Movie Description
Escape from Sobibor is a 1987 British made-for-TV film which aired on CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the 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).
On 14 October 1943, members of the camp's underground resistance succeeded in covertly killing 11 German SS-Totenkopfverbande officers and a number of Sonderdienst Ukrainian and Volksdeutsche guards. Of the 600 inmates in the camp, roughly 300 escaped, although all but 50 - 70 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.
The screenplay was based on Richard Rashke's 1983 book of the same name. Alan Arkin, Joanna Pacula, and Rutger Hauer were the primary stars of the film. Hauer received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Television). Thomas Blatt. Eshter Rabb who died on April 15, 2015, was a camp survivor who had assisted Rashke with his book and served as a technical consultant.