Realism - some nit picking comments

Considering one of the writers was Toivi, I suspect it pretty much follows the exact story.

As someone who has been friends with descendents of real life Holocaust survivors, here is my take.

It's true that those playing the roles of prisoners were familiar actors. However, about the attractiveness of the prisoners, there were many good looking ones in real life. Some people are so genetically blessed that they still look good even after they've been enslaved.

About how fast the prisoners were running despite the little they ate, remember that they did get some food and water, which was more than what other prisoners got in other death camps. Plus, when they ran, they gave it their all. Remember that there were some prisoners who were so sick that they stayed behind and prayed instead of trying to run.

The reason why they didn't walk out of the main gate as they had originally planned was because the guards discovered what happened prematurely and were going to kill all the prisoners on the spot. Leon told Sasha that they'll never make it out the main gate. That was when Sasha thought fast and found that the only way they will even have a remote chance of escaping was taking the other route.

This camp was really like that. I heard that possibly the only reason why prisoners escaped from there was because it was the only one where they were allowed to talk and socialize. In all the other camps, if anyone talked, then the Nazis would kill them right then and there.

Some other observations I made: A difference between the true story and the movie was that in the movie, Sasha said that he was married and had a young daughter. In real life, he did not meet his wife until after WW2. The real Sasha had dark, not blond hair.

It was like that, people panicked and rushed toward the main gate, instead of marching together in a group.

I read a book about Treblinka, which was pretty similar to Sobibor, and survivors from there said that they really weren't short of food. The rations may have been limited, but there was always food coming in with the people on the transports. Even in Auswitch the women who worked in 'Canada', the area where they sorted the prisoner's luggage, were well fed compared to the rest of the camp. People coming in on transports saw these women sometimes sunning themselves in decent clothes, looking pretty good, and were reassured until the true horror hit them.

Much of the acting in the escape sequence is quite bad, mostly because (I think) many extras were not actors at all. The way Germans shoot against firing prisoners then turn to another direction without having killed them is as much ridiculous. Also seeing Arkin standing up and emptying his gun against the camp, without being shoot at back is much hollywood style.
None of the above objections affects the quality of this movie. I liked it a lot.

'What has been affirmed without proof can also be denied without proof.' (Euclid)

stop nitpicking :)

Having read a ton of books (in particular the Guido Knopp series) and having watched Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah', I found it highly lacking in realism as they unloaded prisoners from the train. By all accounts, especially those of Jewish survivors giving testimony, at least a third of the people on the trains were dead on arrival. Most of the rest were 'half crazed' and 'half dead'. The trains were full of dead bodies, excrement and vomit. The average duration of a such a train journey was 2-3 days (with some, as in the case of Greek jews, up to 10 days).

But here we see them being unloaded as if they're coming off a passenger train rather than a cattle track in which a person had around 6 inches squared to stand in. I get that this is a TV movie, but seeing them depicted as being in quasi-normal condition really put me off.

Realism is of fundamental importance for this kind of fare imo.

When they start killing the SS guards it always surprises me that there isn't more of a mess which would be noticed by the next guard to enter.

When you hit someone on the neck with an axe there would normally be a lot of blood

Steve