Escape from Sobibor (1987)

Touches You

Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent but underrated film

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Back in 1987, this excellent British-made film aired on American television. Fortunately, if you want to see it, you can now download it absolutely free from archive.org--and I strongly recommend you do.This film is the true story of a death camp called Sobibor and the inmates who eventually mounted the largest escape during WWII. Of the 600 prisoners, over 300 escaped and many of these folks managed to survive the war. This is awfully astounding and a nice contrast to all the depressing holocaust films, as in this case they fight back--killing many of their SS tormentors in the process of escaping.The film deserves very high marks in just about every way. The acting is superb, the script tense and rousing and the story sticks close to the facts--something not all historical films do. Well worth seeing and, not surprisingly, sad and tragic at times, so have some Kleenex handy and don't let young kids watch this alone.

This is a decent prison escape movie but to even suggest that it is a better holocaust movie than Schindlers List is laughable.Anyone who actually thinks this is an accurate reconstruction of what death camp life was like are seriously lacking in knowledge to the living conditions that these people actually endured. Everyone looks healthy and well fed and the film makes it look like if you stayed out of trouble life was OK. The barracks that the prisoners stay in actually look quite nice and enjoyable in this film.Overall, its a good escape film similar to Alcatraz but its nothing more than that

I consider myself reasonably well-versed in the history of Nazi Germany. I've read a lot about it, studied a lot about it, but somehow until finding this movie I had never heard of this death camp called Sobibor. I even rechecked several sources that I have at hand and found no reference to Sobibor, so the narration introducing the movie was clearly true - this was a little known death camp compared to say Treblinka or Auschwitz. That's unfortunate, because the story told in this movie makes it clear that Sobibor deserves to be better known.The movie stars Alan Arkin as Leon, a Jewish inmate of the camp, and Rutger Hauer as Sasha, a Russian Jewish soldier who is imprisoned in the camp. Leon and Sasha are among a few hundred Jews who the Nazis find useful, and so they stay alive as slave labour , but Leon and Sasha also become the leaders of a planned mass escape.The story is fascinating from a historical perspective and very moving from an emotional perspective, and should rank - in my opinion - pretty close to "Schindler's List" as one of the great Holocaust movies. You can't possibly watch this and not be deeply touched. Especially moving was actually a post-war note narrated at the end of the movie that tells us about the ironic (in a horrible sense) ultimate fate of Leon.The only thing I thought weakened this a tiny bit was that the prisoners seemed in surprisingly good shape under the circumstances. I realize that the Nazis thought these were useful Jews, and therefore perhaps treated them better than others, but I still thought the conditions were better than I would have imagined them to be.Still, a magnificent story that everyone should become familiar with. 9/10

I saw this one ironically a short while after I'd seen Schindler's List. I would have to agree with a lot of people on the comments and threads that this was better than Schindler's List.The best thing about this one is that the Jews fought back. Not only did they fight back but they freaked out the Nazis so much that they leveled the entire camp. I thought that was just the perfect icing on the cake. It's kind of comforting in a small way to know that the good guys can win when they fight back.*****Spoiler Time***** The part where they show the incinerators and the scene where the woman and baby are murdered are particularly difficult to watch. I can't help but feel like my guts have been torn apart when I see a child die in a movie. When it happened at the hands of the Nazi's it just seems to make it worse.There has been more than one friend, family friend and acquaintance that has seen this in school. I think that's a must see! Rutger Hauer was particularly good in this. You really get attached to his character and that shows a side of the war that's not as commonly mentioned. The Russian-Jews really perished a great deal at the hands of the Nazi's.Rent this one or buy it if you can find it!