SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 41
2.3.14. Thomas (Toivi) Blatt (1996)
In addition to Alexander Aronovitch Pechersky, Thomas (Toivi)
Blatt, a Polish Jew who was deported to Sobibór in early 1943 when he
was 15 years old, is certainly the most widely known Sobibór detainee.
He was an advisor for the 1987 movie Escape from Sobibór. 59 More
than half a century after the end of the war, Blatt wrote a book entitled
Sobibór: The Forgotten Revolt, 60 which has been praised lavishly by the
usual devout audience. A certain Marilyn J. Harran, professor of religion
and history at Chapman University, wrote for instance: 61
“Thomas Blatt writes in the preface to his book: ‘Witnessing genocide
is overwhelming; writing about it is soul shattering.’ Nor can
the reader emerge unscathed from this wrenching account of man’s
inhumanity to humanity. The account of the killing of 250,000 Jews
at the death camp Sobibór is made even more powerful by the fact
that the author is one of a handful of survivors of the revolt. To read
this book is to risk having one’s soul shattered and one’s humanity
put in question. No one who reads it will ever be able to forget Sobibór
or Toivi Blatt.”
As soon as the interested reader opens this overwhelming book that
shatters his soul and puts his humanity in question, he learns to his great
surprise that the Nazis allowed T. Blatt to keep a diary (or that they
were at least so sloppy in their supervision that he managed to do so
undetected):
“After the liberation I was able to collect about a third of the diary
pages that I had given to Polish people for safekeeping.” (p. xi,
footnote 7)
After his arrival at Sobibór the boy confided his first impressions to
the diary:
“We stepped down from the trucks. In front of us stretched a
long, barbed-wire fence interwoven with fir branches. Hypnotized,
my eyes were fixed on the Gothic letters on the top of the gate leading
inside: ‘SS-Sonderkommando Sobibór.’” (p. 38)
Again and again, Blatt cites entries from his diary in which he recorded,
with painstaking accuracy, the dramatic events in the death
camp. A particularly overwhelming entry reads:
59 T. Blatt, op. cit. (note 17).
60 Ibid. German: Sobibór. Der vergessene Aufstand, Unrat Verlag, Hamburg 2004.
61 Ibid., Engl. edition, back cover.