Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (born Tomasz Blatt; April 15, 1927 – October 31, 2015) was a

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...

, writer of

mémoire In French culture, the word ''mémoire'', as in un mémoire ("a memory" – indefinite article), reflects the writer's own experiences and memories. The word has no direct English translation. Up to the 18th century The word appeared in the course ...

s, and public speaker, who at the age of 16 escaped from the

Sobibór extermination camp Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As a ...

during the uprising staged by the Jewish prisoners in October 1943. The escape was attempted by about 300 inmates, many of whom were recaptured and killed by the German search squads. Following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Blatt lived in the

Communist Poland The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million nea ...

until the

Polish October Polish October (), also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the politics of Poland in the second half of 1956. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the ...

. In 1957, he emigrated to Israel, and in 1958 settled in the United States.

Life

Thomas "Toivi" Blatt was born on April 15, 1927, to a Jewish family in

Izbica Izbica ( yi, איזשביצע ''Izhbitz, Izhbitze'') is a village in the Krasnystaw County of the Lublin Voivodeship in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina administrative district called Gmina Izbica. It lies approximately south of Kras ...

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of ...

, where his father Leon Blatt owned a liquor store. The population of the town was 90 percent Jewish at the time according to the ''

Holocaust Encyclopedia The ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'' is an online encyclopedia, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, offering detailed information about The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European ...

''. Tomasz (Toivi) also had a brother. During the

occupation of Poland Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...

by Nazi Germany in World War II, his family was forced into the

Izbica Ghetto The Izbica ghetto was a Jewish ghetto created by Nazi Germany in Izbica in occupied Poland during World War II, serving as a transfer point for deportation of Jews from Poland, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Bełżec and Sobibór exterm ...

created by the SS in 1941, the largest transit ghetto in the

Lublin Reservation The Nisko Plan was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany, the plan was cancelled in early 1940. The idea for the expulsion and resettlement of the Jews ...

. In October 1942, the family decided to split up and leave Izbica to increase their chance of survival. Tomasz Blatt tried to reach Hungary. On the way he was captured and imprisoned, first in a prison in Stryj and then in the Ghetto Stryj. In early 1943,with the help of an acquaintance of his family, Blatt went back to Izbica to his parents and his brother. On April 28, 1943, Blatt was taken to

Sobibór Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...

by truck with about 400 Jews from Izbica. Members of his family were killed there on arrival. Thomas (age 16) along with 40 young men was selected to join the ''Arbeitsjuden'' in the Lower, and later, the Upper Camp, where he cut the hair of naked women before gassing. During the one year and a half in which the Sobibór killing centre operated, at least 167,000 people were murdered there, according to the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...

; virtually all of the victims were Jews, mostly from Poland, France and the Netherlands. Other estimates range from 200,000 (

Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 – August 4, 2007) was a Jewish Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust. Christopher R. Browning has called him the founding fath ...

) to 250,000 (Dr. Aharon Weiss, and

Czesław Madajczyk Czesław Madajczyk (27 May 1921 – 15 February 2008) was a Polish historian. His studies on the German occupation of Europe after 1938, and in particular on the occupation of Poland and on World War II Polish culture, are considered particularl ...

Escape from Sobibór

Blatt was among some 300 prisoners who escaped from the camp during the uprising staged by the Sobibór underground on October 14, 1943.

Emigration

In 1957, Blatt emigrated from

Stalinist Poland Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory o ...

to Israel and in 1958 settled in the United States. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he worked for

Richard Rashke Richard L. Rashke (born 1936) is an American journalist, teacher and author, who has written non-fiction books, as well as plays and screenplays. He is especially known for his history, ''Escape from Sobibor,'' first published in 1982, an account ...

, an American journalist and author who wrote the ''Escape from Sobibor'' first published in 1982. Blatt was commissioned by Rashke to help him locate and interview Sobibór survivors for the story of the revolt. Blatt also did his own research. In 1983, he interviewed

Karl Frenzel Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel
(20 August 1911 – 2 September 1996) was an a Nazi German who had been third in command at Sobibór. Frenzel, convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison for his actions at the camp, was released on appeal after serving 16 years. Blatt later claimed that his interview was the first one after World War II in which an

extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

survivor spoke face-to-face with a camp functionary. The 1983 book by Rashke was adapted into the award-winning 1987 television film, ''

Escape from Sobibor ''Escape from Sobibor'' is a 1987 British television film which aired on ITV and CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination cam ...

''. It portrayed the events leading up to, and including the uprising in Sobibór. Blatt served as a technical adviser on the film. The revolt leaders

Leon Feldhendler Leon Felhendler (Lejb Felhendler) (1 June 1910 – 6 April 1945) was a Polish resistance fighter known for his role in organizing the 1943 prisoner uprising at Sobibor extermination camp together with Alexander Pechersky. Prewar life Felhendler w ...

and

Alexander Pechersky Alexander 'Sasha' Pechersky (russian: Алекса́ндр Аро́нович Пече́рский; 22 February 1909 – 19 January 1990) was one of the organizers, and the leader, of the most successful uprising and mass-escape of Jews from a Naz ...

, as well as other camp prisoners including Blatt were played by actors. The film was directed by

Jack Gold Jacob M. "Jack" Gold (28 June 1930 – 9 August 2015) was a British film and television director. He was part of the Kitchen sink realism, British realist tradition which followed the Free Cinema movement. Career Jacob M. Gold was born in ...

and shot in Yugoslavia. Blatt wrote two books about Sobibór. His first

, ''From The Ashes of Sobibor'' (1997), is about his life before the war and the German occupation of

leading up to the deportation of his family to the Sobibór death camp. His second mémoire titled ''Sobibor: the forgotten revolt'' (1998) also based on his own experience and supplementary research, and written with the help of his son Leon Blatt, describes the story of the prisoner revolt of October 14, 1943, as remembered by

and others. The book material was used as the source for his personal website by the same name. Blatt lived in

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coas ...

. He died at his home on October 31, 2015, at the age of 88.

References

External links

Sobibor – The Forgotten Revolt, by Thomas Toivi BlattThomas Blatt – videotaped testimony
– interviewed April 4, 1995,

USC Shoah Foundation USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Hol ...

Visual History Archive Online
Interview with Sobibor Survivor Thomas Blatt: 'Demjanjuk Should Confess'
– May 13, 2009, ''

Der Spiegel (online) ''Der Spiegel (online)'' is a German news website. Before the renaming in January 2020, the website's name was ''Spiegel Online'' (short ''SPON''). It was founded in 1994 as the online offshoot of the German news magazine, ''Der Spiegel'', wit ...

''
Interview of Thomas Blatt
– October 14, 2011,

WMRA WMRA is a public-radio formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Harrisonburg, Virginia. It is the NPR member station for the central Shenandoah Valley. Combined with its full-power repeaters and low-power translators, it serves much of wes ...

Thomas Blatt dies at 88; among 300 Jews who escaped Nazi death camp at Sobibor
– November 3, 2015, ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

''
‘I’m still there – in my dreams,’ said Thomas Blatt, survivor of daring escape from Nazi death camp
– November, 3, 2015, ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

''
Photos of Nazis at Sobibor death camp are the first of their kind
– January 27, 2020, ''The Washington Post'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Blatt, Thomas 1927 births 2015 deaths Polish resistance members of World War II Sobibor extermination camp survivors Polish male writers People from Krasnystaw County People from Lublin Voivodeship (1919–1939) Polish emigrants to Israel Israeli emigrants to the United States American people of Polish-Jewish descent Jewish American writers 21st-century American Jews