Escape from Sobibor (1987) Reviews

• lasting impression

  paulvaughanthomas2004-11-09

  It was interesting to read another viewer's comments about this film. I have seen Schindler's List and it didn't touch me anywhere near as deeply as Escape from Sobibor. I first watched it in my teens and it was this film, more than anything I'd seen previously about the Holocaust, which had the greatest impact. The story, of course, is based on truth and is full of painful, heart-wrenching scenes. Nothing has ever presented the Holocaust to me in a more vivid, more graphic, more powerful way. It's amusing that some people can watch a film and it barely registers with them. Others can see the same film and have a completely different reaction to the experience. But that's people for you, the great variety that is the spice of life. For me, Escape from Sobibor was a very emotional experience and it had a major impact on me. But don't take anyone else's word for it. We all see things differently - go and see it yourself.

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• edge of seat!!!

  jeffandsarah-12004-12-15

  I first got this out on video many years back. Being interested in the holocaust from a young age,and having traveled through Poland in the early eighties I got this out of interest.Amazing to think it was done for television and not cinema. I,was on the edge of my seat all the way through,could hardly breath all through the film,did not take my eyes off the screen.The ending is both shattering and uplifting.Even more so knowing the outcome of some of the lives. And how simply fitting a denouement on the end credits the result of the police investigation, give that policeman a medal. On the whole the acting is exceptional, and by that I mean one forgets the actor and sees only the person as real. In fact it has that real life documentary feel to the story. Most satisfying to have seen it before Rutger got semi-famous.

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• Good television movie about the known breakout from horrible concentration camp

  ma-cortes2006-04-03

  This excellent TV movie deals with extermination center Sobibór and the subsequent escape led by great actors as Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer . We see horrors , murders , massacres against the prisoners . Thus , when the incoming transports , mostly Jews , SS soldiers made instant decisions , those who were fit to labors were sent into the camp , others including the children , were dispatched immediately to the gas chambers where approximately one-quarter million Jews were executed . The movie gets a breathtaking and exciting getaway with a sensitive score by George Delerue . The film was well realized by Jack Gold developing compellingly the historical recreation of the escape from the Nazi Death Camp Sobibor . The picture is based on real events , these are the followings : Sobibór , Chelmno , Belzec and Treblinka were four large death camps in the Lublin district of Poland transformed into extermination centers to implement the policy of genocide thought at the Wannsee Conference . Sobibór was an extermination camp of killing center of Jews including children and located near the Bug River on the border of the German occupied eastern territories . Some 35.000 Dutch Jews , originally assigned to Auschwitz were sent to Sobibór . All four camps were under the command of SS Odilo Globocnick . There was some minor industrial activity linked to the war effort but the main work was the execution of inmates . Victims were brought to the camp in unventilated transports , and all but a handful were gassed after arrival , the gas chambers could accommodate hundred prisoners at one time , most of their corpses were burned in open pits . On October 14, 1943 about 150 inmates broke out in a desperate riot . Of approximately 600 prisoners who attempted escaped in October 1943 , around 300 succeeded . However, nearly all were ultimately recaptured ; only about 60 people survived . Sobibor along with Treblinka and Belzec , was evacuated in the fall of 1943.

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• Painful, yet strong

  BatStarIndyFreak2002-09-14

  I watched this twice and both times it had a stronger emotional grip on me than did Schindler's list (all due credit). While Schindler's list gave you a dose mainly about just how the Jews were treated physically, Sobibor better tackled the psychological tension the Jews experienced. *SPOILERS* I felt my inwards just pull apart as I had to see Jews taken from an escape attempt put in front of a firing squad only to be forced to pick a substitute or else the whole crowd would be killed off. Same with when I saw the mother's baby discovered in the sewing shop. The Nazi officer took the baby, thinking the mother should be grateful he is killing the baby and not her. She gets shot and killed and you hear the baby screaming until the next shot is fired, EXCRUCIATING! but it happened and we have to grasp that to understand just how evil this world can be. A true masterpiece at that!

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• A fantastic movie that tells a true story of bravery and determination during World War II

  stargirlrk2003-05-10

  This movie is fantastic, no doubt about it. It takes place in the Sobibor death camp in Poland during World War II, where Jews are sent to be killed but where also there are over 600 Jews and Russian POWs working. It shows many of the hardships that Jews faced during this time and the brutality of the German SS officers. Alan Arkin is a Jew in working in the camp who is somewhat of a leader among the prisoners there, and with trains of people coming into the camp every day, a train carrying several Russian POWs comes (all Jewish, that is why they were sent there instead of a regular POW camp) and Rutger Hauer is the leader among them. Arkin and Hauer soon work together among other prisoners to devise a way to escape, originally planning an escape that involved only a dozen men but they eventually decided it had to be the entire camp population of 600, or else the 600 people left there would most likely be slaughtered. The film is full of suspense and based on a true story that happened at Sobibor, which was the biggest camp escape during the war. This movie is in some parts shocking when, like Schindler's List and other Holocaust films, it shows naked women and children being led into the gas chambers and a woman being executed simply for bringing her baby into the camp. This movie is a great film and I am surprised that it was only a made-for-TV movie, for it has the true qualities of a theater movie and it also has a great musical soundtrack. Feel free to email me if you have any questions or comments.

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