- Alexander Pechersky
Alexander “Sasha” Pechersky (
February 22 ,1909 – January 1990) was the organizer of a prisoner uprising at theSobibor extermination camp in 1943.Biography
Pechersky was born in
Kremenchuk ,Ukraine in 1909 and received adiploma for his studies in music and literature. In June 1941, he was conscripted into the SovietRed Army as a junior officer.In October 1941, Pechersky was taken prisoner by soldiers of the German
Wehrmacht . After a failed escape attempt, it was discovered he wasJewish . He was transferred to a SSlabor camp inMinsk ,Belarus . He was later transferred toSobibór death camp inPoland in September 1943; he was however not killed outright, but assigned to serve inSonderkommando .Due to his experience as a combat officer, Pechersky was approached by the leaders of the camp's resistance movement. Impressed by Pechersky, they assisted him in masterminding a prisoner uprising which involved the
assassination of Sobibor's SS officers. Each officer was lured to an isolated location and stabbed to death with knives made in the camp's machine shop; the blood was covered up with sawdust poured on the floor. Halfway through the operation, the camp's Commandant learned of Pechersky's plans. Attired in full dress uniform as a Red ArmyLieutenant , Pechersky gave a speech to the camp inmates and ordered them to break through thebarbed wire and escape across a surrounding minefield. Pechersky and several of his fellow Red Army POWs as well as some 300 other prisoners succeeded in escaping to the cover of the forest.After Sobibor, he joined a unit of
Soviet partisans and conductedguerilla warfare against the Nazis until a severe leg injury resulted in a medal for bravery. Afterwards, he returned to civilian life. He was, however, soon was arrested by theNKVD . Pechersky was charged with having allowed himself to be captured by the Nazis (a crime oftreason during the Stalinist era) and sentenced to a long term in a Soviet labor camp. He was eventually released amidst an international outcry over his role in the escape from Sobibor.He died in January 1990 in
Rostov-on-Don .In popular culture
In the 1987 British movie "
Escape from Sobibor ", Sasha Pechersky was played by Dutch actorRutger Hauer , who received aGolden Globe Award .External links
* [http://www.sobibor.info/hero.html Biography and interview]
* [http://yad-vashem.org.il/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205708.pdf Yad Vashem article]
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