It has been requested that the title of this article be changed to List of survivors of Sobibor . Please see the relevant discussion on the discussion page. The page should not be moved unless the discussion is closed; summarizing the consensus achieved in support of the move. |
This is a list of survivors of the Sobibór extermination camp . The list is divided into two groups: the first comprises the 58 known survivors of those selected to perform forced labour for the camp's daily operation; the second comprises those deported to Sobibór but selected there for forced labor in other camps. In contrast, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that at least 167,000 people were murdered in the Sobibór extermination camp. The Dutch Sobibor Foundation lists a calculated total of 170,165 people and cites the Höfle Telegram among its sources while noting that other estimates range up to 300,000. [1] [2]
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.
The Höfle Telegram is a cryptic one-page document, discovered in 2000 among the declassified World War II archives of the Public Record Office in Kew, England. The document consists of several cables in translation, among them a top-secret message sent by SS Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on 11 January 1943; one, to SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in Berlin, and one to SS Obersturmbannführer Franz Heim in German-occupied Kraków (Cracow).
This list might be incomplete, but it is as complete as current records allow. There were 58 known Sobibór survivors: 48 male and 10 female. Except where noted, the survivors were Arbeitshäftlinge, inmates who performed slave-labour for the daily operation of the camp, who escaped during the camp-wide revolt on October 14, 1943. The vast majority of the people taken to Sobibór did not survive but were shot or gassed immediately upon arrival. Of the Arbeitshäftlinge forced to work as Sonderkommando in Lager III, the camp's extermination area where the gas chambers and most of the mass graves were located, no one survived.
Sonderkommandos were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. The death-camp Sonderkommandos, who were always inmates, were unrelated to the SS-Sonderkommandos which were ad hoc units formed from various SS offices between 1938 and 1945.
Name | Birth | Death | Age | Nationality | Ethnicity | Arrival | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Moshe Bahir [3] [4] | July 19, 1927 | November 2002 | 75 | Polish | Jewish | May 24, 1942 | Witness at the Eichmann trial. Changed name from Moshe Szklarek. |
Antonius Bardach | May 16, 1909 | Circa 1959 | 50 | Polish | Jewish | March 30, 1943 | [3] |
Philip Bialowitz | November 25, 1929 | August 6, 2016 | Polish | Jewish | April 28, 1943 | Brother of Symcha Bialowitz. [3] [4] | |
Symcha Bialowitz | December 6, 1912 | February 2014 | 101 | Polish | Jewish | April 28, 1943 | Brother of Philip Bialowitz. [3] [4] |
Rachel Birnbaum | 1926 | March 2013 | 87 | Polish | Jewish | Hid in the forest upon arriving at the camp. [5] | |
Jakob Biskubicz | March 17, 1926 | March 2002 | 75 or 76 | Polish | Jewish | June 1942 | Joined the Parczew partisans. [3] [4] |
Thomas "Toivi" Blatt [3] [6] | April 15, 1927 | October 31, 2015 | 88 | Polish | Jewish | April 23, 1943 | Escaped in revolt. Witness in post-war testimony against SS Staff Sergeant Karl Frenzel. Wrote Sobibor memoir From the Ashes of Sobibor and assisted with the writing of Escape from Sobibor. |
Herschel Cukierman [3] | April 15, 1893 | July 1979 | 86 | Polish | Jewish | May 1942 | Father of Josef Cukierman. |
Josef Cukierman [3] | May 26, 1930 | June 15, 1963 | 33 | Polish | Jewish | May 1942 | Son of Herschel Cukierman |
Josef Duniec | December 21, 1912 | December 1, 1965 | 52 | Polish | Jewish | March 30, 1943 | Died of a heart attack before he was expected to testify at the Sobibor trial. [3] |
Leon Cymiel [4] | February 20, 1924 | 1997 | 73 | Polish | Jewish | Surname also spelled Szymiel. Testimony available at ushmm.org | |
Shlomo Elster [3] | December 1, 1908 | 1992 | 83 | Polish | Jewish | November 1942 | |
Chaim Engel [3] [7] | January 10, 1916 | July 4, 2003 | 87 | Polish | Jewish | November 6, 1942 | Killed SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) Rudolf Beckmann during revolt. Escaped with Selma Wijnberg-Engel and survived the rest of the war in hiding. The two later married. [8] |
Selma Engel-Wijnberg [3] [7] | May 15, 1922 | December 4, 2018 | 96 | Dutch | Jewish | April 9, 1943 | Escaped with Chaim Engel during the revolt. They survived the rest of the war in hiding together. The two later married. [8] |
Leon Feldhendler [3] [4] | 1910 | April 6, 1945 | 34 or 35 | Polish | Jewish | early 1943 | One of the main organizers of the revolt. After fighting as a partisan, made his way back to Lublin, where he was murdered amid the crime-wave of the so-called Soviet liberation. |
Dov Freiberg [3] [4] | May 15, 1927 | March 2008 | 80 | Polish | Jewish | May 15, 1942 | Witness at the Eichmann trial. |
Catharina Gokkes [3] [4] [9] | September 1, 1923 | September 20, 1944 | 21 | Dutch | Jewish | April 9, 1943 | Escaped Sobibor and joined Parczew partisans; died before hostilities in the region ceased. [10] [lower-alpha 1] [12] [13] |
Herman Gerstenberg [3] | October 8, 1909 | June 8, 1987 | 77 | Polish | Jewish | March 14, 1943 | Changed his last name to Posner or Pozner. |
Mordechai Goldfarb [3] [4] | March 15, 1920 | June 8, 1984 | 64 | Polish | Jewish | November 6, 1942 | Joined the Parczew partisans. |
Josef Herszman | 1925 | 2005 | 80 | Polish | Jewish | 1942 | [3] [4] |
Moshe Hochman | March 15, 1953 | June 8, 1993 | 40 | Polish | Jewish | [3] [4] | |
Zyndel Honigman [3] | April 10, 1910 | July 1989 | 79 | Polish | Jewish | November 1942 | Escaped from the camp, not as part of the camp-wide revolt. Joined the Parczew partisans. |
Abram Kohn | July 25, 1910 | January 19, 1986 | 75 | Polish | Jewish | May 1942 | [3] |
Josef Kopp | 1944 or 1945 | Polish | Jewish | 1942 | Allegedly escaped by killing a Ukrainian guard on July 27, 1943 while on duties outside of the camp in the nearby village of Zlobek; did not survive World War II. [3] | ||
Chaim Korenfeld | May 15, 1923 | August 13, 2002 | 79 | Polish | Jewish | April 28, 1943 | [3] [4] |
Chaim Powroznik [4] | 1911 | unknown | Polish | Jewish | Testimony available. [14] [lower-alpha 2] | ||
Chaim Leist | Bet. 1906 & 1911 | Oct 2005 | Polish | Jewish | April 23, 1943 | [3] | |
Samuel Lerer [3] [4] | October 1, 1922 | March 3, 2016 | 93 | Polish | Jewish | May 1942 | Identified gas chamber executioner Hermann Erich Bauer after the war in Berlin, leading to his arrest. |
Jehuda Lerner [3] [4] [6] | July 22, 1926 | 2007 | 81 years | Polish | Jewish | September 1943 | He and Red Army P.O.W. Arkady Moishejwicz Wajspapir killed two guards, SS-Oberscharführer Siegfried Graetschus and Volksdeutscher Ivan Klatt, with axe blows during the revolt. Joined the Parczew partisans. |
Ada Lichtman | January 1, 1915 | 1993 | Polish | Jewish | June 1943 | Joined the Parczew partisans. Witness at the Eichmann trial. [3] [4] | |
Jitschak Lichtman | December 10, 1908 | 1992 | 83 or 84 | Polish | Jewish | May 15, 1942 | Joined the Parczew partisans. Married Ada Lichtman (Fischer). [3] [4] |
Yefim Litwinowski | Soviet | Jewish | September 22, 1943 | Red Army soldier. [3] | |||
Abraham Margulies | January 25, 1921 | 1984 | 62 or 63 | Polish | Jewish | late May 1942 | Joined the Parczew partisans. [3] |
Chaskiel Menche | January 7, 1910 | 1984 | 73 or 74 | Polish | Jewish | June 1942 | [3] |
Mojzesz Merenstein | January 15, 1899 | December 1985 | 86 | Polish | Jewish | [4] | |
Zelda Metz | May 1, 1925 | 1980 | 54 or 55 | Polish | Jewish | December 20, 1942 | Pretended to be Catholic upon escape. [3] |
Alexander "Sasha" Pechersky [3] [4] | February 22, 1909 | January 19, 1990 | 80 | Ukrainian | Jewish | September 22, 1943 | Chief organizer and leader of the revolt. Red Army soldier who joined the Parczew partisans. |
Nachum Platnitzky | 1913 | unknown | Belorussian | Jewish | Surname also listed as Plotnikow; living in Pinsk, Belarus after the war. [4] | ||
Shlomo Podchlebnik [3] | February 15, 1907 | February 1973 | 66 | Polish | Jewish | April 28, 1943 | He and Josef Kopp escaped by killing a Ukrainian guard on July 27, 1943 while on duties outside of the camp in the nearby village of Zlobek. |
Gertrud Poppert–Schönborn | June 29, 1914 | c. Nov 30, 1943 | 29 | German | Jewish | Gertrud "Luka" Poppert–Schönborn never seen following mass escape. [4] [15] [16] | |
Esther Terner Raab [3] [4] [17] | June 11, 1922 | April 13, 2015 | 92 | Polish | Jewish | December 20, 1942 | Née Terner, she became known as Esther Raab after her 1946 marriage to Irving Raab. She identified gas chamber executioner Erich Bauer after the war in Berlin, leading to his arrest. |
Simjon Rosenfeld | 1922 | Alive | 96 | Soviet | Jewish | September 22, 1943 | Israel [3] [4] |
Ajzik Rotenberg [3] | 1925 | 1994 | 69 | Polish | Jewish | May 12, 1943 | Joined the Parczew partisans. Murdered in 1994 in Israel by two Palestinian terrorists. |
Joseph Serchuk | 1919 | November 6, 1993 | 74 | Polish | Jewish | Surname also spelled Serczuk. | |
David Serchuk | 1948 | Polish | Jewish | Surname also spelled Serczuk. | |||
Alexander Shubayev | 1945 | Belorussian | Jewish | Red Army soldier. Killed deputy commandant Johann Niemann with an axe to his head. Joined the Parczew partisans; killed. Surname also spelled Szubajew. [3] [18] | |||
Ursula Stern [3] | August 28, 1926 | 1985 | 58 or 59 | German | Jewish | April 9, 1943 | Joined the Parczew partisans. Witness at Hagen trial. Changed her name to Ilana Safran after the war. |
Stanisław Szmajzner | March 13, 1927 | March 3, 1989 | 61 | Polish | Jewish | May 12, 1942 | Joined the Parczew partisans. [3] [4] |
Boris Tabarinsky | 1917 | Unknown | Belorussian | Jewish | September 22, 1943 | [3] [4] | |
Kurt Ticho Thomas [3] [4] | April 11, 1914 | June 8, 2009 | 95 | Czech | Jewish | November 6, 1942 | After the war, he brought charges against SS officers Hubert Gomerski and Johann Klier. |
Israel (Shrulke) Trager | March 5, 1906 | August 1, 1969 | 63 | Polish | Jewish | Mar 1943 | [3] |
Aleksej Waizen | May 30, 1922 | January 14, 2015 | 92 | Ukrainian | Jewish | autumn 1943 | [19] [3] |
Arkady Moishejwicz Wajspapir [3] [6] [18] [20] | 1921 | January 11, 2018 | Russian | Jewish | September 22, 1943 | He and Jehuda Lerner killed two guards with axe blows, SS-Oberscharführer Siegfried Graetschus and Volksdeutscher Ivan Klatt, during the revolt. A Red Army soldier, he joined the Parczew partisans.[ citation needed ] | |
Abraham Wang [3] | January 2, 1921 | 1978 | 57 | Polish | Jewish | Apr 23, 1943 | Escaped on Jul 27, 1943, along with four other prisoners. |
Hella Weiss | November 25, 1925 | December 1988 | 63 | Polish | Jewish | December 20, 1942 | Joined the Parczew partisans; later joined the Red Army. [3] [4] |
Kalmen Wewerik | June 25, 1906 | Unknown | Polish | Jewish | November 1942 | Joined partisans after the revolt. [3] | |
Regina Zielinsky | September 2, 1924 | September 2014 | Polish | Jewish | December 20, 1942 | [3] | |
Meier Ziss | November 15, 1927 | 2003 | Polish | Jewish | May 1942 | [3] [4] |
Selections sometimes took place at the point of departure, often well before people were forced to board the trains, but there are also reports of selections from trains already en route to the camps. In his June 20, 1942 report, Revier-Leutnant der Schutzpolizei Josef Frischmann, in charge of the guard unit on the train, wrote that "51 Jews capable of work" were removed from the transport at Lublin station. The train had departed Vienna on June 14, 1942, ostensibly for Izbica, but the remaining 949 people on board were delivered to their final destination in Sobibór. [10] [lower-alpha 3]
The precise number of those spared upon arrival in the Sobibor extermination camp is unknown, but there were occasional selections there, for forced labour in other camps and factories, amounting to a total of several thousand people. Many of those selected subsequently perished due to harsh conditions in the slave-labour details. A number of them were murdered after internal selections following transfers to Majdanek and Auschwitz, where people were also routinely murdered by hanging or shooting for arbitrary offences. Thousands of Jews initially selected for slave-labour were among those killed in the Lublin district during Aktion Erntefest and many were shot or succumbed on the death marches in the closing stages of the Nazi regime. However, some of the people selected at Sobibor ultimately survived beyond the total defeat and unconditional surrender of the Nazis in May 1945. [10]
The Aktion Erntefest was a World War II mass shooting action carried out by the SS, the Order police, and the Ukrainian Sonderdienst formations in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. The operation aimed at extermination of Jews pressed into forced-labour at the camps of the Lublin reservation including Majdanek concentration camp and all its subcamps. It was closely linked with the liquidation of the ghetto in Lublin. Aktion Erntefest took place on November 3 and 4, 1943. On the orders of Christian Wirth and Jakob Sporrenberg, approximately 42,000–43,000 Polish Jews were killed simultaneously. Virtually the entire Jewish workforce was eliminated, thus concluding Operation Reinhard.
Death marches refers to the forcible movements of prisoners of Nazi Germany between Nazi camps during World War II. They occurred at various points during the Holocaust, including 1939 in the Lublin province of Poland, in 1942 in Reichskommissariat Ukraine and across the General Government, and between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 near the Soviet front, from the Nazi concentration camps and prisoner of war camps situated in the new Reichsgaue, to camps inside Germany proper, away from reach of the Allied forces. The purpose was to remove evidence of crimes against humanity committed inside the camps and to prevent the liberation of German-held prisoners of war.
On August 17, 1943, a survivor from Sabinov in Slovakia, who has remained anonymous, wrote a report in which he described his selection in Sobibór, together with approximately 100 men and 50 women, upon arrival. For slave-labour in the drainage works in the vicinity of Sobibor they were taken to Krychów. He had arrived following the violent clearance, of deported Slovakian Jews and the few remaining Polish Jews, from the Rejowiec ghetto on August 9, 1942. He described that a few additional skilled workers, technicians, blacksmiths and watchmakers were separated upon arrival in Sobibor, as well. He further wrote that fire was visible in the night sky in the vicinity of Sobibor, and that the stench of burning hair permeated the air. [10] [lower-alpha 4]
Sabinov is a small town located in the Prešov Region, approximately 20 km from Prešov and 55 km from Košice. The population of Sabinov is 12,717.
Krychówpronounced [ˈkrɨxuv] is a village neighbourhood in the administrative district of Gmina Hańsk, within Włodawa County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. In 1975–98 the settlement belonged administratively to Chełm Voivodeship.
Rejowiecpronounced [rɛˈjɔvjɛt͡s] is a town in Chełm County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Rejowiec. It lies approximately 17 kilometres (11 mi) south-west of Chełm and 52 km (32 mi) east of the regional capital Lublin.
Approximately 1,000 people were selected from the 34,313 named deportees who had been deported from the Netherlands via Westerbork to Sobibor between March 2 and July 20, 1943. Only 16 of them, 13 women and three men, survived. [lower-alpha 5] From the group of approximately 30 women selected from the train which left Westerbork with 1,015 people on March 10, 1943, 13 survived the various camps. [lower-alpha 6] Although they were split up after arrival in Lublin and returned to the Netherlands via different camps and routes, this was the largest single group of survivors from any one of the 19 trains which departed the Netherlands. Upon arrival they were separated from the other deportees and shortly afterwards taken by train to Lublin, where they spent the next months in various work details divided over Majdanek and the Alter Flugplatz camp, on the site of an airfield. Eventually Eleven of the women were transferred to Milejów where they worked for a brief period in a Wehrmacht operated provisions factory, but were soon taken to Trawniki, with a larger group of men and women of mixed nationality, in the immediate aftermath of Aktion Erntefest in November 1943. Here their first assignment was assisting in body disposal and sorting the looted possessions of those murdered at the Trawniki camp. After body disposal had nearly been completed the remaining men were murdered, as well. Elias Isak Alex Cohen was the only survivor of the March 17, 1943 transport. He was taken to Majdanek with a group of approximately 35 people selected based on profession. His experiences include a period operating machinery in the ammunition factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna where the poisonous materials and lack of protections decimated the forced-labourers. Jozef Wins was the only one to return to the Netherlands from the May 11 transport. He was among a group of 80 men taken to Dorohucza. Jules Schelvis was the sole survivor of the 3,006 people on the deportation train of June 1, 1943, He too was taken to Dorohucza, with a group of 80 other men. From the remaining 14 trains people were also selected but no one survived the Holocaust. [2] [10] [23] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]
Milejów is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Milejów, within Łęczna County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately 9 kilometres (6 mi) south of Łęczna and 25 km (16 mi) east of the regional capital Lublin. The parish church is the Church of Assumption of Blessed Virgin and St Anthony of Padua.
The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr, and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.
Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately 24 kilometres (15 mi) south-east of Świdnik and 33 km (21 mi) south-east of the regional capital Lublin.
With few exceptions the survivors lost immediate family and relatives who were murdered in the camp. They returned to their native towns and countries to find little comfort. [48] [49] [50] Several of the survivors almost immediately gave statements about their experiences. They have written about their personal experiences and published researched monographs on the history of the camp. These statements and publications continue to be used in historical research and were used in court cases against perpetrators. The survivors themselves also testified at trials such as the Sobibor Trial in Hagen and participated in the prosecution in the capacity of Nebenkläger, co-claimant, under the German criminal law system. A right of which descendants of people murdered in Sobibór also availed themselves in the 2009 trial of Trawniki Wachmann Ivan Demjanjuk. [51]
In contrast to this short lists of survivors, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that at least 167,000 people were murdered in the Sobibór extermination camp. The Dutch Sobibor Foundation lists a calculated total of 170,165 people and cites the Höfle Telegram among its sources, while noting that other estimates range up to 300,000. For practical reasons it is not possible to list all the thousands of people murdered at the camp. The operatives of the Nazi regime not only robbed Jews of their earthly possessions and their lives but attempted to eradicate all traces of their existence as they engaged in the genocidal policies of the Final Solution. [1] [2]
Nazi Germany built extermination camps during the Holocaust in World War II, to systematically kill millions of Jews, Slavs, Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs, political opponents and others whom the Nazis considered "Untermenschen" ("subhumans"). The victims of death camps were primarily killed by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. Some Nazi camps, such as Auschwitz and Majdanek, served a dual purpose before the end of the war in 1945: extermination by poison gas, but also through extreme work under starvation conditions.
Camp Westerbork was a transit camp in Drenthe province, northeastern Netherlands, during World War II. Established by the Dutch government in the summer of 1939, Camp Westerbork was meant to serve as a refugee camp for Jews who had illegally entered the Netherlands.
Bełżec was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to eradicate Polish Jewry, a key part of the "Final Solution" which entailed the murder of some 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943. It was situated about 0.5 km (0.31 mi) south of the local railroad station of Bełżec, in the new Distrikt Lublin of the semi-colonial General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943.
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp built and operated by the SS during World War II near the railway station of Sobibór near Włodawa within the semi-colonial territory of General Government of the occupied Second Polish Republic.
Thomas "Toivi" Blatt was a Polish-American Holocaust survivor, writer of mémoires, and public speaker, who at the age of 16 escaped from the Sobibór extermination camp during the uprising staged by the Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners in October 1943. The escape was attempted by about 300 inmates, many of whom were recaptured and killed by the German search squads. Following World War II Blatt lived in the Soviet-controlled Poland until the Polish October revolution. In 1957, he emigrated to Israel, and in 1958 settled in the United States.
Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel was an SS non-commissioned officer in Sobibór extermination camp. As the commandant of Camp I, he supervised the Special squad of Jewish prisoners who were forced to handle the killing procedure and also herded the victims into the gas chambers.
Jewish resistance under the Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans.The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
Herzogenbusch concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. Herzogenbusch was, with Natzweiler-Struthof in occupied France, the only concentration camp run directly by the SS in western Europe outside Germany. The camp was first used in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before the camp was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war the camp was used as a prison for Germans and Dutch collaborators. Today there is a visitors' center with exhibitions and a national monument remembering the camp and its victims. The camp is now a museum.
Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn national railway system under the strict supervision of the German Nazis and their allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the German Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.
Dorohucza is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Trawniki, within Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately 23 kilometres (14 mi) east of Świdnik and 33 km (21 mi) east of the regional capital Lublin. The village has a population of 753.
Gerrit Kleerekoper was a Jewish - Dutch gymnastics coach. He was married with two children and worked as a diamond cutter.
Selma Engel-Wijnberg was one of only two Dutch Jewish Holocaust survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp. She escaped during the 1943 uprising, hid in Poland, and survived the war. Engel-Wijnberg immigrated to the United States from Israel with her family in 1957, settling in Branford, Connecticut. She returned to Europe again only to testify against the war criminals of Sobibor. In 2010 she was in the Netherlands to receive the governmental honor of Knight in the Order of Oranje-Nassau.
Siegfried Graetschus was a German SS functionary at the Sobibor extermination camp during Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. He was assassinated by a Sonderkommando prisoner during the Sobibor uprising.
Juan Luria was a Polish-Jewish operatic baritone. Born as Johannes Lorié, he studied with Joseph Gänsbacher in Vienna.
Jules Schelvis was a Dutch historian, writer, Holocaust survivor, and Nazi hunter. He lost his wife and most of his family during The Holocaust. Schelvis was a plaintiff and expert witness during the trial of John Demjanjuk.
Philip "Flip" Slier was a Jewish Dutch typesetter who lived in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Slier left documentation of his experiences as a forced labourer in the Molengoot labor camp in a series of 86 letters that he wrote to his parents between April and September 1942. His family concealed his letters in their Amsterdam house, where they were discovered more than 50 years later.
Max van Dam was a Dutch artist born in Winterswijk. He died in the Sobibor extermination camp.
Alfred Ittner was an SS functionary of Nazi Germany who served at the Sobibór extermination camp.
Stanisław "Szlomo" Szmajzner was one of 47 known survivors of the Sobibór extermination camp in German-occupied Poland and participated in the 1943 camp-wide revolt and escape from Sobibór.