by Yitzhak Arad
37
Ideas and Organization for Resistance in Sobibor
The first ideas concerning organized resistance and mass escape were raised by prisoners in Sobibor at the beginning of 1943, and for the same reasons as in Treblinka: the feeling that the camp had almost accomplished its task and that therefore the liquidation of the prisoners was close. However, it was not until the late spring or the summer of 1943 that the ideas of resistance and escape began taking on some organizational form.
The leading figure in the circle of those with ideas for resistance was Leon Feldhendler, in his early thirties, the son of a rabbi, and a former head of the Judenrat in the Zolkiewka ghetto. The group also included some heads of the workshops in Sobibor: among them, Josef (family unknown), a tailor; Jakub (family unknown), a shoemaker; Yanek (family unknown), a carpenter; and several others.1
The event that prompted the operational decision to form an Underground organization was the killing of Jewish prisoners from Belzec death camp. After the liquidation of the camp at Belzec, the 600 prisoners who still remained in the camp were brought to Sobibor in late June 1943. They were told that they were being taken to Germany to work, but when they arrived at Sobibor they were removed from the train in groups of ten and shot. From a note found among the clothing of the murdered, the Sobibor prisoners learned that those who had been killed were, like themselves, prisoners. The note said:
We worked for a year in Belzec. I don’t know where they are 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!2
The Sobibor prisoners were suddenly confronted with the almost certain fate that awaited them. The slowdown in the transports at the end of July as a result of the cessation of transports from Holland contributed to the general feeling that the end was approaching.
The main work at which many of the prisoners were engaged during that period was the construction of barracks and bunkers for storing ammunition in Camp IV, but the prisoners realized that this work would not save them. The minefield laid around the fences of the camp at that time—June 1943—and the retaliation killings of prisoners after the escapes (see chapter 32) emphasized to Feldhendler and his friends that only a large-scale, organized escape might have a chance of success.
To carry out a successful escape, a way had to be found to eliminate the SS men. The Underground hoped that if the Germans were eliminated, the Ukrainians, or at least some of them, would not act against a prisoners’ uprising and that some of them would even join the escape. These hopes were based on the fact that after the German defeats on the eastern front the Ukrainian guardsmen began having second thoughts about their involvement in the camps. Some of them expressed these feelings in talks with prisoners, and some of them even escaped from the camp and joined the partisans.3
In the summer of 1943, the organizational framework of the Underground was still vague. In the testimonies of the survivors, there are only passing remarks concerning the activity of the Underground and their plans for uprising and escape in this period. Some details are even contradictory. The only plan about which we have more complete data is the plan to poison the SS men and stage a mass escape from the camp with the help of partisans. The initiators of this plan were Hersz Cukierman, a prisoner who worked as a cook in the prisoners’ kitchen, and Koszewadski, a Ukrainian from Kiev, who was in charge of this kitchen. Cukierman and Koszewadski had become friendly, and Koszewadski told Cukierman that he had contacts with partisans who would be able to help an escape of prisoners from the camp, but that money was needed to keep up these contacts. Cukierman gave Koszewadski hundreds of dollars on several occasions. He testified:
Koszewadski used to say that a day would come and he would open the gates of the camp for us. Whether his intention was that he would do it for money or for moral reasons I did not know. . . . I had full confidence in him. He told me that he was going to the “friends” in the forest and he needed money to get weapons. I spoke about him to Leon Feldhendler. . . . Koszewadski told me about a talk [he had had] with a certain doctor in Chelm who was in contact with the partisans. According to him, an attack on the camp was impossible because the camp was heavily guarded. In addition, he said such an attack would cause the death of the prisoners in the camp because the Germans would kill them. Koszewadski and the doctor proposed to poison the Germans and the Ukrainians who collaborated with them. The poisoning had to be carried out by two Jewish boys who worked in the German kitchen. . . . The poison was to take effect after six hours. The partisans would arrive that evening and liberate us. But this plan failed. An officer arrived from Majdanek (Lublin) who ordered that no Jews were to work in the German kitchen. The prisoners who worked in the German and Ukrainian kitchens were transferred to another working place.4
The poison that was to be used in this operation was taken from the camp pharmacy. Simha Bialowicz, who worked in the pharmacy, gave his version of the plan:
We were obsessed with the idea of avenging our dead and killing the SS. Hersz Cukierman, a young prisoner from Zamosc, suggested poison. He told me: “Try to find three bottles with 200 grams of morphine.” I got the morphine and gave it to him, but Wagner found one of the bottles. Four men and one girl were arrested. Wagner showed me the bottle, and I said: “I have never seen it before. Our bottles are labeled.” The SS man in charge of the pharmacy confirmed my words. I was lucky, but the five others were executed.5
Which of the two versions for abolishing the poisoning plan—the transfer of the Jews who worked in the kitchen, or the discovery of the morphine—was the true one, or if perhaps both of them took place, remains unclear. Koszewadski himself escaped from the camp. Whether he actually had contacts with partisans and intended to help organize an escape of the prisoners, or if his aim was merely to get money by using different excuses, is also an open question. In the testimonies concerning the plan no dates were mentioned. But if we consider that at that time there were partisans in the area of Sobibor, it had to be in the summer of 1943.
Cukierman also mentions a contact that he, Feldhendler, and his group had established with some other Ukrainians. In the summer of 1943 these Ukrainians presented themselves as Communist party members. They promised that for a substantial sum of money they could hire trucks to drive close by the camp on the night that they would be on guard duty and thus take out the prisoners. The Ukrainians with the lorries were to take the prisoners across the Bug River, where they would organize a partisan unit. The Ukrainians requested the money in advance to pay for the trucks. In the Underground there were differing opinions whether or not to trust the Ukrainians and give them the money in advance or to give them the money only after the prisoners were taken out of the camp. The compromise was that 700 dollars would be given in advance and the rest would be handed over after the prisoners left the camp in the trucks. One day a Ukrainian approached a member of the Underground group and informed him that they could remove only fifteen members of the Underground group from the camp. This proposal was refused. The Underground members suspected that the Ukrainians wanted to lure them out of the camp, take the money, and kill them.6 The entire proposition of the escape by truck was merely an invention of some of the Ukrainian guardsmen to get money from the prisoners.
Another plan that was discussed in Feldhendler’s group was to kill the SS men while they were sleeping. The killing had to be carried out by the youngsters, the so-called putzers, who worked daily, from the early hours, in the SS living quarters. On the day this plan would be carried out, these youngsters would be accompanied by some older prisoners and together they would kill the sleeping SS men with the axes that they used for their work. But this plan was eventually dropped. There were doubts as to whether the youngsters, boys between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, even with the help of some older prisoners, would be able to kill a dozen or so SS men. The
other drawback to this plan was that the killing could be carried out only in the early morning; therefore the escape from the camp would have to take place during the day. This would leave the pursuing forces the entire day for rounding up the escapees.7
In August 1943, an idea was raised in the Underground to set the clothing stores on fire. In the ensuing commotion, while the SS men and Ukrainians would be engaged in extinguishing the fire, the prisoners would burst through the gates and flee. This would have to take place either at noon, when the prisoners who were working in the stores would be out for lunch, or in the middle of the night. Two youngsters volunteered to hide inside the stores and remain there after all the others left; they would then set the fire, although they realized that they would not be able to escape the closed burning stores. Some bottles of gasoline were even prepared for this purpose. According to one of the survivors, Dov Freiberg, the plan was not realized because two of the prisoners who were supposed to participate in the escape opposed it and threatened to inform the Germans if the plan were not dropped. They did not believe in the possible success of the plan and claimed that “if we can live two or three weeks more, don’t kill us now.”8
Leon Feldhendler’s wife gave another version about what happened and why this plan was canceled. Based on what her husband told her, she wrote:
A young boy agreed to remain in the clothing store and set it on fire. This was to draw the attention of the Germans and be the sign for mass escape. He was closed inside the store. As he bid farewell, he wished all the others luck and expressed his happiness for his sacrifice. But at the last moment, before the fire could be set, some Germans appeared, and, being either drunk or suspecting that something was wrong, they went round the storage barrack. And then, he [Feldhendler], seeing that this time the plan could not succeed, opened the store with the key he had and pulled out the boy, who was in despair because the plan had failed.9
Another plan was to dig a tunnel that would lead from Camp I outside the fences and minefield. It had to start in the barrack where the prisoners were living and its length had to be 120–130 meters. The work on this tunnel continued for two months and part of it had been completed. But after the Germans discovered a tunnel in Camp III they began searching for more tunnels and the idea was abandoned.10
All these plans lacked thorough detailed planning and can be considered more as general ideas than actual plans for action. One of the major shortcomings of the Underground group was the absence of someone with leadership ability and military training who would be able to work out a complex escape plan and inspire the prisoners that it could be carried out successfully. Feldhendler was more an idealist than a man to command such an action. He realized this and began looking for such a person among the prisoners.
Feldhendler finally found a Dutch Jew, Joseph Jacobs, who was a former naval officer and who had been brought to Sobibor on May 21, 1943. According to some testimonies, Jacobs was a journalist and had fought in the International Brigade in Spain. Jacobs took it upon himself to organize the uprising together with his Dutch friends, in conjunction with the Underground group. According to the new plan that was formulated in August, the insurgents, assisted by several Ukrainian guards who had agreed to collaborate, would steal into the arms shed in the afternoon when the SS men were in the dining hall. The insurgents would arm themselves, burst through the main gate, and escape to the forests. One of the Ukrainians informed, however, and the escape plan became known. Jacobs was seized and interrogated about his partners in the plot. In spite of continued blows and torture, Jacobs did not break; he adhered to his claim that he alone planned the escape. In reprisal for the escape attempt, Jacobs and seventy-two Dutch Jews were shot.11 Ada Lichtman testified as to what happened at the roll call:
Wagner appeared at the square and ordered all seventy-two Dutch men to march out. They were taken to Camp III. After a short while we could hear salvos of shots aimed at our comrades. We had to remain [at the roll call] during the entire time. The execution lasted half an hour. In the meantime, Frenzel arrived and ordered the Dutch women to sing Dutch songs. The salvos of the shooting mixed with the tunes of the forced songs.12
According to some testimonies a prisoner afraid of retaliation if the escape were to be carried out informed the Ukrainians with whom he was friendly about the planned escape. In some testimonies given about this escape plan, neither Feldhendler nor other Polish Jews are mentioned as having had any contact with Jacobs, and the initiative for this escape is credited exclusively to Dutch Jews.13
While the resistance and escape plans were being discussed by Feldhendler’s group, another escape was planned in the first half of September 1943 by six capos headed by Oberkapo Moshe Sturm, nicknamed “Moses the Governor.” The details of this plan and how the capos intended to escape are unknown. One of the prisoners, a man called “Berliner” (from Berlin), informed the camp authorities about the planned escape and the six capos were arrested and executed in front of all the prisoners. As a reward, Berliner was appointed Oberkapo instead of Moshe Sturm. Shortly thereafter, Berliner was poisoned by the prisoners. Or, according to another version, some of the prisoners, headed by a capo named Pozyczka, under cover of night threw a sack over Berliner’s head and beat him badly. Berliner was forced to remain in bed the next day and eventually died. Before Berliner’s death, Oberscharführer Frenzel brought him coffee and bread from the SS kitchen, so rumors spread in the camp that it was Frenzel who poisoned Berliner. Frenzel had received many precious objects from Berliner in the past and he was afraid that some day Berliner might reveal this to his superiors.14
Very little is known about what was going on in Camp III. Unlike in Treblinka, where clandestine contacts existed between the Undergrounds in both sections of the camp, in Sobibor there were no such connections. And since no prisoners survived from Camp III, there is no eyewitness evidence as to what happened there.
In the summer of 1943, the prisoners in Camp III were almost idle. Only a limited number of transports arrived, and no doubt they felt—even more than in the other part of the camp—that they were no longer needed and that their end was near. This feeling prompted the initiation of Underground activity and preparation for a mass escape.
An Underground group in Camp III decided to dig an escape tunnel from the living barrack, beneath the fences, and through the minefield. The digging of such a tunnel was a complicated action; it had to be carried out in strictest secrecy and required leadership and organization. Most of the prisoners who lived in the barrack had to know about the work and were involved in digging, removing the surplus earth, and concealing the tunnel. The camp authorities discovered the tunnel before the work was accomplished, in mid-September 1943. The punishment was very severe: 150 prisoners, the majority in Camp III, were shot. The executions were carried out by Kurt Bolender, the commander of the extermination area. This was the last attempt of the Jews in Camp III to escape.
The way in which news of the events in Camp III reached the prisoners in the other parts of the camp was described by Tovia Blatt:
We had to go back to work already [from the noon roll call], but we were still standing in Roll-Call Square. Something unusual was happening. Behind the fences which surrounded the square, Ukrainians were posted with rifles ready to shoot. On the watchtowers, there were machine guns. We did not know what happened. At about 15:30, we heard shooting coming from Camp III. Our first thought was, they are liquidating the “hell” [Camp III]. After some time the guards were removed, and we went to work. That evening, the clothes of the workers in Camp III were brought for sorting. The Germans told us that the prisoners in the “hell” wanted to escape and therefore all of them were shot. Some people from our camp were sent to Camp III.15
In spite of the repeated failures at organizing an escape and in spite of the heavy collective punishments that caused a drop in the morale and self-confidence of the prisoners, the Underground group headed by Feldhendler did not give up their idea of resistance
and escape. The lesson learned from the unsuccessful attempts was that plans for escape could not be based on the help of partisans or Ukrainians. The prisoners had to rely on their own ability and strength to get out of the camp.
38
The Underground in Sobibor
The arrival of a transport with 2,000 Jews from Minsk, including about 100 Soviet prisoners of war, on September 23, 1943, was a turning point in the Underground activity in Sobibor. From this transport, eighty men were selected for construction work in Camp IV. Most of these men were prisoners of war. Among them was Lieutenant Alexander “Sasha” Pechersky.
Pechersky was about thirty-four, married with one daughter; until the war he had lived in the city of Rostov-on-Don and had worked as a bookkeeper. He had been called up into the army when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and was sent to the front in October 1941. Near the city of Viazma he was taken prisoner, and in the prisoner of war camp he contracted typhus. He succeeded in concealing his illness, however, and summoned up all his strength to stand at roll calls. Had he not been able to do this, he would have been shot, as the Germans executed the sick prisoners. In May 1942 he and four other prisoners attempted to escape, but they were caught. They were lucky not to be shot on the spot, as usually happened to Soviet prisoners of war caught escaping; instead, they were sent to a penal camp in Borisov. There Pechersky was stripped, and the Germans discovered that he was circumcised and was a Jew. He was sent to the SS labor camp on Sheroka Street in Minsk, where about 100 Jewish prisoners of war, a few hundred Jews from the Minsk ghetto, and some non-Jews arrested for petty crimes were held. In this camp he met and became very friendly with a carpenter, a Polish Jew, Shlomo Leitman, who had been brought there from the Minsk ghetto. From this camp they were sent to Sobibor.