In the extermination camp at Sobibor in the Lublin district of the »General Gouvernement,« about 250,000 people, all of Jewish origin, were murdered in the course of the »Operation Reinhard« between March 1942 and the closing of the camp in 1943. The camp measured 400 by 600 metres, was surrounded by a three metres high fence, disguised with branches, and divided into three areas separated from each other: administration, reception, and death zones.

After arrival the victims were taken into the reception zone where they had to undress, their valuables were taken from them, and their hair was cut off. The prisoners were then driven naked through the so-called »pipe«, a path three metres wide and 150 metres long leading from the reception zone into the gas chambers, where they were poisoned with carbon monoxides. In those gas chambers up to 500 people could be murdered daily, and from September 1942 onwards the number of possible victims was increased to 1200 per day due to the construction of further gas chambers. At first the dead were buried in mass graves. In order to eliminate the traces of the murders, the corpses were from the end of 1942 onwards burnt on grills made of railway rails.

The first phase of the extermination drive which claimed almost 100,000 victims from the ghettos in the Lublin district, lasted from the beginning of May till the end of July 1942. At that point the Austrian SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl was commander of the camp. It is difficult to calculate the exact number of victims from Austria in Sobibor extermination camp. The majority of the 4000 Viennese Jews deported to Izbica and of those deported in the spring of 1941 to the »General Gouvernement« died in the gas chambers at Sobibor and Belzec. Of the 1000 Jews deported on 27 April 1942 to Wlodawa, almost all were murdered in Sobibor. The 27th transport from Vienna (14 June 1942) was the only one which went directly to Sobibor. About 950 of the 1000 deportees were gassed immediately after arrival. More than 130 Austrians were among the roughly 4000 deportees from France to Sobibor.