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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Prisoner of Sobibor</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">On an early autumn day<br>a train coming from Minsk rolled<br>into the railway station of Sobibor, <br>a village in the Lublin district of Poland.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The passengers of the train<br>were unaware that the outskirts <br>of this dusty small town<br>concealed a dreadful Nazi death camp<br>where gas chambers poisoned victims<br>with carbon monoxide.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was September 23,1943, <br>and a Soviet prisoner of war, <br>First Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky<br>was also in one of the boxcars<br>of the deported Jews.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His mind in captivity<br>wandered restlessly.<br>He thought about his family.<br>And he thought about the war<br>and about Mother Russia <br>and of daring plans of escape. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the Great Patriotic War <br>Sasha fought bravely<br>against the German invaders<br>in the Smolensk Oblast, <br>defending the road to Moscow.<br>as the Red Army was retreating.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A Wehrmacht unit captured him<br>in the fall of 1941 in Vyazma.<br>Sasha found it ironic that here<br>in 1812 the Russians defeated <br>a French army of Napoleon<br>retreating from Moscow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before his arrival in Sobibor, <br>Sasha had already spent long months<br>in various prisoner camps. <br>Then, during a strip search, <br>the Nazis discovered<br>that he was circumcised<br>and as a Jew they deported him<br>to Sobibor. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The transport that took him to the camp<br>was an unusual one, because the Nazis<br>selected 80 men for work, <br>instead of gassing them.<br>Sasha was chosen along with 79 others<br>to build new storage facilities in the lager. <br> <br>Now, exhausted and hungry, <br>he was chopping wood <br>with other prisoners. <br>They hoisted their heavy axes <br>and then let them fall <br>on the tree stumps.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">SS Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel, <br>a squad leader, guarded the group.<br>He routinely punished prisoners<br>for slowing down <br>with twenty-five lashes each. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once, when Sergeant Frenzel <br>was busy in beating a prisoner, <br>he noticed that Sasha <br>took a moment of rest. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Russian soldier, you don't like the way<br>I punish this fool? ' Frenzel asked.<br>'Well, I give you exactly five minutes<br>to split this stump. If you make it, <br>you get a pack of cigarettes. <br>But if you miss even by one second, <br>you get twenty-five lashes, too.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It looked an impossible assignment <br>but Sasha was still young and strong.<br>He started to assault the stump<br>with all his strength, <br>fuelled with the hatred of the enemy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He finished the task in less<br>than the allotted time of five minutes. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Impressed by the performance, <br>Frenzel handed Sasha <br>a pack of cigarettes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Many prisoners <br>valued the luxury of smoking<br>even more than their scarce food rations. <br>But Sasha refused to take<br>the highly prized commodity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Thanks, but I don't smoke', he said. <br>Then he lifted his axe<br>and went back to work.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The SS guard was puzzled and furious. <br>He turned around and left.<br> <br>However, he returned soon <br>with a piece of bread <br>and some margarine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was a very alluring delicacy<br>for a starving man <br>and Frenzel handed the food to Sasha.<br> <br>But, again, <br>Sasha declined the SS man's offer.<br>'Thank you', he said, &quot;the food<br>we are getting here satisfies me fully.'<br> <br>This was obviously a lie <br>and Oberscharführer Frenzel<br>became even more furious. <br>Yet at the same time<br>he admired the strength, <br>the pride and moral backbone<br>of the prisoner. <br> <br>The SS man was at a loss how to react.<br>But he did not whip Sasha.<br>He just turned on his heels and left.<br> <br>A few weeks later a revolt broke out<br>in the Sobibor death camp. <br>Sasha played a central role <br>in organizing the uprising.<br> <br>In the afternoon of October 14,1943, <br>the prisoners killed <br>most of the German SS men<br>and some of the Ukrainian guards<br>in the camp. <br> <br>Three hundred prisoners, <br>from a crowd of nearly six hundred, <br>managed to break through<br>the barbed wire fences and mine fields <br>under a hail of fire of the guards.<br> <br>This daring uprising <br>was the most successful mass escape<br>of prisoners from a Nazi lager<br>in World War II.<br>But only about 50 of the escapees <br>survived the war.<br> <br>Sasha was one of them.<br>He found his way to the partisan forces<br>fighting in the forests against the Fascists<br>and later joined again the Soviet Red Army.<br> <br>Seventeen years after the war, <br>In 1962, Karl Frenzel was arrested<br>in Germany for his participation <br>in the mass extermination <br>of 250,000 Jews at Sobibor.<br> <br>Witnesses testified that Frenzel <br>was a sadist murderer.<br>He brutally had beaten to death <br>scores of prisoners, whereas others <br>he shot through the head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A survivor of the death camp, <br>Esther Terner-Raab <br>saw the SS sergeant grabbing a baby<br>and slamming the infant's head <br>against the side of a boxcar.<br> <br>The Hagen Trials in Germany<br>continued for four years.<br>In the end, <br>the court found Karl Frenzel guilty.<br>It sentenced him to life imprisonment<br>for war crimes <br>and crimes against humanity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Paul+Hartal">Paul Hartal</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477367" data-title="A Prisoner of Sobibor de Paul Hartal" data-description="On an early autumn day
a train coming from Minsk rolled
into the railway station of Sobibor, 
a village in the Lublin district of Poland.

The passengers of the train
were unaware that the outskirts 
of this dusty small town
concealed a dreadful N..."></div>
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