SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 87
We thus arrive at the inescapable conclusion that Pechersky invented
the story of his “many years” of incarceration in the Soviet Union in order
to decorate himself with the halo of a double martyr who not only
survived a “Nazi death camp” but also Stalin’s dungeons. This in itself
is enough to make him a con-man, and we have reason enough to be
very suspicious of his Sobibór tales as well.
The Russian Wikipedia entry on Pechersky tells us that the magazine
Znamya published the article entitled “Wosstanie w Sobibore” (Uprising
at Sobibór) by the writers P. Antokolskij and W. Kawerin in its
4/1945 issue. The article is based on Pechersky’s deposition before the
“commission investigating the misdeeds of the German-Fascist intruders
and their helpers.” Pechersky’s account was presented in the third
person. The famous propaganda writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily
Grossman included the article in the manuscript of their Black Book,
which, however, could never be published in the USSR because the
censor’s office had seized and destroyed the printing plates just prior to
the date of the planned publication of the book. It was only in 1980 that
a Russian language edition of the Black Book was published in Israel. 200
A year later an English translation appeared in New York. 201
In 1946 a version of Pechersky’s account, four times as long and
written in the first person, was published by the Moscow publishing
house Der Emes in Yiddish under the title Der Uifstand in Sobibór. Pechersky,
although of Jewish origin, did not speak Yiddish, and so his
Russian report was translated into the Yiddish language by a certain N.
Lurie. Der Uifstand in Sobibór was translated into English in 1967. 123
A comparison of the latter two versions of Pechersky’s account
shows that their contents are essentially identical. Two differences are
worth being mentioned:
� According to the former version, later integrated into the Black
Book, a train with 2,000 future victims arrived at Sobibór “nearly
every day,” 202 whereas the trains of death, according to the 1946 version,
operated only every other day. 203
� In the first version, Sobibór is said to have existed for one year at the
time of Pechersky’s arrival, with a total of 500,000 victims. 204 Ac-
200 Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilja_Grigorjewitsch_Ehrenburg
201 I. Ehrenburg, V. Grossman, op. cit. (note 95), the paper by P. Antokolskij and W. Kawerin,
“Revolt in Sobibór,” is on pp. 427-445.
202 Ibid., p. 443.
203 A. Pechersky, op. cit. (note 123), p. 19.
204 I. Ehrenburg, V. Grossman, op. cit. (note 95), p. 443.