Nazi-Run Camp Where Demjanjuk Allegedly Worked

BERLIN, Germany -- The Sobibor extermination camp, where retired autoworker John Demjanjuk is alleged to have served as a guard, was built by Nazi officers in occupied Poland in 1942 and razed 18 months later.
In the time it was operational, some 250,000 Jews, Gypsies and political prisoners were murdered in its gas chambers.The first trains carrying mostly Austrian, Czech and Polish Jews from the nearby Lublin Ghetto began arriving in May 1942. SS officers forced the men, women and children to leave their belongings aboard, undress and report to the what they were told were "washing rooms" — the gas chambers.After the doors closed, gas from a diesel engine was pumped into the room to suffocate those inside, killing up to 1,300 people at once. Camp inmates removed gold teeth, valuables and cut off hair from the bodies before burning the corpses.Later, guards also killed those inmates forced to work at the camp, located near Nazi-occupied Poland's eastern border with Ukraine.Franz Stangl ran the camp for the first six months, overseeing some 30 SS officers as well as Ukrainian guards. Before arriving at Sobibor, Stangl headed a euthanasia center in Austria where Nazis sent physically and mentally disabled people to be killed. He was later put in charge of the Treblinka death camp.In October 1943, Sobibor prisoners staged an uprising, and hundreds successfully escaped the camp. Days later, SS head Heinrich Himmler ordered guards to tear down the camp and plant the area over with pine trees.In 1965, a monument to the victims of Sobibor was built on the site of the former camp and the ashes of those killed were gathered together in a symbolic mound-mausoleum.A museum was built on the site in 1993.Sobibor, like Auschwitz, was one six extermination camps the Nazis built in occupied Poland, along with Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek and Treblinka.