This is a list of survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp. The list is divided into two groups. The first comprises the 58 known survivors of those selected to perform forced labour for the camp's daily operation. The second comprises those deported to Sobibor but selected there for forced labor in other camps.
Survivors among Sobibor's forced labourers
This list is as complete as current records allow. There were 58 known Sobibor survivors: 48 male and 10 female. Except where noted, the survivors were Arbeitshäftlinge, inmates who performed slave-labour for the daily operation of the camp, who escaped during the camp-wide revolt on October 14, 1943.
The vast majority of the people taken to Sobibor did not survive but were shot or gassed immediately upon arrival. Of the Arbeitshäftlinge forced to work as Sonderkommando in Lager III, the camp's extermination area where the gas chambers and most of the mass graves were located, no one survived.
Worked in provisions barracks, in the Bahnhofskommando, and as a barber. Emigrated to Israel, where he wrote a testimony for the Ghetto Fighter's House and testified at the Eichmann Trial.[2]
Surname also "Białowicz". First name sometimes "Fishel" or "Fiszel".[3][2]
Brother of Symcha Bialowitz. Worked in sorting barracks and provisions barracks, and as a barber and Bahnhofskommando member. Emigrated to the US and co-authored the memoir A Promise At Sobibor with his son Joseph.
Brother of Philip Bialowitz. Worked in the Waldkommando and in the camp pharmacy. Participated in the revolt. Married a survivor from Zamość and settled in Israel.
Was unloading a truck full of vodka for SS Erich Bauer when the revolt began. Hid in Camp IV and escaped that night. Joined the Parczew partisans[5][better source needed] and later settled in Israel, where he gave testimony in the Eichmann trial.
Name also rendered as Toivi Blatt and Tomasz Blatt. Used the Polish name Bolesław Stankiewicz[7] for a short period after the war.
Escaped over the fence in the Vorlager. Witness in post-war trials. Wrote Sobibor memoir From the Ashes of Sobibor and history Sobibor: The Forgotten Revolt. Worked as an assistant to Richard Rashke in writing Escape from Sobibor and acted as a consultant on the movie adaptation. Interviewed Karl Frenzel.
Father of Josef Cukierman. Arrived with wife and daughters who were gassed on arrival. Worked as a gardener before the war, but told the SS that he was a cook in order to be selected for work. Had an excellent memory which helped him identify SS officers in postwar trials.[6]
Sent to Sobibor from Drancy, having emigrated to France in 1932 in order to study chemistry. Moved to Israel after the war, where he died of a heart attack the day before he was expected to testify at the Sobibor trial.
Worked in the sorting barracks and Waldkommando. Escaped with Chaim Engel during the revolt. They survived the rest of the war in hiding together. The two later married.
Escaped from the camp twice. Taken to Sobibor in November 1942 from Gorzków near Izbica, he escaped by crawling under a fence. Was captured and sent back in April 1943, where he worked in the kitchen and in the forest brigade. Escaped from the forest brigade and joined the Parczew partisans.
Allegedly escaped by killing a Ukrainian guard on July 27, 1943 while on duties outside of the camp in the nearby village of Zlobek; did not survive World War II.
Worked in the stables and later in the Erbhof, taking care of chickens and ducks. During the revolt, he escaped with Ester Raab and hid with a friend of her family. In 1949, he and Raab encountered Sobibor "gasmeister" Hermann Erich Bauer in Berlin, leading to his arrest. Moved to New York City and became a cab driver.
Worked in the laundry and as a knitress, where she was regarded as a "surrogate mother" to other prisoners. Joined the Parczew partisans. Moved to Israel, married another survivor, and gave testimony at the Eichmann trial.[5]
Worked in the Bahnhofskommando, as well as kitchens and sorting barracks. Joined the Parczew partisans with Hela Felenbaum-Weiss, then emigrated to Israel, where he worked as a printer.
Cousin of Regina Zielinski. Worked as a knitress and in the laundry. Went to Lviv after the escape, where pretended to be Catholic and worked as a nanny. Emigrated to the US in 1946.
Red Army soldier under Pechersky's command. Was separated from the other Russians and survived in hiding. Rejoined the Red Army and fought in the Battle of Berlin, where he carved the name "Sobibor" into the wall of the Reich Chancellery. Returned to the Soviet Union, but eventually emigrated to Israel.[5]
Goldsmith and machinist in Sobibor. Made the knives used in the revolt, and also stole rifles. Shot a guard in one of the guard towers. After escaping, joined the Parczew partisans[5] and eventually emigrated to Brazil where he worked as an executive in a paper factory. Testified against Franz Stangl, and identified Gustav Wagner at a police station in Goiana.
Boris Tabarinsky
1917
2004
Belarusian
Jewish
September 22, 1943
Job was to cut the barbed wire fence as a backup exit.[5]
Worked as a knitter in Sobibor. After the war, married a Polish Catholic army officer and settled in Australia. Her son wrote a book "Conversations with Regina" which recounts her experiences as well as his own later-in-life discovery of his Jewish origins and his mother's status as a Holocaust survivor.
Arrived on one of the first transports. After the war, he moved to Venezuela and then to Israel, where he worked in electronics.
Survivors among those selected at Sobibor for forced labour in other camps
Selections sometimes took place at the point of departure, often well before people were forced to board the trains, but there are also reports of selections from trains already en route to the camps. In his June 20, 1942 report, Revier-Leutnant der Schutzpolizei Josef Frischmann, in charge of the guard unit on the train, wrote that "51 Jews capable of work" were removed from the transport at Lublin station. The train had departed Vienna on June 14, 1942, ostensibly for Izbica, but the remaining 949 people on board were delivered to their final destination in Sobibor.[40][b]
The precise number of those spared upon arrival in the Sobibor extermination camp is unknown, but there were occasional selections there, for forced labour in other camps and factories, amounting to a total of several thousand people. Many of those selected subsequently perished due to harsh conditions in the slave-labour details. A number of them were murdered after internal selections, following transfers to Majdanek and Auschwitz, where people were also routinely murdered by hanging or shooting for arbitrary offences. Thousands of Jews initially selected for slave-labour were among those killed in the Lublin district during Aktion Erntefest, and many were shot or succumbed on the death marches in the closing stages of the Nazi regime. However, some of the people selected at Sobibor ultimately survived beyond the total defeat and unconditional surrender of the Nazis in May 1945.[40]
On August 17, 1943, a survivor from Sabinov in Slovakia, who has remained anonymous, wrote a report in which he described his selection in Sobibor, together with approximately 100 men and 50 women, upon arrival. For slave-labour in the drainage works in the vicinity of Sobibor they were taken to Krychów. He had arrived following the violent clearance of deported Slovakian Jews and the few remaining Polish Jews from the Rejowiec ghetto on August 9, 1942. He described how a few additional skilled workers, technicians, blacksmiths and watchmakers were separated upon arrival in Sobibor. He further wrote that fire was visible in the night sky in the vicinity of Sobibor, and that the stench of burning hair permeated the air.[40][c]
Approximately 1,000 people were selected from the 34,313 named deportees who had been deported from the Netherlands via Westerbork to Sobibor between March 2 and July 20, 1943. Only 16 of them, 13 women and three men, survived.[d]
From the group of approximately 30 women selected from the train which left Westerbork with 1,015 people on March 10, 1943, 13 survived the various camps.[e] Although they were split up after arrival in Lublin and returned to the Netherlands via different camps and routes, this was the largest single group of survivors from any one of the 19 trains which departed the Netherlands.
Upon arrival they were separated from the other deportees and shortly afterwards taken by train to Lublin, where they spent the next months in various work details divided over Majdanek and the Alter Flugplatz camp, on the site of an airfield. Eventually, eleven of the women were transferred to Milejów, where they worked for a brief period in a Wehrmacht operated provisions factory, but were soon taken to Trawniki, with a larger group of men and women of mixed nationality, in the immediate aftermath of Aktion Erntefest in November 1943. Here, their first assignment was assisting in body disposal and sorting the looted possessions of those murdered at the Trawniki camp. After body disposal had nearly been completed, the remaining men were also murdered.
Elias Isak Alex Cohen was the only survivor of the March 17, 1943 transport. He was taken to Majdanek with a group of approximately 35 people selected based on profession. His experiences include a period operating machinery in the ammunition factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna, where the poisonous materials and lack of protections decimated the forced-labourers.
Jozef Wins was the only one to return to the Netherlands from the May 11 transport. He was among a group of 80 men taken to Dorohucza. Jules Schelvis was the sole survivor of the 3,006 people on the deportation train of June 1, 1943, He too was taken to Dorohucza, with a group of 80 other men. From the remaining 14 trains, people were also selected but no one survived the Holocaust.[61][40][43][62][63][64][65][66][67][68]
^The statement in French is available in PDF in NIOD Toegang 804, Inventaris 18, page 56ff.[24]
^A facsimile of Frischmann's Erfahrungsbericht can be found in NIOD Toegang 804, Inventaris 54, page 175.[41] A description of this transport, including a list of names of the deportees, can be found at Yad Vashem.[42]
^A German and English transcript of the statement is available in PDF in NIOD Toegang 804, Inventaris 54, page 148ff.[41]
^Including Selma Wijnberg and Ursula Stern, who remained in the camp until their successful escape during the revolt, there are 18 known survivors from the transports out of Westerbork to Sobibor who were alive after May 8, 1945: Elias Isak Alex Cohen, Judith Eliasar, Bertha Ensel, Celina Ensel, Sophia Huisman, Mirjam Penha née Blits, Cato Polak, Surry Polak, Suzanne Polak, Bertha van Praag, Debora van Praag, Jules Schelvis, Sophia Verduin, Jetje Veterman, Sientje Veterman and Jozef Wins. In early reports Jeannette de Vries née Blitz is included among the survivors, bringing the preliminary total to 19, a number repeated in some later publications. Jeannette de Vries-Blitz was not deported to Sobibor, however. She was deported to Auschwitz on May 19, 1944. From there her path through various camps paralleled that of Mirjam Penha-Blits and Judith Eliasar. They were liberated in the Neuengamme sub camp in Salzwedel.[40][43][44][45]
^Among those who were selected at Sobibor from the March 30, 1943 transport, but perished before May 8, 1945 are: Henderiene den Arend-van der Reis,[46] Auguste Berliner,[47] Flora Blok,[48] Hilde Beate Blumendal,[49] Marga Cohen,[50] Sophia Cohen,[51] Hester Fresco,[52] Klaartje Gompertz,[53] Fanny Landesmann,[54] Naatje Roodveldt-Moffie,[55] Lotje Stad,[56] Judith Swaab,[57] Annie Troostwijk-Hijmans,[58] Lena Verduin,[59] and Charlotte Zeehandelaar-Andriesse.[60]