Sometimes the only way to stop mass killers is to fight. That was the strategy attempted by the Jewish prisoners on October 14, 1943, at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland.

Despite pleas from Jewish organizations, the Allies never bombed the train tracks leading to the extermination camps. In retrospect, some historians argue that the missions were too dangerous, that the bombers were needed elsewhere, or that the tracks could have been quickly repaired. Whatever the merits of the Allied refusal, every extermination camp in Nazi Europe continued operating until Allied ground forces advanced to the general area. There was never any offensive aimed specifically at an extermination camp. The one extermination camp that was put out of business early was Sobibor.

As detailed in the book and movie “Escape from Sobibor,” and in memoirs of the survivors, the Sobibor camp was horribly efficient, gassing thousands of people per day. The camp was run by Germans, with the assistance of several dozen Ukrainian guards. Much of the day-to-day operations, such as carpentry, sewing uniforms, and processing the dead bodies, were performed by a crew of specially-selected Jews, who worked in exchange for temporarily being allowed to live.

When some Soviet army Jewish prisoners of war were brought into the camp, the P.O.W.s began organizing an escape. Despite constant danger that Jewish spies might reveal the plans to the Nazis (in exchange for favored treatment), the plan went forward. With crude improvised weapons, the inmates quickly killed a few Nazi officers, and obtained the keys to the camp armory. This is how weapons acquisition often works in revolts; when unarmed people acquire their first arms, they attempt to use them to acquire better arms.

Read the article “Unarmed Jews Defeat Mass Murder: Revolts at The Extermination Camps” on washingtonpost.com.