Marmalade factory of death: new documents about the escape of prisoners from the Nazi camp Sobibor have been published. Sobibor camp Uprising in the Sobibor concentration camp
Sobibor(Polish Sobibor, German SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor listen)) is a death camp organized by the Nazis in Poland. Operated from May 15, 1942 to October 15, 1943. About 250,000 Jews were killed here. At the same time, it was in Sobibor on October 14, 1943 that the only successful of the major uprisings in the Nazi death camps, led by Soviet officer Alexander Pechersky, took place.
Camp history
The Sobibor camp was located in the southeast of Poland near the village of Sobibur (now in the Lublin Voivodeship). It was created as part of Operation Reinhard, the purpose of which was the mass extermination of the Jewish population living in the territory of the so-called "governor general" (the territory of Poland occupied by Germany). Subsequently, Jews from other occupied countries were brought to the camp: Lithuania, the Netherlands, France, Czechoslovakia and the USSR.
The camp commandant from April 1942 was SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl, his staff consisted of about 30 SS non-commissioned officers, many of whom had experience in the euthanasia program. Ordinary guards to serve around the perimeter of the camp were recruited from collaborators - former prisoners of war from the Red Army, for the most part (90-120 people) Ukrainians - the so-called. "herbalists", due to the fact that most of them were trained in the camp "Travniki" and civilian volunteers.
The camp was located in the forest next to the substation Sobibor. The railroad came to a standstill, which was supposed to help keep the secret. The camp was surrounded by four rows of barbed wire three meters high. The space between the third and fourth rows was mined. Between the second and third - there were patrols. Day and night, on the towers, from where the entire system of barriers was visible, sentries were on duty.
The camp was divided into three main parts - "subcamps", each had its own strictly defined purpose. The first housed a work camp (workshops and residential barracks). In the second - a hairdresser's barracks and warehouses, where the belongings of the dead were stored and sorted. In the third there were gas chambers where people were killed. For this purpose, several old tank engines were installed in an annex near the gas chamber, during operation of which carbon monoxide was released, which was supplied through pipes to the gas chamber.
Most of the prisoners brought to the camp were killed on the same day in the gas chambers. Only a small part was left alive and used for various jobs in the camp.
During the year and a half of the camp, about 250,000 Jews were killed in it.
Destruction of prisoners
The essay “The Rebellion in Sobibur” (Znamya magazine, N 4, 1945) by Veniamin Kaverin and Pavel Antokolsky cites the testimony of the former prisoner Dov Fainberg dated August 10, 1944. According to Feinberg, the prisoners were exterminated in a brick building called a "bathhouse" that housed about 800 people:
When a party of eight hundred people entered the "bathhouse", the door was tightly closed. In the annex there was a machine that produced asphyxiating gas. The produced gas entered the cylinders, of which through hoses - into the room. Usually, after fifteen minutes, everyone in the cell was strangled. There were no windows in the building. Only there was a glass window on top, and the German, who was called the “bath attendant” in the camp, watched through it whether the process of killing was completed. At his signal, the gas supply was cut off, the floor was mechanically moved apart, and the corpses fell down. There were trolleys in the basement, and a group of doomed people piled the corpses of the executed on them. The trolleys were taken out of the basement into the forest. A huge ditch was dug there, into which the corpses were dumped. People involved in the folding and transportation of corpses were periodically shot.
Later, the essay was included in the "Black Book" of the Red Army war reporters Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman.
Resistance attempts
On New Year's Day 1943, five Jewish prisoners fled from the extermination zone (Zone No. 3). But a Polish peasant reported on the fugitives, and the Polish "blue police" managed to catch them. As a punitive action, several hundred prisoners were shot in the camp.
One prisoner also managed to escape from Zone 1. He took refuge in a freight car under a mountain of clothes belonging to the dead, which were sent from Sobibor to Germany, and managed to get to Chełm. Obviously, thanks to him, Chelm learned about what was happening in Sobibór. When at the end of February 1943 the last batch of Jews from this city was sent to Sobibor, there were several attempts to escape from the train. The deported Jews of Vlodava, upon their arrival in Sobibor on April 30, 1943, refused to voluntarily leave the cars.
Another case of resistance took place on October 11, 1943, when people refused to go to the gas chamber and began to run. Some of them were shot near the camp fence, others were captured and tortured.
On July 5, 1943, Himmler ordered Sobibor to be turned into a concentration camp, the prisoners of which would be re-equipping captured Soviet weapons. In this regard, new construction began in the northern part of the camp (zone No. 4). The brigade, which included 40 prisoners (half Polish, half Dutch Jews), nicknamed the "forest team", began to harvest the wood that was required for construction in the forest, a few kilometers from Sobibor. Seven Ukrainians and two SS men were assigned to guard.
One day, two prisoners from this brigade (Shlomo Podkhlebnik and Yosef Kurts, both Polish Jews) were sent to the nearest village to fetch water under the escort of a Ukrainian guard. Along the way, the two killed their escort, took his weapons and fled. As soon as this was discovered, the work of the "forest team" was immediately suspended and the prisoners were returned to the camp. But on the way, suddenly, on a prearranged signal, the Polish Jews from the "forest team" rushed to run. The Dutch Jews decided not to take part in the escape attempt, because without knowing the Polish language and not knowing the area, it would be extremely difficult for them to find shelter.
Ten of the fugitives were captured, several of them were shot dead, but eight managed to escape. The ten who were caught were taken to the camp and shot there in front of all the prisoners.
Insurrection
The underground operated in the camp, planning the escape of prisoners from the concentration camp.
In July and August 1943, an underground group was organized in the camp, led by the son of the Polish rabbi, Leon Feldhendler, who had previously been the head of the Judenrat in Zolkiev. The plan of this group was to organize an uprising and a mass escape from Sobibor. At the end of September 1943, Soviet Jewish prisoners of war arrived in the camp from Minsk. Among the new arrivals was Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky, who joined the underground group and headed it, and Leon Feldhendler became his deputy.
On October 14, 1943, the prisoners of the death camp, led by Pechersky and Feldhendler, revolted. According to Pechersky's plan, the prisoners were supposed to secretly, one by one, eliminate the camp's SS personnel, and then, having taken possession of the weapons that were in the camp's warehouse, kill the guards. The plan was only partially successful - the rebels were able to kill 11 (according to other sources 12) SS men from the camp staff and several Ukrainian guards, but they failed to take possession of the armory. The guards opened fire on the prisoners and they were forced to break out of the camp through minefields. They managed to crush the guards and escape into the forest. Of the almost 550 prisoners of the work camp, 130 did not take part in the uprising (remained in the camp), about 80 died during the escape. The rest managed to escape. All those remaining in the camp were killed by the Germans the next day.
In the next two weeks after the escape, the Germans staged a real hunt for the fugitives, in which the German military police and camp guards took part. During the search, 170 fugitives were found, all of them were immediately shot. In early November 1943, the Germans stopped active searches. In the period from November 1943 until the liberation of Poland, about 90 more former prisoners of Sobibor (those whom the Germans failed to catch) were extradited to the Germans by the local population, or killed by collaborators. Until the end of the war, only 53 participants in the uprising survived (according to other sources, 47 participants).
The uprising in Sobibor was the only successful camp uprising in all the years of the Second World War. Immediately after the escape of the prisoners, the camp was closed and razed to the ground. In its place, the Germans plowed the land, planted it with cabbage and potatoes.
After the war
At the site of the camp, the Polish government opened a memorial. In connection with the 50th anniversary of the uprising, Polish President Lech Walesa sent the following message to the ceremony participants:
There are places in the Polish land that are symbols of suffering and meanness, heroism and cruelty. These are death camps. Built by Nazi engineers and run by Nazi "professionals," the camps served the sole purpose of the complete extermination of the Jewish people. One of these camps was Sobibor. A hell created by human hands... The prisoners had almost no chance of success, but they did not lose hope.
Saving life was not the goal of a heroic uprising, the struggle was for a dignified death. By defending the dignity of the 250,000 victims, most of whom were Polish citizens, the Jews won a moral victory. They saved their dignity and honor, they defended the dignity of the human race. Their deeds cannot be forgotten, especially today, when many parts of the world are again seized with fanaticism, racism, intolerance, when genocide is being carried out again.
Sobibor remains a reminder and a warning. However, the history of Sobibor is also a testament to humanism and dignity, a triumph of humanity.
I pay tribute to the memory of Jews from Poland and other European countries, tortured and killed here on this earth.
As of January 2015, 4 participants in the uprising in Sobibór survived. One of the participants in the uprising, Aleksey Vaytsen, died on January 14, 2015.
In 1962-1965, trials of former camp guards took place in Kyiv and Krasnodar. 13 of them were sentenced to death.
On May 12, 2011, a Munich court sentenced Ivan Demyanuk, a former Sobibor security guard, to five years in prison.
On January 14, 2015, the last prisoner of Sobibor, Aleksey Angelovich Vaytsen, who gave accusatory evidence against Ivan Demjanyuk, died.
Sobibor in cinema
In 1987, based on the book by Richard Raschke, the feature film "Escape from Sobibor" was shot.
In 2001, the French documentary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann shot the historical documentary film Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 pm.
On July 5, 1943, Himmler ordered Sobibor to be turned into a concentration camp that would receive captured Soviet weapons, and the prisoners would re-equip it. In this regard, new construction began in the northern part of the camp (zone No. 4).
The brigade, which included 40 prisoners (half Polish, half Dutch Jews), nicknamed the "forest team", set about harvesting the wood that was required for the construction. The work was carried out in the forest, a few kilometers from Sobibor. Seven Ukrainians and two SS men were assigned to guard.
One day, two prisoners from this brigade (Shlomo Podkhlebnik and Yosef Kurts, both Polish Jews) were sent under escort of a Ukrainian guard to fetch water from a nearby village. Along the way, the two killed their escort, took his weapons and fled. As soon as this was discovered, the work of the "forest team" was immediately suspended and the prisoners returned to the camp. But on the way, suddenly, on a prearranged signal, the Polish Jews from the "forest team" rushed to run.
Ten of them were captured, several shot dead, but eight managed to escape. The Dutch Jews who were part of the "forest team" decided not to participate in the escape attempt, since, without knowing the Polish language and not knowing the area, it would be extremely difficult for them to find shelter. The ten that were caught, and one kapo with them, were taken to the camp and shot there in front of all the prisoners.
Organization of the underground and the preparation of the uprising. From the second half of July, an underground group began to operate in the camp, led by Leon Feldgendler, the son of a rabbi in one of the Polish shtetls. The group was finally formed by mid-August 1943.
It consisted mainly of team leaders who worked in local workshops - sewing, shoemaking, carpentry and others. The group discussed several options for a mass escape from the camp. One of the major obstacles was the lack of a leader who had the ability to lead and military knowledge and in whose power it would be to prepare an elaborate escape plan.
Finally, Feldgendler managed to find the right person. It was a Jewish Jew from Holland named Josef Jacobs, a former naval officer who was deported to Sobibor on May 21, 1943. He undertook to organize an uprising together with his fellow countrymen and with the assistance of an already existing underground group.
A plan was developed according to which the rebels would penetrate the armory at the time when the SS were having lunch, and, having mastered their weapons, would break through the main gate of the camp and escape into the forests. But on the treacherous denunciation of one of the Ukrainians, Jacobs was arrested.
However, neither beatings nor torture broke Jacobs, and he stubbornly maintained that the escape plan was drawn up by him personally, and no one else was involved in it. Despite this, Jacobs himself and 72 other Dutch Jews were executed as a punitive measure.
Despite the failure of all plans for organizing escapes and severe collective punishments, the underground group, led by Feldgendler, continued to tirelessly look for a new candidate to lead the uprising and escape. And such a person was eventually found.
Jew Alexander Aronovich Pechersky was a lieutenant in the Soviet army. Once surrounded and captured, he was seriously ill with typhus for many months, miraculously escaped execution, escaped from captivity, but was caught. Before being sent to Sobibor, he was kept in the basement of the SS in Minsk.
When the Minsk ghetto was liquidated, this batch of prisoners of war, along with 2,000 other Jews, was sent to Sobibor. This happened on September 23, 1943.
The vast majority of the Jews were immediately sent to the gas chambers, and only 80 people, mostly those with current professions, were left in the camp to be used in the construction of the 4th zone - instead of the group of Dutch Jews that was exterminated. Pechersky declared himself a carpenter, although before the war he led amateur art activities in one of the clubs in Rostov-on-Don.
The arrival of Soviet Jewish prisoners of war as a monolithic group with combat experience boosted the morale of the Sobibor prisoners. The connection between Pechersky, who stood out in his group, and Feldgendler was established by Shlomo Leitman, a Polish Jew, a carpenter by profession, who was with Soviet prisoners of war in the SS camp in Minsk and transferred with them to Sobibor.
The personality of Pechersky made a strong impression on Feldgendler, and already at the first meeting, on September 29, the latter suggested that Pechersky organize a mass escape from the camp. During their subsequent meetings, a group was organized, headed by Pechersky, and Feldgendler became his assistant. In the leadership of the underground there were four more from the Feldgendler group and three Minsk residents.
The joint activities of the two groups, one of which knew local conditions and characteristics well, and the other had military knowledge and experience, made it possible to develop an escape plan for all 600 prisoners of the camp, including 150 women held in the 1st zone.
Its essence was to lure, under various pretexts, one by one the SS elite of the camp - a dozen and a half executioners - into the workshops and warehouses of Sobibor, destroy them there, take possession of their weapons, interrupt telephone communications and break out of the camp in an organized manner into the surrounding forests. Unprecedented in audacity, he required scrupulous preparation, maximum secrecy and consideration of all details.
Two of the camp kapos (guards from among the prisoners) - Puzichka and Chepik guessed that preparations were underway for the escape and in the center of it were Soviet prisoners of war. They turned to Pechersky with a request to accept them into an underground group.
Indeed, with the help of Puzichka, two organizers of the underground, Pechersky and Leitman, were transferred on October 8 to a carpentry workshop, the location of which allowed them to better control the preparations for the uprising.
The prisoners were running out of time. As a possible date for the uprising, the day of October 13 was chosen. According to the information that the prisoners had, several SS men, and among them the two most dangerous - Wagner and Gomersky - were supposed to go on vacation to Germany that day. On October 12, at 9 pm, another meeting of the leaders of the underground took place in the carpentry workshop. The meeting was attended by ten people, among them - Capo Puzichka. The time for the start of the uprising was set on the basis that it was possible to destroy the SS one by one only during working hours, and preferably on the eve of darkness, in order to facilitate the escape.
About forty prisoners, including Soviet prisoners of war, were initiated into the uprising plan.
On October 13, the day on which the uprising was scheduled, a German inspection commission unexpectedly arrived at the camp, and therefore the leaders of the uprising decided to postpone it. In the evening, an additional meeting was held, at which it was decided to carry out an uprising the next day. The underground workers were given secretly made edged weapons: knives, axes, sharpened shovels, etc.
Uprising - October 14, 1943. Until the hour when the uprising began, life in the camp went on as usual. Apart from the members of the underground, no one knew what was to happen that day.
The first stage of the uprising went almost as planned: in half an hour, between 4 p.m. And 16 o'clock. 30 min. eleven SS men were destroyed, who were invited to the workshops in advance, and among them was the head of the camp, Untersturmführer Johann Niemann, that is, all the SS men who were in the camp that day, except for Oberscharführer Karl Frantzel, who did not appear in the workshop. The actions in the 1st zone were led by Pechersky, and in the 2nd zone by Feldgendler. At 16 o'clock. 45 min. capos Puzichka and Chepik ordered all the prisoners to line up. Now many felt that something unusual was being prepared, but they could not understand what it was. As planned in advance, Soviet prisoners of war and members of the underground stood in the forefront of the column, some of them with hidden weapons. And this is where things didn't go according to plan.
A truck suddenly drove into the territory of the 2nd zone and stopped near the SS headquarters. The truck driver, Oberscharführer Eric Bauer, discovered the dead SS man and immediately noticed a prisoner running out of the headquarters building. Bauer, without hesitation, began to shoot after him. At the same time, not far from the parade ground on which the prisoners stood in a column, the commander of the Ukrainian guards, a Volga German, appeared and began to wield a whip. The rebels attacked him and hacked him to death with axes. There was panic. The Ukrainian guards on the towers, realizing that something was wrong, opened fire on the column. In view of this, Pechersky decided not to wait until all the prisoners had gathered, as was envisaged by the plan, but to immediately proceed to the second stage. With shouts of "Forward! Hooray!" the rebels rushed to the gate and the wire fence.
From that moment on, the leaders of the uprising lost control of events. Part of the rebels broke through the camp gates and fled in a southwestern direction, towards the grove. Another group broke through the fence to the north of the gate. Those that fled first were blown up by mines. The dead and wounded appeared, and with their bodies they paved the way through the minefield for those who fled behind.
Escape to the forests and raids. The message about the uprising of Jews, prisoners of the Sobibor death camp, which arrived in Helem and Lublin late due to the failure of the telephone line, caused a commotion in the German headquarters.
The report said that an uprising broke out in Sobibor, during which the Jewish prisoners killed almost all the SS men and seized the weapons depot, as a result of which a threat hung over all the guards still in the camp. In addition, according to the report, 300 prisoners fled in the direction of the Bug River, and there is a danger that they will join the partisans.
On the same night, on alarm, large forces were raised and sent to pursue the fugitives, including a gendarmerie cavalry company, a company of soldiers, as well as gendarmerie and SS units from Vlodava and Lublin, and 150 Ukrainians from Sobibor. In total, about 600 servicemen participated in the persecution. The search itself began at dawn the next day.
From the air, the search was carried out by several reconnaissance aircraft, trying to find the fugitives in the forests and fields. Intensive combing of the area, carried out under the command of Sturmführer Wilbrand, lasted over a week, after which only mounted gendarmes were engaged in searches. The most important goal of the persecution was to prevent those who fled from joining the partisans on the other side of the Bug and, thereby, spreading information about the massacres in Sobibor.
The fugitives were divided into several groups. The group, headed by Pechersky, consisted of several dozen people, and at her disposal was a rifle and four pistols. At night, another group joined her, and together they numbered about 75 people.
However, despite the relative success of the uprising, most of those who fled did not manage to live to see the victory over Germany. Some were captured and killed later; others died in the ranks of the partisans. Three days after the uprising, on October 20, 1943, the last remaining Jews in the Treblinka camp were deported to the Sobibor concentration camp for extermination, after which Sobibor was liquidated, all its buildings were dismantled, and trees were planted on its plowed territory.
Alexander Pechersky, Lyon Feldgendler and their comrades wrote a new glorious page in the history of resistance during the Second World War.
Eight scary facts about the Nazi camp "Sobibor":
1. At first, the Poles thought that the Germans were building a marmalade factory for them.
At least, that's what the Nazis promised when in 1941 they carried out large-scale construction in the forest on the territory of the Sobibor railway station, not far from the Polish city of Vldov. Every day trainloads of people came to the "factory" who thought that they would now work at the marmalade factory. Many, upon arrival, even applauded. In order not to arouse suspicion among the arrivals, the Nazis set up beautiful flower beds in the foreground of the camp.
2. « So that the inhabitants of the surrounding villages did not hear the cries of the slaughtered, they released geese. In fact, the Germans took away from Sobibor to Germany not marmalade, but boxes of ashes, bags of women's hair, wagons of clothes and shoes, and ... barrels of human fat. As follows from the “Information on the atrocities of the Nazi invaders”, compiled by the political department of the 8th Guards Army and stored in the archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, “All arrivals were subjected to a false medical examination, allegedly in order to select the weak for light work. The first batch of those selected were sent to the bathhouse to bathe ... everyone went into the bathing room, which was then filled with gas. In order to drown out the screams, geese were brought in the camp, which were released at the moment of suffocation ... "
3. In Sobibor, there were devices for collecting fat. According to the memoirs of the prisoners of the camp, residents of Warsaw Ber Freiberg, Zelma Weinberg and Chaim Povroznik, first published in the press in 1944, the camp consisted of three parts. The first housed craft workshops, in which prisoners sewed shoes, dresses, and made furniture. Warehouses were located in the second camp. The workers of this camp sorted the clothes, jewelry and hair of the prisoners prepared for slaughter. (As Pechersky noted in his memoirs, the Nazis valued children's hair most of all. They went to make saddle pads). In the third camp there was a so-called "bath", where most of the people were taken. The bodies of those killed from the "bath" were burned, but the Nazis built a special device that previously collected fat from the murdered prisoners.
4. The escape began with a "bloody fitting". On October 14, 1943, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the prisoners arranged for the Germans to try on new uniforms and shoes. In the process of "fitting" the prisoners killed their guards. The daring escape so humiliated the Nazis that they hastily destroyed the camp and covered their tracks. They even planted Christmas trees on the territory where the death factories were located. However, having dug up the young shoots, our Red Army soldiers found bones, burnt bodies and even children's toys.
5. For the first time, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper wrote about the Sobibor death camp. This happened in September 1944. Then the journalists did not yet know under whose command the feat was accomplished. “None of us knows his last name, his name was Sashko, he comes from Rostov,” former prisoners recalled. An article in Komsomolskaya Pravda with the words “this is about you” was brought to Pechersky by an employee of the hospital where he was treated after being wounded. On January 31, 1945, Komsomolskaya Pravda published Pechersky's letter "Sashko is me."
6. Escape from Sobibor was considered impossible. Fence. Barbed wire three meters high. A minefield 15 meters wide, a deep ditch ... “For several months, members of a special team for burning corpses were digging. But the Nazis discovered the tunnel and Oberscharführer Neumann personally shot the entire team, "wrote Komsomolskaya Pravda. Why did Pechersky succeed in escaping? According to the recollections of our hero's friends, already during the first meeting, he said words that turned people's minds upside down. Many did nothing , hoping to the last that they would be rescued. Pechersky managed to force people to make a decision. When fellow campers asked him the question: "We have so many partisans, why don't they attack the camp?" Sashko answered simply and terribly: "No one will work for us."
7. After the disclosure of the truth about Sobibor, “false Sobiborites” appeared. Alexander Pechersky and Komsomolskaya Pravda journalists were actively searching for the prisoners of the camp. One day, the All-Union radio broadcast: another prisoner, Boris Tsibulsky, was found in Novosibirsk. He works as a physical education teacher and speaks to the townspeople with memories of the Sobibor camp. The news both amazed and delighted Sashko, the leader of the escape. After all, there were sad rumors about Cybulsky. Crossing the river after escaping, Boris caught a cold and fell ill. The comrades carried him in their arms and left him in the farm with the peasants, where he died. But, since Tsibulsky was found, does that mean the rumor is false? Delighted, Sashko immediately wrote a letter to his comrade, offering to come. However, he refused to meet. Correspondence ensued, in which the "prisoner of Sobibor" showed an amazing selectivity of memory. In the end, the impostor gave himself away. “You are not the Boris you pretend to be,” Sashko wrote to him. Soon a letter of repentance arrived: “I am not the one, I am to blame. Don't give out. Save me".
Pechersky did not betray the liar. But eight years later, journalist Nina Alexandrova found out about the situation. It is terrible that with this cowardly lie the false Cybulsky became the culprit of her death. On May 18, 1972, the plane on which Alexandrova flew to the false Tsibulsky crashed.
8. In 1987, the Anglo-Yugoslav feature film "Escape from Sobibor" was shot, in which Rutger Hauer starred as Pechersky.
The historically exclusive material was prepared specially for the information portal "site" by the leading analyst and expert Samonkin Yury Sergeevich. Moscow, September 7, 2018.
Sobibor was one of three camps (the other two were Majdanek and Treblinka) created for the complete physical extermination of the civilian Jewish population from the expanding territory of the Third Reich. The history of its foundation, functioning and liquidation. The uprising, led by Alexander Pechersky, thanks to which several prisoners doomed to death managed to escape.
It was 1942. Poland was under the rule of Germany for the fourth year and was officially called the General Government. The centers of resistance that were plowed up in places were quickly and brutally suppressed. The local population began to, if not get used to, then gradually put up with the new established order.
In such conditions, in the woods near the village of Sobibur, with the beginning of spring, the Germans began the construction of a marmalade factory. So it was announced to the local population. Taught not to ask unnecessary questions, the law-abiding Poles did not interfere in the affairs of the German gentlemen. In the meantime, the work went smoothly. Not far from the railway line, a relatively small piece of land was cleared - 600 x 400 meters. And they fenced it with barbed wire, into which, for greater disguise, they woven branches of trees growing nearby. Behind this row of wire, at a distance of fifteen meters from the first, a second row of a three-meter wire fence was placed. And mines were laid between them. True, the local population did not know these details.
Sobibor concentration camp
So the foundation of the Sobibor concentration camp (Poland) was laid. A concentration camp created for the sole purpose of the physical destruction of elements objectionable to the Third Reich. Himmler ordered the preparation of the Sobibor camp in Poland for the extermination of Polish Jews. He also had to be ready to accept transports with people doomed to death from some European countries.
Camp history
As with other camps, questions about why the authorities call this concentration camp Sobibor never arose. The camps were named after the nearest settlement. This facilitated the task of logistics, and the camps were initially temporary. They had to fulfill their task and quietly disappear from the face of the earth, burying all their secrets.
The Sobibor concentration camp began functioning in March 1942. It was built as part of the large-scale Reinhard program, as a result of which not a single Jew was to remain alive on the territory of the Polish General Government. The Majdanek and Treblinka death camps were also included in this program. Sobibor was well staffed. Among the guards were from 20 to 30 qualified SS soldiers, many of whom participated in Operation Euthanasia (then they had to kill their own fellow citizens - mentally retarded, disabled, those whose illness lasted more than five years).
The arrival of the prisoners in the camp
They were assisted by 90 to 120 volunteers from the local population, who completed a course in the Travniki concentration camp. It was the only experimental Polish concentration camp of its kind, in which prisoners were offered special training and subsequently worked for the German government. Most of the cadets were Soviet prisoners of war of different nationalities - Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians, and even Germans and Jews. However, there is evidence that some collaborators voluntarily agreed to undergo such training without being prisoners of the camp. After that, graduates were sent to serve as guards in other concentration camps.
concentration camp guards
Considering that during its existence, which lasted from March 1942 to the end of 1943, about 250 thousand people were killed in the Sobibor concentration camp, the number of guards out of one and a half hundred people (and in reality only half of them were on duty per shift) cannot but surprise. However, do not forget that the true purpose of the camp was carefully hidden.. The Germans were afraid of an uprising of prisoners who were in concentration camps. Therefore, they did everything so that people doomed to death did not guess about their fate until the very last minute.
Upon arrival at the station, they were told that it was just a transit camp. People were greeted with loudspeaker announcements that they had arrived in their new homeland. The sorting (in which those who were immediately sent to the gas chamber were selected) was explained by the fact that the weaker ones would be assigned to light work. And the need to proceed to the cell itself was masked by the promise of a shower and mandatory disinfection. Everyone even received a receipt for things that they handed over before the “disinfection”.
Sorting of captured Jews
And yet, one of the prisoners managed to escape from Sobibor. He was able to get out by hiding in a freight car that was taking valuables of murdered Jews out of the camp to Germany. This was far from the first attempt to escape. But he was the only one able to elude the guards and get to the city of Helm alive. Apparently, the former prisoner told the locals about the true purpose of Sobibor. When transports were sent from that area to the camp in February 1943, there were several attempts to escape directly from the train (which did not happen when the Jews were sure that they were simply being moved to a new place of residence). On April 30, people who arrived from Vlodava refused to voluntarily get out of the cars. On October 11, the problem arose when another batch of prisoners refused to go to the bathhouse. The veil of secrecy thinned.
True, for people doomed to death, this did not change much. The mass escape from the Sobiborne concentration camp was successful, among other things, because for every escape attempt, the German leadership shot randomly selected innocent prisoners. Therefore, clinging to their own lives, the prisoners themselves stopped any attempts to make an escape plan.
Destruction of prisoners
They did not live long in the death camp. Most of the arriving people were immediately sent to the gas chambers. But, to some extent, the death camp was an economy with an industrial scale. And the economy needs workers. These were selected from the newcomers. However, the work extended their life by no more than a few months.
Selection of prisoners for work
Sobibor consisted of three sections. In the first there were workshops in which they worked with shoes, clothes and made furniture. In the next part, there were warehouses filled with the sorted belongings of the dead. There were suitcases, purses, glasses, shoes, clothes, jewelry, hair cut from women before death. Each thread was supposed to go to the benefit of the economy of the Third Reich. Before burial, human fat was rendered from the corpses. He, too, was a valuable resource going to Germany.
The third section consisted of gas chambers disguised as harmless bathhouses. There were no crematoria in Sobibor, so the corpses were dumped into large trenches previously dug, located behind the gas chambers.
Disguised harmless baths.
Immediately after the arrival of the railway train at the half-station, people were taken to the station and separated. They were reassured and assured that the division into men and women was temporary, and was only needed for organized showering. Some were selected for work. The rest were sent to the baths. Men were cut straight away, while women were pre-shorn, because hair was a valuable resource, carefully preserved and regularly sent to Germany.
160-180 naked people were driven into each cell. After that, the tank engine was turned on, and asphyxiating carbon monoxide gas began to flow through the pipes. A German officer watched the execution through the only window in the roof of the building. He made sure that all the people inside were killed, and after that he signaled to stop the engine.
Sobibor gas chambers
In order to drown out the screams of the dying, a large herd of three hundred geese was specially bred and kept in the camp. When disturbed, these birds make a loud piercing noise, cackling and flapping their wings. When the engine was turned on and gas was supplied to the chambers, specially assigned guards began to tease the geese and drive them around the buildings. But even this could not completely mask the screams of hundreds of people dying in agony.
Two or three hours after the sorting began, it was all over. People are killed. The gas chambers have been cleared of corpses. They drove the next 20 cars, and everything started anew.
Destruction of concentration camp prisoners
Resistance attempts
Unlike labor concentration camps, where the prisoners retained at least some illusory hope of survival, in the death camps there was such a “turnover” that everyone understood their doom. The struggle here was not for the opportunity to live and wait until the end of the war. And just for the extra months, weeks and even days, albeit a slave, camp, but still life.
On the other hand, it was this doom that pushed people to attempts to resist. They just had nothing to lose. True, most of them failed due to poor organization and the small number of prisoners who decided to resist. History has preserved several such incidents, and even their dates. So, on December 31, 1942, five prisoners escaped. However, they were all caught, exponentially executed, and at the same time, without any system, a couple of hundred more prisoners were randomly selected and shot on the spot as a warning to the rest.
Escape attempt
Another incident occurred in the summer of 1943. Two prisoners under the escort of one guard were supposed to bring water for the work brigade. On the way, they killed the escort, seized his weapons and hid in the forest. Taking advantage of the fortunate opportunity and the disoriented state of the guards who learned about the murder and the escape, the rest of the working Jews also began to scatter. Ten of them were shot. However, eight successfully escaped.
Insurrection
The uprising in Sobibor took place on October 14, 1943. A combination of several factors contributed to its success. The organization of a serious uprising in the death camps has always been difficult because the prisoners who were there simply did not have enough time to draw up a resistance plan and prepare it. People lived too little. However, in this regard, the situation in Sobibor has changed. Himmler decided to use the people imprisoned there to remake captured Soviet weapons and ammunition. And for this, masters with experience were required, who were left to live longer than others.
In September 1943, together with other Jews from Minsk, Pechersky arrived in the camp. Sobibor was not the first concentration camp that a Soviet officer had to visit. Fate did not particularly favor the Red Army lieutenant. He never dreamed of a military career, he was called to serve with the beginning of World War II, during his service there were not enough stars from the sky, he did not differ in any particular organizational talents or leadership qualities. In the battles for Moscow, he was captured, from which he unsuccessfully tried to escape. After that, he was transferred to a concentration camp in Minsk, from where Pechersky was sent to Sobibor, as soon as it was found out that he was an ethnic Jew.
Workshop work teams
Alexander Pechersky called himself a carpenter during the sorting (although he had nothing to do with him), so he was selected for the work team and sent to the workshop. From the local "old-timer", the same worker, he quickly found out where he really got to. And when everything was on the map, this previously unremarkable person was able to take on the role of inspirer and leader of the only successful Jewish revolt in the Sobibor camp.
The camp was like a heavily guarded fortress. Four rows of barbed wire fence three meters high, a patrol that was between the second and third fences, a fifteen-meter minefield, machine-gun towers. In addition, the constant fear that the kapos collaborating with the Germans from among the prisoners themselves would inform on the conspirators created an atmosphere of distrust and prevented the detailed development of the plan.
With the arrival of Alexander Pechersky in Sobibor, the situation changed somewhat. First, he immediately decided that he had to run and began to leave a plan for how to do it. Secondly, along with Pechersky, other prisoners arrived from Minsk, whom he knew from the previous camp and could trust them. Thirdly, in Sobibor itself, preparations for an uprising had been going on for some time. These conspirators were united by Leon Feldhndler, but he gladly entrusted the main role in the uprising to Pechersky, who had real combat experience.
History of the Sobibor camp
Sobibor in cinema
The story of the uprising organized by Alexander Pechersky was filmed in a feature film directed by Khabensky. The main roles in it were played by Konstantin Khabensky himself, Christopher Lambert and Maria Kozhevnikova. This military drama was Khabensky's debut in the director's chair. The details of the uprising itself are displayed, as far as possible, historically accurate, according to the documents available today and the memories of the escaped prisoners. In the rest, artistic liberties were allowed, since the film Sobibor was never positioned as strictly historical. However, the story of Pechersky (the main character played by Khabensky) is depicted according to memoirs written by Alexander Pechersky himself. So I can recommend watching the movie to anyone who loves history.
Konstantin Khabensky as Pechersky
The events of this film begin with the arrival of the protagonist in Sobibor. Pechersky, who led the uprising, understood that it would be impossible to simply escape, breaking through such a dense barrier, and hiding in the forest. The option of a hidden escape also fell away. Therefore, it was decided, first of all, to neutralize the main officers of the German guard. After that, capture the armory and take possession of the camp with weapons in hand. The first part of the plan was successfully implemented. Under the pretext of trying on new tunics (which were sewn right there, in the camp), the officers were lured at the same time, but in different places, and were able to kill without too much noise.
Escape of the prisoners of Sobibor
But on the way to the armory, the guards immediately suspected something was wrong, and began to shoot the attackers. The prisoners had to flee through the fence. Few managed to escape. Of the 250 participants in the uprising, only 170 managed to break out of the camp, of which another 90 people were found by the Germans, who staged a full-scale roundup of the fugitives. The local population, which gave the fugitives to the pursuers, contributed a lot to such good results. However, others, at the risk of their lives, hid fugitive Jews and helped them join the partisans. 130 prisoners who did not join the uprising (they did not speak Polish and therefore were afraid that it would be difficult for them to dissolve among the local population) were shot the very next day after the uprising. After that, the camp was hastily liquidated, and the place where the buildings were located was plowed up and planted with plants. Thus, the German command planned to cover up the traces of their crimes. And they could have succeeded if not for the daring escape of several dozen eyewitnesses, some of whom managed to survive the war and tell about what happened in the death camp
The uprising in the Polish camp Sobibor was the only one when several hundred death row inmates managed to break free at once, and this happened thanks to the courage and resourcefulness of a Soviet lieutenant
Then, on October 14, 1943, about three hundred people were able to get out of the perimeter of barbed wire and minefields - most of the prisoners of Sobibor. The uprising was led by a 34-year-old lieutenant, taken prisoner near Vyazma, a hero whose feat was subsequently practically forgotten in the USSR. Or tried to forget..
Broken dreams
On May 3, the military drama Sobibor, which became a directorial debut, is released in Russian cinemas. Konstantin Khabensky. In the center of the plot is the legendary story of the uprising in the camp of the same name. This extermination camp, organized near the Polish Lublin, began to function in May 1942. Then the Germans opened several similar camps - they implemented the initiated Himmler an operation for the mass "cleansing" of the occupied countries from Jews and Gypsies.
For a year and a half, while Sobibor was in operation, more than 250 thousand people died there. In addition to the population from the occupied territories, Soviet prisoners of war were also sent there. One of them in September 1943 became a lieutenant. At that time he was 34 years old.
Source: wikipedia.org
Pechersky was born on February 22, 1909 into a Jewish family, his father was a lawyer. When the boy was six years old, his parents moved to Rostov-on-Don. There, Alexander graduated from high school, got a job as an electrician at a locomotive repair plant, participated in amateur art activities and dreamed of playing in the theater. But war intervened in his plans, as in the plans of all his peers.
On June 22, 1941, Alexander was drafted into the army. Already in October, the unit in which he served was surrounded, Pechersky himself was wounded. As a result, like many other surviving fighters, he was captured.
He changed several fascist camps, almost died of typhus, tried to escape several times. The fact that he was an officer, Pechersky hid, it gave him a chance to survive. As he later recalled, for some reason he decided to call himself a carpenter - despite the fact that he had never been engaged in this business. After the Germans found out about his Jewish origin, Pechersky, as part of a group of Jewish prisoners, was sent to Sobibor - to certain death.
Giver of hope
Of each batch of prisoners who ended up in the camp, most were almost immediately sent to the gas chambers. Those who received a deferral were engaged in household work. Pechersky and several other prisoners from his group (many of them were also captured officers or soldiers with extensive combat experience) were lucky - they avoided immediate gas chambers.
Alexander quickly came into contact with an underground group operating in Sobibor, led by the son of a Polish rabbi. Leib (Leon) feldhendler. Pechersky convinced everyone that they can only be saved if the uprising is massive, and they act quickly, thoughtfully and harmoniously - otherwise they will suffer the sadness of those prisoners of Sobibor who tried to act alone and eventually died.
It took about two weeks to prepare. On October 14, 1943, the prisoners revolted. About 400 people participated in it - most of them, at that time there were about 550 prisoners in Sobibor.
Pechersky's plan was as follows: first, one by one, destroy part of the camp's personnel from among the SS men and guards; to do this, they were lured, finding an excuse, to the workshops in which the prisoners worked - and there they were strangled (fortunately, Red Army prisoners of war had extensive experience in hand-to-hand combat) or killed with blows to the head. After that, it was planned to get to the armories - and already with weapons in their hands, clear the way to freedom.
But only the first part was realized, the guards managed to raise the alarm - and then the unarmed prisoners rushed to the breakthrough, despite the fire that was opened on them from the towers, barbed wire and minefields that surrounded the perimeter of the camp. About an hour and a half passed from the beginning of the uprising to freedom.
"Blood redeemed"
Many died. About 300 prisoners managed to escape from behind the barbed wire, but most of them were subsequently caught by the SS men hunting the fugitives or handed over to the Germans by the local population. Eight former prisoners of war of the Red Army, led by Pechersky, moved beyond the Bug. There, Pechersky joined the Belarusian partisans, became a demolition worker.
After the liberation of Belarus, he, like many former prisoners of war, began to actively check the Soviet counterintelligence Smersh. He did not escape the penal battalion - he was sent to an assault rifle battalion. In the summer of 1944, he was seriously wounded - and soon received a certificate that the quartermaster of the 2nd rank Pechersky A.A. "I atoned for my guilt before the motherland with blood." The certificate was issued for "passing further service", but his military biography ended after being wounded.
After spending four months in hospitals, he was demobilized with a disability. He met Victory with the rank of captain. He returned to his native Rostov-on-Don. Married a second time - to a nurse Olga Kotova, who cared for him in a hospital near Moscow (the first time he married before the war, in 1933). Like many who went through the war, he tried to join civilian life. It turned out to be not so easy. During the struggle against the "rootless cosmopolitans" Alexander Aronovich lost his job.
torn page
The story of the destruction of Sobibor (the camp was razed to the ground the next day after the uprising) was heard at the Nuremberg trials, Pechersky was called there as a witness - but the Soviet authorities did not let him in. He used every opportunity to talk about Sobibor - in schools, libraries. The man of "rare courage", as those who knew him said about him, did not lose heart and did not give up. “Of course, I was tired, very exhausted,” Pechersky wrote in one of his letters to a friend.
Most of all, he was worried that the page associated with the history of Sobibor and the uprising in it, figuratively speaking, they tried to delete from the national history - slowly. No one denied that this event took place - but they were silent about it. In the wake of the anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR and the strengthening of friendship with Poland, which was building socialism, it did not really fit into the heroic annals of the Great Patriotic War, some of the pages of which were added or rewritten for propaganda purposes.