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Sobibór Uprising
The Sobibor uprising was a revolt of about 600 prisoners that occurred on 14 October 1943, during World War II and the Holocaust at the Sobibor extermination camp in occupied Poland. It was the second uprising in an extermination camp, partly successful, by Jewish prisoners against the SS forces, following the revolt in Treblinka. SS soldiers executed up to 250,000 Jews using gas at the Sobibor extermination camp. Most of the victims were from Poland, about 33,000 were from the Netherlands, and several thousand were from Germany. After this uprising, the SS no longer used the death camp. The Nazis destroyed the camp down to its foundations and levelled the camp area. To cover up the crimes committed at the site, they established an inconspicuous farm in its place and planted a pine forest over the remnants of the camp. Previous escape attempts Attempts by prisoners to escape from the Sobibor extermination camp occurred throughout its existence. These were sporadic attempts. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jewish Resistance In German-occupied Europe
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule encompassed various forms of organized underground activities undertaken by Jews against German occupation regimes in Europe during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance can be defined as any action that defied Nazi laws and policies. The term is particularly associated with the Holocaust and includes a wide range of responses, from social defiance to both passive and armed resistance by Jews themselves. Due to the overwhelming military power of Nazi Germany and its allies, the system of ghettoization, and the hostility or indifference of various segments of the civilian population, most Jews had limited opportunities for effective military resistance against the Final Solution. Nevertheless, there were numerous instances of resistance, including more than a hundred documented armed uprisings. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Reichleitner
Franz Karl Reichleitner (2 December 1906 – 3 January 1944) was an Austrian member in the SS of Nazi Germany who participated in Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. Reichleitner served as the second and last commandant of Sobibór extermination camp from 1 September 1942 until the camp's closure on or about 17 October 1943. As the commanding officer of the camp, Franz Reichleitner directly perpetrated the genocide of Jews. SS career Reichleitner joined the Nazi Party in 1936 as member number 6,369,213 and the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) in 1937 as member number 357,065. He began his career as a ''Kriminalsekretär'' of the Gestapo in Linz. Later Reichleitner was assigned to work in the Action T4 euthanasia program at the nearby Hartheim Euthanasia Centre. He first served as an assistant supervisor (together with Franz Stangl) under officer Christian Wirth before assuming Wirth's position of chief supervisor at Hartheim. Reichleitner was also partly responsible for getting St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 of the mass escape in October 1943 of hundreds of Jewish prisoners from the extermination camp at Sobibor in German-occupied Poland. The book was adapted as a 1987 TV movie by the same name. Early life and education Richard Rashke was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Guy and Angeline (Luksich) Rashke. He had an older brother Donald. Richard attended local schools and has a master's degree in journalism from American University. Literary career After working as a journalist, Rashke started pursuing his own topics. His first book, ''The deacon in search of identity,'' was about a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, published by Paulist Press in 1975. He followed the widespread publicity about Karen Silkwood, her death, and the suit whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Toivi Blatt
Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (born Tomasz Blatt; April 15, 1927 – October 31, 2015) was a Holocaust survivor, writer of mémoires, and public speaker, who at the age of 16 escaped from the Sobibór extermination camp 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 Blatt lived in Communist Poland until the Polish October. 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, Second Polish Republic, 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''. Tomasz (Toivi) also had a brother. During the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II, his family was forced into the Izbica Ghetto created by the SS in 1941, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Bialowitz
Philip Bialowitz (December 25, 1925 in Izbica – August 6, 2016) was a Polish Holocaust survivor and resistance fighter. Life Bialowitz was transported to Sobibor in April 1943 and quickly heard that his sisters and niece had been murdered in the gas chambers there. He credited his brother Simcha with saving his life, since when he arrived at the camp Simcha said he was a pharmacist and that Philip was his assistant. He was given the role of "working Jew", doing menial tasks such as shaving prisoners while avoiding being executed. The prisoners often believed they were merely being deloused instead of sent to extermination chambers. One day his task was to empty piles of dead bodies from train cars. He tried to pull a woman from the train but her skin stuck to his hands, amusing his Nazi overseer. He and his brother joined a rebellion on October 14, 1943, which overpowered the Nazis and freed 300 of their prisoners. He heard one of the revolt's leaders say as they stood on a t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Blatt
Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (born Tomasz Blatt; April 15, 1927 – October 31, 2015) was a Holocaust survivor, writer of mémoires, and public speaker, who at the age of 16 escaped from the Sobibór extermination camp 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 Blatt lived in Communist Poland until the Polish October. 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, Second Polish Republic, 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''. Tomasz (Toivi) also had a brother. During the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II, his family was forced into the Izbica Ghetto created by the SS in 1941, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simjon Rosenfeld
Simjon Rosenfeld (October 1, 1922 – June 3, 2019) was a survivor of the Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibor death camp and a participant in the prisoner revolt which took place in that camp. Born in Ternivka, Gaysin uezd, Podolia Governorate, Ukrainian SSR (now Ternivka, Haisyn Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine), in 1940 he was recruited to the Red Army. In 1941, the Germans captured him and sent him to build a labor camp in Minsk. On 20 September 1943 he was transferred to Sobibor. The Germans separated the Jewish and non-Jewish soldiers but refrained from killing the Jews as they had war prisoner status. On October 14, 1943, Rosenfeld participated in the uprising that resulted in his escape. Acting commander SS-Untersturmführer, SS Untersturmfuehrer Johann Niemann entered the tailor shop in which Rosenfeld worked. While Isaac Lichtman held Niemann's leg tight – seemingly in an effort to pull off his boots – Rosenfeld and Arcady Wajspaper came out of the back room and split ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sobibor Trial
The Sobibor trial was a 1965–66 judicial trial in the West German prosecution of SS officers who had worked at Sobibor extermination camp; it was held in Hagen. It was one of a series of similar war crime trials held during the early and mid-1960s, such as the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann by Israel in Jerusalem, and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials of 1963–65, also held in West Germany. These trials heightened general public and international understanding of the extent of the crimes that had been perpetrated in occupied Poland some twenty years earlier by Nazi bureaucrats and persons acting as their executioners. The Soviet Union conducted trials in the 1960s of former Trawniki men, mostly Ukrainian Soviet POWs who had trained for the Nazis and worked at Sobibor. Most were convicted and executed. In these and subsequent years, separate trials prosecuted personnel of the Belzec (1963–65), Treblinka (1964–65), and Majdanek (1975–81) extermination camps, all of which had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Schelvis
Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor of the 3,006 people that were on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, having been selected to work at nearby Dorohucza labour camp. He is known for his memoirs and historical research about Sobibor, for which he earned an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, Officier in the Order of Orange-Nassau, and Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Schelvis was born in Amsterdam, part of a secular Jewish family. After high school, he trained as a printer and worked for Printing Office Lindenbaum in Amsterdam. He worked at various newspapers and participated in a local youth labour organization, where he met and courted a woman named Rachel Borzykowski. Schelvis grew close to Borzykowski and her family, whose residence was a local center of Yiddish culture. Schelvis and Borzykowski married o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pistol
A pistol is a type of handgun, characterised by a gun barrel, barrel with an integral chamber (firearms), chamber. The word "pistol" derives from the Middle French ''pistolet'' (), meaning a small gun or knife, and first appeared in the English language when early handguns were produced in Europe. In colloquial usage, the word "pistol" is often used as a generic term to describe ''any'' type of handgun, inclusive of revolvers (which have a single barrel and a separate cylinder (firearms), cylinder housing multiple chambers) and the pocket gun, pocket-sized derringers (which are often multiple-barrel firearm, multi-barrelled). The most common type of pistol used in the contemporary era is the semi-automatic pistol. The older single-shot and lever-action pistols are now rarely seen and used primarily for nostalgic hunting and historical reenactment. Fully-automatic machine pistols are uncommon in civilian usage because of their generally poor recoil-controllability (due to the l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Beckmann
Rudolf Beckmann (20 February 1910Ernst Klee: ''Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945''. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, , p. 37. – 14 October 1943) was a German '' SS-Oberscharführer'' in the Sobibor extermination camp. He was stabbed to death during the uprising in Sobibor by inmates. Beckmann was a member of the Nazi Party (member 305,721) and the Schutzstaffel''.'' Nothing is known about his early life. SS career Beckmann worked initially in the cremation process at the Nazi Action T4 killing centers of Grafeneck Castle and Hadamar Euthanasia Centre, where the disabled were gassed. For Operation Reinhard, he was transferred to the Sobibor extermination camp, where he was mainly in Camp II as head of the sorting commands, where the clothing was sorted, and was responsible for tending to horses. Sorting command After the Jews had arrived on the ramp, they were forced to strip naked and put all of their clothes and luggage to the side. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shlomo Szmajzner
Shlomo or Szlomo is the English form of שְׁלֹמֹה, the Hebrew name of the Israelite King Solomon. It is a popular name among Jews, especially in Israel. As a mononym * Solomon, king of ancient Israel * Shlomo (beatboxing artist) or Simon Shlomo Kahn (born 1983) * Shlohmo or Henry Laufer, an American electronic musician As a given name Shlomo * Shlomo Amar (born 1948), former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and current Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem * Shlomo Argov (1929–2003), Israeli diplomat whose attempted assassination led to the 1982 Lebanon War * Shlomo Aronson (other), multiple people * Shlomo Artzi (born 1949), Israeli singer and composer * Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910–1995), Rosh Yeshiva of the Kol Torah yeshiva in Israel * Shlomo Aviner (born 1943), Israeli Rosh Yeshiva of the Ateret Cohanim * Shlomo Avineri (1933-2023), Professor of Political Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem * Shlomo Bar (born 1943), Israeli musician and composer * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
