Sobibor: The Revolt (Part 3 of 4)

To Part 1: An Overview and Map
To Part 2: Life and Death
To Part 4: Memorial

Jews have often been accused of going to their deaths during the Holocaust like "sheep to the slaughter." But this just isn't true. Many resisted. But the individual attacks and the individual escapes lacked the zest of defiance and craving for life that others, looking back in time, expect and want to see. Many now ask, why didn't the Jews just pick up guns and shoot? How could they let their families starve and die without fighting back?

But resisting and revolting were simply not this simple. If one person were to pick up a gun and shoot, the SS would not just kill the shooter, but also randomly choose and kill twenty, thirty, even a hundred others in retaliation. Even if escaping from a camp were possible, where were the escapees to go? The roads were traveled by Nazis and the forests were filled with armed, anti-Semitic Poles. And during the winter, during the snow, where were they to live? And if they had been transported from the West to the East, they spoke Dutch or French - not Polish. How were they to survive in the countryside without knowing the language?

Though the difficulties seemed insurmountable and success improbable, the Jews of the Sobibor death camp attempted a revolt. They made a plan and attacked their captors, but axes and knives were little match for the SS's machine guns. How and why did they come to the decision to revolt?

Rumors

During the summer and fall of 1943, the transports into Sobibor came less and less frequently. The Sobibor prisoners had always realized that they had been allowed to live only in order for them to work, to keep the death process running. But with the slowing of the transports, many began to wonder whether the Nazis had actually succeeded at their goal to wipe out Jewry from Europe, to make it "Judenrein." Rumors began to circulate - the camp was to be liquidated.

Leon Feldhendler decided it was time to plan an escape. Though only in his thirties, Feldhendler was respected by his fellow inmates. Before coming to Sobibor, Feldhendler had been the head of the Judenrat in the Zolkiewka Ghetto. Having been at Sobibor for nearly a year, Feldhendler had witnessed several individual escapes. Unfortunately, all were followed by severe retaliation against the remaining prisoners. It was for this reason, that Feldhendler believed that an escape plan should include the escape of the entire camp population.

In many ways, a mass escape was more easily said then done. How could you get six hundred prisoners out of a well-guarded, land mine-surrounded camp without having the SS discover your plan before it was enacted or without having the SS mow you down with their machine guns?

A plan this complex was going to need someone with military and leadership experience. Someone who could not only plan such a feat, but also inspire the prisoners to carry it out. But, at the time, there was no one in Sobibor who fit both these descriptions.

Sasha

On September 23, 1943, a transport from Minsk rolled into Sobibor. Unlike most incoming transports, 80 men were selected for work. The SS were planning on building storage facilities in the now empty Lager IV, thus chose strong men from the transport rather than skilled workers. Among those chosen on that day was First Lieutenant Alexander "Sasha" Pechersky as well as a few of his men.

Sasha was a Soviet prisoner of war. He had been sent to the front in October 1941 but had been captured near Viazma. After having been transferred to several camps, the Nazis, during a strip search, had discovered that Sasha was circumcised. Because he was Jewish, the Nazis sent him to Sobibor.

Sasha made a big impression on the other prisoners of Sobibor. Three days after arriving at Sobibor, Sasha was out chopping wood with other prisoners. The prisoners, exhausted and hungry, were raising the heavy axes and then letting them fall on the tree stumps. SS Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel was guarding the group and regularly punishing already exhausted prisoners with twenty-five lashes each. When Frenzel noticed that Sasha had stopped working during one of these whipping frenzies, he said to Sasha, "Russian soldier, you don't like the way I punish this fool? I give you exactly five minutes to split this stump. If you make it, you get a pack of cigarettes. If you miss by as much as one second, you get twenty-five lashes."¹

It seemed an impossible task. But Sasha attacked the stump "[w]ith all my strength and genuine hatred."² Sasha finished in four and a half minutes. Since Sasha had competed the task in the allotted time, Frenzel made good on his promise of a pack of cigarettes - a highly prized commodity in the camp. Sasha refused the pack, saying "Thanks, I don't smoke."³ Sasha then went back to work. Frenzel was furious.

Frenzel left for a few minutes and then returned with bread and margarine - a very tempting morsel for all who are really hungry. Frenzel handed the food to Sasha. But, again, Sasha refused Frenzel's offer, saying, "Thank you, the rations we are getting satisfy me fully."⁴ Obviously a lie, Frenzel was even more furious. But instead of whipping Sasha, Frenzel turned and abruptly left.

This was a first in Sobibor - someone had had the courage to defy the SS and succeeded. News of this incident spread quickly throughout the camp.

Sasha and Feldhendler Meet

Two days after the wood cutting incident, Leon Feldhendler asked that Sasha and his friend Shlomo Leitman come that evening to the women's barracks to talk. Though both Sasha and Leitman went that night, Feldhendler never arrived. In the women's barracks, Sasha and Leitman were swamped with questions - about life outside the camp...about why the partisans had not attacked the camp and freed them. Sasha explained that the "partisans have their tasks, and no one can do our work for us."⁵

These words motivated in the prisoners of Sobibor. Instead of waiting for others to liberate them, they were coming to the conclusion that they would have to liberate themselves.

Feldhendler had now found someone who not only had the military background to plan a mass escape, but also someone who could inspire confidence in the prisoners. Now Feldhendler needed to convince Sasha that a plan of mass escape was needed.

The two men met the following day, on September 29. Some of Sasha's men were already thinking of escape - but for just a few people, not a mass escape. Feldhendler had to convince them that he and others in the camp could help the Soviet prisoners because they knew the camp. He also told the men of the retaliation that would occur against the whole camp if even just a few were to escape.

Soon, they decided to work together and information between the two men passed via a middle man, Shlomo Leitman, so as not to draw attention to the two men. With the information about the routine of the camp, layout of the camp, and specific characteristics of the guards and SS, Sasha began to plan.

The Plan

Sasha knew that any plan would be far-fetched. Even though the prisoners outnumbered the guards, the guards had machine guns and could call for back-up.

The first plan was to dig a tunnel. They started digging the tunnel in the beginning of October. Originating in the carpentry shop, the tunnel had to be dug under the perimeter fence and then under the minefields. On October 7, Sasha voiced his fears about this plan - the hours at night were not sufficient to allow the entire camp population to crawl through the tunnel and fights were likely to flare-up between prisoners waiting to crawl through. These problems were never encountered because the tunnel was ruined from heavy rains on October 8 and 9.

Sasha began working on another plan. This time it was not just a mass escape, it was a revolt.

Sasha asked that members of the Underground start preparing weapons in the prisoner workshops - they began to make both knives and hatchets. Though the Underground had already learned that they camp commandant, SS Haupsturmführer Franz Reichleitner and SS Oberscharführer Hubert Gomerski had gone on vacation, on October 12 they saw SS Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner leaving the camp with his suitcases. With Wagner gone, many felt the opportunity ripe for the revolt. As Toivi Blatt describes Wagner:

Wagner's departure gave us a tremendous morale boost. While cruel, he was also very intelligent. Always on the go, he could suddenly show up in the most unexpected places. Always suspicious and snooping, he was difficult to fool. Besides, his colossal stature and strength would make it very difficult for us to overcome him with our primitive weapons. ⁶

On the nights of October 11 and 12, Sasha told the Underground the complete plans for the revolt. The Soviet prisoners of war were to be dispersed to different workshops around the camp. The SS would be individually lured to the various workshops either by appointments to pick up finished products they had ordered like boots or by individual items that attracted their greed like a newly arrived leather coat.

The planning took into consideration the Germans' brashness and power-hungry mistreatment of the seemingly subdued Jews, their consistent and systematic daily routine, their unfaltering punctuality, and their greed.⁷

Each SS man would be killed in the workshops. It was important that the SS did not cry out when being killed nor any of the guards alerted that something unusual was happening in the camps.

Then, all the prisoners would report as usual to the roll call square and then walk out together through the front gate. It was hoped that once the SS had been eliminated, the Ukrainian guards, who had a small supply of ammunition, would acquiesce to the revolting prisoners. The phone lines were to be cut early in the revolt so that the escapees would have several hours of fleeing time under the cover of darkness, before back-up could be notified.

Significant to the plan was that only a very small group of the prisoners even knew of the revolt - it was to be a surprise to the general camp population at roll call in order to limit the possibility of the SS noticing something strange or for the revolters to be informed on.

It was decided that the following day, October 13, would be the day of revolt.

We knew our fate. We knew that we were in an extermination camp and death was our destiny. We knew that even a sudden end to the war might spare the inmates of the "normal" concentration camps, but never us. Only desperate actions could shorten our suffering and maybe afford us a chance of escape. And the will to resist had grown and ripened. We had no dreams of liberation; we hoped merely to destroy the camp and to die from bullets rather than from gas. We would not make it easy for the Germans. ⁸

October 13

The day had finally arrived. Tension among those that were to play a role in the uprising was high. But during the morning, a group of SS arrived from the nearby Ossowa labor camp. The arrival of these additional SS not only increased the man power of the SS in the camp but could preclude the regular SS men from making their appointments in the workshops. Since the additional SS were still in the camp during lunchtime, the revolt was postponed. It was rescheduled for the following day - October 14.

As the prisoners went to bed this night, many were afraid of what was to come.

Esther Grinbaum, a very sentimental and intelligent young woman, wiped away her tears and said: "It's not yet the time for an uprising. Tomorrow none of us will be alive. Everything will remain as it was - the barracks, the sun will rise and set, the flowers will bloom and wilt, but we will be no more." Her closest friend, Helka Lubartowska, a beautiful dark-eyed brunette, tried to encourage her: "There is no other way. Nobody knows what the results will be, but one thing is sure, we will not be led to slaughter."⁹

Find out what happened during the revolt.

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