Thomas Blatt

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Thomas Blatt in the 1940s
Thomas Blatt on the 70th anniversary of the uprising in Sobibór (October 14, 2013).

Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (born April 15, 1927 in Izbica , Poland; died October 31, 2015 in Santa Barbara , California ) was an American author and survivor of the uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp .

Life

Thomas Toivi Blatt grew up in the Jewish shtetl Izbica in Poland . The Izbica ghetto became an SS deportation destination for Jews during World War II . At the age of 15, Blatt and his family were transported to the Sobibor extermination camp. His family was sent to the gas chamber in front of him. "Toivi" was selected for work. Sobibór, in what was then Lemberg County , today in the Lublin Voivodeship, Poland, was "one of the three extermination camps of ' Aktion Reinhardt ' - the extermination of over one and a half million European Jews, which was planned and carried out in detail." In the camp he joined the Jewish underground group. On October 14, 1943, he and about 600 other prisoners took part in the Sobibór uprising and the subsequent escape. Toivi was one of the 47 people who survived the Sobibór uprising at all. After his "return home to the Izbica area" he was given and denied support by former neighbors, and he was subjected to further assassinations there.

In an interview with Karl Frenzel , an SS overseer at the extermination camp, he tried to investigate the motives for the industrial killing in Sobibor. It was one of the first conversations between an SS overseer and his victim after the Holocaust.

He held memorial events in Sobibór and lectures on the Holocaust.

Thomas Blatt said at an event in Frankfurt in 1999:

"God! How fragile, how incredibly thin is the crust of civilization. How easily the protective cover - as soon as the conditions are given - will burst and a beast will break out. I'm afraid of that. "

Blatt's book From the Ashes of Sobibór is one of the most famous books on the Holocaust. The resulting film Escape from Sobibor with Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer was nominated for four Emmys and received two Golden Globe awards and the Writers Guild of America Award for best screenplay.

He was involved in drafting the script for Escape from Sobibor together with Stanisław Szmajzner , another survivor of the extermination camp.

In May 2009 Thomas Blatt was interrogated as a surviving witness about his experiences in the Sobibor extermination camp in the course of the preliminary investigation against John Demjanjuk in Munich and made a statement in the Demjanjuk trial in January 2010 at the Munich Regional Court.

Most recently, Thomas Blatt lived in the USA. He died in late October 2015 at the age of 88 as one of the last survivors of the Sobibór uprising.

Works

  • From the Ashes of Sobibór. A story of survival. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois 1997, ISBN 0-8101-1302-3 .
  • Only the shadows remain. The uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp. From the American by Monika Schmalz. Structure, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-7466-8068-9 .
  • Sobibor. The forgotten uprising. Report from a survivor. Unrast, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-89771-813-8 .

literature

  • Jules Schelvis : Sobibór extermination camp. Unrast, Hamburg et al. 2004, ISBN 3-89771-814-6 . German first: Metropol, Berlin 1998; Dutch: Vernietigingskamp Sobibor . De Bataafsche Leeuw, Amsterdam 1994, ISBN 90-6707-319-9 ; English: Sobibor. A history of a Nazi death camp . Berg, Oxford et al. 2007, ISBN 978-1-84520-419-8 . (Standard scientific work, written by a surviving Dutchman).
  • Jules Schelvis: A journey through darkness. A report over two years in German extermination and concentration camps. Unrast, Hamburg et al. 2005, ISBN 3-89771-815-4 .
  • Yitzhak Arad : Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indiana University Press, Bloomington In. including 1987, ISBN 0-253-34293-7 (partly outdated, earlier standard work).
  • Adalbert Rückerl (Ed.): National Socialist Extermination Camps in the Mirror of German Criminal Trials. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-02904-8 ( dtv 2904) (basic documentation with excerpts from court judgments and witness statements).
  • Richard Rashke: Escape from Sobibor . bahoe Books, October 2016. ISBN 978-3-903022-39-3 .

documentary

  • The transformation of the good neighbor (Thomas Blatt visits Izbica and Sobibor ), director: Peter Nestler , 85 minutes, Germany 2002.

Web links

Commons : Thomas Blatt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Central Council of Jews in Germany Kdö.R .: USA: Thomas Blatt (88) died - Jüdische Allgemeine .
  2. ↑ Izbica - Ghetto without Walls ( Memento from July 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ 404 The product you are looking for does not exist. Welcome to Unrast Verlag Books of Critique .
  5. ^ Stadtkino Wien: Stadtkino Wien - Error 404 .
  6. ↑ http://sobibor.info/confrontation.html ( Memento from December 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ IMDB on Escape from Sobibor
  8. ↑ Jan Friedmann: Transfer to Stadelheim: Doctors decide about Demjanjuk's future . May 12, 2009.
  9. ↑ Demjanjuk deportation: "The world should find out what it was like in Sobibor" . May 12, 2009.
  10. ↑ Minutes of Thomas Blatt's testimony in the Demjanjuk in Munich in January 2010
  11. ↑ Report of the political magazine Kontrovers of the TV broadcaster BR from June 25, 2010, including statements by Thomas Blatt ( Memento from May 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Blatt, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blatt, Toivi (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author and survivor of the uprising in the Nazi extermination camp Sobibór
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Izbica
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 2015
Place of death Santa Barbara , California