The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 3, Spring 2020 | Page 54

The Saber
it, and then heavy black plaits
on the light-coloured [sic] sand,
and then more and more ....
Everything is true. The last, lunatic
hope that everything was
only a dream is ruined .... And
one feels as if one’s heart could
stop right now, seized with such
sorrow, such grief, that a human
being cannot possibly stand it. 17
It surely took quite some time for the
experience to set in, not just for Grossman
but for those with him. As the late
Treblinka survivor Samuel Willenberg
said, “Here [the corpses of the gassed
prisoners] were buried in enormous
ditches .... It is difficult to believe that
such a crime could have been carried
out within such a small space [of 200
meters by 300 meters] .... It is difficult
.... The scale of the crime is beyond normal
comprehension.” 18
An uprising similar to the one
in Treblinka occurred at Sobibór on
October 14, 1943. Instrumental to the
uprising were “blacksmiths, cobblers,
cabinetmakers, and tailors”—very similar
to the skilled prisoner functionaries
at Treblinka. These few men, led by a
Soviet Jewish officer named Alexander
Pechersky whose unit was encircled and
captured by the Nazis in October 1941,
organized a concerted and discreet killing
spree against their SS captors:
At 4pm, the conspirators in Camp
I acted. Pechersky monitored everything
from the cabinetmakers’
shop. The prisoners relied on the
punctuality of the Nazis and on
their greed and vanity. After inviting
him to try on a new coat in
2