SOBIBOR THE FORGOTTEN REVOLT

by Thomas Blatt

Publisher: H.E.P.E: Thomasblatt@msn.com

Reviewed by Michael Nutkiewicz, Ph.D.

Director. Chief historian- Shoah.

A Steven Spielberg Foundation Los Angeles

Thomas Blatt has written a remarkable book that tells two stories. The first story is about a notorious

Nazi death camp m Poland called Sobibor. This death camp achieved the awful task assigned it by the

Nazis: over a quarter of a million Jewish men, women and children were murdered there.

The second story is about the revolt at Sobibor. In the fail of 1943, over 300 slave workers escaped after a short, violent and desperate revolt. In the history of Jewish resistance movement under the German occupation, the revolt in Sobibor ranks the second in magnitude after the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It was the biggest and most successful uprising hi all of the Nazi camps, where Jews were able to escape en masse. An excerpt from Auschwitz Commandant Hoes’ memoirs concerning the revolt confirms the above.

“....The Jews (of Sobibor) were able to achieve a major breakout, during which almost all of the German personnel were wiped out...”

Blatt tells those two stories in measured tones: he neither exaggerates the heroism of the Jewish prisoners nor demonizes their cruel victimizers. This is a remarkable feat in itself because Blatt was one of the prisoners who had a role in the revolt and who escaped from Sobibor. “I forced myself to be emotionally detached as a survivor,” Blatt writes in the introduction “concerning myself only with recording history, while I sought interviews with the perpetrators themselves.”

He begins with a brief review of the Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to build death camps in Poland.

He comes quickly to the story of Sobibor. The systematic killing was in full swing in May 1942. The

victims came from Poland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, France and the former Soviet

Union.

The author witnessed the genocide and detailed the entire procedure in diary entries during and after the war. Next he describes the revolt in greater detail, reconstructing the revolt step by step, describing his own escape through the barbed wire and mine fields.

The story of what occurred after the escape is equally dramatic but painful. “Most were murdered by hostile bands or individuals ranging from fascist, nationalistic, or anti-Semitic organizations, to common bandits. Only 58 survivors from Sobibor are known to have been liberated by the Allied armies.”

Blatt follows the story of Sobibor beyond the war, tracing the fate of both the victims and perpetrators. One of the most remarkable aspects of this book is the author’s firsthand testimony and

Thomas (Toivi) Blatt is a survivor of Sobibor, the Nazi death camp, where he took part in the most successful revolt and escape from any Nazi during World War II. The story of the revolt was told in the award-winning CBS film, “Escape from Sobibor” A Chrysler Corporation Special in 1987.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Tom Blatt has written a remarkable book that tells two stories. The first details the workings of the notorious Sobibor death camp. The second tells of the revolt at Sobibor. Blatt tells these two stories in measured tones: he neither exaggerates the heroism of the Jewish prisoners nor demonizes their cruel Victimizers. This is a remarkable feat in itself because Blatt was one of the priso.Iers who bad a role in the revolt and who escaped from Sobibor. Most compelling. however, is Torn and Dena Blatt’s interview with Karl Frenzel. a Nazi officer at Sobibor which encapsulates Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase “the banality of evil.”

-Dr. Michael Nutkiewicz, Chief Historian, Survivors of Shoah Visual History

Thomas Blatt writes in the preface to this remarkable book. “Witnessing genocide is overwhelming writing about it is soul shattering.” Nor can the reader emerge unscathed from this wrenching account of man’s inhumanity to humanity. This account of the killing of 250,000 Jews at the death camp Sobibor is made even more powerful by the fact that the author is one of a handful of survivors of the revolt. To read this book is to risk having one’s soul shattered and ones humanity put in question. No one who reads it will ever be able to forget Sobibor or Toivi Blatt.

-Marilyn J. Harran, Ph.D., Professor of Religion and History, Chapman University

This important and deeply moving book, written by one of the heroes of the legendary 1943 Sobibor uprising, recounts one of the greatest escape stories in the annals of human history. Thomas Blatt’s powerful and passionate narrative honors the memory of Sobibor’s victims. It is “must” reading.

-Neal M. Sher, Executive Director, American Israel Public Affairs Committee; former Director, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice

Home