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The Silence of Sobibor - S01 / E03

Ep 3 The the doors opened

How must it feel when you watch television and see the world briefly pause for the death of Selma Wijnberg, and the newsreader says: "The last Dutch survivor of Sobibor has passed away." And you know Selma, because you were in Sobibor just like her. And you too barely survived the camp. It happened to Sophie Huisman, who lived for many more years and in the 1960s recorded her story on a tape recorder. It would be the first and immediately the last time she publicly spoke about her past in Sobibor. In this episode, you hear the story of the actual last Dutch survivor of Sobibor.

What few people know: there are also letters from Sobibor camp. Prisoners had to write optimistic messages under German supervision and send them to the Netherlands. Truus Goud from Haarlem did that, and her letters even arrived. Esther, her great-niece, still has them and reads from them.

And we follow the story of Dov Freiberg. He is fifteen when he has to step out of the train in Sobibor, but he survives as a forced laborer. He talks about his time in the camp, about the day of the uprising, about his escape across the minefield, about the insane moment when he looks back and realizes he is free. But what is freedom in the forests of eastern Poland? How does he survive there until the end of the war?

We'd love to hear what you think of this episode: info@audiodroom.nl. For more information, visit the website of Stichting Sobibor (https://www.sobibor.org/).

Music written and performed by Mark Lobenstein (https://marklobenstein.com/?js_artist=mark_lobenstein). Spoken word created and performed by Ben Oranje (https://benoranje.nl).

#Sobibor #WWII #history #Audiodroom #Holocaust #Jews #war #Westerbork #Amsterdam #ghetto #1943 #DovFreiberg #KoentjeGezang


Over The Silence of Sobibor

Listen to the story of Sobibor. The extermination camp where more than 34,000 Dutch Jews were killed during the Second World War, yet today, hardly anyone knows the place. While Auschwitz grew to become a symbol of the war after 1945, Sobibor—as a site of guilt—fell into oblivion. During the production of this podcast, the creators gained access to a Russian archive that had remained closed until now. In that archive, they discovered unknown photographs of Sobibor that give the history of the camp a new turn. This series broadens and deepens our knowledge of Sobibor. This series was produced by Audiodroom Podcast Productions in collaboration with the Sobibor Foundation the Netherlands (Stichting Sobibor).

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