Surviving in a fascist concentration camp was almost impossible. But in the Soviet Union, people were brought up who didn’t just survive — they staged uprisings, organized mass escape, their will to resist was impossible to break. One of these heroes was Alexander Pechersky, a junior lieutenant who was surrounded by the regiment at the very beginning of the war, and then captured. When the enemies discovered that he was not only an officer, but also a Jew, his fate was decided.
Sobibor
The history of the uprising of prisoners of this death camp, located in southeastern Poland, is very well known in the West. After the war, the Soviet Union decided to forgive Poland for the venality and treacherous nature of a fairly large part of its population, and therefore many things unpleasant for the closest neighbor were simply tactfully hushed up. Alexander Pechersky was not known in the country, and the uprising of the prisoners of Sobibor was left without an honest assessment, and absolutely undeservedly. And in Western Europe and Israel, films were made about this camp and about the uprising itself, many books were written. The leader of the rebels - Alexander Pechersky - is known abroad very widely and is considered a great hero.
What was so about the Nazi death camp? Why was it created? It opened in early 1942 with a single purpose - the complete and absolute destruction, that is, genocide, of the Jewish population. There was an extensive program for this, where the whole process was prescribed step by step. Over the course of the camp’s one and a half year’s existence, more than two hundred and fifty thousand Jews died - residents of Poland and neighboring European countries.
Destruction technology
As in all concentration camps, in Sobibor with the prisoners acted very simply. A narrow gauge railway leading to the forest supplied suicide bombers with a whole train every day. Of these, a number of people were chosen later, and the rest were sent "to the bath", that is, to the gas chamber. Fifteen minutes later, the chosen “big guys” could have buried their fellow travelers in special ditches that had been prepared around the camp. Their "bathing day" was also not far away, since the household affairs in the camp were very difficult, and no one was going to feed the prisoners. The "big guys" quickly lost their condition.
Such an approach was invented precisely by the Nazis, and they considered it to be very economically viable. There were in each camp those who were not prisoners. In addition to the SS, guarded by Sobibor and collaborators, that is, all kinds of traitors. The vast majority are Ukrainian Bandera. Many of them are worth a separate story, so that humanity always remembers how scary it is. For example, the fate of the anti-hero opposing such a person as Alexander Pechersky is interesting.
Ivan Demyanjuk
Who would have thought that in the third millennium the lawsuits related to the Great Patriotic War would still continue? Few witnesses of that time survived to this day.
The trial of a former Soviet man, a prisoner of war, and later - a particularly bloodthirsty sadist and executioner, overseer of Sobibor, and even later - American citizen Ivan (John) Demyanjuk lasted a year and a half and ended with the charge of killing several tens of thousands of Sobibor suicide bombers. Ninety-year-old Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison for these crimes.
For what
This non-human was born in 1920 in Ukraine. With the beginning of World War II, Demyanjuk was drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, and in 1942 surrendered. In a concentration camp, he entered the service of the Nazis. He was remembered by the Treblinka, Majdanek, and Flusseborg camps. Work argued - the track record was replenished. But Sobibor was less fortunate, because there was an uprising and the escape of prisoners, which does not bring any honor to the guards.
One can imagine with what degree of cruelty and sadism Demyaniuk ("Ivan the Terrible" for the SS men) was cracking down on those whom he managed to catch. There is evidence for that, but the details are too terrible to be given here. There simply could not be a successful escape from the death camp. They were not in Sobibor until Alexander Pechersky, a military national hero, appeared there. There was already an underground organization in the camp, but it consisted of people of purely civilians, moreover, they often perished in the gas chamber. The escape was planned, but this plan could not even be finalized.
Lieutenant from Rostov-on-Don
Alexander Aronovich Pechersky, whose biography was almost unknown to the general population of his native country almost until the end of his life, was also born in Ukraine, in Kremenchug, in 1909. In 1915, the family of the lawyer, his father, moved to Rostov-on-Don, which Alexander considered his whole life to be his native city. After graduating from school, he got a job as an electrician at a factory and went to university. He loved amateur performances very much, and the audience loved him too.
On the first day of the war, Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky was already on his way to the front. His position was such, since the university was graduated. Alexander fought with the Nazis near Smolensk in the artillery regiment of the 19th army. They were surrounded near Vyazma, Pechersky and his colleagues, carrying the wounded commander on their shoulders, broke through the battle line with fights, which had already moved significantly away. Ammo is over. Many fighters were injured or seriously ill - it is not so easy to wade through swamps in the cold. The group was surrounded by the Nazis and disarmed. So the captivity began.
In captivity
The Red Army was driven west - from camp to camp, and, of course, only those who could serve in the quarries. The officer of the Red Army Alexander Pechersky did not want to submit, he did not die either, and he never left hope of escape. Outwardly, he did not look like a Jew, so the Nazis, when they got an idea (of a denunciation) of his nationality, immediately sent him to Sobibor to die. Together with Alexander, about six hundred people arrived at the camp.
Of these, only eighty were temporarily left to live, the rest were no longer alive after an hour. Alexander fell into the category of healthy people, and later it turned out that he knew the carpentry as well, so until he fell down without strength, he would work for the needs of the concentration camp and all of Germany. So the Nazis decided, but not Lieutenant Pechersky from Sobibor. Illusions were alien to the lieutenant, he perfectly understood that if they did not kill him today, they would do it a bit later. And this delay is necessary for him in order to give the Nazis the last battle, to complete their last feat. It’s not so easy to kill Alexander Pechersky.
Plan
He explained to the underground group that single shoots are impossible neither here, nor in any other camp, since you cannot go further than the barbed wire. He insisted on an uprising, in which literally everyone should run away from the camp, because the rest would be killed in any case, but only after torture and bullying. One has only to look at the faces of Bandera people who walk around the camp and kill who they want and when they want. And this is still no one is resisting and not buzzing. Those who remain in the camp after the escape will be tortured fiercely.
Of course, many will also die during the escape. But each of those fleeing will have a chance. The underground committee approved the plan that was proposed. So he received a new position, the most responsible in his life, Alexander Pechersky - leader of the uprising. Almost all the prisoners who were informed of this escape plan approved this method. All the same, it’s necessary to die, it’s better not with such a weak, dumb crowd, walking sheep-like into the gas chamber. You need to die with dignity, if the opportunity arises.
Pure Jewish Trick
The fact is that in the camp there were not only carpentry workshops, but also sewing workshops. Who better than a Jewish tailor will be able to build a uniform that looks really beautiful on an SS man? Tailors from the echelons of suicide bombers were also taken out, as were the joiners and masons, even if they were not "healthy". Tailors were especially needed for the needs of great Germany. Here in this sewing workshop it all started. Bandera guards, by the way, also did not disdain her services.
And on October 14, 1943, the guards wandering around the camp began to lure them one by one into the fitting room, where they were being hunted with an hatchet or strangled with a rope, after which they were disarmed and put into the cellar. For this mission, prisoners of war with experience in hand-to-hand combat were specially selected. The most interesting thing is that Alexander Pechersky, the hero of the whole story, was in Sobibor for less than three weeks, but already managed to create a detachment that was quite capable of clearly and coherently acting. Such were his will and determination to go to the end.
The escape
Silently and invisibly to the prying eyes, eleven Germans and almost all guards free of guards ceased to exist. Only then was the alarm raised, and Sobibor’s suicide bombers forced to make a breakthrough. This was the second stage of the plan drawn up by Alexander Pechersky. Armed with trophies, the prisoners began to shoot at the remaining guards. A machine gun was working on the tower, and there was no way to get it. People ran. They rushed to the barbed wire, paving the way for their comrades with their bodies. They died under machine-gun fire, were blown up by mines that surrounded the camp, but did not stop.
The gates were broken, and here it is - freedom! Nevertheless, one hundred and thirty people out of almost six hundred remained in the camp: exhausted and sick, those who, if not today, then tomorrow — into the gas chamber. There were those who hoped for their humility and mercy on the part of the Nazis. In vain! The camp ceased to exist. The next day, all remaining were shot, and soon Sobibor was destroyed. The land itself was leveled with bulldozers and planted cabbage on it. So that even no memory remains of what was here before. Why? Because it was a shame for Nazi Germany - the exhausted prisoners of war escaped, and even successful.
Summary
A little less than three hundred suicide bombers found freedom, and a little over eighty found a glorious death during the breakthrough. Next, it was necessary to decide where to go, since all four sides were open for fugitives. They hunted for two weeks. One hundred and seventy people hid unsuccessfully. Bandera found and killed them. Almost all were given out by locals who turned out to be anti-Semites too.
Almost ninety fugitives were tortured not even by Ukrainian Bandera, but by the Poles. Of course, none of those caught by quick death died. Partly to blame for this is the choice made by fate. Mostly those who chose to hide in Poland died. The rest went with Alexander Pechersky through the Bug to Belarus, where they found the partisans and survived.
Homeland
Pechersky Alexander Aronovich, before the liberation of our country from the Nazi invaders, fought in the partisan detachment named after Shchors, was a successful demoman, and then returned to the Red Army and met in May 1945 with the rank of captain. He was wounded, was treated in a hospital near Moscow, where he met his future wife Olga. He had few rewards, despite the path full of hardships and deeds. Two years in captivity - this, as a rule, even sounds suspicious. However, he had the medal "For Military Merit". And this is instead of the Order of the Patriotic War, to which he was represented.
The reasons, of course, are clear. The uprising in Sobibor was not exaggerated in the press, since it was mono-ethnic, and it was not accepted to focus attention on this in the USSR - the international drove everyone, not the Jews. In Israel, Pechersk became a national hero, and relations between our country and the Promised Land meanwhile have deteriorated. And no one here wanted to read this uprising at the state level, as it was done there. And, of course, Poland. Proud noblemen would surely be offended if we had told the whole world that it was the Poles who had put to death those prisoners who had just managed to escape her, in the gas chamber, in the minefields … The USSR was not afraid to offend socialist Poland, simply did not want to. But sooner or later everything secret will certainly become apparent.
