Brief Biographies — Sobibor Survivors

GROUP 1: Polish Survivors

Shlomo Alster (1908–1992). He lived in Chełm and was deported to Sobibor in November 1942 and worked as a carpenter in the camp. After his escape, he hid in the forest, then in Chełm and the surrounding villages (together with H. Povroznik). In 1946 he emigrated to Palestine. He lived in the Israeli city of Rehovot.

Philip Bialowitz (1925-2016). He was transported to Sobibor in April 1943 and quickly heard that his sisters and niece had been murdered in the gas chambers there. He and his brother joined a rebellion on October 14, 1943, which overpowered the Nazis and freed Jewish prisoners. He heard one of the revolt's leaders say, as they stood on a table, “If you survive, bear witness! Tell the world about this place!”

Tomasz Blatt (1927-2015). At the age of 16, he escaped from the Sobibor extermination camp during the uprising staged by the Jewish prisoners in October of 1943. Blatt lived in Poland until 1957 and eventually immigrated to the U.S. His children are Rena Smith and Leonard Blatt.

Josef and Hershel Cukierman. The Cukiermans were from Kurow, Poland.

Leon Cymiel. Cymiel was born in Chelm to Jewish parents. After escaping from Sobibor, he served in the Filuk partisan unit. After the Holocaust, he remained in Poland, moving to Warsaw and having two children.

Chaim (Heinrich) Engel (1916–2003). He was deported to Sobibor in November 1942 from Izbica. In the camp, he was engaged in various jobs, including sorting things, cutting the hair of women who went to the gas chambers. During the uprising, he killed SS-Oberscharführer Rudolf Beckmann. In the camp, he met a prisoner from Holland, Selma (Sarah) Weinberg (1922–2018; in Sobibor since April 1943), his future wife. After escaping, he hid with her with Polish peasants. After the liberation of Eastern Poland, they reached Odessa, and from there by sea to the Netherlands. From 1951 they lived in Israel, and from 1957 in the United States.

Leib Leon Felhendler (1910-1945). Born in Turobin. He lived in Zolkiewka, where his father became a rabbi. Before the war, he was engaged in commerce, renting a mill and a sawmill. After the arrival of the Germans, he became the head of the Zolkiewka Judenrat. In the autumn of 1942 he was deported from Izbica Lubelska to Sobibor, where his wife, two children, brother and sisters died in the gas chamber. At the beginning of 1943 he headed the camp underground. He was one of the leaders of the October 14 uprising. In the memoirs of A. Pechersky, he was called by the name Boruch. After his escape, he hid with Meir Ziss, on a farm near Zolkiewka. In April 1945, he died in Lublin under circumstances that were not fully clarified (he was shot through the door of his own room).

Ber Freiberg (1927–2008). A native of Warsaw. In the autumn of 1941 he fled from the Warsaw ghetto to the town of Turobin near Lublin. In May 1942 he was deported to Sobibor from Krasnystav. After escaping, he hid in the forest with Semyon Rosenfeld, joined the partisan detachment of Josef Serchuk. In 1947, he tried to get to Palestine on the ship Exodus, but the flight was intercepted by the British. The following year, he was able to move to Israel, where he changed his name to Dov. He was one of the witnesses at the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961). He is the author of several books published in Hebrew and English.

Josef Herszman (1925-2005). He was born in Zolkiewka. He was deported to Sobibor from Chełm in 1942 and worked in the sorting barracks, in the station and forest brigades. He fled during the October 14 uprising. After the war, he moved to Israel.

Mikhail Zelikovich Itskovich (1922-1945). A native of Izbica. Apparently, like Naum Plotnitsky, another member of the group of nine who left with Pechersky after escaping from Sobibor to Belarus, he did not serve in the Red Army before entering the camp. Entered6 in the Frunze detachment of the Stalin brigade of the Brest partisan unit, then fought in the ranks of the Red Army. In August 1944 he was awarded Medal "For Courage". According to the testimony of A. Vaispapir, he died in the battles near Gdynia.

Shmul Lerer (1922-2016). A native of Zolkiewka. He was deported to Sobibor in May 1942. In the camp, he looked after horses and chickens. In 1949, on the streets of Berlin, together with a former prisoner of Sobibor, Esther Raab, identified the SS man Erich Bauer, who became the first convict among the Sobibor staff. Later he moved from Germany to the United States, worked as a taxi driver. One of the heroes of the documentary film by Pavel Kogan and Lili van den Berg "The Uprising in Sobibor" (1989).

Ethel Ada Fischer Lichtman (1915–1993). Arrived at Sobibor since June 1942. She is one of the heroines of Claude Lanzmann's documentary Four Sisters (2017).

Isaac Lichtman (1908–1992). A native of the village of Zolkiewka (Poland). He was deported to Sobibor in May 1942 and worked as a shoemaker in the camp. After escaping, he joined the Soviet partisans, and in 1944 joined the 1st Polish Army. In Sobibor, he met his future wife, Ada Fischer Lichtman.

Zelda Kelbermann Metz (1925-1980). In Sobibor since December 1942, in the camp she knitted socks and sweaters, was engaged in washing and ironing. After escaping, she hid with Polish peasants. Then she straightened out false "Aryan" documents and worked as a nanny in Lviv. From 1946 she lived in the United States.

Shlomo Podchlebnik (1907-1973). Prisoner of the Sobibor camp. He was deported to the camp on April 28, 1943 with his wife and two children (apparently they died immediately upon arrival) from the transit ghetto in Izbica Lubelska. He escaped with Josef Kopf and other prisoners on July 23 during forestry work, killing guard Myron Flynt. Before the liberation of Eastern Poland, he hid with local peasants. After the war, he emigrated to the United States. He lived in Vineland, New Jersey. He was engaged in chicken breeding.

Chaim Powroznik (1911–1989). He was born in the city of Lyuboml (now the Volyn region of Ukraine). He served in the Polish army, in 1939 he was captured by the Wehrmacht and sent to a work camp in Chełm. In March 1943 he was deported to Sobibor, where he worked as a carpenter. After his escape, he hid in Chełm and the surrounding area. After the war, he emigrated to the United States, where he changed his surname to Posner.

Josef Serchuk / Serczuk (1919-1993). A native of Chelm. During the Nazi occupation, he hid in the woods with his brother David. According to some reports, he created a Jewish partisan detachment, which included former prisoners of Sobibor, in particular B. Freiberg. In 1950 he moved to Israel. He lived in Tel Aviv.

Stanislaw Szmajzner. After escaping Sobibor, Szmajzner served in the Kovpak partisan unit. He made immigration to Brazil.

Israel Trager (1906-1969) was deported on May 22, 1942 from the Polish city of Chełm to Sobibor, where the SS selected him to work as a bricklayer. He spent almost a year and a half in the extermination camp and fled during the October 14 uprising. After the war he lived in Israel. His entire family (his daughter, his sister Sarah, his wife Haya) was exterminated in Poland during the Nazi occupation.

Hella Weiss Felenbaum (1924–1988). A native of Lublin area. In December 1942 she was deported to Sobibor (her parents died there) from the Staw labor camp (near Chelm). In the camp, she knitted gloves, socks, sweaters for the SS, worked in the laundry and in the ironing room. Later she was transferred to a sorting barracks, then took care of the flowers. After the uprising and escape on October 14, she hid in the forest for several months along with other prisoners of Sobibor and five Red Army soldiers who had escaped from captivity. She joined the reconnaissance and sabotage detachment of the NKVD "Hunters" under the command of Nikolai Prokopyuk. From October 1944 in the Red Army. "The Russians sent her to a special school for six weeks, where she studied German weapons, the rules of mines and the basics of Marxism-Leninism." She was a nurse in the Taman division, took part in the mining of railways and bridges. In Czechoslovakia, she met her future husband, a soldier of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps under the command of Ludwik Svoboda, and emigrated with him to Israel, where she lived until the end of her life.

Kalmen Wewryk (1906-1989). Deported to Sobibor from Chełm in the summer or autumn of 1942, he worked as a carpenter in the camp. After escaping, he hid in the vicinity of Chelm, then joined the Soviet partisan detachment. From 1956 he lived in France, since 1968 in Canada. Author of the book of memoirs "To Sobibor and Back".

”Mayorek” Meir Ziss (Mejer Ziss; 1927-2003). Deported to Sobibor in May or June 1942, he worked in sorting barracks, then as a hairdresser. After his escape, he hid with Leon Felgendler with Polish peasants. After the war he lived in Venezuela (1956-1961) and Israel.

GROUP 2: Western European Survivors

Antonius Bardach (16 May 1909 Lemberg, Poland - unknown). Antonius Bardach arrived in Sobibor on the 53rd transport from Drancy. Of the thousand deportees, he and Josef Duniec were the only survivors. After the war, he emigrated to Belgium.

Josef Duniec (pronounced Doon-yetz) (21 December 1912 Równo, Poland; 1 December 1965 Haifa, Israel). In 1932 Josef Duniec had emigrated to France to study chemistry. On 25 March 1943 he was put on a transport from transit camp Drancy to Majdanek. Because the thousand people on the transport could not be accommodated here the train went on to Sobibor. He was one of the 31 prisoners selected to work in the camp. After the war he settled down in Israel. He died one day before he was supposed to testify at the 1965 Sobibor trial.

Selma Wijnberg Engel (15 May 1922 Groningen, Netherlands - December 4, 2018 USA) Selma (Saartje) Wijnberg arrived in Sobibor on 9 April 1943 on a transport from Westerbork of 2,020 Jews. She worked mainly in the sorting barracks, and occasionally in the Waldkommando. Selma Wijnberg is the only Dutch woman to survive the uprising in Sobibor. The Red Army liberated her and Chaim Engel on 23 June 1944 near Chelm. They reached liberated Holland via Odessa and Marseille. After living in Zwolle for a while, she and her husband emigrated via Israel to the United States.

Ursula Stern (1926–1985). Born in Germany, after Hitler came to power, the family moved to the Netherlands. In April 1943, Stern was deported to Sobibor, from where she fled during the October 14 uprising. After the war, she returned to the Netherlands, then emigrated to Israel, where she changed her name to Ilana Safran (married Buchheimer).

Kurt Thomas (11 April 1914 - 8 June 2009). He served as a telegraph operator in the Czech army. He was taken to Sobibor via the ghetto of Theresienstadt. In the sorting barracks he had to sort clothes and belongings of victims who had been gassed. As an orderly, he later managed to save the lives of several prisoners by letting them rest longer than allowed. When he had climbed across the fence during the uprising, he refused to hurry: “I don’t have to run anymore, I am a free man.” After the war, he saw to it that SS man Frenzel was arrested in Berlin. Kurt Thomas died on 8 June 2009 in Columbus, Ohio.

GROUP 3: Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian Survivors (Pechersky Group)

Yefim Vladimirovich Litvinovsky (1921–1993) was captured in 1941, sent to a work camp in Minsk, and from there in September 1943 to Sobibor. After the uprising of October 14, 1943, he hid in the forest, then joined the Polish Jewish partisan detachment named after B. Glowacki, led by Gil Braverman, from there he moved to the detachment of Fyodor Kovalev, who was part of the Ludov Guard, and later joined the Chernigov-Volyn partisan unit under the command of Alexei Fedorov, operating in Ukraine and Belarus (see: Fedorov A.F. Last winter. M., 1981. p. 99). After the merger of the partisans with the regular troops, he fought in the Red Army. In 1944 he was wounded in the arm and was hospitalized in Kuibyshev, where he lived until the end of his life.

Semyon Yakovlevich Mazurkevich (1911-1945). A native of Belarus. Member of the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 At the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War he was captured, among other prisoners of war was in a work camp in Minsk on Shirokaya Street, from where he was deported to Sobibor in September 1943. Member of the October 14 uprising. After his escape, he fought in the Belarusian partisan detachment named after Frunze, then in the Red Army. He died during the fighting in the Danzig corridor.

Alexander “Sasha” Pechersky / Petsjerski (1909-1990). Born in Kremenchuk on 22 February 1909. A lieutenant in the Red Army, he was taken prisoner in the autumn of 1941. When a medical examination revealed he was Jewish, he was transported to Sobibor on 22 September 1943. Over a period of three weeks he drew up a detailed plan to escape from the camp with all the prisoners. About his captivity and his part in the uprising he said: “It is not just a memory, I live it.” He was married and had a daughter when he enlisted in the army. In January 1990 he died in his hometown of Rostov-on-Don.

Naum Yankelevich Plotnitsky (1913-1982). A native of Western Belarus. In 1919, the area in which his family lived was ceded to Poland. In March 1939 he was drafted into the Polish army, from the beginning of World War II he took part in hostilities, at the end of September he was captured by the Germans. At the end of 1940 he escaped from the prisoner of war camp and hid until 1943. In July 1943, he was rounded up and sent to Sobibor, where he was selected as a builder. During the uprising, he was supposed to lead a group with A. Weitzen to seize an armory. After escaping, together with A. Pechersky and other Soviet prisoners of war, he crossed the Western Bug and joined the Shchors partisan detachment. After the war he lived in Pinsk. In 1979 he immigrated to Israel.

Semyon Moiseevich Rosenfeld (1922-2019). The son of a tailor. After graduating from high school (1940) he was drafted into the Red Army. At the end of July 1941 he was wounded in the leg, shell-shocked and captured. He spent several days in a prisoner of war camp in Mogilev, and then was sent to Stalag 352 in the village of Masyukovshchina near Minsk. There, after "selection", he was imprisoned in a punishment cell - the so-called "Jewish basement", and in September 1941 he was transferred to the SS work camp on Shirokaya Street in Minsk. From there, on September 18, 1943, together with A. Pechersky, other prisoners of the camp on the Shiroka and Minsk ghettos (about two thousand people in total), he was deported to Sobibor. During the uprising of October 14, according to him, he received from A. Pechersky the task to eliminate K. Frenzel, but he did not appear in the carpenter's workshop at the scheduled time. While escaping from the camp, he was wounded in the leg. After the arrival of the Red Army (July 1944) and a three-week check in SMERSH, he returned to the Red Army. In January 1945, during street fighting in Poznan, he was seriously wounded in the arm, after leaving the hospital in Berlin, the head of the guard of the army food warehouse. In October 1945 he was demobilized. He lived in Haivoron, Kirovograd region, since 1978 - in Odessa. In 1990 he immigrated to Israel.

Alexander Shubaev (1917-1944). A native of Khasavyurt. According to A. Pechersky, he graduated from the Rostov Institute of Railway Engineers (not documented). He lived in the working village of Kotelnikovsky in the Stalingrad region (now the city of Kotelnikovo, Volgograd region). In 1940 he was drafted into the Red Army. He was taken prisoner (presumably in August 1942). Together with Pechersky, he ended up in a work camp on Shirokaya Street in Minsk. From there, on September 18, 1943, he was deported to Sobibor. During the uprising of October 14, he killed the deputy commandant of Sobibor, Johann Niemann, in the tailor's workshop, thereby initiating the liquidation of the SS men who served in the camp. After his escape, he moved along with Pechersky and a group of other former prisoners to the Western Bug and joined the Belarusian partisan detachment named after Frunze. According to A. Vaispapir, "I went with a group of scouts across the Pripyat River to establish contacts with the army (when the front came close). The group is gone."4. "He was a cheerful, never discouraged man. He was very fond of singing and jokingly called himself "Kalimali". No one knew what "kalimali" was, but it made everyone smile, "Pechersky recalled about him.

Boris Izrailevich Taborinsky (1917-2004?). He lived all his life in Minsk. After the occupation of the city, he ended up in the Minsk ghetto, then in a work camp on Shirokaya Street. In September 1943 he was deported to Sobibor. After the uprising of October 14 and his escape, he crossed the Western Bug with A. Pechersky's group and joined the partisan detachment named after Frunze. In the summer of 1944, he was "filtered" in the Kharkov special camp of the NKVD No. 258 and was sent to a separate assault rifle battalion No. 20, where he stayed from August to December. He finished the war with the rank of second lieutenant.

Boris Tsibulsky (~1913-1943). A native of Donbass. He met Alexander Pechersky in August 1942 in the punishment cell ("Jewish basement") of Stalag 352 in the village of Masyukovshchina near Minsk. Then they were transferred to a work camp on Shirokaya Street in Minsk, from where they were deported to Sobibor on September 18, 1943. During the uprising of October 14, together with Leon Felgendler and several other prisoners, he liquidated four SS men in Camp II. After escaping during the crossing of the Western Bug, he caught a cold, fell ill with pneumonia and remained in one of the Belarusian border villages, where, apparently, he soon died. "A tall, agile big man of about thirty, with large features, with black eyes, a former butcher and binder, somewhat rude, but good-natured and cheerful, a little talkative. There was more feigned in his rudeness, and there was a lot of human warmth in his heart," recalled A. Pechersky.

Arkady Vaispapir (1921-2018). He was born in a Jewish agricultural settlement near Kherson. In 1940 he was drafted into the army. In September 1941, near Kiev, he was seriously wounded and taken prisoner along with the entire hospital. He met A. Pechersky in a work camp on Shirokaya Street in Minsk. On September 18, 1943, he was deported to Sobibor. During the October 14 uprising, together with Yehuda Lerner, he hacked to death the head of the camp guard, Siegfried Greatshus, and a guard named Klyatt. After the escape, he joined the Frunze partisan detachment, then in the Red Army. After the war, he lived in Ukraine (since 1994 - in Kiev).

Alexei Anshelevich Wajcen (later changed his patronymic to Angelovich, 1922-2015). He was born in the village of Grigoriv (Stanislav Voivodeship, Poland, now Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine). He spent his childhood and youth in Khodoriv (Lviv Voivodeship). After the annexation of this territory to the USSR, he was drafted into the Red Army. In the summer of 1941 he was wounded, taken prisoner, and escaped a few days later. He was detained twice more and fled. He stayed in Ternopil with a Jewish family; during the raid he was detained, "exposed" as a Jew and in May 1942 sent to Sobibor. There he worked on sorting the belongings of the dead prisoners. After the uprising and escape (his younger brother Shmul, who later went missing, also managed to escape; another brother, Mikhail, died in Sobibor earlier), he joined the group of Alexander Pechersky and, having crossed the Western Bug together with other prisoners of war of the Red Army, joined the Voroshilov partisan detachment, then the Frunze detachment of the Stalin brigade of the Brest formation, which in April 1944 joined the Red Army. He served in intelligence, ended the war in East Prussia. He remained to serve in the airborne troops in Pskov, then in Ryazan. He was demobilized in 1966 with the rank of captain.