Post by Bonobo on Oct 16, 2008 21:01:16 GMT 1
65th anniversary of the Sobibor uprising
Polish Radio
14.10.2008
Today is the sixty-fifth anniversary of the rebellion at the World War Two German Nazi extermination camp in Sobibor, now eastern Poland.
On the 14th of October 1943, an uprising started there under the command of Home Army officers. It was the largest such uprising among all German Nazi concentration camps on Polish territory. The insurgent killed 12 Nazi officers and collaborators.
Out of the over three hundred prisoners who managed to escape, only 50 survived. Among them Philip Bialowitz, who was a teenager in 1943. Later he wrote a book about those events.
'I am glad to be able to relay my experiences to young people and to tell this story, because soon nobody will be left of the survivors from Sobibor. We're only seven or eight survivors left of Sobibor,' Bialowitz said.
Overall, about a quarter of a million of Jews of Polish origin were killed in the Sobibor extermination camp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobibor_extermination_camp
On October 14, 1943, members of the Sobibor underground, led by Polish-Jewish prisoner Leon Feldhandler and Soviet POW Alexander "Sasha" Pechersky, succeeded in covertly killing eleven German SS officers and a number of camp guards. Although their plan was to kill all the SS and walk out of the main gate of the camp, the killings were discovered and the inmates ran for their lives under fire. About half of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped.
Only 47 [5] escapees survived the war, however. Some died on the mine fields surrounding the site, and some were recaptured and shot by the Germans in the next few days, but survivors' accounts also indicate that some of the escapees were killed by the Polish underground and civilians, including a massacre of ten former prisoners on or about October 17, 1943, in the forest to the south west of the camp. Most of those who did survive were hidden from the Germans by other Poles, at the risk of their own lives. Feldhandler was murdered by Polish antisemites who shot him through the door of his apartment in January 1945. Pechersky was imprisoned by the Soviet NKVD, but later released.
The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 British TV movie Escape from Sobibor, directed by Jack Gold. An award-winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann, entitled Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures (Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m.).
Polish Radio
14.10.2008
Today is the sixty-fifth anniversary of the rebellion at the World War Two German Nazi extermination camp in Sobibor, now eastern Poland.
On the 14th of October 1943, an uprising started there under the command of Home Army officers. It was the largest such uprising among all German Nazi concentration camps on Polish territory. The insurgent killed 12 Nazi officers and collaborators.
Out of the over three hundred prisoners who managed to escape, only 50 survived. Among them Philip Bialowitz, who was a teenager in 1943. Later he wrote a book about those events.
'I am glad to be able to relay my experiences to young people and to tell this story, because soon nobody will be left of the survivors from Sobibor. We're only seven or eight survivors left of Sobibor,' Bialowitz said.
Overall, about a quarter of a million of Jews of Polish origin were killed in the Sobibor extermination camp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobibor_extermination_camp
On October 14, 1943, members of the Sobibor underground, led by Polish-Jewish prisoner Leon Feldhandler and Soviet POW Alexander "Sasha" Pechersky, succeeded in covertly killing eleven German SS officers and a number of camp guards. Although their plan was to kill all the SS and walk out of the main gate of the camp, the killings were discovered and the inmates ran for their lives under fire. About half of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped.
Only 47 [5] escapees survived the war, however. Some died on the mine fields surrounding the site, and some were recaptured and shot by the Germans in the next few days, but survivors' accounts also indicate that some of the escapees were killed by the Polish underground and civilians, including a massacre of ten former prisoners on or about October 17, 1943, in the forest to the south west of the camp. Most of those who did survive were hidden from the Germans by other Poles, at the risk of their own lives. Feldhandler was murdered by Polish antisemites who shot him through the door of his apartment in January 1945. Pechersky was imprisoned by the Soviet NKVD, but later released.
The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 British TV movie Escape from Sobibor, directed by Jack Gold. An award-winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann, entitled Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures (Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m.).