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Escape from Sobibor, is a reverent account of prisoners from the concentration camp Sobibor, who made one of the most daring and courageous escapes in World War II history. Following real accounts of eighteen individuals who survived the escape, the author, Richard Rashke, tells the story of cruelty, desolation and ultimately the will to live so that others could know what happened.
To understand why such an escape from a concentration camp was so successful, it is necessary to look at the persons involved and the motivations that drove the prisoners to attempt such an audacious plan. Of all the prisoners who were crucial in implementing the escape from Sobibor, a few were the principle decision makers and key pegs that could decide the fate of an operation that would most certainly fail. The pivotal players were Leon Feldhendler (leader of The Organization), Alexander Pechersky (Russian POW and mastermind of escape, and who I like to call “The Indispensables” or the kids like Shlomo Szmajzner and Thomas Platt who were given privileged or special access within the camp for their special technical skills.
Each prisoner had a transformative moment throughout their time at Sobibor that would push them to their ultimate decision to escape. Usually such moments represented a realization that death was almost certain if they were to stay, others, that letting the world know was necessary. But the common thread through them all was that to live was an act of defiance.
The first character that is met in Escape from Sobibor is Shlomo Szmajzner, a young Polish boy who is brought to Sobibor with his family as part of the Final Solution. During processing, Shlomo volunteered to serve as a goldsmith for the camp. In doing so, Shlomo hoped t...
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...as simple as possible everyone had to be on board.
The success of the escape did not ultimately impinge on whether everyone got out or not, but whether he or she was able to defy the Germans. In different ways, Feldhendler, Pechersky, Shlomo, Toivi, all resisted the Germans. “But what about the others?” said Boris, one of Pechersky’s right hand men, “You know the Germans will kill them all”. Boris replied, “’No my friend, when we go, we’ll all go together. The whole camp. Some will die. But those who make it will get even for them (Rashke, 1995, p.167)
It was the unity of action and the unity of mind that was the ultimate triumph in defying the Germans. It wasn’t each prisoner fighting for his own memory. It was each prisoner fighting for the memories of all prisoners.
Works Cited
Rashke, R. L. (1995). Escape from Sobibor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
The historical documentary directed by James Moll, The Last Days, exemplifies the cruel conditions and sufferings of the Jewish people through firsthand accounts of five survivors. At night, Rabbi Eliahu and his son marched together from the concentration camp in Buna to a different camp in Buchenwald. When they marched to Buchenwald, the son “.had seen [Rabbi Eliahu] losing ground.he had continued to run in front, letting the distance between them become greater” (Wiesel 91). When Rabbi Eliahu’s son sees him fall while marching, the son continues to march forward and leaves his father behind.
There are unexpected aspects of life in the camp depicted in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlement” by Tadeusz Borowski. The prisoners were able to make very obvious improvements to their lived in the camp, without reaction by the SS officers; the market was even made with the support of the camp. The prisoners actually hoped for a transport of prisoners, so as to gain some supplies. The true nature of the camp is never forgotten, even in better moments at the camp.
Being confined in a concentration camp was beyond unpleasant. Mortality encumbered the prisons effortlessly. Every day was a struggle for food, survival, and sanity. Fear of being led into the gas chambers or lined up for shooting was a constant. Hard labor and inadequate amounts of rest and nutrition took a toll on prisoners. They also endured beatings from members of the SS, or they were forced to watch the killings of others. “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Night Quotes). Small, infrequent, rations of a broth like soup left bodies to perish which in return left no energy for labor. If one wasn’t killed by starvation or exhaustion they were murdered by fellow detainees. It was a survival of the fittest between the Jews. Death seemed to be inevitable, for there were emaciated corpses lying around and the smell...
Lina Vilkas is a fifteen year old girl who is the protagonist of this story. She was taken, by the NKVD, from her house with her mother and brother to exile. Later in the story she meets Andrius and falls in love with him. She marries him after the war while moving from place to place. Andrius uses his misfortune as a fortune to help others. He takes care of Lina and her family as best he can. Nikolai Kretzsky is a young NKVD officer who helps Lina and her mother even after Lina insulted him. Mr Stalas is a Jew who is deported with the other people. He wanted to die with dignity. He is often referred to as The Bald Man. He confesses that he was liable for the deportation. Janina is a starry-eyed young girl who likes to help others and to talk to her "dead" doll. When few selected people are brought to the North Pole for more suffering, dozens of people die from cholera and pneumonia. Lina however, survives and manages to save Jonas and Janina with the help of Nikolai Kretzsky.
Between Night and The Hiding Place, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are clearly proved to be essential in order to survive in these death camps. Corrie, Elie, and other victims of these harsh brutalities who did survive had a rare quality that six million others unfortunately did not.
The second prisoner was a young boy who was being hanged for the fact that he stole weapons during a power failure. The significance of this particular hanging was the young boy’s lack of rebellion, his quiet fear and the unbearable duration of his torment. The boy had lost all hope and was one of the only victims who wept at the knowledge of their demise. What made this case different from the rest was not only his youth, but also his silence, and emotion and the fact that it took a half an hour for him to die, as a result of the lightness of his young body. Even though he was constantly tortured and provoked by the guards before he was hanged, he still said nothing, unlike the two people who joined him, who both shouted in defiance. His quiet courage really stood out as an unspoken and unannounced rebellion not only for the Jews, but it showed the doubts that some of the guards began to have. “This time, the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner.” Although this quote is one sentence it still shows the effect the boy had on everyone in the camp. Even though the prisoners had been living with the constant presence of death, the execution of this young boy made them feel emotion they believed they had lost forever. This death was an unsaid act of rebellion in the sense that it showed the audience that there was indeed still some sensitivity left no matter how much both the prisoners and the guards were dehumanized: the prisoners as merely a number, and the guards as ruthless
I chose this passage because it amazes me that after all they had suffered, after all the unnecessary hardships the Nazis made them suffer, no one had a though of revenge.
The unimaginable actions from German authorities in the concentration camps of the Holocaust were expected to be tolerated by weak prisoners like Wiesel or death was an alternate. These constant actions from the S.S. officers crushed the identification of who Wiesel really was. When Wiesel’s physical state left, so did his mental state. If a prisoner chose to have a mind of their own and did not follow the S.S. officer’s commands they were written brutally beaten or even in severe cases sentenced to their death. After Wiesel was liberated he looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t even recognize who he was anymore. No prisoner that was a part of the Holocaust could avoid inner and outer turmoil.
...ings by then, whose memories, fears, and enthusiasms should not be remembered." Thus, unlike the title suggests, this remarkable war memoir is not about one soldier. Instead it refers to the entire German army who were defeated by the Allies. Although the German cause was very controversial, these gentlemen bravely fought for their country. Many men died, many were mutilated, and many more had to forever live with the atrocities they encountered. At war's end, however, they were merely "forgotten" for their failure of success. And although The Forgotten Soldier is an astonishing account of the horrors of infantry warfare, it serves a much greater purpose. It allows the historian to glance into the German experience and realize they too were young men fighting because their nation called upon them, and they deserve to be remembered for such a courageous act.
As World War II occurred, the Jewish population suffered a tremendous loss and was treated with injustice and cruelty by the Nazi’s seen through examples in the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Victor Frankl records his experiences and observations during his time as prisoner at Auschwitz during the war. Before imprisonment, he spent his leisure time as an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, Austria and was able to implement his analytical thought processes to life in the concentration camp. As a psychological analyst, Frankl portrays through the everyday life of the imprisoned of how they discover their own sense of meaning in life and what they aspire to live for, while being mistreated, wrongly punished, and served with little to no food from day to day. He emphasizes three psychological phases that are characterized by shock, apathy, and the inability to retain to normal life after their release from camp. These themes recur throughout the entirety of the book, which the inmates experience when they are first imprisoned, as they adapt as prisoners, and when they are freed from imprisonment. He also emphasizes the need for hope, to provide for a purpose to keep fighting for their lives, even if they were stripped naked and treated lower than the human race. Moreover, the Capos and the SS guards, who were apart of the secret society of Hitler, tormented many of the unjustly convicted. Although many suffered through violent deaths from gas chambers, frostbites, starvation, etc., many more suffered internally from losing faith in oneself to keep on living.
soldiers during the Jewish Holocaust, knew that the Nazi’s actions were inhumane and cruel; hence, he commanded his soldiers to not confiscate property from the Jews. Although the Nazi soldiers did not take valuables away from the Jews, they still dehumanized and exterminated the Jews, rega...
A story of a young boy and his father as they are stolen from their home in Transylvania and taken through the most brutal event in human history describes the setting. This boy not only survived the tragedy, but went on to produce literature, in order to better educate society on the truth of the Holocaust. In Night, the author, Elie Wiesel, uses imagery, diction, and foreshadowing to describe and define the inhumanity he experienced during the Holocaust.
A few of the recorded, harsh episodes are when a brutal foreman pries Elizer’s gold tooth out of his mouth with a rusty spoon, when the prisoners are forced to watch other prisoners and children hung in the camp courtyard. Also, sons start to abandon and abuse their own family for an extra ration of watered down soup and crusty bread. Throughout this book, Wiesel shows that not only does he endure physical torture, but emotional as well. Beacuse of this, Elizer began to lose his faith, not only in God but also in humanity all together. While Elizer is in the infirmary due to a recent foot surgery, the Nazis decide to evacuate the camp, which resulted in forcing the prisoners to run for more than fifty miles during a snowstorm to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. Because of the harsh conditions, lack of water and food, and extreme exhaustion, many people die. But the deadly journey did not stop there, they traveled by cattle cars and eventually made it to their final concentration camp, Buchenwald. Due to dysentery, age, and physical abuse, Eliezer’s father dies and Elizer is left alone in a camp full of the abusers and the abused. On April 11, 1945, the American army broke down the prison walls and freed the remaining few prisoners who were strong enough to withstand the abuse and neglect long enough to be considered a human
All things considered, as horrible as it sounds, it’s no surprise the people in the concentration camps were so selfish. They had to choose between their own lives or someone else’s life. While in the cattle cars,
In this tiny novel, you will get to walk right into a gruesome nightmare. If only then, it was just a dream. You would witness and feel for yourself of what it is like to go through the unforgettable journey that young Eliezer Wiesel and his father had endured in the greatest concentration camp that shook the history of the entire world. With only one voice, Eliezer Wiesel’s, this novel has been told no better. Elie's voice will have you emotionally torn apart. The story has me questioning my own wonders of how humanity could be mistreated in such great depths and with no help offered.