Alexander Pechersky Alexander Aronovich Pechersky ( ; 22 February 1909 – 19 January 1990 ) was the chief organizer and leader of the most successful uprising and mass - escape of Jews from a Nazi extermination camp during World War II ; this occurred at the Sobibor extermination camp on 14 October 1943 . Biography . Early life . Pechersky , a son of a Jewish lawyer , was born on February 22 , 1909 in Kremenchuk , Poltava Governorate , Russian Empire ( now Ukraine ) . In 1915 , his family moved to Rostov - on - Don where he eventually worked as an electrician at a locomotive repair factory . After graduating a university with a diploma in music and literature , he became an accountant and manager of a small school for amateur musicians . World War II . On 22 June 1941 , the day when Germany invaded the Soviet Union , Pechersky was conscripted into the Soviet Red Army with a rank of junior lieutenant . By September 1941 , he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant quartermaster ( class II ) . In the early autumn of 1941 , he rescued his wounded commander from being captured by the Germans . He didn ' t receive any medals for this deed . One of his fellow soldiers reportedly said : " " Sasha , if what you ' ve done doesn ' t make you a hero , I don ' t know who is ! " " In October 1941 , during the Battle of Moscow , their unit was surrounded and captured by the Germans in the pocket at the city of Vyazma , Smolensk Oblast . Captured , Pechersky soon contracted typhus , but survived the seven - month long illness . In May 1942 , he escaped along with four other prisoners of war , but they were all recaptured the same day . He was then sent to a penal camp at Borisov , Belarus , and from there to a prisoners of war ( POW ) camp located in the forest next to the city of Minsk . During a mandatory medical examination it was discovered that he was circumcised . Pechersky recalled a German medical officer asking him : " " Do you admit to being a Jew ? " " He admitted it , since any denial would result in a whipping , and was thrown into a cellar called " the Jewish grave " along with other Jewish POWs ( prisoners of war ) , where for 10 days he sat in complete darkness , being fed 100 grams ( 3 . 5 oz ) of wheat and a cup of water every second day . On August 20 , 1942 , Pechersky was sent to a SS - operated arbeitslager , a work camp , in Minsk . The camp housed 500 Jews from the Minsk Ghetto , as well as Jewish Soviet POWs ; there were also between 200 – 300 Russian inmates whom the Germans labeled as incorrigible : people who were suspected of contacting the Soviet partisans and those who were repeatedly truant while working for the Germans . The prisoners were starved and worked from dawn till dusk . Pechersky wrote about the Minsk work camp : At Sobibor . On 18 September 1943 , Pechersky , along with 2 , 000 Jews from Minsk including about 100 Soviet Jewish POWs , was placed in a train cattle car which arrived at the Sobibor extermination camp on September 23 , 1943 . Eighty prisoners from the train , including Pechersky , were selected for work in " Lager II " . The remaining 1 , 920 Jews were immediately led to the gas chambers . Pechersky later recalled his thoughts as the train pulled up to Sobibor , " " How many circles of hell were there in Dante ' s Inferno ? It seems there were nine . How many have already passed ? Being surrounded , being captured , camps in Vyazma , Smolensk , Borisov , Minsk . . . And finally I am here . What ' s next ? " " The appearance of Soviet POWs produced an enormous impression on Sobibor prisoners : " hungry hope - filled eyes following their every move " . Pechersky wrote about his first day in Sobibor : During his third day at Sobibor , Alexander Pechersky earned the respect of fellow prisoners by standing up to Karl Frenzel , an SS senior officer , as the incident was recalled by Leon Feldhendler . Pechersky ' s plan merged the idea of a mass escape with vengeance : to help as many prisoners as possible to escape while executing SS officers and guards . His final goal was to join up with the partisans and continue fighting the Nazis . Five days after arriving at Sobibor , Pechersky was again approached by Solomon Leitman on behalf of Leon Feldhendler , the leader of the camp ' s Polish Jews . Leitman was one of the few prisoners who understood Russian and Pechersky didn ' t speak either Yiddish or Polish . Pechersky was invited to talk with a group of Jewish prisoner leaders from Poland , to whom he spoke about the Red Army victory in the Battle of Stalingrad and partisan victories . When one of the prisoners asked him why the partisans won ' t rescue them from Sobibor , Pechersky allegedly replied : " " What for ? To free us all ? The partisans have their hands full already . Nobody will do our job for us . " " The Jewish prisoners who had worked at the Bełżec extermination camp were sent to Sobibor to be exterminated when Bełżec closed . From a note found among the clothing of the murdered , the Sobibor prisoners learned that those who had been killed were from work groups in the Belzec camp . The note said : " " We worked for a year in Belzec . I don ' t know where they ' re taking us now . They say to Germany . In the freight cars there are dining tables . We received bread for three days , and tins and liquor . If all this is a lie , then know that death awaits you too . Don ' t trust the Germans . Avenge our blood ! " " The leadership of the Polish Jews was aware that Belzec and Treblinka had been closed , dismantled and all remaining prisoners had been sent to the gas - chambers and they suspected that Sobibor would be next . There was a great urgency in coming up with a good escape plan , and Pechersky , with his army experience , was their best hope . The escape had to also coincide with the time when the Sobibor ' s deputy commandant Gustav Wagner went on vacation , since the prisoners felt that he was sharp enough to uncover the escape plan . Luka . Pechersky clandestinely met with Feldhendler under the guise of meeting Luka , a woman he was supposedly involved with . Luka is often described as an 18 - year - old woman from " Holland " , but records indicate she was 28 and from Germany , her real name was Gertrude Poppert – Schonborn . After the war , Pechersky insisted that the relationship was platonic . Her fate after the escape was never factually established and she was never seen alive again . During an interview with Thomas Blatt , Pechersky said the following regarding Luka : " " Although I knew her only about two weeks , I will never forget her . I informed her minutes before the escape of the plan . She has given me a shirt . She said , ' it ' s a good luck shirt , put it on right now ' , and I did . It ' s now in the museum . I lost her in the turmoil of the revolt and never saw her again . " " Luka ' s shirt still exists and is described on by Pechersky ' s daughter as : The uprising . According to Pechersky ' s plan , the prisoners would assassinate the German SS staff , thereby rendering the auxiliary guards leaderless , obtain weapons , and eliminate the remaining guards . Individual Polish Jewish inmates were assigned specific German SS guards that they were supposed to lure inside the workshops under some pretext and silently kill . Ester Raab , a survivor of the escape , recalled : " " The plan was , at 4 o ’ clock ( pm ) , should start ( the escape ) , everybody has to kill his SS man , and his guard at his place of work . " " Only a small circle of trusted Polish Jewish inmates were aware of the escape plan as they didn ' t trust the Jews from other European countries . On 14 October 1943 , Pechersky ' s escape plan began . During the day , several German SS men were lured to workshops on a variety of pretexts , such as being fitted for new boots or expensive clothes . The SS men were then stabbed to death with carpenters ' axes , awls , and chisels discreetly recovered from property left by gassed Jews ; with other tradesmen ' s sharp tools ; or with crude knives and axes made in the camp ' s machine shop . The blood was covered up with sawdust on the floor . The escapees were armed with a number of hand grenades , a rifle , a submachine gun and several pistols that the prisoners stole from the German living quarters , as well as the sidearms captured from the dead SS . Earlier in the day , SS - Oberscharführer Erich Bauer , at the top of the death list created by Pechersky , unexpectedly drove out to Chełm for supplies . The uprising was almost postponed since Bauer ' s death was felt necessary for the success of the escape . Bauer came back early from Chełm , discovered that SS - Scharführer Rudolf Beckmann had been assassinated , and began shooting at the Jewish prisoners . The sound of the gunfire prompted Alexander Pechersky to begin the revolt earlier than planned . Pechersky screamed the preplanned code - words : " Hurrah , the revolt has begun ! " Disorganized groups of prisoners ran in every direction . Ada Lichtman , a survivor of the escape recalls : " " Suddenly we heard shots . . . Mines started to explode . Riot and confusion prevailed , everything was thundering around . The doors of the workshop were opened , and everyone rushed through . . . We ran out of the workshop . All around were the bodies of the dead and wounded . " " Alexander Pechersky was able to successfully escape into the woods . At the end of the uprising , 11 German SS personnel and an unknown number of Ukrainian guards were killed . Out of approximately 550 Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor death camp , 130 chose not to participate in the uprising and remained in the camp ; about 80 were killed during the escape either by machine gun fire from watchtowers , or while getting through a mine field in the camp ' s outer perimeter ; 170 more were recaptured by the Nazis during large - scale searches . All who remained in the camp or caught after the escape were executed . However , 53 Sobibor escapees survived the war . Within days after the uprising , the SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the camp closed , dismantled and planted with trees . After the escape . Immediately after the escape , in the forest , a group of 50 prisoners followed Pechersky . After some time , Pechersky informed the Polish Jews that he along with a few Soviet Jewish soldiers would enter the nearby village and then shortly return with food . They " allegedly " collected all the money ( Pechersky implies the money collection is a fabricated detail ) and weapons except one rifle , but never came back . In 1980 , Thomas Blatt asked Pechersky why he abandoned the other survivors . Pechersky answered : Pechersky , along with two other escapees , wandered the forests until they ran into Yakov Biskowitz , and another Sobibor escapee . Biskowitz testified at the Eichmann Trial regarding the meeting : The two Russian Jewish soldiers who Yahov Biskowitz met with Pechersky were Alexander Shubayev ( who was responsible for executing SS - Untersturmführer Johann Niemann ; was later killed fighting the Germans ) and Arkady Moishejwicz Wajspapier ( who was responsible for executing SS - Oberscharführer Siegfried Graetschus and Volksdeutscher Ivan Klatt ; survived the war ) . For over a year Pechersky fought with the Yehiel ' s Group partisans as a demolition expert and later with the Soviet group of Voroshilov Partisans , until the Red Army drove out the Germans from Belarus . As an escaped POW , Pechersky was conscripted into a special penal battalions , conforming to Stalin ' s Order No . 270 and was sent to the front to fight German forces in some of the toughest engagements of the war . Pechersky ' s battalion commander , Major Andreev , was so shocked by his description of Sobibor that he permitted Pechersky to go to Moscow and speak to the Commission of Inquiry of the Crimes of Fascist - German Aggressors and their Accomplices . The Commission listened to Pechersky and published the report " Uprising in Sobibor " based on his testimony . This report was included in the " Black Book " , one of the first comprehensive compilations about the Holocaust , written by Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg . For fighting the Germans as part of the penal battalions , Pechersky was promoted to the rank of captain and received a medal for bravery . He was eventually discharged after a serious foot injury . In a hospital in Moscow , he was introduced to his future wife , Olga Kotova . After the war . After the end of World War II , Pechersky returned to Rostov - on - Don , where he lived before the war , and started working as administrator in an Operetta theater . The mass murder of Jews at the Sobibor death camp became part of the charges against leading Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials . The International Tribunal at Nuremberg wanted to call Pechersky as a witness , but the Soviet government wouldn ' t allow him to travel to Germany to testify . In 1948 , during Stalin ' s persecution of Jews , known as the ' Rootless cosmopolitan ' campaign targeting those who allegedly lacked true loyalty and commitment to Stalinism and the Soviet Union , Pechersky was arrested and imprisoned in the GULAG labor camp system along with his brother . Only after Stalin ' s death in 1953 and mounting international pressure for his release , was Pechersky freed . His brother however succumbed to a diabetic coma while in prison . Pechersky was permitted to resume working at a small amateur musical theater but in a far more menial position . The Soviet government prevented Pechersky from testifying at the Eichmann Trial in Israel , only allowing a short deposition in Moscow which was controlled by the KGB . In 1963 , he appeared as a witness during the Soviet trial of 11 former Ukrainian guards at Sobibor ; all of whom were convicted and 10 of whom were executed . According to his daughter in an interview , Pechersky was prevented by the Soviet Union government from testifying in multiple international trials related to Sobibor . The final time Pechersky was refused to leave the country and testify was in 1987 at a trial in Poland , and according to his daughter , this refusal " " just crippled my father . He almost stopped getting out of bed and instantly aged . " " Alexander Pechersky died on January 19 , 1990 , and was buried at the northern cemetery in Rostov - on - Don , Russia . As of 2009 , Pechersky ' s daughter , granddaughter and two great - grandsons live in Rostov - on - Don ( his niece , her son and their descendants live in the United States ) . Remembrance . Alexander Pechersky features prominently in a Dutch - Russian documentary " Revolt in Sobibor ( 1989 ) " by director Pavel Kogan . An award - winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann , entitled " Sobibor , 14 Octobre 1943 , 16 heures " . The revolt was also dramatized in the 1987 British TV movie " Escape from Sobibor " , in which Rutger Hauer received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role ( Television ) for his portrayal of " Sasha " . Pechersky however did not attend the premiere of the movie ; his widow later stated that the Soviet government denied him permission to travel to the United States . Only in 2007 , 17 years after his death , was a small memorial plaque placed on the side of the building where he lived in Rostov - on - Don . There is also a memorial wall with his name engraved on it in Boston , United States . A street is named in his honor in Safed , Israel .