Customer Reviews

Escape from Sobibor

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The release of Claude Lanzmann's new documentary about the escape from Sobibor may cause readers to flock to this book, first published in 1982. (Lanzmann this week won Israel's highest cinematic honor for his film). It should.

As Richard Rashke noted in his 1982 introduction, even then almost no one had ever heard of Sobibor, although it had been the scene of the biggest prisoner escape in World War II, on October 14, 1943 at 4 p.m. Why? Millions of pages of Nazi records included only three documents on Sobibor--like Treblinka and Belzec, a top secret death factory. These 3 places, unlike Auschwitz and Dachau and thousands of other camps, had no satellite labor camps.

Here, virtually everyone was sent immediately to their deaths. The handful of survivors were those enslaved to process transports. Even these laborers, if they did not die of exhaustion or starvation, were largely murdered after a very short while.

Poland's pre-glasnost Commission for German War Crimes estimated that the Nazis gassed at minimum 1.65 million Jews (25% of all those murdered in the Holocaust) in these three camps alone--250,000 of them at Sobibor, which Rashke called Heinrich Himmler's "best-kept secret."

This book was perhaps the first lengthy expose of such a place. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Rashke interviewed 18 of Sobibor's 30 survivors, who warmly welcomed his inquiries because he is not Jewish. He interviewed escape co-leaders Alexander (Sasha) Perchersky (in the Soviet Union) and Stanislaw (Shlomo) Szmajner (in Brazil) and spoke for more than 10 days with Thomas (Toivi) Blatt, who survived Sobibor for six months and made it his business to know everything about that hell. Rashke's subjects also included Chaim and Selma Engel in the U.S. and Eda and Itzhak Lichtman in Israel.

What resulted from this extensive research was not any old oral history. Rashke made a valiant and largely successful attempt to check and cross check all the information he was given. The book contains 335 footnotes and an extensive bibliography including many primary sources.

But this is high drama, not academic work, the more so because many of the survivors are still (even now) living. In fact, the book was in 1987 made into a television docudrama starring Joanna Pacula, Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer.

After reading it in the mid-1980s, I discovered family members were acquainted with some of the survivors. And a close friend's grandparents had been murdered in Sobibor.

This is a book you will never forget. Alyssa A. Lappen

This book represents a painful retelling of life and death in a World War II Nazi death camp where some 250,000 Jews were taken. Nearly all of them were quickly exterminated, but a sliver of a percent escaped, and from them we learn about Sobibor. We learn how thousands of lives were snuffed out daily and how thousands of bodies were disposed of daily. We learn how the "lucky" ones, chosen to work at the camp, dealt with gruesome events associated with the daily march toward annihilation of their race.

After reading this book, I have a much deeper understanding not only of what Jews have been through, but how this leads many of them to think. I noticed that Rashke helped me understand the Jewish mindset, but not the Nazi mindset. I suppose Rashke didn't take this one on because there really is no defensible logic for Nazi behavior. What in the world led so many Nazis to conclude that Jews deserved no dignity or treatment as humans? What could I possibly learn from someone who could "pick up a baby by the feet, smash its head against a boxcar, and then toss it into the miners' train like a dead rat" (p. 92 in the paperback).

The book ends with about 75 pages that explain how Rashke found and interviewed the people whose stories are told in "Escape from Sobibor." It's a useful format to place this at the end of the book, since by now I'm involved in their lives and want to know what happened after the war ended. This section reveals that the survivors are never really free of Sobibor. There are daily reminders and frequent nightmares. But I'm thankful that they were willing to open the wounds and bleed again. Stories like this, despite the injustice and atrocity and inhumanity they expose, should never be buried.

I am so glad the people whose lives are told about in this book were willing to share there personal histories with us the reader. I am also greatful for Richard Rashke for the time and energy spent researching this book to bring it to life. The people in this book will touch your heart and you will find yourself thinking of them as people you know and care for and cry for and pray for even still. Even though many books have been written of holocaust survivors,every one deserves to be read,no matter. They speak out for the living as well as the dead. We must never forget,and we must read books such as this one to keep them alive in our memories.

This is an awesome and compelling book on the cruelty and harshness of the Nazis during WWII. The heroics of Sasha, Shlomo, Toivi, and other Jewish prisoners helped the escape of more than 50 Jews from the death camp. Well written.

This is one of the best books I have read about the Holocaust. The author interviews a number of survivors from Sobibor and from their stories provides you with The Story of Sorbibor told from multiple vantage points. It gives a very personal overview of what life was like inside a concentration camp. Obviously it was horrible, but the story is one about survival.

Escape from Sobibor, by Richard Rashke, is a profound work. It was even more disturbing and thought-provoking than my visit to the Jewish Concentration Camp in Dachau, Germany.

The book reveals a startling and detailed picture of the atrocities committed at the super-secret Sobibor Jewish Extermination Camp in Poland, where more than 250,000 Jews were tortured and murdered during World War II. Approximately 600 "fortunate" Jews were spared to maintain the camp, assist with "processing" prisoners, and perform other duties for the Nazis. Of this group, some 300 escaped one well-planned afternoon - the only successful Jewish breakout from a Nazi prisoner camp. All but about 30 were recaptured and executed.

Through intimate, sensitive interviews with survivors and meticulous research, Rashke fills the empty boots of Holocaust victims with bodies, faces, hearts, and souls. He demonstrates how spirit, strength, cooperation, and luck drove the escapees to fulfill their mission - to let the world know what was really going on behind the pristine facade so carefully cultivated by the SS at Sobibor.

Escape from Sobibor answers one question the uninformed always ask, "Why didn't the Jews resist?" Many tried, as Rashke describes so well. Inside the camp, the Jews faced overwhelming odds. They were unarmed, denied the right to assemble, and often betrayed by staff and fellow prisoners. Outside the camp, they were surrounded by mostly hostile and frightened neighbors who would not provide food, shelter, or weapons and who also frequently betrayed them.

Escape from Sobibor also compels the reader to consider other important issues about the Holocaust, including why the rest of the world chose to ignore the Jewish plight for so long and how humans can be so cruel to each other. Exploration of these topics is still significant since racial and ethnic discrimination and abuse persists around the world.

It is clear from the haunting accounts chronicled by Rashke that no one really "escaped" from Sobibor, even if they are still alive today. Now I will never really "escape" Sobibor either.

at the same time. It portrays the depths of human cruelty and the courage and faith of human spirit in a way fiction could never attain. I found this book to be extremely moving and important.

Escape from Sobibor documents personal experience cross referenced with official documents to shed light on the Sobibor death camp, one of the best kept secrets of Hitler's final solution. Also included are excellent summaries of other references and their validity. Admirably researched and as unbiased as I think you can get on such a serious topic. It will torment every serious conscious, and break the heart of every honest person who reads it.

Buy it, read it, recommend it to your firends! Richard Rashke's book, Escape from Sobibor, is a must read for everyone.

Based on interviews with 17 survivors of the escape from the Nazi's Jewish death camp at Sobibor in eastern Poland, this book is filled with compelling insights that only come from first-hand experiences of this tragic part of our history.

I'm not much of a reader, and it usually takes me a couple of weeks to read a book, but this book I finished in less than 24 hours! Gripping, raw emotions and graphic details of overcoming the horrors inside a Nazi death camp, this book tells it like it was. The Nazis killed over 250,000 Jews at Sobibor in a little over a year. The successful escape of over 300 Jews, death camp laborers, from Sobibor is the only large scale escape from a Nazi camp. Within days after the escape the Nazis had closed and dismantled the camp, planting the area with pine trees to hide the evidences of their work.

Published in 1982, the book is based on in-depth interviews with 17 of the 30+ survivors still alive almost 40 years after the fact. Well researched and documented with facts checked and story details cross-checked, Escape from Sobibor is a must read for anyone wanting more information on the reality of survival in a Nazi death camp.

I've read a bunch of 'em (non-fiction stories of the Holocaust). A couple of salient points come to mind which make this one different:

1. Who has heard of Sobibor? Certainly not me (prior to this book). That seems to be due to Sobibor not being a concentration or work camp like the infamous Auschwitz, Daschau, etc. Survivors from those camps helped make us aware of them through their post-war writings. Sobibor on the other hand was a pure death camp. Other than the small cadre of inmate workers (a few of which escaped), there were no survivors to tell the tale and the Nazis did a very tidy job of covering up the existence of the camp. About 250,000 died there. Noteworthy is that these were not political or punitive incarcerations/murders . . . these people were collected and sent to Sobibor to die soley because they were Jews. This is an important element and is made clear in the book.

2. Most (all?) of the Holocaust books I have read were penned by survivors. That is needful, but it always presents the experience from the eyes/ears/stomach of an individual. "Escape from Sobibor", however, is written and written well by an accomplished author. Richard Rashke sought out survivors, did his homework, and credibly researched and documented his work. Thus the tales of escapees are told, who otherwise would never have written that book (a few of them did). Rashke did an thorough job and carefully footnoted variations and gray areas. So this is a rather scholarly as well as a moving and exciting piece.

May I add another point which separates this book from previous readings. For whatever reason, I was not previously aware of the intense anti-Semetic fervor of the general Polish population at the time of WWII. This is borne out by multiple witnesses and events in the book. It was quite a factor in the Jewish struggle in Poland and worth bringing to clear light of day.

Easily a worthy read in this topic area.