Sobibor Concentration Camp Revolt | Part 3: Redemption

*Transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors*

The year is 1984.
World War II has long since passed.
Adolf Hitler's dream of a thousand year reich had collapsed like his bunker in Berlin and
with it his vision of a world without Jews.
In a little town in West Germany, two men sit down for a drink together.
One man was middle-aged at 56 years old. He had dark hair and wore a tan suit.
Outwardly, he looked calm, but his hands and feet fidgeted every so often.
The other man was older, in his 70s.
Almost completely bald, with a few tufts of gray hair clinging to his temples, he was tall, heavy-set with a double chin.
These two men could have been anyone, old friends, a boss and his employee, a father and son,
but they weren't.

With only a tablecloth separating them sat Toivi Blatt, a Jewish escapee from Sobibor extermination camp, and
Urbischvatsfjuerer Karl Frenzel, one of the Nazi guards who worked there.
Forty years ago, Frenzel had been complicit in the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews.
Back then, Toevi had done everything he could to avoid it, but now it was he who sought him out.
For years, Toevi had dithered back and forth on whether he could meet the man.
After all these years, he had no idea how his body would react.
Would he cower, lose his words? Would he reach over the table and cave the old man's head in?
But with Frenzel's health failing and so few Nazis still alive, the decision would soon be made for him.
He had to do it, if not for him, for the other survivors,
to show them that these people that had tortured them were just men,
scared, sad old men.
Staring inquisitively, the Urbischvatsfjuerer waited for him to begin the interview.
Do you remember me?
Welcome back to Anthology of Heroes, the podcast sharing stories of heroism and defiance throughout history.
Anthology of Heroes is part of the Evergreen podcast network.
I'm your host, Elliot Gates, and this is part three, the final part of the story of the Sobibor concentration camp revolt,
the most successful concentration camp revolt in the history of the Holocaust.
A day in 1943 when the imprisoned Jews overthrew their Nazi oppressors,
killed them, battered down the fences, and escaped into the woods.
In episode one of our story, we introduced our two main characters,
Tobi Blart and Schlurmo Schmagner, two young Polish Jews who found themselves imprisoned at Sobibor extermination camp.
In that episode, we covered Tobi's life before the war and walked through the history of the Holocaust,
exploring how the Nazis perfected the art of genocide on the handicapped citizens of Germany.
We saw the challenges that both boys faced at Sobibor trying to stay alive and the brutality they endured on a daily basis.
We also met Leon Fellhändler, a confident and inspiring Jewish man who became the main planner of the revolt.
In episode two, we saw the arrival of Sasha Pachersky, a Russian soldier who happened to be Jewish.
Pachersky's entry to Sobibor bought a new life to camp.
Teaming up with Leon Fellhändler, Sasha turbocharged the plan, turning it from a simple, isolated breakout into a full blown revolt,
complete with objectives, kill squads and phasers.
We then saw the revolt itself.
Weeks of meticulous planning led to an almost flawless execution of the plan.
Many high-profile Nazis were murdered in silence, but just before the final phase was completed, an SS officer came across a dead body.
Shots were fired and Jews stampeded for the exit, slaughtering any Nazi guards that blocked them.
Mines exploded, barbed fences were torn down and gunfire was exchanged as Sobibor's imprisoned Jews ran to freedom in the forest.
Casualties were high, but as night fell, around 300 Jews had made it into the clearing.
Starving, cold and armed with only four or so guns, they were now in the middle of hostile countryside with no idea what to do next.
This episode picks up from here and mainly follows Tove's experience of what happened next.
But just a heads up, if some of the characters' stories do feel like they end a bit abruptly, it's because we'll be touching base with them again later on, so just keep that in mind.
There's some violence mentioned in this episode, but not to the extent of part one and two.
Let's get started.
In the Sobibor extermination camp, Carl Frenzel, the most senior Nazi still alive, peered around the corner of the empty streets trying to take stock of what had just happened.
Twelve Nazi officers were unaccounted for and more bodies were turning up every hour.
One stuffed into a closet, two more under a pile of clothes.
All the corpses they found had been absolutely savaged.
Many of them had had their skulls caved in and their bodies crisscrossed with deep frenzied stab wounds.
Frenzel ordered Bauer, the man who operated the gas chambers, to head into town and round up a few more Nazis to bolster their numbers for the night.
But Bauer, by his own admission, was too scared to leave.
Who knew who or what was out there in the forests?
The revolt had done so much damage to the camp that the surviving Nazis thought that partisans, guerrilla fighters, on the outside may have helped.
And if that were true, who's to say they weren't still out there?
With Bauer staying put, Frenzel mashed the telephone button, but there was no dial tone.
The prisoners had thought of that already.
The camp's generator had been sabotaged before everything began.
So instead he directed a telegram operator to dictate a message.
And over in the nearest city, telegram machine clicked to life in the local police station.
Jews revolted, some escaped, some SS officers, non-coms, foreign guards, dead, some Jews still in camp, send help.
On the edge of the forest, the spent minefield and a couple of pine trees were all that separated Shlomo, Toyvi, Leon, Sasha and 300 other Jews from their prison.
They'd done the impossible.
They'd escaped Sobibor, but what now?
Throughout the evening, stragglers drifted in.
There were hugs, but there were more tears.
Everyone knew someone that had it made it out.
Groups had already begun to form.
A few drifted away, but the majority of people stuck close to Sasha, the blonde Russian who had led them all to freedom.
After a quick inventory check to see what weapons and food everyone had, Sasha led the group away, wanting to put some distance between them and the camp.
He seemed agitated.
Whispering quietly to his Russian soldiers, it was obvious he didn't really know what to do.
The prisoners knew it, but he was still their best hope.
Suddenly, he turned around and addressed his noisy entourage.
He told them, listen, from now on, we move in single file.
That way we won't leave a beaten down path like this, he said, motioning to the flat and ground around them.
Looking over at a group of Jews chatting, he continued, and for God's sake, be silent and don't smoke.
If you see a flare or we're fired at, hit the ground.
After a few hours of walking, the convoy came to rest in a thicket.
Tovi put his head down and sleep came instantly.
The next thing he knew, it was awoken by the noise of an engine.
A search plane was patrolling the skies above and spotlight crisscrossing the scrub.
Once the plane departed, they moved on.
Through the chilly dawn, the convoy of Jews marched onwards.
Tovi's shoes were already wet through, and his warm winter coat had been lost during the escape through barbed fences.
He turned around and saw the enormous snake of people falling behind him.
Noisy, chattering and smoking, there was no way they wouldn't be caught in a group this large.
Then and there, he decided he would sneak away as soon as he could.
Weaker members of the party were already starting to slow the group down.
A French Jew mournfully told Tovi, I can't go on any further.
For a few kilometers, Tovi walked with him, encouraging him.
But as other members of the convoy overlapped him, his pace slowed even more,
and Tovi overtook him and walked onwards.
Sasha, of course, noticed all this too.
Looking back and shaking as had he whispered to his Russians, he too was making an escape plan.
Stopping for a break in the early afternoon, Sasha stood up and announced they needed to figure out where they were.
He and his Russians would approach nearby farmhouses, figure out their coordinates,
and try and barter for food for the group.
But for that, he needed money.
So they went from person to person, cap in hand, asking them to hand over whatever cash they had.
The prisoners grumbled about how they'd be sitting ducks waiting for him to return.
But they didn't really have much of a choice.
No one else was stepping forward to lead.
When the collectors approached Tovi, he handed over some cash,
but already suspecting something was up, he kept the majority of his wealth tucked away.
With a pocketful of money, Sasha and about five others headed off into the woods.
With the exception of Shlomo, the convoy now had no guns.
One hour passed, then another, then another.
By the afternoon, everyone was forced to confront the facts.
Their leader had abandoned them.
Bartering safe passage with the money he'd fleeced from the other prisoners,
a few days later, Sasha and his men crossed the Bug River.
They were going home.
But it wasn't as simple as walking back to Moscow, Russia was being invaded.
Between him and his homeland was a massive German army.
With the first good luck he'd experienced since the start of the war,
he stumbled across a band of guerrilla fighters operating behind enemy lines.
Ever the dutiful soldier, he joined them, sabotaging German supply lines and blowing up train tracks.
As the Red Army gained ground, Sasha stepped on a mine, blowing his leg off.
It was touch and go, but by the time the Red Army arrived, he was stable.
He was shipped back home, still wearing Luca's lucky shirt.
It's easy to judge Sasha Bochersky.
He'd abandoned hundreds of his followers deep in enemy territory.
Not only that, he stole their belongings before he left.
Sasha had always been a Russian first and a Jew second.
His imprisonment at Sobibor was just a roadblock for him,
something that he needed to overcome to get back to his calling,
defending the motherland from Germans.
He had never asked to be the leader of the Sobibor Jews, they just all gravitated to him.
And when he lied to them and stole from them, he thought only of his wife and young daughter
back at home.
He probably thought he'd never see any of those people again anyway.
But he was wrong.
Decades later, he would be asked directly by one of them.
Why did you abandon us?
We'll touch back with him later on.
Back at the clearing, everyone was tense.
Sasha was gone, then he wasn't coming back.
Now everyone had their own suggestions on what they should do.
The most capable survivors were already linking up and drifting away in small groups.
Everyone pushing to stay together as one big group were the people that wouldn't last on their own.
The old, the young, the weak, or the sick.
Meanwhile, back in Sobibor, Frenzel had regained control.
The prisoners who had made the choice to stay behind during the revolt, about 159 people,
were taken into the barracks and executed.
The Nazi officers knew that this was the end of the road for Sobibor concentration camp.
The news of the breakout had already reached Nazi High Command.
Heinrich Himmler was humiliated.
The war was really not going well, a Jewish revolution was the last thing they needed.
Close it all down, he commanded, leave nothing.
Treblinka, the next closest concentration camp, soon got its orders for liquidation.
Three other camps in the area would follow soon.
Himmler was clear, these camps never existed.
The secrets of what took place needed to be buried.
In just two days, 42,000 people were murdered, officially bringing Hitler's final solution,
code-named Operation Reinhardt to a close.
The sappers and engineers were dispatched to disarm the mines,
the ash pits were filled, the gas chambers were dynamited,
and saplings were planted to grow over the top.
If anyone ever stumbled across these camps, all they would find was burnt out buildings and rubble.
The only ones left who could tell the story were the escaped Jews hiding in the forest near Sobibor.
They had to be found.
Mounted guards, bloodhounds, and three spotter planes were dispatched,
but Frenzel had made a big mistake with where he sent the search parties.
He assumed that the Jews would flee across the Bug River into Russian Poland.
But with the exception of Sasha, the majority of the escapees were Polish Jews.
They knew these lands better than whatever lay east.
Many were now making their way back home through the forests.
But they weren't alone.
The woods were teeming with partisan groups,
guerrilla fighters whose loyalty was all over the spectrum.
Some were anti-communist, some were anti-Nazi, some were both,
but all had different attitudes towards the Jews.
Smatted throughout the forest were these little isolated huts,
farms belonging to peasant families.
These people too had their own thoughts on Jews.
Some hated them, some tolerated them,
but as a penalty for assisting a Jew was death, most wanted nothing to do with them.
The following story comes to us from biographer Richard Raschke.
But just to call out, I've been unable to collaborate this part of the story with other
accounts. It was at one of these huts that Shlomo Schmazzner wrapped at the door of.
Rifle in hand, he readied himself for whatever was inside.
The owner cautiously cracked the door open and Shlomo pushed his way in.
Don't kill me, said the little old man. He was the only one home.
Shlomo told him not to worry that he was a partisan and he just wanted food.
Wolfing down the first thing he'd eaten in four days, he gave the man a gold coin and left.
With a group of 16 other Jews, Shlomo and his band soon ran into a real group of partisans.
Prior to the meeting, Shlomo had thrown his rifle into a bush,
in case the men mugged him, he wanted to be able to return to it later.
One of the Jews was trying to convince the armed partisans that they too were partisans.
The group eyed them up and down. Sotted wet in torn clothes with no guns and foreign accents,
it's clear that whoever these people were, they weren't partisans.
When one of them blabbed that Shlomo had a gun hit in a way, the group raised their rifles at them.
Hands up, give me the gun. Shlomo had no choice but to hand over the weapon.
As soon as he did, the commander lined them all up.
Fire, he told his men. Gunfire rang out through the night and the bodies of all 17 Jews hit the
ground. The bullet missed Shlomo, but he lay still, struggling to breathe as another man's body
landed on top of him. Silent and still, he lay there for 30 minutes before hoisting the body
off him. The partisans had left, and he and two other Jews had survived. With no food, and now
no gun, the three survivors headed for a farmhouse where an old family friend of one of them lived.
They were relieved to find he was still there, and despite the risk, agreed to shelter them.
Shlomo and the other two languished there, but as the months drifted by,
they got bored and restless. All of them wanted to play their part in finishing off the Reich.
Each one went their own way, and it's believed Shlomo finally managed to join a partisan group
that accepted Jews. Alongside them, he fought the dwindling Nazi forces until Poland's liberation
by the USSR just a year later, and we'll touch base with him again later on.
And that leaves us with Toivi Blat. Sasha was gone, Leon and Shlomo were gone too,
and the 15-year-old found himself as one of the most able-bodied people in a crowd of sick,
weak and injured Jews. Toivi had already decided he was heading home to his beaker.
Nazis or not, he had a better chance with neighbors he knew rather than knocking on
peasants' huts in the middle of a forest. He and two others crept away, but they were spotted.
By the time they'd broke off, there were seven of them in total. One of them was a young teen
named Mendel. Mendel constantly chatted about how soon they'd be caught and killed and what was
the point of everything. Since they'd met in the forest, Mendel had been a bag of nerves.
Toivi thought he was probably suffering from some kind of PTSD after what had happened to him at
Sobibor. Toivi did his best to quieten him, he told him, relax, we're okay now, but he noticed
the two older men glancing back. After stopping for a rest, Toivi awoke to see them sneaking away.
He followed after them saying, hey, fair enough if you want to leave, but there are two young
kids with us. It's only fair that each group should take one of them. As they argued, Mendel
jabbered and twitched and stuttered on the edge of a nervous breakdown. But reluctantly,
the two men agreed to take him with them. The two groups split, but half an hour later,
Mendel returned to Toivi in tears, sobbing that the two men had chased him away.
Again, Toivi chased them down. Once he caught up to them, he asked, what do you think you're doing?
It's not fair that our group has to take two children. You must take Mendel with you.
In their eyes, he saw a genuine fury and he knew if it was just him there, they would have killed
him. But the two men were outnumbered and Toivi had a switchblade just in case they tried.
With even greater reluctance, they again stomped away with Mendel following them.
Half an hour later, Toivi and the others heard a horrible shriek and sounded like Mendel.
No one suggested going to investigate, no one spoke. They'd done all they could for the boy.
The group of four marched on. But Toivi worried about the child they had with them.
Like Mendel, he was a risk, prone to crying or even selling them out.
When they came upon an isolated hut, the child boldly announced that he would knock at the door,
get some food and return to them. They watched him disappear into the hut.
An hour ticked by, then another. He never came back outside.
Maybe a kindly Polish farmer felt bad for a child of his age, or maybe he'd tied him up for the
Germans. Whatever had happened, there was nothing that could be done, and the trio plotted onwards
towards his beaker. Accompanying Toivi were Schmull Wassen, an 18-year-old who worked as
a document incinerator back at Sobibor, and Fredek Kostman, who was a little older than the other
two at around 21 years of age. Fredek and Schmull were both city boys. Unlike Toivi, who'd lived
his whole life in his rural village, they were more worldly. But here out in the wilds, it was
Toivi who took the lead. The trio trekked through the forest. Ducking patrols and spotlights,
they peaked into homesteads and ate whatever they could. Most inhabitants just wanted them gone as
quickly as possible. If they were lucky, they'd let them buy a plate of food. And if they were
really lucky, a barn to sleep in overnight. It became a routine. Quick meal, payment, and then
back out into the cold. On October the 20th, six days after the breakout, the boys trudged down
the side of Lonely Highway and saw a sign that read, is beaker, 12 kilometers. They soon reached
the outskirts of his town, but Toivi barely recognized it. The homes of almost all Jewish
families in New were now just empty blocks. Literally torn up plank by plank by treasure
hunters searching for that elusive Jew gold Hitler was always going on about. Late that night,
they arrived at the house of an old family friend. They were a Catholic family, and Toivi's father
had given them all of their furniture before they were sent to Sobibor. Toivi told Fredek and
Schmull to wait in the bushes while he went to speak with the family. To make sure he was coming back,
the two made sure Toivi left behind all his money and his knife. Tip tonguing up to the
homestead, Toivi rapped quietly at the door. After a brief delay, a woman's voice asked,
who's there? Toivi. My God, go away, I'm afraid, she whispered at the closed door.
Tovi lied that his father was with them and begged her to shelter them.
I don't want to hear it, the woman responded emotionally. My husband was sent to Auschwitz,
all I have is my son, I won't put him in danger. After more begging, she reluctantly cracked the
door and held out a piece of bread with butter for Toivi. He went to leave and take some back to his
friends, but the woman told him to eat it right now or give it back, lest he be caught and give
her name to the Nazis. As soon as he was finished, the door was closed and bolted, and Toivi returned
to his friends empty-handed. As the trio crept through the back alleys, the late October winds
were beginning and it was starting to snow. They had nowhere to sleep and they were bordering on
starvation. Scooting around the edges of town, they looked for somewhere isolated to spend the
night in, and soon came across a lonely farmstead. Making for the barn, they crept through the crops
quietly, but a guard dog saw them and started to bark. The door of the homestead flew open and a
chubby, red-faced farmer came outside to check the noise. The farmer called out, asking, who's there?
And to his surprise, Toivi recognized him. His name was Bajarski, the father of one of Toivi's
old schoolmates. Glad to see that the intruders were just three Jews and not robbers, he invited
them inside and the trio had their first hot meal since Sobibor. As they gratefully wolfed down the
food, they floated the idea of maybe letting them sleep in the barn for a few nights. Bajarski
shook his head, though. To shelter Jews was to risk death. But when Toivi presented the farmer's
wife with a pair of gold earrings and his daughter with a gold ring, his tone changed quickly.
Remember, these three had all manner of jewelry, gold and paper money stashed on them from Sobibor.
The peasant farmer's eyes widened as he saw the gifts. He asked them to leave for the night so
he could think about it. As the three drifted off to sleep in the woods nearby, there was
something about the situation that bothered Toivi. This was the closest they'd been to safety
since they escaped, so why was his gut telling him that something was wrong? He had seen the
farmer's face before, not just through a school friend somewhere else. Suddenly it came to him.
He remembered a moment from his childhood when his father ran a grocery store. Every time a
liquor delivery arrived, it was always a few bottles short and the delivery drive was always
stumbling and slurring, clearly having tucked into the bottles on the drive over.
One day the delivery was even lighter than usual. Toivi's father Leon confronted the man and told
him, you know, this isn't on. You can't just keep stealing liquor from these deliveries and
expecting me to pay. The man puffed himself up and blew up at Toivi's father, yelling all kinds
of racist slurs he left in a strop, kicking a dining table into the wall on his way out.
Not 10 minutes later, Toivi's neighbours cried out that their house was on fire.
The neighbours quickly doused the blaze and told him it had been started by a drunk and
delivery driver. Toivi, Fredek and Shmool were now trusting their life to that same man.
The revelation of where Toivi knew Bajasky from didn't change the situation they were in.
They were Jewish fugitives with no food or shelter and winter just around the corner.
Bajasky might have been an unsavory character, but they didn't exactly have options.
The farmer vacillated throughout the night. The boys knew that his decision was balancing on
a knife edge. The next day when he took them inside to give them his final decision,
they again let their wealth to the talking. On the peasant's dining table, they laid diamonds,
rings, necklaces, bullion and paper money from every country across Europe.
Bajasky's eyes glistened as he looked over the items. Just a few of them would make him the
richest man in town. All of this could be his if he just kept them hidden for a few months.
The war would be over soon anyway, they insisted. Bajasky agreed. He would shelter the three Jewish
boys, providing they would continue paying him. The trio worked static. They had secured shelter
and food. All they needed to do now was wait for liberation. Cautiously, Bajasky led them across
the fields to his barn. The trio followed him around the pile of old farm equipment into a corner.
Pushing a hay bale aside, there was a single bent nail sticking out of the wall.
Impossible to see if you weren't looking for it. Bajasky twisted the nail and a wooden plank came
loose. Behind it was a packed wall of hay and at the very bottom of that was a two-foot hole.
He instructed the boys to crawl through and inside was their new home. Eight foot long,
four foot wide and four foot tall, it was little more than a coffin. There was no room to stand up
or to do anything apart from lie or sit down. The only items inside were two old horse blacken
kits and a chamber pot. It wasn't a palace, but it was hidden and warm. They were safe.
The farmer promised to feed them three times a day and come nightfall take them out of exercise
and fresh air. Initially, they had a gas lamp to provide light, but once it ran dry, Bajasky
refused to buy more gas, saying it was a fire hazard. So in the pitch black, the teens eight
slept and existed. Not being able to tell the time messed with their body clock,
everyone just slept whenever they felt like it, which meant someone was always awake when
another one was trying to sleep, tossing and turning. After a few days, they made a rule,
no one sleeps from the time the rooster crows until Bajasky brings them their third meal.
They'd listen for Bajasky's timid footsteps. The plank would be removed and they'd silently
walk a lap around the outside of the barn before going back inside. With each day that passed,
they'd add another stick of straw to the calendar they'd made. Weeks turned into months, and this
was all there was. Fredek, a chronic smoker, was unable to fight his nicotine withdrawals
and rolled up paper to smoke, stinking out their little box. To pass the time, he and Schmull
talked of the cars their families owned, of towering train stations, tunnels and flushing
toilets, all of which made Tovy feel like a country bumpkin. One night, the monotony of
the routine was broken when Tovy awoke to a noise outside.
Where have you hidden the Jews? An unfamiliar voice asked, accusingly.
Sir, have pity. There are no Jews here, no strangers. They heard Bajasky pleading.
Well, why you dressed so nicely lately? Come on, hand them over and we'll divide the gold.
Bajasky began to sob, and the strangers poked through his barn.
Tearing up bales of hay, they searched and searched, but their box was well hidden.
They left empty-handed. But from that day on, Bajasky's attitude to his guests changed.
The boys had now officially worn out their welcome.
I thought this would only be for a short time, Bajasky exasperated,
rubbing his forehead in frustration. I figured a few weeks, maybe two months,
but there's no end to it. The three teens could offer no consolation except more money.
The peasant farmer was in a tough place. If he forcibly evicted the boys,
they'd probably be caught, and if that happened, they'd probably give up his name.
It was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. Their night time exercise was cancelled,
and now they were living on a single bowl of food per day.
The gloomy living situation began to sour the mood inside.
Shmuel had become paranoid and greedy. Out of the three of them,
he'd escaped Sobibor with the most gold and treasure.
Despite this, Shmuel insisted on splitting their bribes for Bajasky equally,
which had led Fredek and Toyvy to being dangerously low on cash.
If they ran out of money, would Shmuel pay their share?
Out of nowhere, one day, he got in the face of the other two boys,
claiming they'd stolen some of the money. The accusation was ridiculous.
They were with each other at all times. There was no privacy whatsoever.
Filthy, hairy and paranoid, the three boys sat in the dark and waited desperately
for the Soviet advance to free them.
God, what shame and disgrace would descend upon my family if people found out that I was
sheltering Jews. Bajasky's familiar rant flattered in as he bought them their daily meal.
Usually, Toyvy just ignored him, but today he was tired and irritable.
Pointing out to the cross that dangled from Bajasky's neck,
Toyvy pointed to the lettering, I-N-R-I, Inri. Do you know what that means? He asked.
Bajasky was silent.
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Jesus himself was a Jew.
Bajasky huffed and puffed at the rebuke, yelling at the teens and demanding more gold
before he stomped back into his house. But the next day, he returned suspiciously cheery.
He told them that he'd heard in town the Germans were on the hunt for partisans and Jews.
I won't let you boys down. If we go down, we go down together. He told them with a big forced grin.
But he continued, They're really digging to everyone's barn,
so I'm going to have to move you somewhere more secure.
So out of their straw coffin, he led them. Outside of the barn behind some bushes with
their new home. If what they had been in was a coffin, then this was a grave.
A four and a half foot long, three foot high, three foot wide grave.
Gingerly, the boys lowered themselves into the hole and tried to arrange themselves on the straw.
Once they were all inside, the farmer gave them a kerosene lamp to get themselves settled
and then set a plank of water top the hole. Tovi looked around. Where was the air vent?
By the time Bajasky had closed them up, the kerosene lamp had already begun to wink and falter.
There was no oxygen here. They heard a heavy object being dragged across the ground above
before it landed with a thud right above their heads. Chunks of dirt and dust fell on them
as a hairline crack spread through the wooden board above. The wood began to bow and flex
dangerously inward, was about to snap. Instinctively, all three jumped up to support the beam,
but the weight of what ever on top was too heavy. The kerosene lamp splattered out,
and in the darkness, Tovi began to feel lightheaded. With all their strength,
they strained against the weight until they heard the object begin to slide off.
Light and fresh air flooded into the tomb as they scrambled out.
At that moment, Bajasky turned the corner and saw them. His face white, like he'd seen a ghost,
he asked, how did you get out? Slapping the boys on the back, Bajasky laughed the whole
event off as an accident as he led them back to their old shelter. But the three boys knew,
the man had tried to bury them alive.
It was April 23, 1944. In exactly one week's time, carrying his bunker,
Adolf Hitler would raise a Walther pistol to his temple and pull the trigger.
The war was almost over. The sounds of the front line grew louder with each passing day.
The Red Army was almost there.
Fredek, Tovi and Schmull had sheltered in the peasant's barn now for five and a half months.
What had started off as a goodwill gesture lubricated with gold had been turned on his head.
Both parties lived in great suspicion of the other. Bajasky barely fed them,
and the three were always on the lookout for whatever he would try next.
Late into the evening, they heard footsteps.
Thank God, thought Tovi, he'd bought them food.
Fredek leaned through the opening to receive the plate,
and the group were almost deafened by a bang.
Fredek slumped over and mumbled, Son of a bitch, Germans.
Tovi and Schmull grabbed him by the legs and hauled him back inside. His blood sprayed all
over them. He'd been shot. Tovi froze, stunned. The straw cabin had always been their safe space.
It didn't seem possible that they could be hurt while they were inside,
but Fredek's glassy dead eyes were all the confirmation they needed.
Schmull and Tovi pushed themselves into the hay bales, trying to hide,
as the soldiers pulled away the panels. Digging through the hay, Tovi came face to face with
one of the soldiers, a skinny, blonde, German teen who looked about as old as he was.
The look on his face was one Tovi had seen a million times now.
Hatred. Tovi's face was so close to his gun that he could see the rust accumulating on the barrel.
As he lowered his rifle at his head, Tovi begged,
please don't shoot, don't kill me. He heard a bang, and everything went black.
A throbbing pain in his jaw was the first thing Tovi felt as he regained consciousness.
As his other senses returned, he realized he was being dragged over ground.
There was a noose around his feet. They were outside the barn somewhere,
as he heard Bajasky say, might be better to give him another bullet.
So it was him. After everything, Bajasky had sold them out.
Tovi did his best to remain still and dead, but the winter chill was so intense he couldn't
stop his hand and feet twitching. The teen that had shot him walked over to him and held his hands
in front of his mouth. Tovi held his breath to the point where he thought his lungs might burst,
but at the very moment he couldn't hold any longer, the teen pulled his hands back.
Let's not waste a bullet. He's already stiff, the teen told Bajasky.
Bajasky, his wife, and the German agreed to dispose of the bodies and loot the corpses the next day.
Lying in a pool of his own blood, Tovi lay completely still until he was sure they were gone.
Slowly he stood up and walked over to the slumped body of Shmul.
Nudging him, he asked. Shmul, are you alive?
He was. He too had pretended to be dead. The Nazi had shot him four times but only hit him once.
Shmul's right index finger was completely extended, unable to bend with a bullet nestled
in between the bones. Feeling out his own wounds, Tovi realized a metal bullet was still lodged in
his jawbone. Gathering up their cash and gold, Tovi and Shmul hobbled off into the forest.
It was snowing, and all they had was their blood soaked regular clothes.
After a few miles, Tovi's ankle swelled to the point where he was unable to walk.
He told Shmul to go on ahead, but was touched by his bravery as the older boy helped him walk,
telling him, if we die, we die together. The two spent their first night in an old brick factory.
The next day they found a lone goat and suckling milk from her teats that had their first nourishment
in days. Hopping from barn to barn, they rolled the dice on the kindness of strangers.
One man gave them food, shelter, nursed their wounds and even gave them a new set of clothes,
while another screamed at them, run, you dirty Jews, run or I'll get the Germans myself.
When they couldn't find free food, they paid whatever was demanded.
As they crept through a cornfield one night, a spotlight fell on them.
Stop, don't move. Tovi's ankles were still swollen too badly to run even if he wanted to.
Shmul bolted, and the guards sprinted after him, leaving Tovi to hop all the way.
From the local families Tovi sheltered with, he learned that Shmul had managed to outrun
the guards and was still in the area. But both boys were always one day ahead or one day behind
the other, never managing to link up. The loneliness Tovi felt without Shmul really affected him.
It was now as if Shmul was the only person in the world to him. The closest thing to a family
member and the only person who truly understood what he was going through. Without Shmul,
Tovi struggled to find the motivation to keep going. He spent days just roaming the farmland
asking if anyone had seen his friend. It's very hard to find anything concrete on Shmul's fate,
but according to the Holocaust History Society, not long after they split up, Shmul was caught
and killed. Tovi Blatt passed the days and nights with strings of families he knew were friendly.
He helped out on their farms, fixed whatever machinery he could and did his best to blend in.
He even went to church a couple of times. The front line was now very close and the
paltry German forces left behind around town had begun dynamiting their own tanks.
When the day finally arrived, it was almost underwhelming, a token resistance by an army that
knew they were already defeated. The first battalion of men marched into town wearing green uniforms,
just like Sasha wore. World War II was over.
Out of the roughly 300 Jews that escaped Sobibor on the 14th of October 1943,
100 were caught and executed by the Germans, 139 were never accounted for,
and 61 survived until liberation. Tovi Blatt eventually moved to California in the United
States. He married once, divorced, and then married again. He and his wife co-ran an automotive shop
and had two children, a boy and a girl. Perhaps to fit in better, he began to go by Thomas instead
of Tovi. Though it shifted into the life of an American easily enough, he fastidiously collected
Sobibor memorabilia and kept in contact with many of the survivors. Leon Felhenler was murdered,
just after liberation. His death is a bit of a mystery. Either he was killed at the hands of
Polish partisans or in a robbery gone wrong. It's an absolute tragedy that a man who was so crucial
in the survival of so many others was killed in such a senseless act. Without Felhenler forming
the organization, Sasha would never have found a core group of escapies already pre-packaged and
ready to go. If the Russian had to organize and plan everything himself, it would have been on a
much smaller scale, and based on previous escape attempts probably wouldn't have succeeded.
Without any memoirs released, Leon Felhenler's story will always be that one missing puzzle
in the piece of Sobibor. Kym Engel, the man who screamed, for my father, for my brother,
for all the Jews, as he murdered SS Beckman, moved to Israel with his wife Selma, who he met at Sobibor.
Shlomo Shmashna, Sobibor's first and last goldsmith, moved to Goiana in the north of Brazil.
Entrepreneurial as ever, Shlomo set himself up quite well as a well-connected executive director
of a very profitable paper recycling plant. Sasha Pachersky, the blonde Russian soldier who led the
rebellion, reunited with his wife and daughter and moved to Rostov-on-Don, USSR. In 1965, a trial
was set for the Sobibor Nazis that still lived. Accusations ranged from murder to war crimes
all the way up to genocide. Twelve Nazi personnel had been scraped up from all across Europe
to be held accountable for what they'd done almost two decades ago.
Survivors flew in from all across the world, determined to finally say their peace to the
people that tortured them with impunity. Eric Bauer, the so-called gas master who mocked the
crowds of shivering prisoners as they walked to the chambers, was recognized on the streets of Berlin
by two survivors. He was arrested and sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life in prison.
During his trial, he said about his role, quote,
It is clear to me that in the extermination camp, murder was committed. What I have done was only
to assist in the murder. If I were to be found guilty, it would be justified. Murder is murder.
We are all guilty. The camp had a chain of command, and if one link in the chain were to refuse to
cooperate, then the whole system would collapse. We did not have the courage to disobey orders,
end quote. This chain of command justification will be repeated by many Nazis involved in the
Holocaust. Defense lawyers would try and argue along the lines, if the man who operated the
gas chamber was responsible for the deaths, what about the station master who cleared the boxcars
for departure? What about the man who built the train tracks? And on and on it could go.
Eric Bauer died in prison. Kurt Bollender, another high-ranking Nazi that survived the
rebellion, changed his name after the war. Going by Heinz Brenner, he worked as a doorman
at a hotel in West Berlin, but again was recognized by two survivors who passed him in the streets.
He tried to protest that he had never been at Sobibor, but police searching his house found a
whip with the buttstock of it engraved with his initials KB. This was one of the monograms
that Schloma had crafted all those years ago. Bollender was found guilty of personally murdering
about 360 Jews and assisting in the murder of 86,000. He committed suicide before it could be
put on trial. Gustav Wagner, the beast of Sobibor, the man who had always been at the top of the
kill list but had the luck of being on day leave during the revolt. Wagner was cunning, there was
nowhere he was going to be cornered like a rat in a cage. A particular Austrian bishop was one of
many within the Vatican who was sympathetic to the Nazis. The bishop used his position to help
many war criminals escape to South America, and Wagner was one of them. Going by the name
Gunther Mendel, Wagner worked as a handyman for a wealthy Brazilian family near Sao Paulo.
He married a local woman and set up building a new life for himself. If he stayed out of the
limelight, he might have even got away with it all. But the pull of Nazi indoctrination was too
strong. In 1978, Wagner and other aging Nazis met up in Brazil to celebrate what would have been
Adolf Hitler's 89th birthday. In an infamous picture that shows many elderly Germans performing
the Heil Hitler salute, there nestled at the back was Gustav Wagner, alive and well a world away
from his thousand year Reich. When his cover was blown, Israel, Austria, Yugoslavia, West Germany
and Poland all sent extradition requests to Brazil. But for an unknown reason, Brazil refused to
give up the war criminal. In a 1979 interview with the BBC, Wagner would be the only guard to not even
bother faking remorse at what he'd done. Quote, I had no feelings, it became just another job.
In the evenings, we never discussed our work, we just drank and played cards.
Two years later, Wagner was dead. His death was officially ruled a suicide,
but Shlomo and other survivors heavily implied there was more to it than that.
The beast had died from a stab wound to the chest, an extremely unorthodox and painful way to end
your own life. And what about Frenzel? Wagner's slow-witted replacement who took over command
after the revolt. Frenzel was found guilty of personally killing six Jews and assisting in
the murder of 150,000. He was the star defendant of the trial, the highest ranking of all Nazis
to be called Testify. From sobibore survivors to members of the public, everyone howled for
justice when Frenzel took the stand. Lucky for him though, by the time his trial had come around,
West Germany had just recently outlawed the death penalty. Wagner instead received the
harshest penalty possible, life in prison. He served a few years, but when his health began
to fail, he was released on compassionate leave into the care of a retirement home in Hanover.
This man who was found guilty in the deaths of over 150,000 people lived out his days playing
checkers and sipping tea. In 1984, Toivi Blatt, who had made it as life's work to
chronicle and archive what happened in sobibore, flew to Germany for an interview with the aging
Frenzel. As far as I know, this is the only instance of a Holocaust survivor interviewing
one of his oppressors. Here's Toivi, in his own words, explaining why he chose to interview Frenzel.
But I felt I must take the opportunity as historian and write about sobibore and
find out as much as possible from the source of the enemy everything I could get about sobibore.
Setting down over a patterned tablecloth, Frenzel, the man who had murdered Toivi's
entire family, sat calmly, sipping cold beer from a glass. Though they both looked very different
now, they were the same people with the same memories. Here's the first 30 or so seconds of
the three hour interview. The voice you hear is Carl Frenzel apologizing and asking Toivi for his
forgiveness. The interview went for three hours and if Toivi wanted a frothing monster, a demon,
he didn't get it. According to Frenzel, he had since renounced his Nazi leanings and stayed away
from politics. There were no raised voices, curses or yelling. Frenzel answered his questions calmly.
When Toivi pointed out that he had murdered his family, the old Nazi responded with quote,
this was terrible, very terrible. It isn't only now that it upsets me so terribly, it upset me then.
You don't know what went on in us. You don't understand the circumstances we found ourselves
in, end quote. Toivi probed and probed to get more answers. Was he anti-semitic? Did he just
hate Jews? No, not really, Frenzel responded. Then why? Why did you murder us? Duty. Duty was all he
could say. When pressed on the deaths, he was quick to follow the chain of command excuse.
Just because he had sent hundreds of thousands to the gas chambers, he technically didn't kill
them as he wasn't the one who switched on the gas. Ultimately, Toivi walked away from the interview
with just as many questions as he had going in. But he did get one thing. Having visited
Sobibor regularly since a revolt, Toivi was always bothered by the plaque outside that read,
here the Nazis killed 250,000 Russian prisoners of war, Jews, Poles and Gypsies. To Toivi,
the sign was a blatant lie and one that minimized the suffering of the Jews.
In other camps, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and minority groups were murdered but at Sobibor it
was Jews, just Jews. In his interview, Frenzel confirmed this and Toivi leveraged the recording
to petition for the sign to be corrected. But a replaced sign was little consolation.
Toivi continued to visit Sobibor over the years. Despite the monumental impact the camp had on
his life, the place was a dump. The parking lot was overgrown with weeds and the barracks had
been converted into a shanty pub where locals had scrawled, don't piss here,
include black letters on the wall. Baron Lightpost stood empty and dark with fixtures stolen by
locals who'd also dug up areas of the camp looking for buried treasure. And where the crematorium
once stood, Toivi was saddened to still find fragments of bones. During one visit as he
walked through his old home, a Polish priest was telling an abridged version of what happened to
his friends. More than once he referred to the prisoners as kikes. Toivi confronted him,
they are not kikes, they are Jews. You may wear the garb of a Christian,
be to not have the soul of a Christian. Every survivor dealt with their memories differently.
No one, apart from other survivors, had any frame of reference to understand what they'd endured.
Toivi was introspective, quiet, but did everything in his power to ensure that it was remembered.
While Shlomo was fiery, the anger that took him that one night with no jet seemed to have never
left him. When the two young men met up after the liberation of Poland, Toivi told him the
story of what had happened with Bajarski. Toivi was prepared to let sleeping dogs lie, but Shlomo
wasn't. He convinced Toivi that they should go pay the old farmer a visit, at very least to see if
he still had any of the stolen wealth. They arrived at the farm a week later. Toivi had no
trouble finding it. The same barn where he spent eight months loomed large. There was no more
schmool or freddick, but they had two Russian soldiers with them in case things got rough.
They knocked at the door and Bajarski's wife answered. Toivi saw it in her eyes, she recognized
him. They pushed their way in. Where's Bajarski? In town. We'll wait then. When he didn't return,
Shlomo calmly grabbed Bajarski's daughter, put a gun to her head and told his wife,
tell us where the gold is now. I don't know, she pleaded, but Shlomo was insistent. I will kill
her if you don't tell me. The farmer's wife gave in and led them to the hiding spot. Bajarski had
spent much of it, but there were still thousands of dollars of cash and jewelry. Gold in hand,
Shlomo marched the girl out to the barn, to the very same spot where Toivi and the others had
been shot. He raised his gun to the girl's head and cocked it. The mother screamed and Toivi
begged, pleaded with him, don't do it, what good would it do? They had what they came for.
As they left together, Shlomo looked Toivi in the eye and said,
I would have done it, just like that. Toivi had no doubt that he would have.
Bajarski ended up in prison not long after and Toivi never heard of him again.
As the years passed, interest in the revolt was reignited by an author named Richard Rashki.
Fascinated by the story and perplexed that it remained so unknown in world history,
Rashki decided he had to write a book on it.
Various survivors had written memoirs or partial memoirs, but he wanted to cover the whole story
from end to end in English. Reaching out to the survivors across the world, his venture was met
with suspicion. Oh, so now the world cares about Jews was the typical feeling. Some survivors
completely stonewalled him, but little by little here in the trust of a few. After linking up with
Shlomo and Toivi, Rashki penetrated the inner sanctum, and the hero of Sobibor, Sasha Pacherski,
finally agreed to meet with him for an interview, provided Toivi was there too.
In 1980, Toivi and Rashki arrived in the USSR. The trip itself was a rarity. The Soviet state
was famously closed off, and tourists were viewed with the utmost suspicion.
Rashki and Toivi entered into the lobby of their government-monitored hotel room,
and got their first glimpse at the 72-year-old Sasha Pacherski. He had the posture of the soldier,
though he had grown a bit of a belly and his cheeks were ruddy. When he walked, he was tall
and straight. His silver hair was combed back, and as Rashki shook his hand, he could still
feel the man was very strong. As a resident of the USSR, Sasha had comparatively little contact
with the rest of the survivors. Letters going to and from him were always intercepted by the
government, and despite the legendary status he had within the minds of the survivors,
he lived in a typical Soviet dwelling, a small apartment, spare furniture with a
shared kitchen and bathroom for other residents. After gulping down a sufficiently
Russian amount of vodka, the interview began. Sasha's mind was still sharp,
and he remembered everything in good detail. As he spoke, Rashki's hands sped across a page,
trying to dictate every detail that Sasha remembered. He was fearful that at any moment
the interview could be cut short. Toivi told him how highly everyone thought of him. He asked him,
did you receive any recognition for your efforts after the war? Sasha and his wife Olga looked
at each other. Then he got up, checked the hallway, and made sure no one was listening.
Once the coast was clear, he leaned in close and whispered sarcastically.
Yes, my efforts were recognized. I was thrown in a prison for surrendering to the Germans.
I was only freed because of international pressure, thanks to what I did at Sobubor.
The ice broken, Rashki pushed a question he'd wanted to ask since he walked through the door.
Tell me about Luka. As if a switch had been flicked, the gruff old Russian immediately
began to sob. Out of nowhere, he cried and cried. Long, unashamed, anguished sobs. Twice he tried
to start the story again, but had to stop because he was unable to get the words out.
Eventually, he described how the girl inspired him, but clarified that there was nothing sexual
between them. His tears were tears of regret, regret that he could never bring himself to trust her,
and because of that felt responsible for her death. Rashki was surprised when the Russian
pulled from storage an old shirt. It was the same lucky shirt that Luka had sewed for him.
Finally, Toyvi came to the question he'd wanted to ask for the last 40 years.
Why did you leave us? To promise that you'd come back after surveillance, we trusted you.
You were our hero. Why don't you tell us the truth? The same cold eyes that once
met Leon Felhenler's over the chessboard stared back piercingly at Toyvi. My job was done.
You were Polish Jews in your own terrain. I belonged in the Soviet Union and still considered
myself a soldier. In my opinion, the chances of survival were better in smaller groups.
To tell the people straightforward, we must part would not have worked. You have seen,
they followed every step of mine, we would have all perished.
The accusatory nature of the questions clearly made the man squirm, but Toyvi pressed further.
I can understand that not telling us the truth was perhaps necessary,
otherwise we would not have let you go, but why did you take all the armed men?
So your men had all the weapons and the rest of us. Over 50 people were left with one rifle,
and on top of that, money was collected for your people to buy food and rest. To us,
this was plain dishonesty. Adjusting himself in his chair, Sasha responded,
Tom, what can I say? You were there. We were only people. The basic instincts came into play.
It was a fight for survival. This is the first time I hear about money collection.
It was turmoil. It was difficult to control everything. I admit, I've seen the imbalance
in the distribution of weaponry, but you must understand they, meaning the soldiers,
would rather die than give up their arms. Brashki's book would go on to be a success,
and the book inspired an even more successful movie, which shone light on the rebellion.
Many survivors even assisted in the production of it. When the movie was nominated for awards,
something the survivors desired above all else had been attained. Recognition.
When Sasha jumped to top that wooden podium on the 14th of October 1943, he promised everyone
that their story would never be forgotten, and now it wouldn't be. Just last year in 2022,
the finishing touches were put on the Sobby Boar Museum. No longer an overgrown shack,
the new facilities used state-of-the-art technology to bring the incredible story of the
revolt to life again. In eight different languages, guests can learn about Toevi,
Shlomo, Sasha, and every other person that endured the very worst conditions imaginable.
Safe to say, the story will never be forgotten. Stanislav Shlomo-Schmajna died in Goiana,
Brazil, 1989. Alexander Picherski died in Rostov-on-Don, USSR, in 1990.
And Thomas Toevi-Blatt died in Santa Barbara, California, in 2015.
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