Alexander Aronowitsch Pechersky

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Alexander Pechersky
Pechersky Monument in Tel Aviv

Alexander Aronowitsch Pechersky ( Russian Александр Аронович Печерский , even Печёрский Petschorski *  22. February 1909 in Kremenchuk , Poltava Governorate , Russian Empire (now Ukraine ); †  19th January 1990 in Rostov-on-Don , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ) was a Soviet officer . He planned and directed the Sobibór armed uprising on October 14, 1943, which resulted in a mass breakout from the Sobibor extermination camp , Poland .

biography

Before Sobibor

Alexander Petscherski was born the son of Aron Petscherski, a lawyer. In 1915 his family moved to Rostov-on-Don. He completed his studies in music and theater studies with a diploma. Then Pechersky worked as a director of various cultural centers, where he dealt with amateur theater.

During the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army . After a short time he rose to lieutenant in September 1941. A month later he was arrested by German troops at the Battle of Vyazma . After an unsuccessful attempt to escape from a POW camp in Smolensk, he was deported to a penal camp in Borissow . Was recognized as his Jewish ancestry, deported him the SS in the Minsk ghetto .

On September 18, 1943, the SS commander announced in a short speech that they would be taken to a labor camp in Germany. With 300 grams of bread per person, around 1,500 prisoners were taken to a deportation train to Sobibor, which reached the station on September 23, 1943.

During the selection at the platform ramp, Pechersky was chosen as one of 60 prisoners to do maintenance work as forced labor in the camp for the SS . The rest were killed in the gas chamber that same day .

On the evening of the day of arrival, Pechersky learned from fellow prisoners that the smoke from the chimneys came from the cremated corpses of the prisoners who had arrived with him.

Initial situation in the warehouse

In military terms, the situation in Germany had changed shortly before Alexander Petscherski's arrival . The slave laborers had learned of the defeat of Stalingrad . The prisoners were also aware of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19, 1943. On July 5, 1943, Himmler had ordered Sobibor to be converted from an extermination camp to a concentration camp , which gave rise to the well-founded fear among the inmates that all eyewitnesses to the mass murders should be eliminated. Under the leadership of Leon Feldhendler , a member of the Jewish Council of Żółkiewka , the prisoners began to plan to take their fate into their own hands through a mass outbreak. Two smaller attempts to break out had previously failed.

Planning and implementation of the Sobibor uprising

When the group of Soviet prisoners, led by Alexander Pechersky, arrived at the camp, the inmates immediately contacted them. Pechersky had military experience, was familiar with the handling of weapons, possessed strategic thinking, and was not yet as demoralized as many who had lost their family members in the camp.

Pecherski's plan, which came about within six weeks, was to put the command structure, consisting of 17 SS men, out of action with self-made cutting and stabbing weapons. At the same time, communication in the warehouse was to be cut, which would cut the phone and power out. This should provide the opportunity to steal weapons and take out the guards. Petscherski's plan, about which only about 10% of the prisoners were informed, could largely be implemented. At 4 p.m. on October 14, 1943, the captured forced laborers succeeded in killing eleven SS men on the spot. Around 365 of the 600 insurgent prisoners were able to overcome the barriers. Since only part of the guards were eliminated, the losses were higher than expected. Around 150 refugees escaped the hail of bullets from the Trawniki and the minefields around the camp and fled to the nearby forests. 47 escaped prisoners were still alive at the end of the Second World War .

After Sobibor

In order to have a better chance of escaping the persecutors, Pechersky decided that the refugees should separate.

With the help of a small farmer, his group of nine managed to cross the Bug and cross the border to the Soviet Union near Brest-Litovsk on the night of October 19-20, 1943 . Two days later, the group around Pechersky reached a partisan group, which they joined. Sabotage of supply routes and targeted attacks on small German bases were among his main tasks in the next few months.

As soon as possible he rejoined the Red Army. After Pechersky was seriously injured in the leg in August 1944, he received a medal for bravery and retired from the army.

After returning to Rostov-on-Don, he married for the second time (he had divorced his first wife before the war). His second wife was a nurse named Olga who had nursed him in hospital while he was wounded. In 1945, when he was working as a music teacher, he published his memoirs about the Sobibor camp and the uprising. He corresponded with numerous survivors from the camp who lived in the west. These letters led to his dismissal in 1948 for "links with imperialist states". He was not arrested, but was unable to work for five years, relying on odd jobs. After Stalin's death in 1953 he was able to work again as an art teacher.

Pechersky wrote down his memories of the uprising. His eyewitness account of the uprising in Sobibor was translated and published by Ingrid Damerow. The book was published by Metropol-Verlag in 2018.

Commemoration

Pechersky was never honored in the Soviet Union. The historiography of the time completely ignored him. His important role in organizing the uprising was not known in his hometown.

In 1963 he was the main prosecution witness in a trial against ten Ukrainian guards in the Sobibor camp, nine of whom were sentenced to death and one to 15 years imprisonment. Although he was invited to western countries several times in the seventies and eighties and finally received an exit visa after several refusals in 1987 , he was unable to accept the invitation due to illness.

A street in Israel bears his name, as does a monument in Boston . Before the 70th anniversary of the concentration camp uprising, President Vladimir Putin commissioned the Russian Defense Ministry to design a memorial project. The Russian Human Rights Council previously demanded that Pechersky posthumously be awarded the highest order of " Hero of the Russian Federation ". On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the uprising, a ceremony was planned in a Moscow synagogue in the presence of representatives of the Ministry of Defense and politics.

Movies

Pechersky took part in the following documentary film about the Sobibor breakout:

  • "Aufstand in Sobibor" (Opstand in Sobibor, 1990), directed by Pavel Kogan and Lily van den Bergh

He was also featured in the following documentaries

He is also the main character in the following films about the Sobibor breakout:

literature

  • Thomas “Toivi” Blatt : Only the shadows remain: the uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp . From the American by Monika Schmalz. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7466-8068-9 .
  • Thomas "Toivi" sheet: Sobibór - the forgotten uprising . Translated from English and provided with follow-up comments by Heike Kleffner and Miriam Rürup . Unrast Verlag, Hamburg / Münster 2004, ISBN 3-89771-813-8 .
  • Israel Gutman (ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust - The persecution and murder of European Jews . Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , 3 volumes (entry: Alexander Petscherski)
  • Jules Schelvis : Sobibór extermination camp. Translated from the Dutch by Gero Deckers (= Center for Research on Antisemitism : Series of Documents, Texts, Materials , Volume 24) . Metropol, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-926893-33-8 .
  • Franziska Bruder: Hundreds of such heroes; The uprising of Jewish prisoners in the Nazi extermination camp Sobibór, reports, research and analysis (=  series of anti-fascist texts ). Unrast Verlag, Hamburg / Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-89771-822-7 .
  • Aleksandr Pechersky: Report on the uprising in Sobibor . Ed .: Ingrid Damerow. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86331-387-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b tlz.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Anoek de Groot: Russia commemorates the revolt in Sobibor concentration camp 70 years ago , October 14, 2013, accessed on October 15, 2013.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.tlz.de  
  2. ↑ Russia commemorates the revolt in Sobibor concentration camp 70 years ago. Memories of a forgotten hero . Welt Online , October 14, 2013; Retrieved October 15, 2013.
  3. ^ Opstand in Sobibor (1990) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  4. ↑ medienbuero-oldenburg.de Medienbüro Oldenburg.
  5. ↑ Sobibor: The Plan, the Revolt, the Escape (2010) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  6. ↑ Escape from Sobibor (1987) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  7. ↑ Sobibor (2018) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Pechersky, Alexander Aronowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pechersky, Alexander; Печёрский, Александр Аронович (Cyrillic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION soviet officer
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Kremenchuk
DATE OF DEATH January 1990
Place of death Rostov on Don