There is an image of Jews going tamely to slaughter in the Holocaust. And it is true, for various reasons, this did happen all too often. But some Jews stood up and fought, even at times defeating the Nazis at least for a time. Throughout the Nazi era, there were always Jews who stood up and fought, and we should not forget those fights.
Sobibor was one of the Nazi death camps. Not just a run of the mill, as it were, concentration camp. But a full out Death Camp whose sole purpose was the death of Jews.
Jews so thoroughly trashed the place that the Nazis did all they could to eliminate every memory of the place. I want to REMEMBER Sobibor, just as much as the Nazis want us all to forget it. In honor of the Jews who rebelled at Sobibor, here is a song written by someone in the Vilna Ghetto, inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, honoring those who stood up and fought. It is sung in this case by Paul Robeson, who does it full justice:
In 1943 Jews were responsible for the destruction of one of the worst Nazi death camps. You probably haven't heard of Sobibor. Sobibor was designed specifically and solely to kill. It wasn't a camp where they worked people to death. It was a camp where they killed people. Mengele in Auschwitz, sorting who died and who lived for just awhile longer, was kind compared to the brutality of Sobibor.
Two of the six Nazi death camps, Treblinka and Sobibor, were destroyed as a result of Jewish uprisings. These events were suppressed not only by the embarrassed Nazis, but also ironically by some Jews who felt ambivalent about resistance, and by some Israelis who, until the revelations of the Eichmann trial, felt those who remained in the Diaspora had, by not moving to Israel, been partly responsible for their fate. I think the memory of Jewish resistance against the Nazis is extremely important to keep alive. I think we all need to know in our gut that two Death Camps received fatal blows from Jewish rebels.
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