Sobibor, an extermination camp from the war, in the far east of Eastern Poland, at the tripoint with Belarus and Ukraine. On quiet days, you can hear the war in the distance.

If ten people were murdered on your local football pitch, you would likely never forget it. There would be a monument, commemorations. A documentary. And what if a hundred people were murdered there? Or a thousand? Or ten thousand? In less than a year and a half, 170,000 people were murdered in Sobibor, a place no larger than a few sports fields. Yet, for a long time after the war, Sobibor became a neglected and forgotten place. More than 34,000 of those victims came from the Netherlands. And every story shows once again how horrific and insane Sobibor was.

In this first episode, we follow Richard Oostwal. He lived with his parents in the Jewish ghetto of Amsterdam but survived the war. One day, his little friend Robbie had disappeared. "To a camp," Richard’s parents said. But what kind of camp? Richard went searching and discovered the gruesome reality. In this episode, we, podcast makers Patty-Lou Middel-Leenheer and Richard Grootbod, accompany Richard to the place where his companion was murdered.

Every episode of this series ends with a ‘spoken word’ by Ben Oranje. Someone once said, "you shouldn't write poems about Sobibor, because the language of poetry is too elegant for what happened there." And perhaps that person was right, but we are going to try anyway. We would love to hear your thoughts on this episode: info@audiodroom.nl

For more information, visit the website of the Sobibor Foundation (Stichting Sobibor).

Music written and performed by Mark Lobenstein.

Spoken word created and performed by Ben Oranje.

#Sobibor #WWII #history #Audiodroom #Holocaust #Jews #war #Westerbork