Upfall

Schnabel knew that the only way to defend Camp 3 was to block the Himmelgang. Two Ukranian guards were already sheltering within the covered way, and Schnabel decided that at the very least he should reinforce them. He ordered Untershmfuehrer Blum, the last of the SS barrack escapees, to round up as many Ukranians as he could and bar the Himmelgang.

Instead of saluting and setting off like a good SS man, Blum looked at Schnabel and asked "Why me?"

"Because I ordered you, corporal“ said Schnabel nervously.

"Send one of your chums" answered Blum, nodding at Henshel and Magdeburg, the two gas experts. The gas men, who were older and plumper than most of the SS in the camp shook their heads as if a puppeteer where directing them. They looked as pale as puppets as well, thought Blum.

"We are skilled technicians" said Magdeburg. Blum snorted at that.

Schnabel unholstered his pistol, and pointed it at Blum. "Do your duty."

Blum unholstered his own pistol, as if he were going to fight, but then turned away from Schnabel, and looked out into the open ground between the gas building and the entrance to the Himmelgang. He turned back toward Schnabel and the gas men. "Cowards" is all he said.

Blum ran out into the open calling for Ukrainians to join him. None did. He looked back at Schnabel. Bolander and Ilan shot Blum a second later. Blum fell, pierced by two bullets, one of which took off the top of his head. Schnabel and his chums pressed their bodies against the building and shivered.

In the Sonderkommando barracks, twenty meters away from Schnabel, 42 Jewish prisoners and three Kapos huddled together in the cramped windowless building. Like Schnabel, when the shooting began, the Jews assumed that the Germans were just perpetrating another massacre on the platform. Several long minutes later it dawned on some of the Sonderkommados that the Germans themselves might be under attack.

Near the front of the building David Sandler, a 21 year-old who used to work in a iron mill, and a veteran of three weeks in the death camp, managed to pry apart a pair of wooden slats in the wall. Just as he forced an opening, to his astonishment and glee, he saw an SS man hit by rifle fire and collapse into the dust. A few meters beyond the German lay the body of a Ukranian. Off slightly to the left of the German corpse, Sandler could just make out the corpulent body of the SS gasman Magdeburg, cowering in the lee one of his buildings.

Sandler reported all this excitedly to the others in the gloomy barrack.

"Shut up you!" shouted Judah Hertzburg, the head Kapo of Camp 3. Hertzburg was a big strapping man from Lodz. Unlike the other two Camp 3 Kapos, Hertzburg was quick to use his whip, and uncurled it now.

Sandler rose. He was exhausted and almost starved, but sensed that the time to act had come. He would he killed in a few weeks anyway if he did nothing.

"The Germans are being killed out there Hertzburg. Do you want to join them?" snarled Sandler.

"I told you..." began the Hertzburg, when Adolf Burstin, another Kapo grabbed his whip hand. Hertzburg turned on Burstin, a small, squat man with dark eyes and thick forearms.

"Judah.Let's have a look" said the smaller man.

"You can look, but I‘m following my orders!" Hertzberg shouted, turning head around the darkened barrack, challenging the other men.

"Do as I say or you'll be shot like dogs."

Most of the Sonderkommandos were terrified of Hertzburg and the power he wielded. They knew his threat was not idle. Death in Sobibor was only a moment away. The Sonderkommados did the most disgusting and humiliating work in the camp, just to live another day. Most had already surrendered their last vestige of pride or honor. They were not a rebellious lot.

Sandler‘ looked to Burstin for support but found none. The smaller Kapo had been cowed. Sandler tried the rest of the men.

"We‘ve got to get out of here now!" he argued. "It's our best chanoe. We're all dead men anyway."