Surviving in a Nazi concentration camp was almost impossible. But in the Soviet Union, such people were brought up who did not just survive - they staged uprisings, organized mass escapes, it was impossible to break their will to resist. One of these heroes was Alexander Pechersky, a junior lieutenant who, along with the regiment, was surrounded at the very beginning of the war, and then captured. When the enemies discovered that he was not only an officer, but also a Jew, his fate was sealed.
Sobibor
The story of the uprising of the prisoners of this death camp, located in the south-east of Poland, is very well known in the West. After the end of the war, the Soviet Union decided to forgive Poland for the venality and treacherous nature of a fairly large part of its population, and therefore many things that were unpleasant for its nearest neighbor were simply tactfully hushed up. Alexander Pechersky was not known in the country, and the uprising of the prisoners of Sobibor was left without an honest assessment, and absolutely undeserved. And in Western Europe and Israel about this camp and about the uprising itself,films, many books have been written. The leader of the rebels - Alexander Pechersky - is widely known abroad and is considered a great hero.
What was it like in the Nazi death camp? Why was it created? It was opened at the beginning of 1942 with the sole purpose of complete and absolute annihilation, that is, genocide, of the Jewish population. For this, there was an extensive program, where the whole process was prescribed step by step. Over a year and a half of the existence of the camp, more than two hundred and fifty thousand Jews died there - residents of Poland and neighboring European countries.
Destruction Technology
As in all concentration camps, in Sobibor the prisoners were treated very simply. The narrow-gauge railway leading to the forest daily supplied suicide bombers by a whole train. Of these, a certain number of he althier people were chosen, and the rest were sent "to the bathhouse", that is, to the gas chamber. Fifteen minutes later, the chosen "big men" could already bury fellow travelers in special ditches that were prepared around the camp. Their "bathing day" was also not far away, since household chores in the camp were very difficult, and no one was going to feed the prisoners. The "big men" quickly lost their condition.
This approach was invented by the Nazis, and they considered it very cost-effective. There were in each camp those who were not prisoners. In addition to the SS, Sobibor was also guarded by collaborators, that isall kinds of traitors. The vast majority are Ukrainian Bandera. Many of them are worth a separate story, so that humanity always remembers how scary it is. For example, the fate of an antihero who opposed such a person as Alexander Pechersky is interesting.
Ivan Demjanjuk
Who would have thought that in the third millennium, trials related to the Great Patriotic War would still continue? Few witnesses from that time have survived to this day.
The trial of a former Soviet man, a prisoner of war, and later a particularly bloodthirsty sadist and executioner, a warder of Sobibor, and even later an American citizen Ivan (John) Demjanjuk lasted a year and a half and ended with the accusation of murdering several tens of thousands of Sobibor suicide bombers. Ninety-year-old Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison for these crimes.
For what
This nonhuman was born in 1920 in Ukraine. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Demyanyuk was drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, and in 1942 he surrendered. In a concentration camp he entered the service of the Nazis. He was remembered by the camps of Treblinka, Majdanek, Flusseborg. The work was arguing - the track record was replenished. But less fortunate with Sobibor, because there was an uprising and the escape of prisoners, which does not bring any honor to the guards.
One can imagine with what degree of cruelty and sadism Demjanjuk ("Ivan the Terrible" for the SS) de alt withthose who were caught. There is evidence for this, but the details are too gruesome to be given here. There simply could not be a successful escape from the death camp. They were not in Sobibor until Alexander Pechersky, a military folk hero, appeared there. There was already an underground organization in the camp, but it consisted of purely civilian people, who often died in the gas chamber. The escape was planned, but this plan could not even be finalized.
Lieutenant from Rostov-on-Don
Alexander Aronovich Pechersky, whose biography was not known to the general population of his native country almost until the end of his life, was also born in Ukraine, in Kremenchug, in 1909. In 1915, the family of the lawyer, his father, moved to Rostov-on-Don, which Alexander considered his hometown all his life. After graduating from school, he got a job as an electrician at a factory and entered the university. He was very fond of amateur performances, and the audience loved him too.
On the first day of the war, junior lieutenant Alexander Pechersky was already on his way to the front. He had such a position, since he graduated from the university. Alexander fought the Nazis near Smolensk in the artillery regiment of the 19th Army. Near Vyazma they were surrounded, Pechersky and his colleagues, carrying a wounded commander on their shoulders, fought their way through the front line, which had already moved significantly. The ammo has run out. Many fighters were wounded or seriously ill - it is not so easy to make your way through the swamps in the cold. The group was surrounded by the Nazis and disarmed. Thus began captivity.
Captive
The Red Army was driven towest - from camp to camp, and, of course, only those who could serve in the quarries. The officer of the Red Army, Alexander Pechersky, did not want to submit, he did not want to die either, and he never left the hope of escaping. He did not look like a Jew, so the Nazis, when they found out (by denunciation) about his nationality, immediately sent him to Sobibor to die. Together with Alexander, about six hundred people arrived in the camp.
Of them, only eighty were temporarily left to live, the rest were no longer alive an hour later. Alexander fell into the category of he althy men, and later it turned out that he also knows carpentry, so until he collapses exhausted, he will work for the needs of the concentration camp and all of Germany. So the Nazis decided, but not Lieutenant Pechersky from Sobibor. Illusions were alien to the lieutenant, he perfectly understood that if they didn’t kill him today, they would definitely do it a little later. And he needs this delay in order to give the fascists the last battle, to accomplish his last feat. Alexander Pechersky cannot be killed so easily.
Plan
To the underground group, he explained that single escapes are impossible either here or in any other camp, since you can’t go further than barbed wire. He insisted on an uprising, in which literally everyone should flee the camp, because the rest would be killed in any case, but only after torture and abuse. One has only to look at the faces of Bandera, who walk around the camp and kill whom they want and when they want. And yet no one is resisting and buzzing. Those who remain in the camp after the escape will be tormented ferociously.
Of course, many will also die in the escape. But then each of the fugitives will have a chance. The underground committee approved the plan that was proposed. So he received a new position, the most responsible in his life, Alexander Pechersky - the leader of the uprising. Almost all the prisoners who were informed of this escape plan approved of this method. You still have to die anyway, so it’s better not to be such a weak, wordless crowd, walking like sheep into the gas chamber. You need to die with dignity, if the opportunity arose.
Purely Jewish cunning
The fact is that in the camp there were not only carpentry workshops, but also sewing workshops. Who better than a Jewish tailor will be able to build a truly beautifully fitting uniform on an SS man? Tailors from the echelons of suicide bombers were also taken out, as were carpenters and masons, even if they were not "big men". Tailors were especially needed for the needs of great Germany. It was in this sewing workshop that it all began. Bandera's guards, by the way, also did not disdain her services.
And on October 14, 1943, the guards, loitering around the camp, began to be lured one by one to a fitting, where they were guarded with an ax or strangled with a rope, after which they were disarmed and put in the cellar. For this mission, prisoners of war with hand-to-hand combat experience were specially selected. The most interesting thing is that Alexander Pechersky, the hero of this whole story, was in Sobibor for less than three weeks, but he already managed to create a detachment,quite capable of acting clearly and coherently. Such was his will and determination to go to the end.
Escape
Silently and imperceptibly to prying eyes, eleven Germans and almost all the guards free from guard ceased to exist. Only then the alarm was raised, and the Sobibor suicide bombers were forced to make a breakthrough. This was the second stage of the plan drawn up by Alexander Pechersky. Armed with trophies, the prisoners began to shoot the remaining guards. A machine gun was working on the tower, and there was no way to get it. People ran. They threw themselves on the barbed wire, paving the way for their comrades with their bodies. They died under machine-gun fire, were blown up by mines that surrounded the camp, but did not stop.
The gate was broken down, and here it is - freedom! Nevertheless, one hundred and thirty people out of almost six hundred remained in the camp: exhausted and sick, those who, if not today, then tomorrow, would go to the gas chamber. There were also those who hoped for their humility and mercy from the Nazis. In vain! The camp has ceased to exist. The next day, all those who remained were shot, and soon Sobibor was destroyed. The ground itself was leveled by bulldozers and cabbages were planted on it. So that even no memory is left of what was here before. Why? Because it was a shame for Nazi Germany - exhausted prisoners of war escaped, and even successful.
Results
A little less than three hundred suicide bombers found freedom, and a little more than eighty died a glorious death duringbreakthrough. Then it was necessary to decide where to go, since all four sides were open to the fugitives. They were hunting for two weeks. One hundred and seventy people hid unsuccessfully. Bandera found them and killed them. Almost all were given away by locals who also turned out to be anti-Semites.
Almost ninety fugitives were tortured not even by Ukrainian Bandera, but by Poles. Of course, none of those caught a quick death died. In all this, the choice given by fate is partly to blame. Mostly those who chose to hide in Poland died. The rest left with Alexander Pechersky across the Bug to Belarus, where they found partisans and survived.
Motherland
Before the liberation of our country from the fascist invaders, Alexander Aronovich Pechersky fought in the Shchors partisan detachment, was a successful demolition worker, and then returned to the Red Army and met May 1945 with the rank of captain. He was wounded, treated in a hospital near Moscow, where he met his future wife Olga. He had few awards, despite the path full of hardships and exploits. Two years in captivity - this, as a rule, even sounds suspicious. However, he had a medal "For Military Merit". And this is instead of the Order of the Patriotic War, to which he was presented.
The reasons, of course, are clear. The uprising in Sobibor was not exaggerated in the press, since it was mono-ethnic, and it was not customary to focus on this in the USSR - the international ruled everyone, and not the Jews at all. In Israel, Pechersky became a national hero, and relationstime between our country and the Promised Land has become very bad. And no one here wanted to honor this uprising at the state level, as it was done there. And, of course, Poland. Proud gentry would certainly be offended if we told the whole world that it was the Poles who put to death those prisoners who had just managed to escape it, in a gas chamber, in minefields … The USSR was not afraid to offend socialist Poland, it simply did not want to. But sooner or later, everything secret will certainly become clear.
PS
And the national hero of Israel Alexander Pechersky lived until January 1990 in his native Rostov-on-Don. And he was happy. In 2007, a memorial plaque appeared on the wall of the house where he lived. In 2015, one of the streets of Rostov-on-Don was named after the hero. And in 2016 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.
