aditc I honestly think that this could have been done much better. The acting was bad in general. Some of the actors chose to portray no emotion, while others played it so over the top that they were unbelievable. The only parts that was really interesting were the interpersonal sections, which were still only about as good as a soap opera. The violence was very TV appropriate, meaning that it was low budget stuff that mostly occurred off screen. The angles were clearly meant to not show the actual violence. The worst they show were the whippings, where all people had their shirts still on, that way the makeup team wouldn't have to make scars. Still, the idea is important. I just wish a lot more time, effort, and production value had gone into this.

arfdawg-1 This TV movie got lots of good reviews. I suppose it's good for TV. I found it utterly boring. It's been done so many times. Time to stop.During WWII, the death camp at Treblinka had an escape, causing the Commandant at a similar camp in Sobibor to vow that his camp would never experience the same thing. But those who were its captives, the Jewish laborers that had been spared from the ovens, knew that they were on borrowed time and that their only hope was to escape... the only question was how to do it. However, because the Germans would kill an equal number of others whenever a group attempted to escape, the captives knew that if ever an escape was tried, all 600 prisoners in the camp would have to be included... logistically precluding any ideas about tunnels or sneak breakouts. Indeed, to have such a mass escape could only mean that the Ukrainian guards and Germain officers would have to be killed, which many of the Jews felt simply reduced themselves to no better than their captors... thus making it a struggle of conscience. And therein lies the story, with the film being based on a factual account of what then .

sddavis63 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

celticmel789 I agree with what the first commenter added. I saw this movie when it first came out and till this day I remember the movie. It really disturbs me what humans have done things as such to other humans all because of different beliefs and customs. I also found the scene where the people were taking their bowls of soup and what was discovered as being in it. That is just horrible. I really can't figure how the officers could have followed the commands of their superiors to enforce the acts that were and go to sleep at night knowing the crimes they committed. I would have rather been executed myself rather than execute others. I couldn't have lived with the knowing of what I did in other words. I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone that needs to understand the depth and meaning of holocaust.