< Continued from page 4

The Forest

Once in the forests, the escapees tried to quickly find relatives and friends. Though they started off in large groups of prisoners, they eventually broke into smaller and smaller groups in order to be able to find food and to hide.

Sasha had been leading one large group of about 50 prisoners. On October 17, the group stopped. Sasha chose several men, which included all the rifles of the group except one, and passed around a hat to collect money from the group to buy food.


He told the group that he and the others he had chosen were going to do some reconnaissance. The others protested, but Sasha promised he'd come back. He never did. After waiting for a long time, the group realized that Sasha was not going to come back, thus they split into smaller groups and headed off in different directions.

After the war, Sasha explained his leaving by saying that it would have been impossible to hide and feed such a large group. But no matter how truthful this statement, the remaining members of the group felt bitter and betrayed by Sasha.

Within four days of the escape, 100 of the 300 escapees were caught. The remaining 200 continued to flee and hide. Most were shot by local Poles or by partisans. Only 50 to 70 survived the war.¹⁴ Though this number is small, it is still much larger than if the prisoners had not revolted, for surely, the entire camp population would have been liquidated by the Nazis.

Notes

1. Alexander Pechersky as quoted in Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987) 307.

2. Alexander Pechersky as quoted in Ibid 307.
3. Alexander Pechersky as quoted in Ibid 307.
4. Alexander Pechersky as quoted in Ibid 307.
5. Ibid 308.
6. Thomas Toivi Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997) 144.
7. Ibid 141.
8. Ibid 139.
9. Arad, Belzec 321.
10. Ibid 324.
11. Yehuda Lerner as quoted in Ibid 327.
12. Richard Rashke, Escape From Sobibor (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995) 229.
13. Ada Lichtman as quoted in Arad, Belzec 331. 14. Ibid 364.

Bibliography

Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Blatt, Thomas Toivi. From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997.

Novitch, Miriam. Sobibor: Martyrdom and Revolt. New York: Holocaust Library, 1980.

Rashke, Richard. Escape From Sobibor. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995.