October 14: Revolt in Sobibor

[caption id=“attachment_12492” align=“alignleft” width=“218”] Alexander Pechersky[/caption]
An S.S. guard was axed to death at 4 PM on this date in 1943 in an uprising in the Sobibor concentration camp. The revolt was organized and led by Aleksandr “Sasha” Aronovich Pechersky, a Soviet military officer who had arrived in the camp the month before, and Leon “Leibl” Feldhendler, who had headed a local Judenrat (Jewish council) before being imprisoned at Sobibor. They and their group lured eleven Nazi guards (and several Ukrainian guards) into storehouses with promises of new coats and boots, attacked them with knives and axes, cut the camp’s phone and electricity lines, and set the camp ablaze. About half of the camp’s 600 inmates escaped, but most were killed by pursuers or while crossing minefields; 53 managed to survive the war, a number of whom fought actively as partisans after their escape. After the uprising, the Nazis destroyed all traces of the Sobibor camp, where more than 167,000 Jews had been killed in less than a year and a half. Sasha Pechersky died in 1990, age 81; a street is named in his honor in Sfat, Israel. Leibl Feldhendler was murdered in Lublin at the end of the war, possibly by Polish rightwing nationalists.
[caption id=“attachment_12493” align=“alignleft” width=“137”] Leon Feldhendler[/caption]
“Pechersky, still wearing his Soviet Army uniform, was assigned to dig up tree stumps in the North Camp.... One Dutch Jew was too weak to chop a stump so Frenzel began beating him with his whip. Pechersky stopped chopping and watched the whipping... Frenzel told Pechersky that he had five minutes to split a large tree stump in two. If Pechersky beat the time he would receive a pack of cigarettes, if he lost, he would be whipped 25 times.... Pechersky split the stump in four and a half minutes and Frenzel held out a pack of cigarettes and announced that he always does as he promises. Pechersky replied that he doesn’t smoke... Frenzel came back twenty minutes later with fresh bread and butter and offered it to Pechersky. Pechersky replied that the rations at the concentration camp were more than adequate... That evening, this episode of defiance spread throughout Sobibor.” —Leon Feldhendler