- Sigmund Sobolewski
Sigmund Sobolewski (born 1923) is a Polish
Catholic who was the 88th prisoner to enterAuschwitz on the very first transport to the concentration camp onJune 14 ,1940 and remained a prisoner for four and a half years duringWorld War II . Now residing inCanada , he is an opponent ofHolocaust denial and is notable for having confronted modern neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers.Sobolewski, the son of the mayor of a small Polish town who was also an officer in the Polish army, was detained at Auschwitz at the age of 17 as a result of the anti-Nazi activities of his father.
Fluent in German, Sobolewski was pressed into service as a translator.
"I survived also because I was young," said Sobolewski. "I didn't realize the seriousness of what was going on. Most of the people who survived were simple people; workers, peasants from Polish villages who couldn't read and write, but who were used to the hard work. Lawyers, doctors, technicians, university graduates: many of them after three or four weeks in Auschwitz had committed suicide because they realized their chances of surviving were very, very slim." [http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/story/2969]
He is the sole surviving witness of the
October 7 ,1944 revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau when a group of Jewish prisoners blew up Crematorium Number 4 and attempted to escape. Sobolewski was on the fire brigade and was ordered to put out the fire. He witnessed the execution of 450 Jewish Sonderkommandos in retailation. [http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-1579-10643/conflict_war/echoes_of_auschwitz/]"I survived only to live with the nagging question, 'What distinguished me from them (the Jews)?'", he said in an interview. [http://www.wcr.ab.ca/news/1999/0426/auschwitzsurvivor042699.shtml]
He traveled the world following the war and settled in Alberta, Canada. In 1967, he initiated his activity protesting neo-Nazism by donning a facsimile of his Auschwitz prison uniform and picketing the appearance of a German neo-Nazi leader on Canadian television. In subsequent decades he would do the same to protest Holocaust denier
Jim Keegstra and, in 1990 to picketAryan Fest , a neo-Nazi festival organized by Terry Long in Alberta. [http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-71-1579-10652/conflict_war/echoes_of_auschwitz/]Sobolewski works as a realtor in Alberta [http://www.cirrealtors.com/wc.wc?RLT~BaseProfile~692] but also travels the world lecturing audiences on his experiences in Auschwitz and warning against Holocaust denial. [http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/story/2969]
His life is the subject of the biography "Prisoner 88: The Man in Stripes" by Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum [http://www.uofcpress.com/1-895176/1-895176-74-3.html]
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