Sobibor Uprising

Up until the hour that had been set for the outbreak of the revolt,
life in the camp continued as usual.  Except for the underground members,
the vast majority of the prisoners in the camp did not know what was about
to happen.  The first stage of the revolt was also carried out as planned:
between 16:00 and 16:30 hours, eleven SS men who had been called to the
workshops were killed, among them the commander of the camp,
Untersturmfu"hrer Niemann.  These were all the SS people in the camp that
day, save for one--Frantzel--who was called to the workshops but did not
come.  The operation in Camp 1 was run by Pechorsky, while Feldhendler
commanded the operation in Camp 2.  The telephone and electric lines were
cut, and the motor vehicles immobilized.  The blacksmiths' group removed
six rifles from the Ukrainian guard room, and these were handed over to the
underground.  (Pechowsky, op.cit., p.54; testimony of Blat, op.cit., p.81;
Rutkowski, p.35; Stanislaw Shmeizner, "Me-Opole le-Sobibor," Sobibor,
op.cit., p.65.) All of these activities were carried out without the
Ukrainians at their posts or in the guard towers being aware of what was
happening.

At 16:45 Positzka and Czepik began assembling all the prisoners into
roll-call formation.  At that point the rest of the prisoners sensed that
something was afoot, but they still did not know what. According to the
plan, the prisoners of war and the members of the underground, some of them
armed, took up position in the front rows. The operation plan was now
disrupted.  A truck that had arrived from outside the camp appeared in Camp
2 and came to a halt near the building of the camp headquarters.  The
driver, Oberscharfu"hrer Bauer, spotted a dead SS man lying there and then
saw a prisoner running from the building.  He immediately opened fire on
him. (Testimony of Biskowitz, Eichmann's Trial.) At the same time the
commander of the Ukrainian guard, a Volksdeutsche from the Volga area,
appeared at the roll-call square.  The insurgents attacked him and killed
him with ax blows.  The rest of the prisoners became panic-stricken.  The
Ukrainian guards, who now realized what was happening, opened fire.  At
that point Pechorsky decided not to wait until all the prisoners were
assembled, as planned, and instead began stage two of the revolt.  With
cries of Come on!  Hurrah!  the insurgents broke toward the gate and the
fences, and from that moment on there was no control over what happened.
Some of the insurgents broke open the main gate and escaped from there
southwest toward the woods.  Another group broke through the fences north
of the gate. The first of this group triggered the mines, were wounded and
killed, but the others who crossed the area where the mines had already
exploded, managed to flee, as they stepped over the bodies of their
comrades.


from: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/resistyad.html