This absorbing documentary details the successful revolt by Jewish prisoners against their German nazi captors in the concentration camp at Sobibor in the Ukraine, on October 14, 1943 at 4P.M. The precise hour is crucial because the plan depended on the well-known German zeal for punctuality.

Director Claude Lanzmann, best known for 1985's Shoah, the milestone work about the Holocaust as told by survivors, has made an extraordinary film that spells out in exacting detail how the plot was carried out. Through the reminiscence of one exceptional man, Yehuda Lerner, the events of that October day are relived. We are locked on every word. He is onscreen perhaps 70 percent of the time and he is the only person we see. His face as he answers probing and direct questions is intercut with shots of the overgrown railroad tracks and the decaying remains of Sobibor. We see a bit of present day Minsk, the city in which Lerner worked as part of nazi labor project before being sent to Sobibor.

He readily acknowledges how lucky he was. He describes how honored he felt to be chosen to participate in the plan. Now 75, some fifty-seven years after these events, he is still a robust and handsome man. He was barely sixteen when along with his parents, brother, and sister he was routed from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. When they arrived at the prison, he was separated from his family. He never saw them again.

He escaped from no less than six different camps in eight months time, each time being fortunate enough to be picked up and taken to another camp instead of being shot. Each time, he made his break from a work site outside the prison confines and survived by gleaning scraps to eat from the forest. After one escape he found his way to Minsk and ended up in a prisoner of war camp with Jewish Russian soldiers. They were transported to Sobibor in September 1943 and quickly and efficiently made a plan for revolt and escape. He repeats how strongly he believed he would rather be shot trying to be free than to accept imprisonment and much worse. He was reduced to feeling he was less than nothing. He had nothing to lose.

He could not believe the warnings that they were to be burned and thought it must be a language misunderstanding. He describes a method used for crowd control that employed a large gaggle of geese induced to make a very big noise to drown out the screams of those being murdered.

Hearing rumors that the camp would soon be closed and the prisoners executed, they accelerated the scheme. In just a few weeks time, a smart, detailed and resourceful plan was in action. The film unfolds in detail how Lerner and fellow prisoners counted on the arrogance and confidence of the German army. Knowing the German insistence on punctuality, the conspirators arranged for various appointments to be kept at precisely 4:00 PM on the appointed day. The guards' punctuality was their undoing and it was the triumph of Lerner and his cohorts. The

elation that he felt at the hour when the plan was carried out, we experience with him. The brutality of the moment that otherwise would indicate savagery, is felt instead as joy for Lerner and for us too.

One prisoner who escaped that day mentioned Sobibor briefly in Shoah. Lanzmann felt the story was so compelling that it deserved a film of its own. We know too little of the spirit of defiance during the holocaust. This story of victory needed to be told. He and Lerner have told it brilliantly.