A Prisoner of Sobibor
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 Nazi death camp
where gas chambers poisoned victims
with carbon monoxide.
It was September 23,1943,
and a Soviet prisoner of war,
First Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky
was also in one of the boxcars
of the deported Jews.
His mind in captivity
wandered restlessly.
He thought about his family.
And he thought about the war
and about Mother Russia
and of daring plans of escape.
In the Great Patriotic War
Sasha fought bravely
against the German invaders
in the Smolensk Oblast,
defending the road to Moscow.
as the Red Army was retreating.
A Wehrmacht unit captured him
in the fall of 1941 in Vyazma.
Sasha found it ironic that here
in 1812 the Russians defeated
a French army of Napoleon
retreating from Moscow.
Before his arrival in Sobibor,
Sasha had already spent long months
in various prisoner camps.
Then, during a strip search,
the Nazis discovered
that he was circumcised
and as a Jew they deported him
to Sobibor.
The transport that took him to the camp
was an unusual one, because the Nazis
selected 80 men for work,
instead of gassing them.
Sasha was chosen along with 79 others
to build new storage facilities in the lager.
Now, exhausted and hungry,
he was chopping wood
with other prisoners.
They hoisted their heavy axes
and then let them fall
on the tree stumps.
SS Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel,
a squad leader, guarded the group.
He routinely punished prisoners
for slowing down
with twenty-five lashes each.
Once, when Sergeant Frenzel
was busy in beating a prisoner,
he noticed that Sasha
took a moment of rest.
'Russian soldier, you don't like the way
I punish this fool? ' Frenzel asked.
'Well, I give you exactly five minutes
to split this stump. If you make it,
you get a pack of cigarettes.
But if you miss even by one second,
you get twenty-five lashes, too.'
It looked an impossible assignment
but Sasha was still young and strong.
He started to assault the stump
with all his strength,
fuelled with the hatred of the enemy.
He finished the task in less
than the allotted time of five minutes.
Impressed by the performance,
Frenzel handed Sasha
a pack of cigarettes.
Many prisoners
valued the luxury of smoking
even more than their scarce food rations.
But Sasha refused to take
the highly prized commodity.
'Thanks, but I don't smoke', he said.
Then he lifted his axe
and went back to work.
The SS guard was puzzled and furious.
He turned around and left.
However, he returned soon
with a piece of bread
and some margarine.
It was a very alluring delicacy
for a starving man
and Frenzel handed the food to Sasha.
But, again,
Sasha declined the SS man's offer.
'Thank you', he said, "the food
we are getting here satisfies me fully.'
This was obviously a lie
and Oberscharführer Frenzel
became even more furious.
Yet at the same time
he admired the strength,
the pride and moral backbone
of the prisoner.
The SS man was at a loss how to react.
But he did not whip Sasha.
He just turned on his heels and left.
A few weeks later a revolt broke out
in the Sobibor death camp.
Sasha played a central role
in organizing the uprising.
In the afternoon of October 14,1943,
the prisoners killed
most of the German SS men
and some of the Ukrainian guards
in the camp.
Three hundred prisoners,
from a crowd of nearly six hundred,
managed to break through
the barbed wire fences and mine fields
under a hail of fire of the guards.
This daring uprising
was the most successful mass escape
of prisoners from a Nazi lager
in World War II.
But only about 50 of the escapees
survived the war.
Sasha was one of them.
He found his way to the partisan forces
fighting in the forests against the Fascists
and later joined again the Soviet Red Army.
Seventeen years after the war,
In 1962, Karl Frenzel was arrested
in Germany for his participation
in the mass extermination
of 250,000 Jews at Sobibor.
Witnesses testified that Frenzel
was a sadist murderer.
He brutally had beaten to death
scores of prisoners, whereas others
he shot through the head.
A survivor of the death camp,
Esther Terner-Raab
saw the SS sergeant grabbing a baby
and slamming the infant's head
against the side of a boxcar.
The Hagen Trials in Germany
continued for four years.
In the end,
the court found Karl Frenzel guilty.
It sentenced him to life imprisonment
for war crimes
and crimes against humanity.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Related quotes
Sasha Fierce
B'bay Bay you're so fine.
Sun shines on you all they time.
Say Sasha!
Sasha Fierce.
B'bay Bay you're so fine.
Sun shines on you all they time.
Say Sasha!
Sasha Fierce.
I know whatcha got.
And you are hotter than hot.
My Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
I know whatcha got.
And you are hotter than hot.
My Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
B'bay Bay you're so fine.
Sun shines on you all they time.
Say Sasha!
Sasha Fierce.
Though this is only morning glow.
That comes to leave me blown away.
Beyoncé made me feel this way.
And when I noticed her in you...
My heart took flight on something new.
So rare it is,
I knew it came to stay.
B'bay Bay you're so fine.
Sun shines on you all they time.
Say Sasha!
Sasha Fierce.
B'bay Bay you're so fine.
Sun shines on you all they time.
Say Sasha!
Sasha Fierce.
I know whatcha got.
And you are hotter than hot.
My Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
I know whatcha got.
And you are hotter than hot.
My Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
My Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
I gotcha Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
My Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
I gotcha Sasha.
Sasha Fierce.
I gotcha Sasha!
Inspired by:
Beyoncé Knowles
'Comeon! Is there anyone on the planet,
who has not been inspired by the gifted talents
of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter?
If so...
She will be coming to you soon.
She is a phenomenal performing artist.
Diva implies something else that Beyoncé is beyond! '
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Little-Known Death Factory
Operation Barbarossa,
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
commenced on June 22,1941.
Behind the rapidly advancing Wehrmacht forces
mobile SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen,
went into action. They killed Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war and political commissars.
The historian Raul Hilberg estimated
the number of Jewish men, women and children
murdered by the Einsatzgruppen
in the ravines of Babi Yar, in the forests of Riga
and many other places at 1.3 million.
On the outspread yards of a former kolkhoz,
a dusty Soviet collective farm,
the SS task forces set up a secret death factory.
Its horrible assembly lines creaked and cried
in the outskirts of Minsk of Byelorussia,
near the village of Maly Trostenets.
Here the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, Gypsies
and other Byelorussian civilians.
And then, on May 19,1942,
the first transport of Jews from Germany,
Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived.
Maly Trostenets became
a Vernichtungslager, an extermination camp.
Men, women and children
Were shot daily in the forests.
Others, thousands of them,
were killed in mobile gas chamber vans,
on the way from Minsk to Maly Trostenets.
Special groups of prisoners threw the corpses
Of the murdered into deep pits of mass graves.
The 'final solution',
the euphemistic code used in Hitler's Reich
for the extermination of the Jews,
was conducted in great secrecy.
The guards were ordered under oath
to shut their mouth.
The perpetrators of the massacres tried
to obliterate the evidence
that the camp ever existed.
As the Red Army advanced
the inmates were forced to exhume the bodies
from the mass graves and to cremate the corpses.
After they completed their terrible task
the guards killed them as well.
Finally, on June 28,1944,
the SS guards blew up the camp.
One of the victims who was shot by the Nazis
at Maly Trostenets was Vincent Hadleuski,
a Catholic priest and Byelorussian patriot.
Another victim who died here was Cora Berliner,
a German Jewess born in 1942 in Hannover,
She was known in her homeland
as a pioneer of social work and as an economist.
The Austrian-born soprano Grete Forst
was murdered in Maly Trostenets, too.
History has recorded the date: June 1,1942.
The psychologist Margarete Hilferding,
her compatriot, also lost her life here,
on September 23 of the same year.
No survivors of the lager are known
to be alive today.
Since the Nazis did not keep camp records
the exact number of people who perished here
in the genocide is unknown.
Estimates range from 200,000
to half million murdered men, women
and children. At least 65,000 of them
were Jews.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Sasha, My Sasha
Sasha, my Sasha, what can I say?
You're a dear angel in every way!
When you enter the room problems disappear
As your smiling face and personality draw near.
Your beliefs are solid as are your points-of-view,
Since your keen mind has thought them through.
You're that rare combination of beauty and brain,
Which so many seek, though most often in vain.
I'm so proud and fortunate you're a daughter of mine.
You're a classy lady with a brassy shine!
Sashutte, you're still a young lover regardless of age.
Your future promises many an exciting new page.
With you in my life it will never be sad.
I'll be busy beaming and bragging since I'm your dad.
Happy Birthday dear angel… float through the sky.
Set goals towards the heavens and your life will fly.
poem by Gregory Huyette
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Fate Hanged on a Hairbreadth
It was summer,1944.
The train stood at the railway station of Gyŏr,
halfway on the road
between Budapest and Vienna.
In the boxcars
there were over 3,000 passengers.
The Hungarian gendarmes squeezed
the deported men, women and children
like sardines into the wagons
and the prisoners were crying for help.
For the SS-Unterscharführer
assigned to the transport
it was just another job.
The corporal already directed
many similar trains to the east.
And those trains always went to the east
and to the same terminus.
However, this transport of deportees
was unlike the others.
The SS corporal made a fatal mistake
but the guards discovered this
only at the Slovakian border.
The train's number was not
on the list of transports
destined for Auschwitz.
The train stopped
at the Slovakian border.
Here the guards contacted
Colonel Adolf Eichmann by telephone
and informed him about the error.
Eichmann decided
that since the train traveled that far
it should continue to Auschwitz.
So the SS guards changed the serial number
of the train and replaced it with the number
of another train departing from Debrecen.
Thus, instead of the death camp
of Auschwitz-Birkenau
in Nazi occupied Poland,
the train from Debrecen
was sent to the distribution camp
of Strasshof in Austria.
As you see,
fate hanged in the war on a hairbreadth.
A freak of chance, a random accident,
an oversight of procedure,
or of a supposed algorithm,
could lead to arbitrary decisions
regarding the life or death of thousands.
Although Strasshof
was a brutal slave labor lager,
most people there,
about 14,000 of the 21,000 deportees,
survived the ordeal of the Holocaust.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Camp Concerts
In school I learnt
That music beautifies life.
It elevates and ennobles
The soul.
But tell me
My dear teacher:
How could the music
Elevate the prisoners
Of Treblinka?
How could
The waltz or the tango
Beautify the tortures
In Sobibor?
And how could
The symphonies
At Auschwitz ennoble
The victims?
The Nazis organized
The concerts
In the death camps
In order
To humiliate
The prisoners
And to mock
The lofty essence
Of human life.
Orchestras
In the lagers
Played to degrade
The lifeblood of dignity
To debase the marrow
Of the soul.
Inside
The barbed wire fences
Trumpets sobbed
Flutes and violins wept
As majestic melodies
Soared over
Grisly horrors.
poem by Paul Hartal
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I actually wanted to be an exotic dancer, but that didn't work out so I thought I'd take on acting.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I'm going to tell stories to the world. I think there's time for me to grow. We'll see.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I believe life takes us where we need to be.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Last Train
The last train walked away
Like a deaf prostitute
poem by Sasha Ioffine
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When you read a script, you get a feeling from it.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My husband's a director, so he understands what I do.
quote by Sasha Alexander
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My parents wanted me to go to law school.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I prefer film and that's what I think I'm gonna put my focus on.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Stage work, that's all I have in my background. Wasteland was my first TV experience. Dawson's was my first long-term, I mean the entire season of 22 episodes.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I just saw the movie for the first time in its entirely last night. It's really cool when you're in with an audience that's so tuned in and plugged in to what's going on.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I just don't want to end up on something that bores the hell out of me. Otherwise, I'll fake a knee injury and get out of there.
quote by Sasha Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Schrodinger's Cat Soliloquy
To be and/or not to be.
That is the question
poem by Sasha Ioffine
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My family has always been there to support me along the way. My coach, John Nicks, is a great influence.
quote by Sasha Cohen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I entered into Dawson's Creek to do a couple of episodes. They weren't sure about my role in the beginning, but then the chemistry kind of worked.
quote by Sasha Alexander
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Death, Anger, Silence.
For years I've been trying to evade it
And I thought I'd finally succseeded
But the blackness just keeps crawling in
deadly, angry, silent.
The road that I walk down is long
And I'm not really sure where it goes
But I keep walking, trying to hide
From the death, anger and silence
It starts out as a shadow
Nothing but a little blocked light
Except soon I'm surrounded; I can't get out
Of the death, anger and silence
As the shadow grows big, I become small
Blending in, hidden from one and all
To make myself seen I have to scream
And make death, anger and silence
I look around, I look around,
Trying to find simewhere safe
But soon I see, it becomes clear to me;
You can't stop the death
You can't hide from the anger
And you can't escape the silence
poem by Sasha Julia
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