On this day, 14 October 1943, 400 prisoners at the Sobibór death camp staged a mass breakout. They killed several guards quietly, planning to kill them all and open the gates, however one dead guard was discovered and they had to dash for freedom through a minefield under machine-gun fire. 150 ended up getting away, and many joined partisan units or the Red Army.
The Jewish Red Army officer, Alexander Pechersky, who organised the breakout, later recalled to Thomas ‘Toivi’ Blatt, another escapee, that he felt they had no choice but to revolt: “Fighting back give us a chance, a very distant chance but still some hope.”
Esther Raab (pictured) described how she escaped: “I saw that somebody put a stepladder behind the carpenter’s shop… And I just jumped up that… I got a bullet shot from the tower right here, and I fell down. As I fell down, I was so much aware, and the will to live was so great, there’s no measurements to it, that I started hopping on dead bodies, and soon I reached the woods, we were in the woods, and it was… I felt, I did it, I made it.”
Pechersky was one of those who subsequently joined a partisan outfit in the Soviet Union, launching attacks on German troops behind German lines.
After the war he and his brother were arrested and imprisoned in the USSR. Pechersky later recounted: “After people from abroad kept inquiring about me, I was finally released but, my brother who had been arrested with me, succumbed to a diabetic coma while in prison. I was allowed again to work with the youth on a lover level in the cultural activities. I even was asked and did talk about my experiences in schools, but as far as an official acknowledgment and medal [for his role in the rebellion], no such thing for a Jew.” https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1829956197189522/?type=3
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