Sobibor was the most secret Nazi death camp, made more secret by the fact that it was shut down after the uprising and made to look like a farm. Sobibor therefore was unable to become a human slaughterhouse on the scale of Birkenau (though the 250,000 deaths that occurred there are deplorable enough.) The film begins in the camp, and the first section of the film demonstrates some of the spontaneous, disorganized, and somewhat individualistic attempts at escape that end in failure and death. Also shown are acts of Nazi retribution, and routine brutality. EFS does not flinch at demonstrating the cruelty of the Capos (Jewish collaborators who acted as camp guards), most of them treacherous fiends. This is standard fare for Holocaust films, but the history portrayed in EFS turns in a different direction.
Camp prisoner Leon Feldhendler leads a growing group of Jews who do not wish to idly stand around and wait for death from the fascists. They maintain morale by living in the best conditions they can possibly scrape together. One boy, Shlomo, who has unwittingly delayed his execution by …show more content…
They were conditioned to submit to this tyranny by the collaboration of their own Jewish leaders and the collapse of their national governments (usually due to sabotage on the part of a pro-Nazi fifth column in the ranks of the army and government.) What is so astonishing about Sobibor is that, in the midst of a labour/death camp, the prisoners were able successfully to rise up, kill their oppressors, and escape in large numbers, thus dooming the camp. With communist leadership, the prisoners in Sobibor found that it is always possible to fight back against incredible odds and