Red Army officer Alexander Pechersky: biography. Alexander Pechersky's feat: rebellion in Sobibor

It was almost impossible to survive in a fascist concentration camp. But in the Soviet Union, people were brought up who did not just survive: they organized uprisings, organized mass shoots, their will to resist was impossible to break. One of these heroes was Alexander Pechersky, a junior lieutenant, who, together with the regiment, was surrounded at the very beginning of the war, and then captured. When the enemy found that he was not only an officer, but also a Jew, his fate was decided.

Sobibor

The history of the uprising of the prisoners of this death camp, located in the southeast of Poland, is very well known in the West. After the war, the Soviet Union decided to forgive Poland the venality and treacherous nature of a fairly large part of its population, and therefore many things unpleasant for the nearest neighbor were simply tactfully hushed up. Alexander Pechersky was not known in the country, and the uprising of Sobibor prisoners remained without an honest assessment, and absolutely undeservedly. And in Western Europe and Israel, films have been made about this camp and about the uprising, many books have been written. The leader of the rebels - Alexander Pechersky - is widely known abroad and is considered a great hero.

What was it like in the Nazi death camp? Why was it created? It was opened in early 1942 with the sole purpose of complete and absolute annihilation, that is, genocide, of the Jewish population. To do this, there was an extensive program, where the whole process was prescribed step by step. Over one and a half years of the existence of the camp, there were killed more than two hundred and fifty thousand Jews - inhabitants of Poland and the nearest European countries.

Destruction technology

As in all concentration camps, in Sobibor with the prisoners came very simply. A narrow-gauge railroad leading to the forest daily supplied suicide bombers with a whole railway train. Of these, a certain number of people were chosen more positively, and the rest were sent to the "bathhouse", that is, to the gas chamber. Selected "big guys" in fifteen minutes could already bury fellow travelers in special ditches that were prepared around the camp. Their "bath day" was also not far off, as the economic affairs in the camp were very difficult, and nobody was going to feed the prisoners. "Hefty" quickly lost their condition.

Such an approach was invented by the fascists, and they considered it very economically advantageous. There were also in each camp those who were not prisoners. In addition to the SS, Sobibor was guarded and collaborators, that is, all kinds of traitors. The overwhelming majority are Ukrainian Banderites. Many of them are worth a separate story, so that mankind will always remember how terrible it is. For example, the fate of an anti-hero who opposed such a man as Alexander Pechersky is interesting.

Ivan Demjanjuk

Who would have thought that in the third millennium the trials that are connected with the Great Patriotic War will still continue? Few witnesses have survived to this day.

The trial of a former Soviet man, a prisoner of war, and later a particularly bloodthirsty sadist and executioner, Sobibor overseer, later - an American citizen, John Demjanjuk, lasted a year and a half and ended with the accusation of killing several tens of thousands of Sobibor suicide bombers. Ninety-year-old Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison for these crimes.

For what

This inhuman was born in 1920 in Ukraine. With the outbreak of World War II, Demjanjuk was drafted into the Red Army, and in 1942 he surrendered. In the concentration camp he entered the service of the Nazis. He was remembered by the camps Treblinka, Majdanek, Flussseborg. The work was bustling - the service record was replenished. But with Sobibor was less fortunate, because there was an uprising and escape of prisoners, that the guards do not bring any honor.

One can imagine with what degree of cruelty and sadism Demjanjuk ("Ivan the Terrible" for SS men) dealt with those who managed to catch. There is evidence for this, but the details are too terrible to be quoted here. From the death camp, a successful escape could not have happened. In Sobibor, they were not there, until Alexander Pechersky, a military national hero, appeared there. The underground organization in the camp was already there, but it consisted of people who were purely civilians, and often died in the gas chamber. The escape was planned, but this plan did not work out even to make it definitively.

Lieutenant from Rostov-on-Don

Alexander Aronovich Pechersky, whose biography until the end of his life was not known to wide sections of the population of his native country, was also born in Ukraine, in Kremenchug, in 1909. In 1915 the family of a lawyer, his father, moved to Rostov-on-Don, which Alexander had always considered his home city. After graduating from school, he got a job as an electrician and entered the university. Very fond of amateur art, and the audience also loved him.

On the first day of the war, Junior Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky was already on his way to the front. His position was such that the university was finished. Alexander fought against the fascists near Smolensk in the artillery regiment of the 19th Army. Under Vyazma they were surrounded, Pechersky and his colleagues, carrying the wounded commander on their shoulders, fought through the front line, which had already considerably moved away. The cartridges were over. Many fighters were injured or seriously ill - it's not so easy in the cold to wade through the swamps. The group was surrounded by the Nazis and disarmed. So the captivity began.

In captivity

Red Army men were driven to the west - from the camp to the camp, and, of course, only those who could serve in the quarries. Red Army officer Alexander Pechersky did not want to obey, to die, too, and there was never any hope of escape. He did not look like a Jew, so the Nazis, when they told him (on the denunciation) about his nationality, immediately sent him to Sobibor to die. Together with Alexander in the camp came about six hundred people.

Of these, only 80 were temporarily left to live, the rest in an hour was no longer alive. Alexander fell into the category of big guys, and later it was discovered that he knows the carpentry, so until he falls down he will work for the needs of the concentration camp and the whole of Germany. So the Nazis decided, but not Lieutenant Pechersky from Sobibor. Illusions were alien to the lieutenant, he knew perfectly well that if they had not killed him today, they would do it later. And this delay is necessary for him to give the Nazis the last battle, to make his last feat. Alexander Pechersky so easy to kill will not work.

Plan

In the underground group, he explained that single shoots are impossible neither here, nor in any other camp, since you can not go beyond the barbed wire. He insisted on an insurrection, in which literally everything should escape from the camp, because the remaining ones will be killed in any case, but only after torture and mockery. It is only to see the people of Bandera who walk around the camp and kill anyone they want and when they want. And it's because no one is resisting or bussing. The remaining in the camp after the escape will be tormented ferociously.

Of course, when you escape, too many will perish. But each of the refugees will have a chance. The underground committee approved the plan that was proposed. So he received a new post, the most responsible in his life, Alexander Pechersky - leader of the uprising. Almost all the prisoners who were informed about this escape plan approved this method. To die all the same will have, so it is better not such a feeble dumb crowd, like sheep walking into the gas chamber. Dying should be worthy, if there is such an opportunity.

Purely Jewish cunning

The fact is that on the territory of the camp there were not only carpentry workshops, but also sewing. Who better than a Jewish tailor will be able to build a really beautiful uniform on the SS? Tailors from the death row were also getting out, as were carpenters and masons, even if they were not "big guys". For the needs of great Germany, tailors were needed especially. Here in this sewing workshop it all began. Bandera guards, by the way, also did not disdain her services.

And on October 14, 1943, the security that loafed around the camp began to be lured to a fitting, where they were courted with a hatchet or strangled with a rope, and then disarmed and put in a cellar. For this mission, prisoners of war with experience of hand-to-hand fighting were specially selected. The most interesting thing is that Alexander Pechersky, the hero of this whole story, was in Sobibor for less than three weeks, but he already managed to create a detachment, capable of clearly and harmoniously acting. Such were his will and determination to go to the end.

The escape

Noiselessly and imperceptibly for an outsider's eyes, eleven Germans ceased to exist and almost all guard-free guards. Only then did the alarm go up, and Sobibor's suicide bombers were forced to make a breakthrough. This was the second stage of the plan, compiled by Alexander Pechersky. The prisoners, armed with trophies, began to shoot the remaining guards. The machine gun worked on the tower, and there was no way to get it. People ran. They rushed to the barbed wire, their bodies paving the way for their comrades. They were killed under machine gun bursts, they were undermined by the mines that surrounded the camp, but did not stop.

The gate was broken, and here it is - freedom! Nevertheless, one hundred and thirty people from almost six hundred remained in the camp: exhausted and sick, those who, if not today, then tomorrow - in the gas chamber. There were also those who hoped for their obedience and mercy on the part of the Hitlerites. In vain! The camp ceased to exist. The next day, all the remaining were shot, and soon Sobibor was destroyed. The land itself was leveled with bulldozers and planted cabbage on it. So that there will not even be any memory left of what was there before. Why? Because it was a shame for Hitler's Germany - the exhausted prisoners of war made an escape, and even a good one.

Results

Freedom was given to just under three hundred suicide bombers, and just over eighty found a glorious death during the breakthrough. Then it was necessary to decide where to go, since all four sides were open to the fugitives. For two weeks they were hunting. One hundred and seventy people hid themselves unsuccessfully. Banderovtsy found them and killed them. Almost all of them were given to local people who turned out to be anti-Semites too.

Almost ninety of the fugitives were tortured not even by the Ukrainian Bandera, but by the Poles. Of course, none of those caught in a quick death died. In all this, it is partly the choice given by fate that is to blame. Those who chose to hide in Poland perished mostly. The others left with Alexander Pechersky through the Bug to Belarus, where they found partisans and survived.

Homeland

Pechersky Alexander Aronovich before the liberation of our country from the fascist invaders fought in the partisan detachment named Shchors, was a successful demolitionist, and then returned to the Red Army and met in May 1945 in the rank of captain. He was wounded, treated in a hospital near Moscow, where he met his future wife Olga. Awards he had little, despite the path, full of hardships and exploits. Two years in captivity - this, as a rule, even sounds suspicious. However, he had a medal "For Military Merit" . And this instead of the Order of the Patriotic War, to which he was represented.

The reasons, of course, are clear. The uprising in Sobibor was not exaggerated in the press, since it was monoethnic, and it was not customary to focus attention on this in the USSR - the International was driving everyone, not the Jews at all. In Israel, Pechersky became a national hero, and relations in the meantime between our country and the Promised Land were very spoiled. And nobody here would like to read this uprising at the state level, as it was done there. And, of course, Poland. The proud gentry would surely be offended, we tell the whole world that it was the Poles who put to death those prisoners who had just managed to avoid it, in a gas chamber, in mine fields ... The USSR was not afraid to offend socialist Poland, simply did not want to. But sooner or later all the secret will certainly become apparent.

P.S

Alexander the People's Hero of Israel Alexander Pechersky lived until January 1990 in his native Rostov-on-Don. And he was happy. In 2007, a memorial plaque appeared on the wall of the house where he lived. In 2015, one of the streets of Rostov-on-Don is named after the hero. And in 2016 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.