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Sobibor : The Forgotten Revolt - A Survivor's Report

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Sobibor The Forgotten Revolt by Thomas Blatt. Revieved by Michael Nutkiewicz, Ph.D. Director. Chief Historian - Shoah A Steven Spielberg Foundation. Los Angeles.

Thomas Blatt has written a remarkable book that tells two stories. The first story is about a notorious Nazi death camp in Poland called Sobibor. This death camp achieved the awful task assigned by the Nazis: over a quarter of a million Jewish men, women and children were murdered there. The second story is about the revolt at Sobibor. In the fall of 1943, over 300 slave workers escaped after a short, violent and desperate revolt. In the history of Jewish resistance movement under the German occupation,the revolt in Sobibor ranks the second in magnitude after the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It was the biggest and most successful uprising in all of the Nazi camps, where Jews were able to escape en masse. An excerpt from Auschwitz Cammandant Hoes' memoirs concerning the revolt confirms the above. "...The Jews (of Sobibor) were able to achieve a major breakout, during which almost all of the German personnel were wiped out..." Blatt tells those two stories in mesaured tones:he neither exaggerates the heroism of the Jewish prisoners nor demonizes their cruel victimizers. This is a remarkable feat in itself, because Blatt was one of the prisoners who had a role in the revolt and who escaped from Sobibor. "I forced myself to be emotionally detached as a survivor," Blatt writes in the introduction "concerning myself only with recording history, while I sought interviews with the perpetrators themselves." He begins with a brief review of the Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to build death camps in Poland. He comes quickly to the story of Sobibor. The systematic killing was in full swing in May 1942. The victims came from Poland, the Netherlands,Slovakia, Austria, Germany, France and the former Soviet Union. The author witnessed the genocide and detailed the entire procedure in diary entries during and after the w! ar. Next he describes the revolt in greater detail, reconstructing the revolt step by step, describinbg his own escape trough the barbed wire and mine fields. The story of what occured after the escape is equally dramatic but painful."Most were murdered by hostile bands or individuals rangind from fascist, nationalistic, or anti-Semitic organizations, to common bandits. Only 58 survivors from Sobibor are known to have been liberated by the Allied armies." Blatt follows the story of Sobibor beyond the war, tracing the fate of both the victims and the perpetrators. One of the most remarkable aspects of this book is the author's first hand testimony and that of the former prisoners and other witnesses he personally interviewed. Most compelling however, are Blatt's interviews with Karl Frenzel, a Nazi officer at Sobibor. Blatt interviewed him in 1983 and reveals some portions of that transcript. Frenzel offers this explanation for his role in the murder of hundreds of thousands of people: "This was terrible, very terrible. I can only tell you with tears in my eyes; it isn't only now that it upset me so terribly. It upsed me then... You don't know what went on in us, and you don't understand the circumstances we found ourselves in." The interview encapsulates Hanna Arendt's famous phrase "The Banality of Evil." Blatt concludes his book with a short overview of the free world's reaction to the genocide of the European Jewry. He adds little that is not already known from secondary literature on the subject. But juxtaposed with the horrifying story of Sobibor, perhaps is right to remind us that the governments of the free world knew a great deal about the genocide by 1943 but did not engage in meaningful discutions about rescue. How one deals with what must have been enormous pain over long years needed to amass photographs, documents and interviews. And then incredibly, toward the end of the journey, Mr, Blatt had to confront a government who wanted to deny what happened. 'Sobibor! . The Forgotten Revolt' gives the reader a broader understanding of the complicated methods of mass genocide. It is a important book for anyone interested in the genocide of European Jewry. This book provides the reader with a glimpse into life and death in the 'belly of the beast.'

I had the honor of meeting Mr. Blatt when he spoke to my Holocaust literature class. He is one of the most quietly impressive men you could ever meet. His story is excrutiating and astounding. A must read for Holocaust studies. And really, this is the sort of story Everyone should read to know what sort of men exist - the evil & the brave.

I had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Blatt speak and interviewing him several years ago and I bought a copy of his book at that time. I am sorry to say it sat on my bookcase up until about a week ago - sorry because once I started to read it I couldn't put it down! I would recommend this book to everyone because it teaches one of the most important lessons there is about our history. It is a lesson I hope the world never forgets

This book is written by a Sobibor survivor, and as such is perhaps the most factual account of what happened in the secret Nazi death camp that is currently available. It provides harrowing accounts of the atrocities committed and of all those involved from both sides. It is well researched and written and describes not only the day to day operations of the camp, but also the plans and report of the escape that occurred on October 14th, 1943 which led to the camp's destruction shortly after. An excellent account that everyone should read.

Author has managed to approach the Sobibor revolt with maximal objectivity despite the fact that he was intensely involved. This book and "From the Ashes of Sobibor" also written by Mr. T. Blatt should be read by all adolescents in the World. Both books are accurate accounts of what happened to Jewish people during WWII depicting those horrible events that are so hard to understand and almost impossible to accept as human history.
Drs. Kees van den Bosch MEd MBA, The Netherlands.

Under the Germans occupation, I was saddled with the most gruesome experiences. I saw the Germans looting, expropriating, mocking, beating, torturing, shooting, hanging, burning alive, babies choked or smashed to death, starving and other unimaginable acts of extreme wickedness carried out against innocent people. As a Jew, I was considered to be genetically programmed as subhuman. I was hated before I was born and tortured by people who did not know me. In SOBIBOR I read many vignettes of brutality and savagery that I have not experienced or witnessed. For example, SS officer Paul Groth made two prisoners eat excrement. He trained his dog to attack prisoners' genitals (p52). It seems that the Nazis had unlimited vicious ideas how to torture and degrade their captives; those SS men committed their crimes with gusto.

As a Holocaust survivor, I have often heard the comment: "you were cowards" not resisting the brutalities perpetrated by the Germans. Many Jews in Palestine, (the Yishuv in 1945-1948) were acrimonious, questioning the Holocaust survivors: "Why did you let the Germans lead you like sheep to slaughter houses?" For detainees behind barbed-wire it was very difficult to fight back. There were numerous watchtowers. In one camp, my uniform did not even have pockets. We had nothing to fight with. To fight off armed men with bare hands would be suicidal. In some instances, where a slight chance to fight the Germans did exist, Jews did resist. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 is one example.

The revolt in the death camp SOBIBOR is another of example of Jewish courageous resistance. 250,000 Jewish men women and children were murdered in Sobibor. The camp, located in the eastern part of occupied Poland, was surrounded by three barbed wire fences. Seventeen yards from the outer fence, mines were planted. Still In the fall of 1943, over 300 slave captives escaped after a short, violent and desperate revolt. It was the biggest and most successful uprising in all of the Nazi camps, where Jews were able to escape. Most were captured and killed; about 50 did survive. An excerpt from Auschwitz Commandant Hoes' memoirs concerning the revolt confirms the above. "...The Jews (of Sobibor) were able to achieve a major breakout, during which almost all of the German personnel were wiped out."

Thomas Blatt wrote SOBIBOR because "he has been possessed by the need to tell the story of this evil universe." I wrote my memoir because a U.S. WWII veteran told me:" You must put in print your life story for my children and my grandchildren." That veteran, an officer in the US Army, was among the liberators of Buchenwald, a notorious camp in Germany. Blatt and the said U.S. veteran had been motivated by the desire to share their life story hoping that it will help to replace this "evil universe" with a righteous universe.

The book is diligently researched and well written. The quoted testimonies given by former SS officers, at war crimes trials are most compelling. The compilation of a list of 65 Germans directly involved in the extermination process in Sobibor is astonishing. So is the list of the 117 Ukrainian guards. It is remarkable that Blatt managed to locate and publish the names of 62 Sobibor's survivors. SOBIBOR could be a text book in a history class; a lesson about human cruelty and human courage.

I have seen the movie escape from sobibor and absolutely loved it. And now that i've read a book about it, it is just so breathtaking to compare the two and just to think about having to live like that for so long. i just loved this book and i recommend that anyone should read it.