Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history,talk.politics.misc Subject: LEST WE FORGET: Sobibor & the Jewish revolt Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Sobibor,Pechersky,Sasha "It was at Sobibor that one of the most daring revolts flared, which again alerted the Nazis to the enormous danger the Jews represented once they had secured arms. Hoess of Auschwitz, in his prison autobiography, wrote that the escape and its cost to the Nazis left a trail of shame. `The Jews,' he noted, `were able by force to achieve a major breakout during which almost all the guard personnel were wiped out.' Himmler was so outraged by the `humiliation' that he ordered Sobibor to be destroyed and all evidence of its activity erased.<22> The revolt was organized by a Jewish prisoner, Alexander (Sasha) Pechersky, a Red Army officer captured by the Nazis in October 1941 and shunted from Minsk to several camps until September 1943, when he finally landed in Sobibor. His ingenuity was demonstrated when an official call came for carpenters. Pechersky, who was no more a carpenter than Szmuluwski at Auschwitz was a roofer, wolunteered and was plucked from the death line. It was not long before he rose to leadership in the camp underground and became the organizer of a major attempt at mass escape. He warned his comrades that there was little to be gained by waiting for the vaporous signals that might never come from the Polish Partisans in the forest. `We are not allowed to give up life,' he said. `We must live in order to take our revenge....No one can do our work for us.' Pechersky's realism became the credo of those who joined him in the revolt set for October 14. Each conspirator was given a station -- the tailor shop or the storehouse, the cabinet makers' quarters of the armory. Each methodically disposed of an unsuspecting Nazi guard or guards by stabbing, strangling, or smashing skulls. Thirty-eight Germans and Ukrainians were killed and many more wounded. The SS lost ten of its top officers. The prisoners donned the uniforms of the slain and Pechersky gave the signal for the dash to the fence. The sudden attack and the disguise of the uniforms only temporarily delayed the counter-attack. Fleeing prisoners were strafed by machine gun fire from the watch towers. Nevertheless, about six hundred, including many women, broke out across the various barriers to the forest. The Nazis mounted a search-and-destroy mission, in the course of which all but about sixty were caught and killed. When the story broke in the international press, Himmler ordered the camp inmates to be destroyed and, as noted, leveled Sobibor to the ground. Even the geese were killed. More than twenty years passed before a dozen of the Sobibor Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators were brought to trial, some in the Soviet Union in 1965, the others in Germany in 1966. Pechersky, who had devoted two decades of his post-Holocaust life to hunting them down, was a chief prosecution witness. Ten of the accused were found guilty and hanged. The others, for whom no witnesses could be located to testify, received life sentences, soon commuted or suspended. A German writer, Robert Neuman, computed that the average sentence was about ten minutes of prison time for each murdered victim." <22> Hoess, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz. p. 45 Extracted from--------------------------------------------------- "THE REDEMPTION OF THE UNWANTED", Abram L. Sachar (New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1983. pp. 42-43 ----------------------------------------------------------------- For an extensive bibliography dealing with the Holocaust, and containing over 1100 citations, contact kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca - it will be sent to you by return email. Additions to this bibliography are actively solicited.