📅 #OTD in 1943, an uprising broke out at #Sobibor — the only successful mass escape by POWs from Nazi “death factories” during #WW2.
The Sobibor uprising was helmed by Alexander Pechersky, a Soviet POW, lieutenant of the Red Army, held among others in Sobibor. The Soviet officer performed a truly heroic feat — just in a few weeks, he managed to devise an escape plan, rally other prisoners and inspired them to fight the Nazis.
◼️ During #WWII, Germany established around 14'000 'death camps'. Among them, the so-called death factories became infamous as places where the Nazis herded their victims for the one purpose — annihilation.
Sobibor was among such “death factory”, established in the south-east of Nazi-occupied Poland, near the Western Bug River and the Polish-Soviet border. The camp was built alongside the railway line between the towns of Chełm and Włodawa.
POWs were transported to Sobibor in entire railway carriages, for one sole purpose — to be killed. The camp was turned into a veritable 'assembly line' for the mass murder of human beings. Each and every day, up to six trains carrying POWs arrived at Sobibor, including prisoners of war and civilians — elderly people, women and children.
At Sobibor, the Nazis starved their victims and exploited them to death. Inhuman medical experiments were conducted on POWs. People from Austria, Czechoslovakia, France and other countries were brought to the camp to be tortured. In June 1943, two special trains carrying children arrived at Sobibor from the Netherlands. In September 1943, a group of Soviet POWs arrived from the Minsk transit camp.
According to various estimates, the Nazis exterminated up to 250'000 POWs at Sobibor during the camp’s existence.
🎖 From the all-Union newspaper 'Krasnaya Armiya' (The Red Army) (September 2, 1944):
The Nazis turned Poland into one vast prison, where millions of people from every country in Europe perished after indescribable suffering.
<...>
The Sobibor camp was one of the death factories established by the Germans on Polish territory. Residents of the Polish village of Zhlobok-2 <...> wrote in a letter to the Red Army command that the inhabitants of villages neighbouring Sobibor knew well of the conditions in this horrific concentration camp.
Every day, more than 1'000 people of various nationalities were exterminated in the camp’s gas chambers. <...>
The Germans referred to this camp as a “button factory” and a “thread factory”...
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⚔️ On 14 October 1943, an uprising broke out at Sobibor under the leadership of lieutenant Alexander Pechersky.
The POWs, who dared to challenge the enemy, engaged in an unequal battle. Overpowering 'SS' guards with their bare hands, prisoners rushed towards the main gate despite machine-gun fire from the watchtowers.
❗️Nothing could stop exhausted people determined to break free from Nazi enslavement.
As a result of the uprising, around 300 people managed to escape from the sheer hell on earth. Many of those who survived and made it to freedom joined the resistance movement and continued fighting the Nazis. Pechersky himself joined the Belarusian partisans and, in 1944, returned to the front, fighting the enemy as part of an assault battalion.
The #SobiborUprising became a testament to the unbending human will and strength of spirit — a symbol of the triumph of good over Nazi evil.
The crimes committed at Sobibor formed part of the charges brought against the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. In March 1962, eleven guards who had served at Sobibor and Treblinka stood trial in Kiev. Alexander Pechersky himself testified as a witness. All the Nazi criminals were sentenced to death.
Today, the Alexander Pechersky Foundation, together with the Russian Military Historical Society, museums and other organisations, is doing everything possible to ensure that the memory of the heroic feat of the Sobibor prisoners is carefully preserved and passed on to future generations.
#LestWeForget #Victory81