When Alexander Pechersky, known to family and friends as āSashkoā, an affectionate Georgian diminutive, stepped off the transport from Minsk in September 1943, he had already survived typhus, multiple escape attempts from prisoner-of-war camps, & 3 prior concentration camps. A Red Army lieutenant & a Jew, he had concealed his officer rank from the Nazis, which saved his life, as officers were separated and shot immediately. He arrived at Sobibor with the sharpened alertness of a man who had learned to read danger quickly.
The unusual designation āSonderlager Sobiborā (Special Camp Sobibor), rather than a standard concentration-camp label, immediately signalled to him that this place was different. Sobibor had operated since May 1942 as one of three secret extermination camps established under Heinrich Himmlerās personal oversight as part of Operation Reinhard, alongside Belzec and Treblinka.Ā
Built in a remote, marshy forest near the Bug River on the border with occupied Belarus and surrounded by dense woods, swamps & minefields, the site was chosen to make escape almost impossible. The camp was divided into 3 main areas separated by electric fences and deep ditches: a forward zone with SS administration & Ukrainian guard barracks; a central zone containing prisoner barracks & workshops and a sealed inner section with the gas chambers & cremation pyres, hidden from the rest of the camp.Ā
Historians estimate that between 167,000 & 250,000 people were murdered there, arriving from Poland, the Netherlands (more than 34,000 Dutch Jews), France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia & the Soviet Union.
Transports arrived almost daily. As each one pulled in, SS officers called out for specific trades such as tailors, cobblers & carpenters. Those who stepped forward sometimes secured a temporary place in the workforce. Most did not.Ā
Prisoners were told they had come for labour & needed disinfection before continuing. The process was deceptively orderly: music played, staff appeared calm & friendly. Victims were ordered to undress, their heads were shaved (the hair collected and sent to Germany) and they were led to gas chambers disguised as bathhouses. Gustav Wagner, the deputy commandant, was known to walk alongside the lines in a white coat, handing lollipops to children & urging them to stay healthy. In reality, they entered gas chambers where up to 2,000ā3,000 people were murderedĀ in about 3 hours.Ā
On peak days the camp operated for 14ā16 hours and murdered as many as 14,000. Without a dedicated crematorium, bodies were burned on open-air pyres built from railway tracks & fuelled with wood from the surrounding forest. The smoke and smell were visible and noticeable from long distances.Ā
The screaming inside the gas chambers lasted roughly 15 minutes. To mask it, the Nazis kept hundreds of geese nearby; their honking drowned out the sounds of people dying.
A Polish-Jewish underground already existed in the camp when Pechersky arrived, organised by Leon Feldhendler, the son of a rabbi. Feldhendler had survived nearly a year at Sobibor, working in the provisions barracks & witnessing failed escapes and relentless killing.Ā
Deep distrust existed between different Jewish groups (Polish Jews did not fully trust the German & Dutch Jews), but Pechersky, as an outsider with no factional ties, helped unite them.Ā
Feldhendler recognised that Pecherskyās military experience offered the resistance something new. He persuaded him to take command and shared all he knew. Pechersky insisted from the outset that everybody must escape or nobody would: those left behind would face certain Nazi reprisals.
Continuous communication was essential, yet any unusual gathering would attract immediate attention.
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Children's ID tags unearthed at Nazi death camp in Poland
Archaeologists have unearthed the identity tags of four children murdered by the Nazis at Sobibor death camp in eastern Poland.
Each metal tag is different and was likely given to the children by their parents prior to being separated from them. The parents may have hoped the ID tags would help the children be returned home, according to Yoram Haimi, an archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, who is part of a team excavating the site.
"Every small artifact that we have brings a story. It's the story of the community from where they came to Sobibor," Haimi, whose uncle was killed at the camp, told Live Science. Read more.
Tomorrow marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and as always, we take a moment to mark the lives tragically ended by the Nazis and their collaborators. It all seems so distant, but it is still within living memory. Six million died, including 1.5 million children. Pictured is the identity tag for Annie Klapper, a 12-year-old Dutch-Jewish girl who was killed along with her family and 1350 Jews at Sobibor death camp. It was discovered recently near the crematoria. Take a minute to mourn with us this special life, of which only this tag remains. #internationalholocaustremembranceday #theholocaust #dutchjews #sobibor #genocide #massmurder #remember https://www.instagram.com/p/CKiHxOGAsqH/?igshid=52b0aebb6mb9
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Chances are, if you know anything about The Great Escape, you know that it features a scene where someone ramps a motorbike over a prison camp fence. Itās one of those scenes thatās been so relentlessly pastisched and parodied that you'd probably recognise the references even if you couldnāt name the film ā an iconic image of Hollywood spectacle, as man and machine go flying over our heads to freedom.
That someone was going to vault a motorbike over a fence at some point was one of few things I knew about this movie going in.
Now, scenes like this do tend to grow in the re-telling, but I would not have guessed just how exaggerated the parodies would prove to be. To begin with, we arenāt jumping the prison fence itself ā the prison break itself is about a third of the runtime behind us, so instead weāre making do with some random border fence in Nazi territory, as Steve McQueen flees the pursuing Nazis. For another thing, the fence he jumps is actually only the first and much lower of two fences.
And having jumped that fence, he almost immediately runs head-first into the second one.
From this dignified position, heās recaptured and taken back to prison, there to spend the rest of the war.
Itās still a reasonably cool stunt and all, but blink, and you could miss this āiconicā scene altogether ā the camerawork doesnāt remotely frame it as the epic moment it would become in reproduction (and given what follows, you can see why not). Itās more like watching a fleeing animal tangle itself in a hedge than a great leap for freedom. Itās odd to find myself thinking, āwell, okay, but it was cooler when the team behind Wallace and Gromit did it with the chickens.ā
I open with this particular impression not simply for effect, but because this sort of anti-climax was typical of the my overall experience with the movie. If you asked me to summarise the film in a few words, they might be, escape was not actually as great as advertised. Remember this, weāll come back to it.
Summarising the film in more detail requires some background context. The Great Escape is, for the completely uninitiated, a film based on a real, historical breakout of (primarily) British troops interred in a Nazi prison camp during World War II. Opening cards assure us that though liberties have been taken with some of the personalities involved, all the details of the actual escape are as truly took place.
My own interest in the film was twofold ā for one, as covered above, this is one of those films which has been so relentlessly referenced in popular culture since its release that I was curious about the original, and the fact that my own family history intersects with the British war effort (both my paternal grandparents were in the RAF) adds some minor personal interest in the topic. For another, and probably the more obvious point, this film features David McCallum, and since Iād already given one of Vaughnās pre-UNCLE films a try, this seemed the logical follow-up.
Actually, there are additional parallels between The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, as their large ensemble casts both featured Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn among the more prominent credits ā or, to put it another way, both featured That One Skinny Blonde Dude From M7, One Of Those Two Brown Haired Dudes from M7, and That Other Skinny Blonde Dude From M7 Who I Kept Confusing With Steve McQueen. Believe me, when youāve already spent one movie trying to figure out which of the two skinny blonde dudes in cowboy hats is Steve McQueen, having both of them show up in a second movie with an even bigger cast does not help (that both had American accents in a cast of English accents did not help either), and round 2 of Is That Steve McQueen? quickly ensued. Having now spent two different movies on this same problem, I think I can definitively state that I Do Not Get the hype about Steve McQueen. He is generic as fuck.
I would like to say that the rest of the cast was more distinctive, but Iād be lying. The trouble with large ensembles of white dudes with generic faces and hair is that, well, just look at these people. Richard Attenborough was consistently recognisable, as was the one bald dude and the one with the mustache, but few others really stayed with me, and keeping track of who was who and who did what was a genuine chore. Itās not even that they were all generically hot, as theyād probably be were the movie made today ā in a cast stuffed to the gills with healthy young men of enlistment age, David McCallum remains the only notable eye-candy on screen, and he did not have enough scenes.
In fairness, though, this isnāt a movie about characters nearly so much as it exists to chronicle an event, and the scenes where the escape plan gradually comes together were the filmās best. Next to zero time is wasted on getting to know one another or formulating their plans: the Nazis have opted to deal with their most troublesome prisoners by chucking every member of a seasoned team of British escape artists in the one place, and thus most everyone knows one another from the get-go. āBig Xā outlines the plan to dig their way out of the camp in one of the earliest scenes, gives everyone their job, and they all go to it. Men are assigned to dig, to dispose of the dirt, to scrounge materials, to keep watch, to forge documents and even to make clothes to help escapees to blend into the populace after making it out. There are setbacks and missteps, but the majority of the action is rather like watching an episode of Hustle or Mission Impossible ā sit back and enjoy, knowing the heist is in good hands.
At the same time ā and for all the perfectly valid commentary about Steve McQueen being shoehorned into the action for the benefit of the American market ā he and his countrymen did add a valuable (though never over-dramatised) element of culture clash. Heās the outsider, who initially has his own plans, who only gets drawn into the plan as an early attempt is foiled and the tension mounts. Perfectly valid narrative device, no matter how little he may have done for me as a character.
No, the major problem with the film arrives only later, as the escape takes place. Now, up until this point, my major problem with the film had been that the whole notion of the escape plan seemed a bit of a jolly jape to the men enacting it. As far as Nazi camps go, it goes without saying that these folks have it insultingly good. Most have multiple previous escape attempts to their names, after which theyād all been rounded up and politely brought back to prison. Early in the film, an exasperated Nazi Colonel implores the ranking British officer to have his men give it up, so that āwe may all sit out the war as comfortably as possible,ā to which he receives the brazen reply, āit is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape.ā Now, itās fair to say that no-one wants to be a prisoner of the Nazis as the war wraps up, for all sorts of good reasons. But the impetus behind the escape is certainly not survival, but explicitly, āto start another front, to foul up the Germans behind the lines.ā To achieve this, they plan not simply to escape, but to escape in unprecedented numbers ā to free a full 200 men and set them loose in occupied territory, to tie up as many Nazi resources as possible. This goal is as explicit as can be: itās in the trailer, itās the carrot they use to get Steve McQueen on-board, etc. Itās the rallying cry behind the movie.
On the night of the escape, however, one thing began to bug me, as with every man in the camp outfitted with new clothes and papers, waiting for his turn to make the dash, it became apparent that the diggers were only now closing the final distance to open the exit into the fresh air. Iām no expert here, but it struck me as extraordinarily bad planning not to at least have had someone stick their head out the night before to confirm, eg. that they hadnāt brought themselves up under a boulder or a bee hive, or the border guardās favourite tree for a discrete piss in between their rounds, etc. The counter-argument, presumably, was that every single day they waited was a day where the tunnel might be found and the whole thing foiled. But when one has just spent several minutes thinking, āgosh, theyāre going to feel like right twits if it turns out theyāve misjudged the distance and come up short or something,ā itās a bit hard to feel as sympathetic as one should when thatās exactly what they did.
This is all, for the record, historically accurate ā only a mere 75 of the 200 men would make it out through the botched tunnel before they were seen and the alarm raised. With months of careful planning, outfitting 200 men to blend in in Nazi territory ā even going so far as to have one man stage a solo escape attempt and then deliberately get recaptured after heād had a chance to get the lay of the land ā the one thing the conspirators didnāt do was stop to say, ādo you think maybe weāve misjudged the distance to the trees, given that weāre basically guessing? Shouldnāt we have someone stick his head out of the tunnel just to double check before we commit?ā Perhaps this all made far more sense from the inside, but the film didnāt especially sell it, and thatās disappointing.
The greater disappointment, however, was that after this great failure, the film shrugs, and goes on to follow the various escapees as they mostly sort of drift around occupied territory for a full additional third of the filmās runtime before most are recaptured, and at last summarily executed. This could, with a few tweaks, have easily been a clever subversion ā the kind of tragic disappointment on which the reality of war is built ā but as filmed, the framing carries surprisingly little narrative weight. The magnitude of their failure to free the full 200 prisoners or create the new front theyād planned is never really dwelt upon. There are no bold new plans to make the best of their options with their limited numbers, no revised strategy to prioritise survival ā what any of them are actually trying to do beyond ānot get capturedā is quite ambiguous. And thus the conclusion is not a tragedy, but a prolonged anticlimax. When the Nazis finally have almost everyone but Steve McQueen shot, all I could really think was, āyeah, canāt especially blame them at this point.ā I mean, they shouldāve shot Steve McQueen too, but thatās beside the point.
Ultimately, The Great Escape is neither awesomely epic nor soberingly tragic. Itās merely a moderately authentic recreation of a one of the most meticulously planned fuck-ups in POW history, and it doesnāt even seem to know how it feels about it.
In conclusion, my advice to you all is not to bother with The Great Escape (Attempt). If you want a truly magnificent WWII escape story, then Iād suggest instead you look up the 1943 uprising and escape from SobibĆ³r ā the 2014 documentary Escape From a Nazi Death Camp gives an excellent overview, and you can probably find a copy online fairly easily (it may even be available on Netflix in some regions). SobibĆ³r, for the record, was a genuine concentration camp ā the prisoners were primarily Polish Jews, kept alive only to do the horrific work of stripping and incinerating the bodies of their fellows ā and yet so many of the facts of the escape are just about pure Hollywood.
Thereās a portent of doom, when a note in the pocket of a gas chamber victim brings a warning that the Nazis are beginning to shut down their own camps, and that SobibĆ³r may be next in line. Thereās culture clash, as the original population ally themselves with a small group of newly transferred Russian soldiers, only lately added to their numbers. Thereās a daring, meticulously-organised escape plan led by a tall, young, hot Russian officer (Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky), with the gall to give inspirational speeches at key moments, and even live to carve the name of the camp on the wall of a building in Berlin. Thereās even some romance ā two of the prisoners met in the camp, fell in love, and lived to escape together.
But most important of all, thereās the success ā around 200 of the prisoners made it out, and almost 50 of the escapees would be still free to see peace come again, putting the very modest 2 surviving escapees of āThe Great Escapeā to shame. Seriously, look it up ā itās got the material The Great Escape was based on beat on every possible front, and it doesnāt shy away from the true horror evoked by the words āNaziā and ācampā in combination.
Alternately, look up the escape from Treblinka, another Nazi extermination camp in Poland, where prisoners broke into the armoury, set fuel stores on fire and burst out amid a hail of gunfire. Nearly 70 of those who escaped lived beyond the end of the war too.
What do stories like these lack? English-speakers, presumably. No British prisoners, no Steve McQueen, no Hollywood deal. End of story. SobibĆ³r got one British made-for-TV movie, but that seems to be about the limit of the interest in dramatising this sort of material in the Anglophone world.
