Sobibor escapee speaks on hope

By Polina Olsen

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Even as the Nazis herded Toivi Blatt and the other Jews into the truck bound for the Sobibor death camp, the prisoners told each other hopefully, “They need us; they won’t kill us.”

And, when Nazis pulled skilled craftspeople, like tailors, out of the gas chamber line, Blatt still believes his yearning to live caused one to turn and say, “Come out my little one. You’ll be my shoeshine boy.”

Toivi Blatt came out and lived to tell about the most successful prisoner revolt in Holocaust history. One quarter million Jews were murdered at Sobibor; 300 escaped. The April 30 lecture for Oregon State University’s Holocaust Memorial Program attracted more than 1,000 people. They stood and cheered before Blatt even spoke.

Blatt grew up in a small, mostly Jewish town in eastern Poland. When the SS declared it Judenrein (free of Jews), it became “a jailhouse waiting for the prisoners to be executed.” Townspeople knew something horrible was happening at Sobibor. Several followed the weekly transport trucks only to find a quiet area with large burning smokestacks.

When Blatt and his family were among those selected for deportation, he slipped into the crowd of spectators. A Polish school friend directed Blatt to a barn where he could hide. But, the barn was padlocked. “Goodbye Toivi; I will see you on a shelf in a soap store,” his “friend” said, as the Nazi who followed Blatt led him away.

Blatt became a fireman; he incinerated documents taken from the 3,000 Jews who arrived at the death camp each Friday. Other prisoners sorted belongings into heaps of shirts, jackets, boots. And, quietly, a small group led by Leon Feldhendler plotted their escape. When Russian-Jewish POWS arrived at the camp, they saw their chance.

The POWs, under their leader Aleksander Peczersky, understood strategy–and how to handle guns. Three weeks later, it happened.

They wanted the entire camp liberated. They planned to kill the Nazis and walk all 600 prisoners through the gate. At 4 p.m. on Oct. 14, 1943, Blatt and others one-by-one lured guards into enclosed workshops with promises of leather coats or boots stolen from exterminated Jews. There, prisoners with handmade knives quickly murdered their tormentors.

The alarm sounded before the plan was complete. They heard Peczersky shout: “Those of you who may survive, bear witness, let the world know what happened here.”

Machine guns blasted as the prisoners tore through barbed wire fences and ran through minefields into the woods.

But, where could Jews hide? The Pole who at first sheltered Blatt and two others, turned and shot them. Only Blatt survived. Of the 300 Sobibor prisoners who escaped, half were alive when the war ended.

Today the six remaining Sobibor survivors never forget Peczersky’s words. Blatt wrote two books on the horror and consulted on the Hollywood movie “Escape from Sobibor.”

When the Soviet government threw Peczersky in prison for “collaborating with the enemy,” Blatt and other survivors demanded and won the hero’s release. And, for the sake of history, Blatt interviewed Karl Frenzel, one of the leading Nazis at Sobibor.

“Hope can be with a person until the last minute of his life,” says Blatt, who visits Sobibor every year. At 86, he still lectures around the world. The Sobibor survivors never stop hoping that remembering will finally end genocide.