Upfall

Several seconds later two rifle reports echoed across Sobibor.

"That should do it for the watchtower" commented Mofaz.

Yatom offered a grim smile. "How do you propose we take Camp 3?" said Yatom, addressing the question to his deputy.

"Let Ilan and Bolander work on them a bit, and then demand that they surrender" said Mofaz.

"And if they don't?"

"Send whats-his-name and his Jews down that corridor" said Mofaz, inclining his head towards De Jong who crouched with his men near the Himmelgang. "That passageway is a death trap."

Beyond the Himmelgang, in Camp 3, the sergeant-in-charge, Scharfuehrer Schnabel huddled near one of the gas chamber buildings with the three remaining SS men.

This was Sobibor's heart, the place where people were killed with factory efficiency. The gas chamber buildings themselves, like every other structure in Sobibor, appeared ordinary and benign to casual observation. The buildings and the chambers they housed were quite small—little more than large shacks really. The victims were packed in like sardines. Each of the gassing buildings was connected to an old Russian tank engine which pumped carbon monoxide into the sealed chambers until Schnabel and his associates were confident that everybody inside was dead. Over the months Schnabel had worked it down to a science. He was quite proud of his unit's production and effectiveness.

As with Sobibor in general, Schnabel operated with a relatively small team. Two SS sergeants operated the gas engines while Schnabel‘s deputy supervised a squad of 15 Ukrainians that rotated through—two more Ukrainians usually manned the machinegun in the watchtower directly above the sub-camp.

The dirty work in Camp 3 was carried out by the Jews of the Sonderkommando and their Kapos. The Sonderkommando consisted of 40 Jewish men, usually relatively young and strong, who's job it was to empty the gas chambers of their victims, and transport them to the mass graves, really just large open pits, that occupied most of the space in Camp 3. Since the graves were already mostly filled with several months of murderous work, Stagl had ordered the Sonderkommando, when not otherwise occupied, to begin digging several open air crematoria nearby. The crematoria when completed would have been, like everything else in Sobibor, cheap, simple and efficient—large pits intersected with discarded pieces of iron railroad track. Fires ignited at the bottom of the pit would burn the bodies piled upon the railroad tracks to ash, much like a giant grill.

Schnabel had been preparing for the cargo with his usual focus and drive when he heard shooting break out at the main camp. The sub-camp had neither a radio nor a telephone, so Schnabel had no way of knowing what was happening in the main camp, although he assumed that the train passengers had rioted. Schnabel dispatched a Ukrainian runner to Der Speiss but the man did not return.

Concerned, but hardly panicked, Schnabel locked up the Sonderkrmrnrado within their barracks and alerted the Ukrainians, who could be lazy. Since there were no defensive positions within Camp 3 other than the watchtower, mostly everyone just stood about.

From the watchtower above the sub-camp one of the guards had reported that a battle appeared to be raging at the rail platform, and prisoners were running about. Seconds later, as Schnabel watched, the guard and his mate were killed by sniper fire. That's when Schnabel fled behind one of the gas chamber buildings with the other Germans. Ten minutes after the tower guards died, Schnabel and his men were joined by three other Germans who had fled the SS barracks. These fellows, whom Schnabel knew and trusted, recounted the attack on the Forward Camp and the probable death or capture of Stangl.

Sobibor, it appeared, was under a general assault by a combined force of escaped prisoners, and some well armed foreign soldiers. Schnabel ordered two of the recent German arrivals, both mere corporals, up into watch-tower to man the machinegun and report on the situation within the main camp. Reluctantly, the two men complied, climbing the tower and heaving the bodies of the two dead Ukrainians out.

Shortly after manning the machinegun, but before they could describe the situation in the main camp, they were also shot dead.

Schnabel stared at his remaining German comrades, at a loss for words. A Ukrainian guard kneeling in the dirt a few feet from the Germans suddenly keeled over, a neat bullet hole drilled into his chest.

Another Ukrainian tried to run behind one of the gas chamber buildings but was hit several times before he reached safety. This unhinged the remaining Ukranian guards who now began to shout and crawl to cover wherever they could. Some made it, but many were also hit.