A Promise at Sobibor

A Promise at Sobibór is the story of Fiszel Bialowitz, a teenaged Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi gas chambers. Between April 1942 and October 1943, about 250,000 Jews from European countries and the Soviet Union were sent to the Nazi death camp at Sobibór in occupied Poland. Sobibór was not a transit camp or work camp: its sole purpose was efficient mass murder. On October 14, 1943, approximately half of the 650 or so prisoners still alive at Sobibór undertook a daring and precisely planned revolt, killing SS officers and fleeing through minefields and machine-gun fire into the surrounding forests, farms, and towns. Only about forty-two of them, including Fiszel, are known to have survived to the end of the war.

Philip (Fiszel) Bialowitz, now an American citizen, tells his eyewitness story here in the real-time perspective of his own boyhood, from his childhood before the war and his internment in the brutal Izbica ghetto to his harrowing six months at Sobibór—including his involvement in the revolt and desperate mass escape—and his rescue by courageous Polish farmers. He also recounts the challenges of life following the war as a teenaged displaced person, and his eventual efforts as a witness to the truth of the Holocaust.

In 1943 the heroic leaders of the revolt at Sobibór, Sasha Perchersky and Leon Feldhendler, implored fellow prisoners to promise that anyone who survived would tell the story of Sobibór: not just of the horrific atrocities committed there, but of the courage and humanity of those who fought back. Bialowitz has kept that promise.

ISBN-13: 9780299248000
Author : Philip (Fiszel) Bialowitz
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date: 11/30/2010

Editorial Reviews - Library Journal

Bialowitz survived the Holocaust thanks to determination, intelligence, the kindness of Polish gentiles, and a great amount of luck. While his account here spans his life from young adulthood in pre-World War II Poland to his postwar life in the United States, the focus, and the most interesting part of his memoir, is his part in one of the most dramatic moments of the Nazi era. Imprisoned in Sobibór, a death camp in Poland, Bialowitz participated in the largest successful prisoner revolt of the Holocaust. That he survived both the revolt and the war as a whole, along with several siblings, makes his story a rare one.Verdict Many Holocaust memoirs suffer from the inclusion of historical-contextual material that is post facto additions to historical memory. Bialowitz, with his son and coauthor, worked assiduously to ensure that his story was told from a perspective contemporary to his experiences then and not based on hindsight. Overall, he succeeds, making this a worthy addition to the corpus of Holocaust memoirs.—Frederic Krome, Univ. of Cincinnati Clermont Coll.

Meet the Author

Philip (Fiszel) Bialowitz is a retired jeweler who has spoken in North America and Europe about his experience at Sobibór, including testifying at several war crimes trials, most recently at the German trial of John Demjanjuk in 2010. He lives in New York. Joseph Bialowitz is Philip’s son. He is an environmental manager and Holocaust lecturer who lives in California.