Alexander Pechersky
Encyclopedia
Alexander Aronovich Pechersky was the chief organizer and leader of the most successful uprising
and mass-escape of Jews
from a Nazi extermination camp during World War II
; this occurred at the Sobibor extermination camp
on 14 October 1943.
, Poltava Governorate
, Russian Empire
(now Ukraine
). In 1915, his family moved to Rostov-on-Don
where he eventually worked as an electrician at a locomotive
repair factory. After graduating a university with a diploma in music and literature, he became an accountant and manager of a small school for amateur musicians.
invaded the Soviet Union
, Pechersky was conscripted
into the Soviet Red Army
with a rank of junior lieutenant
. By September 1941, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant quartermaster
(class II). In the early autumn of 1941, he rescued his wounded commander from being captured by the Germans. He didn't receive any medals for this deed. One of his fellow soldiers reportedly said: "Sasha, if what you've done doesn't make you a hero, I don't know who is!" In October 1941, during the Battle of Moscow
, their unit was surrounded and captured by the Germans in the pocket at the city of Vyazma
, Smolensk Oblast
.
Captured, Pechersky soon contracted typhus
, but survived the seven-month long illness. In May 1942, he escaped along with four other prisoners of war, but they were all recaptured the same day. He was then sent to a penal camp at Borisov, Belarus
, and from there to a prisoners of war (POW) camp located in the forest next to the city of Minsk
. During a mandatory medical examination it was discovered that he was circumcised
. Pechersky recalled a German medical officer asking him: "Do you admit to being a Jew?" He admitted it, since any denial would result in a whipping
, and was thrown into a cellar called "the Jewish grave" along with other Jewish POWs (prisoners of war), where for 10 days he sat in complete darkness, being fed 100 grams (3.5 oz) of wheat and a cup of water every second day.
On August 20, 1942, Pechersky was sent to a SS
-operated arbeitslager
, a work camp, in Minsk. The camp housed 500 Jews from the Minsk Ghetto
, as well as Jewish Soviet POWs; there were also between 200–300 Russian
inmates whom the Germans labeled as incorrigible: people who were suspected of contacting the Soviet partisans
and those who were repeatedly truant while working for the Germans. The prisoners were starved and worked from dawn till dusk. Pechersky wrote about the Minsk work camp:
on September 23, 1943. Eighty prisoners from the train, including Pechersky, were selected for work in Lager II. The remaining 1,920 Jews were immediately led to the gas chambers. Pechersky later recalled his thoughts as the train pulled up to Sobibor, "How many circles of hell were there in Dante's Inferno
? It seems there were nine. How many have already passed? Being surrounded, being captured, camps in Vyazma, Smolensk
, Borisov, Minsk... And finally I am here. What's next?" The appearance of Soviet POWs produced an enormous impression on Sobibor prisoners: "hungry hope-filled eyes following their every move".
Pechersky wrote about his first day in Sobibor:
During his third day at Sobibor, Alexander Pechersky earned the respect of fellow prisoners by standing up to Karl Frenzel
, an SS senior officer, as the incident was recalled by Leon Feldhendler.
Pechersky's plan merged the idea of a mass escape with vengeance: to help as many prisoners as possible to escape while executing SS officers and guards. His final goal was to join up with the partisans
and continue fighting the Nazis.
Five days after arriving at Sobibor, Pechersky was again approached by Solomon Leitman on behalf of Leon Feldhendler, the leader of the camp's Polish Jews. Leitman was one of the few prisoners who understood Russian
and Pechersky didn't speak either Yiddish or Polish
. Pechersky was invited to talk with a group of Jewish prisoner leaders from Poland, to whom he spoke about the Red Army victory in the Battle of Stalingrad
and partisan victories. When one of the prisoners asked him why the partisans won't rescue them from Sobibor, Pechersky allegedly replied: "What for? To free us all? The partisans have their hands full already. Nobody will do our job for us."
The Jewish prisoners who had worked at the Bełżec extermination camp were sent to Sobibor to be exterminated when Bełżec closed. From a note found among the clothing of the murdered, the Sobibor prisoners learned that those who had been killed were from work groups in the Belzec camp. The note said: "We worked for a year in Belzec. I don't know where they're taking us now. They say to Germany. In the freight cars there are dining tables. We received bread for three days, and tins and liquor. If all this is a lie, then know that death awaits you too. Don't trust the Germans. Avenge our blood!"
The leadership of the Polish Jews was aware that Belzec and Treblinka had been closed, dismantled and all remaining prisoners had been sent to the gas-chambers and they suspected that Sobibor would be next. There was a great urgency in coming up with a good escape plan, and Pechersky, with his army experience, was their best hope. The escape had to also coincide with the time when the Sobibor's deputy commandant Gustav Wagner went on vacation, since the prisoners felt that he was sharp enough to uncover the escape plan.
. Her fate after the escape was never factually established and she was never seen alive again. During an interview with Thomas Blatt
, Pechersky said the following regarding Luka: "Although I knew her only about two weeks, I will never forget her. I informed her minutes before the escape of the plan. She has given me a shirt. She said, 'it's a good luck shirt, put it on right now', and I did. It's now in the museum. I lost her in the turmoil of the revolt and never saw her again."
Luka's shirt still exists and is described on by Pechersky's daughter as:
guards leaderless, obtain weapons, and eliminate the remaining guards. Individual Polish Jewish inmates were assigned specific German SS guards that they were supposed to lure inside the workshops under some pretext and silently kill. Ester Raab, a survivor of the escape, recalled: "The plan was, at 4 o’clock (pm), should start (the escape), everybody has to kill his SS man, and his guard at his place of work." Only a small circle of trusted Polish Jewish inmates were aware of the escape plan as they didn't trust the Jews from other European countries.
On 14 October 1943, Pechersky's escape plan began. During the day, several German SS men were lured to workshops on a variety of pretexts, such as being fitted for new boots or expensive clothes. The SS men were then stabbed to death with carpenters' axes, awls, and chisels discreetly recovered from property left by gassed Jews; with other tradesmen's sharp tools; or with crude knives and axes made in the camp's machine shop. The blood was covered up with sawdust on the floor. The escapees were armed with a number of hand grenades, a rifle, a submachine gun and several pistols that the prisoners stole from the German living quarters, as well as the sidearms captured from the dead SS. Earlier in the day, SS-Oberscharführer Erich Bauer
, at the top of the death list created by Pechersky, unexpectedly drove out to Chełm for supplies. The uprising was almost postponed since Bauer's death was felt necessary for the success of the escape. Bauer came back early from Chełm, discovered that SS-Scharführer Rudolf Beckmann had been assassinated, and began shooting at the Jewish prisoners. The sound of the gunfire prompted Alexander Pechersky to begin the revolt earlier than planned. Pechersky screamed the preplanned code-words: "Hurrah, the revolt has begun!"
Disorganized groups of prisoners ran in every direction. Ada Lichtman, a survivor of the escape recalls: "Suddenly we heard shots... Mines
started to explode. Riot and confusion prevailed, everything was thundering around. The doors of the workshop were opened, and everyone rushed through... We ran out of the workshop. All around were the bodies of the dead and wounded." Alexander Pechersky was able to successfully escape into the woods. At the end of the uprising, 11 German SS personnel and an unknown number of Ukrainian guards were killed. Out of approximately 550 Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor death camp, 130 chose not to participate in the uprising and remained in the camp; about 80 were killed during the escape either by machine gun fire from watchtowers, or while getting through a mine field in the camp's outer perimeter; 170 more were recaptured by the Nazis during large-scale searches. All who remained in the camp or caught after the escape were executed. However, 53 Sobibor escapees survived the war. Within days after the uprising, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler
ordered the camp closed, dismantled and planted with trees.
Pechersky, along with two other escapees, wandered the forests until they ran into Yakov Biskowitz, and another Sobibor escapee. Biskowitz testified at the Eichmann Trial regarding the meeting:
The two Russian Jewish soldiers who Yahov Biskowitz met with Pechersky were Alexander Shubayev (who was responsible for executing SS-Untersturmführer
Johann Niemann
; was later killed fighting the Germans) and Arkady Moishejwicz Wajspapier (who was responsible for executing SS-Oberscharführer
Siegfried Graetschus
and Volksdeutscher Ivan Klatt; survived the war). For over a year Pechersky fought with the Yehiel's Group partisans as a demolition expert and later with the Soviet group of Voroshilov
Partisans, until the Red Army drove out the Germans from Belarus.
As an escaped POW, Pechersky was conscripted into a special penal battalions
, conforming to Stalin's Order No. 270 and was sent to the front to fight German forces in some of the toughest engagements of the war. Pechersky's battalion commander, Major Andreev, was so shocked by his description of Sobibor that he permitted Pechersky to go to Moscow
and speak to the Commission of Inquiry of the Crimes of Fascist-German Aggressors and their Accomplices
. The Commission listened to Pechersky and published the report Uprising in Sobibor based on his testimony. This report was included in the Black Book, one of the first comprehensive compilations about the Holocaust, written by Vasily Grossman
and Ilya Ehrenburg
.
For fighting the Germans as part of the penal battalions, Pechersky was promoted to the rank of captain and received a medal for bravery. He was eventually discharged after a serious foot injury. In a hospital in Moscow, he was introduced to his future wife, Olga Kotova.
theater. The mass murder of Jews at the Sobibor death camp became part of the charges against leading Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials
. The International Tribunal at Nuremberg wanted to call Pechersky as a witness
, but the Soviet government wouldn't allow him to travel to Germany to testify.
In 1948, during the Soviet persecution of Jews known as 'Rootless cosmopolitan
' campaign, explained as the removal of subversives who lacked full allegiance to the Soviet Union, Pechersky was fired from his job and imprisoned along with his brother. Only after Stalin
's death in 1953 and mounting international pressure for his release, was Pechersky freed. His brother however succumbed to a diabetic coma while in prison. Pechersky was permitted to resume working at a small amateur musical theater but this time at a demoted position.
The Soviet government prevented Pechersky from testifying at the Eichmann Trial in Israel
, only allowing a short deposition in Moscow which was controlled by the KGB
. In 1963, he appeared as a witness during the Soviet trial of 11 former Ukrainian guards at Sobibor; all of whom were convicted and 10 of whom were executed. According to his daughter in an interview, Pechersky was prevented by the Soviet Union government from testifying in multiple international trials related to Sobibor. The final time Pechersky was refused to leave the country and testify was in 1987 at a trial in Poland, and according to his daughter, this refusal "just crippled my father. He almost stopped getting out of bed and instantly aged."
Alexander Pechersky died on January 19, 1990, and was buried at the northern cemetery in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. As of 2009, Pechersky's daughter, granddaughter and two great-grandsons live in Rostov-on-Don (his niece, her son and their descendants live in Israel).
An award-winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann
, entitled Sobibor, 14 Octobre 1943, 16 heures. The revolt was also dramatized in the 1987 British
TV movie Escape from Sobibor
, in which Rutger Hauer received a Golden Globe Award
for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Television) for his portrayal of "Sasha". Pechersky however did not attend the premiere of the movie; his widow later stated that the Soviet government denied him permission to travel to the United States
.
Only in 2007, 17 years after his death, was a small memorial
plaque placed on the side of the building where he lived in Rostov-on-Don. There is also a memorial wall with his name engraved on it in Boston
, United States. A street is named in his honor in Safed
, Israel.
Rebellion
Rebellion, uprising or insurrection, is a refusal of obedience or order. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors aimed at destroying or replacing an established authority such as a government or a head of state...
and mass-escape of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
from a Nazi extermination camp during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; this occurred at the Sobibor extermination camp
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
on 14 October 1943.
Early life
Pechersky, a son of a Jewish lawyer, was born on February 22, 1909 in KremenchukKremenchuk
Kremenchuk is an important industrial city in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Kremenchutskyi Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on the banks of Dnieper River.-History:Kremenchuk was...
, Poltava Governorate
Poltava Governorate
The Poltava Governorate or Government of Poltava was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate which was split between the Chernigov Governorate and Poltava Governorate with an...
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
). In 1915, his family moved to Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
where he eventually worked as an electrician at a locomotive
Locomotive
A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...
repair factory. After graduating a university with a diploma in music and literature, he became an accountant and manager of a small school for amateur musicians.
World War II
On 22 June 1941, the day when GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
invaded the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Pechersky was conscripted
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
into the Soviet Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
with a rank of junior lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
. By September 1941, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant quartermaster
Quartermaster
Quartermaster refers to two different military occupations depending on if the assigned unit is land based or naval.In land armies, especially US units, it is a term referring to either an individual soldier or a unit who specializes in distributing supplies and provisions to troops. The senior...
(class II). In the early autumn of 1941, he rescued his wounded commander from being captured by the Germans. He didn't receive any medals for this deed. One of his fellow soldiers reportedly said: "Sasha, if what you've done doesn't make you a hero, I don't know who is!" In October 1941, during the Battle of Moscow
Battle of Moscow
The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, capital of...
, their unit was surrounded and captured by the Germans in the pocket at the city of Vyazma
Vyazma
Vyazma is a town and the administrative center of Vyazemsky District of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Vyazma River, about halfway between Smolensk and Mozhaysk. Throughout its turbulent history, the city defended western approaches to the city of Moscow...
, Smolensk Oblast
Smolensk Oblast
Smolensk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its area is . Population: -Geography:The administrative center of Smolensk Oblast is the city of Smolensk. Other ancient towns include Vyazma and Dorogobuzh....
.
Captured, Pechersky soon contracted typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
, but survived the seven-month long illness. In May 1942, he escaped along with four other prisoners of war, but they were all recaptured the same day. He was then sent to a penal camp at Borisov, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
, and from there to a prisoners of war (POW) camp located in the forest next to the city of Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
. During a mandatory medical examination it was discovered that he was circumcised
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
. Pechersky recalled a German medical officer asking him: "Do you admit to being a Jew?" He admitted it, since any denial would result in a whipping
Flagellation
Flagellation or flogging is the act of methodically beating or whipping the human body. Specialised implements for it include rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails and the sjambok...
, and was thrown into a cellar called "the Jewish grave" along with other Jewish POWs (prisoners of war), where for 10 days he sat in complete darkness, being fed 100 grams (3.5 oz) of wheat and a cup of water every second day.
On August 20, 1942, Pechersky was sent to a SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
-operated arbeitslager
Arbeitslager
Arbeitslager is a German language word which means labor camp.The German government under Nazism used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during World War II....
, a work camp, in Minsk. The camp housed 500 Jews from the Minsk Ghetto
Minsk Ghetto
The Minsk Ghetto was created soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest in Eastern Europe, and the largest in the German-occupied territory of the Soviet Union...
, as well as Jewish Soviet POWs; there were also between 200–300 Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
inmates whom the Germans labeled as incorrigible: people who were suspected of contacting the Soviet partisans
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
and those who were repeatedly truant while working for the Germans. The prisoners were starved and worked from dawn till dusk. Pechersky wrote about the Minsk work camp:
- The German Nazi camp commandant didn't let a single day pass without killing someone. If you looked at his face you could tell he was a sadist. He was thin, his upper lip shaking and his left eye bloodshot. He always had a hangover or was drunk and committed unspeakable horrors. He shot people for no reason and his favorite hobby was commanding his dog to attack random people who were ordered not to defend themselves.
At Sobibor
On 18 September 1943, Pechersky, along with 2,000 Jews from Minsk including about 100 Soviet Jewish POWs, was placed in a train cattle car which arrived at the Sobibor extermination campSobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
on September 23, 1943. Eighty prisoners from the train, including Pechersky, were selected for work in Lager II. The remaining 1,920 Jews were immediately led to the gas chambers. Pechersky later recalled his thoughts as the train pulled up to Sobibor, "How many circles of hell were there in Dante's Inferno
Inferno (Dante)
Inferno is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through what is largely the medieval concept of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as...
? It seems there were nine. How many have already passed? Being surrounded, being captured, camps in Vyazma, Smolensk
Smolensk
Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River. Situated west-southwest of Moscow, this walled city was destroyed several times throughout its long history since it was on the invasion routes of both Napoleon and Hitler. Today, Smolensk...
, Borisov, Minsk... And finally I am here. What's next?" The appearance of Soviet POWs produced an enormous impression on Sobibor prisoners: "hungry hope-filled eyes following their every move".
Pechersky wrote about his first day in Sobibor:
- I was sitting outside on a pile of logs in the evening with Solomon (Shlomo) Leitman, who subsequently became my top commander in the uprising. I asked him about the huge, strange fire burning 500 meters away from us behind some trees and about the unpleasant smell throughout the camp. He warned me that the guards forbade looking there, and told me that they are burning the corpses of my murdered comrades who arrived with me that day. I did not believe him, but he continued: He told me that the camp existed for more than a year and that almost every day a train came with two thousand new victims who are all murdered within a few hours. He said around 500 Jewish prisoners – PolishPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, FrenchFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, German, Dutch and CzechoslovakCzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
work here and that my transport was the first one to bring Russian Jews. He said that on this tiny plot of land, no more than 10 hectareHectareThe hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
s, (24.7 acres or .1 square kilometer) hundreds of thousands of Jewish women, children and men were murdered. I thought about the future. Should I try to escape alone or with a small group? Should I leave the rest of the prisoners to be tortured and murdered? I rejected this thought.
During his third day at Sobibor, Alexander Pechersky earned the respect of fellow prisoners by standing up to Karl Frenzel
Karl Frenzel
SS-Oberscharführer Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel was the commandant of Sobibor extermination camp's Lager I section, which was the section for the Sonderkommando forced-labor prisoner-workers, who also herded victims into the gas chambers...
, an SS senior officer, as the incident was recalled by Leon Feldhendler.
- Pechersky, still wearing his Soviet Army uniform, was assigned to dig up tree stumps in the North Camp. Frenzel was in charge because an underling was elsewhere and was in a bad mood. Frenzel was waiting for an excuse to pick on someone since he considered himself an officer and a gentleman and waited for some reason to begin his sadistic games. 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 while resting on his axe. KapoKapoKapo can refer to one of the following:* Kapo , a Hawaiian goddess or god* Kapo , a privileged prisoner who served as a barracks supervisor/warder or led work details in a Nazi concentration camp...
Porzyczki translated when Frenzel asked Pechersky if he didn’t like what he saw. Pechersky didn't bow down, shake or cower in fear but answered, Yes Oberscharfuhrer. Franzel told Pechersky that he had 5 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. Franzel looked at his watch, and said: Begin.
- 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, turned around and got back to chopping down new tree stumps. 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 and that he wasn’t hungry. Frenzel turned around and left, leaving Kapo Porzyczki in charge. That evening, this episode of defiance spread throughout Sobibor. This episode influenced the leadership of the Polish Jews to approach Pechersky about ideas for an escape plan.
Pechersky's plan merged the idea of a mass escape with vengeance: to help as many prisoners as possible to escape while executing SS officers and guards. His final goal was to join up with the partisans
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...
and continue fighting the Nazis.
Five days after arriving at Sobibor, Pechersky was again approached by Solomon Leitman on behalf of Leon Feldhendler, the leader of the camp's Polish Jews. Leitman was one of the few prisoners who understood Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Pechersky didn't speak either Yiddish or Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
. Pechersky was invited to talk with a group of Jewish prisoner leaders from Poland, to whom he spoke about the Red Army victory in the Battle of Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
and partisan victories. When one of the prisoners asked him why the partisans won't rescue them from Sobibor, Pechersky allegedly replied: "What for? To free us all? The partisans have their hands full already. Nobody will do our job for us."
The Jewish prisoners who had worked at the Bełżec extermination camp were sent to Sobibor to be exterminated when Bełżec closed. From a note found among the clothing of the murdered, the Sobibor prisoners learned that those who had been killed were from work groups in the Belzec camp. The note said: "We worked for a year in Belzec. I don't know where they're taking us now. They say to Germany. In the freight cars there are dining tables. We received bread for three days, and tins and liquor. If all this is a lie, then know that death awaits you too. Don't trust the Germans. Avenge our blood!"
The leadership of the Polish Jews was aware that Belzec and Treblinka had been closed, dismantled and all remaining prisoners had been sent to the gas-chambers and they suspected that Sobibor would be next. There was a great urgency in coming up with a good escape plan, and Pechersky, with his army experience, was their best hope. The escape had to also coincide with the time when the Sobibor's deputy commandant Gustav Wagner went on vacation, since the prisoners felt that he was sharp enough to uncover the escape plan.
Luka
Pechersky clandestinely met with Feldhendler under the guise of meeting Luka, a woman he was supposedly involved with. Luka is often described as an 18 year old woman from Holland, but records indicate she was 28 and from Germany, her real name was Gertrude Poppert–Schonborn. After the war, Pechersky insisted that the relationship was platonicPlatonic love
Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...
. Her fate after the escape was never factually established and she was never seen alive again. During an interview with Thomas Blatt
Thomas Blatt
Thomas "Toivi" Blatt was one of the few survivors who successfully escaped Sobibor extermination camp. While fleeing the SS he was betrayed by a farmer who was hiding him resulting in a gunshot injury to the jaw. The bullet remains there to this day...
, Pechersky said the following regarding Luka: "Although I knew her only about two weeks, I will never forget her. I informed her minutes before the escape of the plan. She has given me a shirt. She said, 'it's a good luck shirt, put it on right now', and I did. It's now in the museum. I lost her in the turmoil of the revolt and never saw her again."
Luka's shirt still exists and is described on by Pechersky's daughter as:
- It is very well preserved. Light gray. Has dark-gray stripes. A little worn from wear and being often washed. Long sleeves. The shirt collar has some blurred letters of the Latin alphabet which are no longer readable.
The uprising
According to Pechersky's plan, the prisoners would assassinate the German SS staff, thereby rendering the auxiliaryAuxiliaries
An auxiliary force is a group affiliated with, but not part of, a military or police organization. In some cases, auxiliaries are armed forces operating in the same manner as regular soldiers...
guards leaderless, obtain weapons, and eliminate the remaining guards. Individual Polish Jewish inmates were assigned specific German SS guards that they were supposed to lure inside the workshops under some pretext and silently kill. Ester Raab, a survivor of the escape, recalled: "The plan was, at 4 o’clock (pm), should start (the escape), everybody has to kill his SS man, and his guard at his place of work." Only a small circle of trusted Polish Jewish inmates were aware of the escape plan as they didn't trust the Jews from other European countries.
On 14 October 1943, Pechersky's escape plan began. During the day, several German SS men were lured to workshops on a variety of pretexts, such as being fitted for new boots or expensive clothes. The SS men were then stabbed to death with carpenters' axes, awls, and chisels discreetly recovered from property left by gassed Jews; with other tradesmen's sharp tools; or with crude knives and axes made in the camp's machine shop. The blood was covered up with sawdust on the floor. The escapees were armed with a number of hand grenades, a rifle, a submachine gun and several pistols that the prisoners stole from the German living quarters, as well as the sidearms captured from the dead SS. Earlier in the day, SS-Oberscharführer Erich Bauer
Erich Bauer
Hermann Erich Bauer , sometimes referred to as "Gasmeister", was a SS-Oberscharführer . He participated in Nazi Germany's Action T4 program and later in Operation Reinhard, serving as a gas chamber operator at Sobibor extermination camp...
, at the top of the death list created by Pechersky, unexpectedly drove out to Chełm for supplies. The uprising was almost postponed since Bauer's death was felt necessary for the success of the escape. Bauer came back early from Chełm, discovered that SS-Scharführer Rudolf Beckmann had been assassinated, and began shooting at the Jewish prisoners. The sound of the gunfire prompted Alexander Pechersky to begin the revolt earlier than planned. Pechersky screamed the preplanned code-words: "Hurrah, the revolt has begun!"
Disorganized groups of prisoners ran in every direction. Ada Lichtman, a survivor of the escape recalls: "Suddenly we heard shots... Mines
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
started to explode. Riot and confusion prevailed, everything was thundering around. The doors of the workshop were opened, and everyone rushed through... We ran out of the workshop. All around were the bodies of the dead and wounded." Alexander Pechersky was able to successfully escape into the woods. At the end of the uprising, 11 German SS personnel and an unknown number of Ukrainian guards were killed. Out of approximately 550 Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor death camp, 130 chose not to participate in the uprising and remained in the camp; about 80 were killed during the escape either by machine gun fire from watchtowers, or while getting through a mine field in the camp's outer perimeter; 170 more were recaptured by the Nazis during large-scale searches. All who remained in the camp or caught after the escape were executed. However, 53 Sobibor escapees survived the war. Within days after the uprising, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
ordered the camp closed, dismantled and planted with trees.
After the escape
Immediately after the escape, in the forest, a group of 50 prisoners followed Pechersky. After some time, Pechersky informed the Polish Jews that he along with a few Soviet Jewish soldiers would enter the nearby village and then shortly return with food. They collected all the money and weapons except one rifle but never came back. In 1980, Thomas Blatt asked Perchensky why he abandoned the other survivors. Pechersky answered:- My job was done. You were Polish Jews in your own terrain. I belonged in the Soviet Union and still considered myself a soldier. In my opinion, the chances for survival were better in smaller units. To tell the people straight forward: "we must part" would not have worked. You have seen, they followed every step of mine, we all would perish. [...] what can I say? You were there. We were only people. The basic instincts came into play. It was still a fight for survival. This is the first time I hear about money collection. It was a turmoil, it was difficult to control everything. I admit, I have seen the imbalance in the distribution of the weaponry, but you must understand, they would rather die than to give up their arms.
Pechersky, along with two other escapees, wandered the forests until they ran into Yakov Biskowitz, and another Sobibor escapee. Biskowitz testified at the Eichmann Trial regarding the meeting:
- The two of us wandered through the forests, until we met Sasha Pechersky. There were three of them whom I came across. One had weak legs. They wore white clothes made of hand-woven material. They had sunk into mud after escaping. After that, we met together. There were now five of us – we walked to the Skrodnitze forests. There we met the first Jewish partisansJewish partisansJewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II....
called Yehiel's Group (under Yehiel Grynszpan) – it was a group of Jews who had undertaken action. We engaged in sabotagingSabotageSabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
railway lines, cutting telephone wires, hit-and-runHit-and-run tacticsHit-and-run tactics is a tactical doctrine where the purpose of the combat involved is not to seize control of territory, but to inflict damage on a target and immediately exit the area to avoid the enemy's defense and/or retaliation.-History:...
attacks on German army units."
The two Russian Jewish soldiers who Yahov Biskowitz met with Pechersky were Alexander Shubayev (who was responsible for executing SS-Untersturmführer
Untersturmführer
Untersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the German Schutzstaffel first created in July 1934. The rank can trace its origins to the older SA rank of Sturmführer which had existed since the founding of the SA in 1921...
Johann Niemann
Johann Niemann
Johann Niemann was an SS-Untersturmführer and deputy commandant of Sobibor extermination camp...
; was later killed fighting the Germans) and Arkady Moishejwicz Wajspapier (who was responsible for executing SS-Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...
Siegfried Graetschus
Siegfried Graetschus
Siegfried Graetschus was an SS-Oberscharführer at Sobibor extermination camp. In the process, Graetschus aided with the genocide of Jews and other peoples at Sobibor during Operation Reinhard of The Holocaust.Gratschus joined the SS in 1935 and the Nazi Party in 1936...
and Volksdeutscher Ivan Klatt; survived the war). For over a year Pechersky fought with the Yehiel's Group partisans as a demolition expert and later with the Soviet group of Voroshilov
Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov , popularly known as Klim Voroshilov was a Soviet military officer, politician, and statesman...
Partisans, until the Red Army drove out the Germans from Belarus.
As an escaped POW, Pechersky was conscripted into a special penal battalions
Penal military unit
Penal battalions, penal companies, etc., are military formations consisting of convicted persons for which military service in such units was either the assigned punishment or an alternative to imprisonment or the death penalty.-Nazi Germany:...
, conforming to Stalin's Order No. 270 and was sent to the front to fight German forces in some of the toughest engagements of the war. Pechersky's battalion commander, Major Andreev, was so shocked by his description of Sobibor that he permitted Pechersky to go to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and speak to the Commission of Inquiry of the Crimes of Fascist-German Aggressors and their Accomplices
Extraordinary State Commission
The Extraordinary State Commission – fully: "Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes perpetrated by the German–Fascist invaders and their accomplices, and the damage inflicted by them on citizens, collective farms, social organisations, State enterprises and...
. The Commission listened to Pechersky and published the report Uprising in Sobibor based on his testimony. This report was included in the Black Book, one of the first comprehensive compilations about the Holocaust, written by Vasily Grossman
Vasily Grossman
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was a Soviet writer and journalist. Grossman trained as an engineer and worked in the Donets Basin, but changed career in the 1930s and published short stories and several novels...
and Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...
.
For fighting the Germans as part of the penal battalions, Pechersky was promoted to the rank of captain and received a medal for bravery. He was eventually discharged after a serious foot injury. In a hospital in Moscow, he was introduced to his future wife, Olga Kotova.
After the war
After the end of World War II, Pechersky returned to Rostov-on-Don, where he lived before the war, and started working as administrator in an OperettaOperetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
theater. The mass murder of Jews at the Sobibor death camp became part of the charges against leading Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
. The International Tribunal at Nuremberg wanted to call Pechersky as a witness
Witness
A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about an event, or in the criminal justice systems usually a crime, through his or her senses and can help certify important considerations about the crime or event. A witness who has seen the event first hand is known as an eyewitness...
, but the Soviet government wouldn't allow him to travel to Germany to testify.
In 1948, during the Soviet persecution of Jews known as 'Rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan was a Soviet euphemism widely used during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953, which culminated in the "exposure" of the alleged Doctors' plot...
' campaign, explained as the removal of subversives who lacked full allegiance to the Soviet Union, Pechersky was fired from his job and imprisoned along with his brother. Only after Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's death in 1953 and mounting international pressure for his release, was Pechersky freed. His brother however succumbed to a diabetic coma while in prison. Pechersky was permitted to resume working at a small amateur musical theater but this time at a demoted position.
The Soviet government prevented Pechersky from testifying at the Eichmann Trial in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, only allowing a short deposition in Moscow which was controlled by the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
. In 1963, he appeared as a witness during the Soviet trial of 11 former Ukrainian guards at Sobibor; all of whom were convicted and 10 of whom were executed. According to his daughter in an interview, Pechersky was prevented by the Soviet Union government from testifying in multiple international trials related to Sobibor. The final time Pechersky was refused to leave the country and testify was in 1987 at a trial in Poland, and according to his daughter, this refusal "just crippled my father. He almost stopped getting out of bed and instantly aged."
Alexander Pechersky died on January 19, 1990, and was buried at the northern cemetery in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. As of 2009, Pechersky's daughter, granddaughter and two great-grandsons live in Rostov-on-Don (his niece, her son and their descendants live in Israel).
Remembrance
Alexander Pechersky features prominently in a Dutch-Russian documentary Revolt in Sobibor (1989) by director Pavel Kogan.An award-winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...
, entitled Sobibor, 14 Octobre 1943, 16 heures. The revolt was also dramatized in the 1987 British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
TV movie Escape from Sobibor
Escape from Sobibor
Escape from Sobibor is a 1987 British made-for-TV film which aired on CBS. It deals with the extermination camp at Sobibor, the site of the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination camps...
, in which Rutger Hauer received a Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...
for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Television) for his portrayal of "Sasha". Pechersky however did not attend the premiere of the movie; his widow later stated that the Soviet government denied him permission to travel to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Only in 2007, 17 years after his death, was a small memorial
Memorial
A memorial is an object which serves as a focus for memory of something, usually a person or an event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or art objects such as sculptures, statues or fountains, and even entire parks....
plaque placed on the side of the building where he lived in Rostov-on-Don. There is also a memorial wall with his name engraved on it in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, United States. A street is named in his honor in Safed
Safed
Safed , is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. Due to its high elevation, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters...
, Israel.