Muzeum Byłego Hitlerowskiego Obozu Zagłady w Sobiborze | |
Sobibór Museum monument,
Woman and child martyrology, iron |
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Established | 1993 |
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Location | Sobibór, Poland |
Coordinates | 51°15′54″N 23°21′13″E / 51.2650°N 23.3537°E |
Director | Dr Krzysztof Skwirowski |
Website | www |
The Sobibór Museum or the Museum of the Former Sobibór Nazi Death Camp (Polish: Muzeum Byłego Hitlerowskiego Obozu Zagłady w Sobiborze), is a Polish state-owned museum devoted to remembering the atrocities committed at the former Sobibor extermination camp located on the outskirts of Sobibór near Lublin. The Nazi German death camp was set up in occupied Poland during World War II, as part of the Jewish extermination program known as the Operation Reinhard, which marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in Poland. The camp was run by the SS Sonderkommando Sobibor headed by Franz Stangl. The number of Jews from Poland and elsewhere who were gassed and cremated there between April 1942 and October 14, 1943 is estimated at 250,000; possibly more, including those who came from other Reich-occupied countries.
Since May 1, 2012 the Sobibór Museum has been a branch of the Majdanek State Museum, dedicated to the history and commemoration of the Holocaust camps and subcamps of KL Lublin. Originally, the museum served as an out-of-town division of the district museum in Włodawa nearby founded in 1981. It has been temporarily closed to the public from April 2011 due to lack of financial means. The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage reopened the Museum with additional funding after its administrative reorganisation.
Little was known about the camp before the Sobibor trial in Hagen, Germany, and the parallel Hiwi trials in Krasnodar in the former USSR, inspired by the investigative work of Simon Wiesenthal and the highly publicized snatching of Eichmann by Mossad. Most Holocaust survivors had left Poland long before these events, and the camp was largely forgotten.