History Daily - The Sobibor Uprising

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

October 14, 1943. Jewish prisoners attempt a mass breakout from an extermination camp in German-occupied Poland. Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

It's 4 p.m. on October 14, 1933, at the Zopabor extermination camp and German-occupied Poland. His head bowed, Moisha Hachman opens the door to the tailor's shed and respectfully steps aside to allow deputy camp commander Johann Neiman in first. Following Neiman inside, Moshe quickly closes the door, then hurries to his bench and picks up a leather coat. He holds it up for Neiman to inspect, trying to keep his hands from shaking. Every moment has to appear natural. He cannot afford to look nervous. Moisha explains that the coat has been taken from the possessions of one of the camp's newest arrivals. Neman runs his fingers across the leather and then nods. Moisha breathes a sigh of relief. He tells the officer that the coat is too fine not to try on. So Neiman shrugs off his SS jacket and slips into the leather coat. He rolls his shoulders and flexes his arms, testing the fit. Moisha's eyes moved to Neiman's pistol at his belt. He swallows and then suggests that Neiman remove the holster so he can check how the coat fits across the back. Neiman pauses and locks eyes with Moysha. For a terrible moment, Moisa thinks he's made a mistake and the silence seems to stretch on for seconds. But then

Neiman removes his gun and places it on the table. He turns and presents his back. Moisha glances toward a dark corner of the shed and gives a barely perceptible signal. Then, in a sudden flurrected, of motion, another prisoner bursts out of the shadows. Before Neiman can react, the prisoner raises his arm and drives a hatchet deep into Neiman's skull. Johann Neiman is not the only SS officer targeted for assassination. All across Zopibor, other SS men are lured to quiet corners and attacked. It's the beginning of an uprising. Around 180,000 Jews have already been murdered by the Nazi regime in the camp, and Zobobor's captives have come to accept a horrible dilemma. They must kill or be killed. And the fight for their

lives begins on October 14, 1943. Hello, History Daily listeners. The live show I've been telling you about for a few weeks has a new date, October 23rd at the Plaza Theater in Garland, Texas. This is my Days That Made America tour, a thrilling evening of history, storytelling, and music with me and a band live on stage. So if you're in the North Texas area or anywhere close, be sure to come out and see me live. More shows will be announced soon, too. So for information on tickets and upcoming dates, go to historydailylive.com. That's historydailylive.com. Come see my Days at Made America Tour live on stage. Go to historydaily.com. From Noisor and Airship, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily. History is made every day. On this podcast, every day, we tell the true stories of the people, and events that shaped our world.

Today is October 14, 1933, the Zobibor Uprising. It's early November, 1942, at the Zobor Extermination Camp in German-occupied Poland, 11 months before prisoners there begin a fight for freedom. 32-year-old Leon Felhender stumbles out of a rail car and onto a chaotic platform. For hours, he and his family have been crammed into a livestock transport alongside dozens of other Jews. Now, though, fresh air washes over Leon's face, and for a moment it feels wonderful. But Leon is careful not to celebrate the end of the journey too quickly. Bitter experience has taught him that in Nazi-occupied Europe, the end of one nightmare is usually

followed by the beginning of another. Ever since the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Leon and his family have been trapped in an increasingly desperate struggle for survival. Just this past October, the Nazis expelled the remaining Jewish population. of their hometown and transported them to an overcrowded ghetto. Leon and his family managed to avoid the round-ups and deportations for several weeks, but then their hiding place was discovered, and they were forced onto a train bound for Zobabar. Now, as guards bellow orders at the new arrivals,

Leon peers beyond the crowded platform. He can see barbed wire fences, guard towers, and wooden barracks. But he has little time to get his bearings before an SS officer calls for skilled laborers to step forward. Leon doesn't have a useful trade, but one of his cousins intervenes telling the Germans that Leon is an experienced carpenter. The lie works, and a guard pulls Leon away from his family and shoves him toward a small group of prisoners selected for labor. Leon stares desperately back at his wife and children, but none of them dares to leave their line. A few minutes later, the new arrivals are marched into camp at gunpoint. Most are taken toward a fenced-off area concealed behind tall trees.

Leon and the other selected workers are led in the opposite direction, toward workshops and prisoners' barracks, which will become Leon's new home, a cramped dormitory that he shares with dozens of other captives. Here he will live and work, and he's first assigned to the sorting shed, where he must sift through the prisoner's luggage, separating valuable items from ordinary clothing and other possessions.

But on his second day in the camp, Leon makes a horrific discovery. While sorting through jewelry, he recognizes his brother's, brother-in-law's wedding ring. Leon knows the ring can't have been packed in his brother-in-law's suitcase. He never took it off, and Leon for a moment can't understand how it ended up with the rest of the luggage. But he soon pieces together the truth. Zobor isn't a prison. It's an extermination camp. The buildings hidden behind the trees contain gas chambers and mass graves. Most new arrivals are killed

only shortly after they arrive, so Leon's wife and young children, his brother-in-law, and the rest of his family are all dead. Leon has little time to grieve. The prisoners kept alive to work inside Zobor understand that they can be killed at any moment. Guards often murder captives who become sick, injured, or unable to work, and new transports always bring fresh replacements. So Leon instead begins plotting to escape with ten or so fellow prisoners. And over the months that follow, they consider various possibilities,

including poisoning guards, starting a fire. or digging a tunnel. But every plan carries enormous risks. The camp is closely guarded, and by the summer of 1943, a broad minefield surrounds its perimeter. Escape seems impossible. Then in September of that year, a transport arrives carrying Jewish prisoners of war from the Soviet Army. Among the small number selected for labor is Lieutenant Alexander Picherski. He brings with him military experience and a new sense of urgency to Leon's underground group. So during hushed discussions late at night, Pacherski declares that the prisoners have to make use of the only advantage they have over their captors, strength and numbers. Most of Zobor's

guards are former Soviet soldiers who have been recruited from brutal German POW camps, but they are overseen by a relatively small number of SS personnel. So Pacherski proposes a daring plan. He and the others will assassinate the SS men who run the camp, then raid the armory, and lead the prisoners to freedom before the remaining guards on duty can respond. To prevent their plan from leaking, only the prisoners responsible for killing the SS officers are told what's coming. Everyone else is kept in the dark. Then the conspirators gather axes, hammers, and other tools. They fashion crude knives from sheet metal, and by October 14, 1943, they're ready.

They know that the odds are stacked against them. But there will be no turning back. They can't just wait for the Nazis to kill them. so instead they'll escape Zobobor or die trying. It's late afternoon on October 14, 1943, at the Zoboer extermination camp, a few moments after Deputy Camp Commander Johann Neiman was killed in the tailor's shed. Peering through the cracked window of a storage building in another part of the camp,

Heim Engel watches SS officer Rudolf Beckman make his way along a dusty path between buildings. Heim exchanges a look with the man beside him and tightens his grip on the knife in his hand. Beckman has no idea that he's walking toward his death. As soon as he walks through the door, Heim's accomplice will distract him, and then Heim will sink the knife into his back. Given Beckman's reputation for cruelty and indiscriminate violence,

it's a job that Heim is looking forward to. But as he looks through the window again, Heim's blood runs cold. Beckman has stopped. The SS officer pulls out his pocket watch and checks the time, and then without warning, he turns around. Heim watches in disbelief as Beckman begins walking back toward the administration building. All across the camp, SS officers are being lured into deadly ambushes, but the plan will fall apart if even a single target raises the alarm,

and now Beckman is getting away. Knowing that the lives of hundreds of their fellow prisoners depend on them, Heim and his accomplice slip out of the storage shed and follow Beckman. Thankfully, the administration building is almost deserted. They find Beckman in his house. his office, and before he even has the chance to get up from behind his desk, Hym stabs him over and over. With Beckman dead, Hym pushes his body underneath the desk.

It's a crude hiding spot. Anyone entering the room will see him almost right away, but it might be enough to prevent passers-by from noticing that anything is wrong. But not every assassination attempt is as successful. The plan begins to unravel when SS officer Carl Frenzel fails to appear for an appointment at the Carpenter's Workshop. Worried that Frenzel will figure out the plot, Red Army Lieutenant Alexander Picherski

sounds the signal for evening roll call 10 minutes early. And as captives gather on the parade ground, Petrowski tries to act as though it's just another day. The rest of the prisoners are still supposed to be unaware of the escape plan, but rumors have been swirling that an uprising has begun. And to Petrowski's horror, one of the captives decides to take matters into his own hands. He suddenly attacks a guard on the,

the parade ground, out in the open. With this, the element of surprise is over and there's no turning back. Chaos erupts. The prisoners haven't yet had time to arm themselves, but it's too late now. Petersky urges the captives to seize the opportunity and run. Some head for the main gate, hoping to force their way through. Others decide to scale the barbed wire fence and take their chances in the minefield beyond. But the guards in the watchtowers open fire, and soon the handful of SS officers who escaped assassination respond to. Hearing the commotion, Carl Frenzel rushes out of the administration block and fires on the fleeing prisoners with a machine gun. When the shooting finally subsides, Frenzel realizes that he's the most senior officer still alive

and is therefore in command. He tries to call for reinforcements, only to find that the camp's telephone lines have been cut. But he knows there's another phone on the train platform that uses a different line, so he rushes to check if it's still functioning. It is, and an SS unit is immediately dispatched from a nearby town. After these soldiers arrive, they find the bodies of dozens of Jewish prisoners all shot while escaping. But around 150 inmates are still in the camp. Many of them chose not to flee with the others because they were too sick, exhausted or scared to run. That doesn't spare them. The SS men gunned them down as retribution for the uproval. and then they go looking for the prisoners who did make it out.

300 escapees are hunted through the forest by soldiers with dogs. Most are captured and immediately executed. But around 50 survive and go into hiding or join up with partisans. When news of this uprising reaches the highest levels of the SS, the response is swift. With dozens of prisoners missing, Zobobor isn't secure anymore. So Jewish inmates from other camps are brought in to dismantle the buildings, destroy the gas chambers and burn the bodies of the dead. They plow over the camp, plant trees, and establish a farm on the site.

The Nazis hoped to erase all trace of what happened there. But despite the attempted cover-up, the crimes that occurred at Zobor will not be forgotten, and the time will come when some of those responsible will have to account for what they did. It's March 22nd, 1962, at a theater in Frankfurt, West Germany, 19 years after the Zoboor uprising. The now 50-year-old Carl Frenzel steps out of the stage door into a narrow side alley. He perches on a wooden crate and reaches into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

The former SS officer now works as a theater technician. He spent a long day setting up the lighting for tonight's performance, and he's looking forward to a few quiet minutes alone. But Frenzl has barely lit his cigarette when the theater manager pushes through the stage door. Two police officers follow close behind, and Frenzl slowly gets to his feet. He flicks the cigarette away and offers the police his hands and gesture of surrender. He already knows why they're here. His past has finally caught up with him.

In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, Frenzel was captured by American soldiers and held in a prisoner of war camp. But when questioned about his wartime service, he revealed little. He was especially careful not to mention anything about the Zobor extermination camp, and with no evidence linking him to any war crimes, the Americans let him go, and Frenzel returned to civilian life. But Zobar had not been forgotten. Recently, archivists examining old Nazi documents

discovered the names of several SS officers who worked at the camp, and Frenzel was among them, so now it's time for him to face justice. Three and a half years after his arrest, Frenzl finally goes on trial. He's charged with personally killing 42 prisoners at Zobabar and with being complicit in the murders of the thousands of others who died in the camp's gas chambers.

In the courtroom, survivors of the uprising described the brutality of life inside Zobor and identify Frenzel as one of its most feared officers. Frenzl's defense is weak. He claims that he did not know what was happening at Zobor was illegal. He also insists that he was only following orders and that he feared for his own life if he refused to carry them out. But Frenzl's arguments do not convince the court.

He's found guilty on enough charges to be sentenced to life imprisonment, but even then the story's not over. Frenzel's conviction will be overturned on appeal in 1982. He'll be reconvicted three years later, but his age and poor health will mean that he never returns to a prison cell. Instead, he will die a free man at the age of 85. It's a peaceful death that was denied to the Jewish inmates of Zobor, who lived in such dire conditions that they had little choice but to rise up against their Nazi captors

on October 14, 1943. Next on History Daily, October 15, 1674. 71 innocent people are sentenced to death in Sweden's most infamous witch trial. From Noisor and Ayrship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham, audio editing by Mohamed Shazi, sound design by Molly Bond, music by Thrum. This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves, edited by William Simpson, managing producer Emily Burke, executive. producers are William Simpson for airship and Pascal Hughes for Noisor.