the plan has been discovered, Pechersky and Feldhendler urge the prisoners to revolt and flee the camp. Most of the 600 prisoners stampede for the perimeter fences, some of the Jews using captured rifles to shoot their way through the Ukrainian guards. Other guards open fire with machine guns from observation towers, cutting many of the fleeing prisoners down, and other would-be escapees are killed on the minefield surrounding the camp. But over 300 Jews reach the forest and escape.

As the survivors flee deeper into the forest, famed newscaster Howard K. Smith narrates the fates that befell some of the survivors on whose accounts the film was based. Of the 300 prisoners who escaped, only approximately 50 survived to see the end of the war in 1945. Pechersky makes it back to Soviet lines and rejoins the Red Army, surviving the war, and Feldhendler lives to see the end of the war but is killed shortly afterwards in a clash with anti-semitic Poles. After the uprising, which was the largest escape from a prison camp of any kind in Europe during World War II, Sobibor was bulldozed to the ground, and trees were planted on the site to remove any sign of its existence.

Cast



In credits order:

* Alan Arkin as Leon Feldhendler

* Joanna Pacua as Luka (Gertrude Poppert)

* Rutger Hauer as Lieutenant Aleksandr 'Sasha' Pechersky

* Hartmut Becker as SS-Hauptscharfhrer Gustav WagnerAlthough the character wears the rank insignia of a sturmscharfhrer, he is addressed as "hauptscharfhrer" throughout. Wagner held the lower rank of oberscharfhrer.

* Jack Shepherd as Itzhak Lichtman

* Emil Wolk as Samuel Freiberg

* Simon Gregor as Stanisaw 'Shlomo' Szmajzner

* Linal Haft as Kapo Porchek

* Jason Norman as Thomas 'Toivi' Blatt

* Robert Gwilym as Chaim Engel

* Eli Nathenson as Moses Szmajzner

* Kurt Raab as SS-Oberscharfhrer Karl FrenzelThe character wears the collar patches of a scharfhrer and the epaulettes of a hauptscharfhrer, but is addressed by the actual Frenzel's correct rank of oberscharfhrer throughout.

* Eric Caspar as SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Franz Reichleitner

* Hugo Bower as SS-Oberscharfhrer Rudolf Beckmann

* Klaus Grnberg as SS-Oberscharfhrer Erich Bauer

* Wolfgang Bathke as SS-Unterscharfhrer Hurst

* Henning Gissel as SS-Scharfhrer Fallaster

* Henry Stolow as SS-Untersturmfhrer Johann Niemann

* Ullrich Haupt as SS-Scharfhrer Josef Wolf

* Patti Love as Eda Fiszer Lichtman

* Judith Sharp as Bajle Sobol

* as Selma Wijnberg

* David Miller as Tailor Mundek

* Jack Chissick as Hershel Zuckerman

* Ned Vukovic as Morris

* Sara Sugarman as Naomi

* Peter Jonfield as Kapo Sturm

* Dijana Krani as Esther Terner

* Irfan Mensur as Kalimali

* Zoran Stojiljkovi as Boris

* Svetolik Nikaevi as Old Man

* Mia Janketi as Oberkapo Berliner

* Dejan avi as Kapo Spitz

* Zlatan Fazlagi as Weiss

* Predrag Milinkovi as Kapo Jacob

* Svetislav Gonci as Gardener

* Gojko Baleti as Guard (uncredited)

* Milan Erak as SS Corporal (uncredited)

* Rastislav Jovi as Shlomo's Father (uncredited)

* Erol Kadi as Gardener

* Miroljub Leo as Prisoner (uncredited)

* Bozidar Pavievi-Longa as SS-Sturmmann Ivan Klatt (uncredited)

* Howard K. Smith as Narrator (American version) (uncredited)

* Dragomir Stanojevi as Guard (uncredited)

* Predrag Todorovi as Guard (uncredited)

* Jelena igon as Shlomo's Mother (uncredited)

See also



* List of Holocaust films

* List of survivors of Sobibor

* 'Sobibor' (2018), a film about the same topic starring Konstantin Khabensky

* 'The Grey Zone' (2001), movie about the uprising in Auschwitz-Birkenau

Footnotes



References




Buy Escape from Sobibor now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1987



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1108540722.