Alexander "Sasha" Aronovich Pechersky (; 22 February 1909 – 19 January 1990), also known as Oleksandr Aronovych Pecherskyi (), was a Jewish-Soviet officer. He is one of the organizers, and the leader, of the most successful uprising and mass-escape of Jews from a Nazi extermination camp during World War II, which occurred at the Sobibor extermination camp on 14 October 1943.
In 1948, Pechersky was arrested by the Soviet authorities along with his brother during the countrywide Rootless cosmopolitan campaign against Jews suspected of pro-Western leanings but released later due in part to mounting international pressure. Pechersky was prevented by the Soviet government from leaving the country to testify in international trials related to Sobibor, including the Eichmann Trial in Israel; foreign investigators were only allowed to collect his testimony under KGB supervision. The last time he was refused permission to exit the country and testify was in 1987, for a trial in Poland.
Pre-war life and career Pechersky, a son of a Jewish lawyer, was born on 22 February 1909 in Kremenchuk, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine). In 1915, his family moved to Rostov-on-Don where he eventually worked as an electrician at a locomotive repair factory.Arguments & Facts Magazine Profile : August 10, 2008 issue (in Russian) Retrieved on 2009-04-21 After graduating from university with a diploma in music and literature, he became an accountant and manager of a small school for amateur musicians.Erenburg, Grossman. Black Book: Uprising in Sobibor (in Russian) Retrieved on 2009-04-21
World War II On 22 June 1941, the day when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Pechersky was conscripted into the Soviet Red Army with a rank of junior lieutenant. By September 1941, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant quartermaster (class II).Top Secret Magazine profile of Pechersky: Forgotten Hero Retrieved on 2009-04-21 In the early autumn of 1941, he rescued his wounded commander from being captured by the Germans. He did not receive any medals for this deed. One of his fellow soldiers reportedly said: "Sasha, if what you've done doesn't make you a hero, I don't know who is!" In October 1941, during the Battle of Moscow, their unit was surrounded and captured by the Germans in the city of Vyazma, Smolensk Oblast.
Captured, Pechersky soon contracted typhus, but survived the seven-month-long illness. In May 1942, he escaped along with four other prisoners of war, but they were all recaptured the same day. He was then sent to a penal camp at Borisov, Belarus, and from there to a prisoner of war (POW) camp located in the forest next to the city of Minsk. During a mandatory medical examination it was discovered that he was circumcised. Pechersky recalled a German medical officer asking him: "Do you admit to being a Jew?" He admitted it, since any denial would result in a whipping, and was thrown into a cellar called "the Jewish grave" along with other Jewish prisoners of war, where for 10 days he sat in complete darkness, being fed 100 grams (3.5 oz) of wheat and a cup of water every second day.
On 20 August 1942 Pechersky was sent to a SS-operated Arbeitslager, a work camp, in Minsk. The camp housed 500 Jews from the Minsk Ghetto, as well as Jewish Soviet POWs; there were also between 200–300 Soviet inmates whom the Germans labeled as incorrigible: people who were suspected of contacting the Soviet partisans and those who were repeatedly truant while working for the Germans. The prisoners were starved and worked from dawn till dusk.Jewish Electronic Encyclopedia (in Russian) Retrieved on 2009-04-21 Pechersky wrote about the Minsk work camp:
Sobibor extermination camp On 18 September 1943, Pechersky, along with 2,000 Jews from Minsk including about 100 Soviet Jewish POWs, were placed in a railway cattle wagon which arrived at the Sobibor extermination camp on 23 September 1943. Eighty prisoners from the train, including Pechersky, were selected for work in Lager II. The remaining 1,920 Jews were immediately led to the gas chambers.Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indiana University Press. 1987. Pechersky later recalled his thoughts as the train pulled up to Sobibor, "How many circles of hell were there in Dante's Inferno? It seems there were nine. How many have already passed? Being surrounded, being captured, camps in Vyazma, Smolensk, Borisov, Minsk... And finally I am here. What's next?" The appearance of Soviet POWs produced an enormous impression on Sobibor prisoners: "hungry hope-filled eyes following their every move".
Pechersky wrote about his first day in Sobibor:
During his third day at Sobibor, Alexander Pechersky earned the respect of fellow prisoners by standing up to Karl Frenzel, a SS senior officer, as the incident was recalled by Leon Felhendler.
Escape plan Pechersky's plan merged the idea of a mass escape with vengeance: to help as many prisoners as possible to escape while executing SS officers and guards. His final goal was to join up with the partisans and continue fighting the Nazis. Five days after arriving at Sobibor, Pechersky was again approached by Solomon Leitman on behalf of Felhendler, the leader of the camp's Polish Jews.Rashke, Richard. Escape From Sobibor – Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982 Leitman was one of the few prisoners who understood Russian and Pechersky did not speak either Yiddish or Polish. Pechersky was invited to talk with a group of Jewish prisoner leaders from Poland, to whom he spoke about the Red Army victory in the Battle of Stalingrad and partisan victories. When one of the prisoners asked him why the partisans would not rescue them from Sobibor, Pechersky reportedly replied: "What for? To free us all? The partisans have their hands full already. Nobody will do our job for us."
The Jewish prisoners who had worked at the Bełżec extermination camp were sent to Sobibor to be exterminated when Bełżec closed. From a note found among the clothing of the murdered, the Sobibor prisoners learned that those who had been killed were from work groups in the Bełżec camp. The note said: "We worked for a year in Belzec. I don't know where they're taking us now. They say to Germany. In the freight cars there are dining tables. We received bread for three days, and tins and liquor. If all this is a lie, then know that death awaits you too. Do not trust the Germans. Avenge our blood!" The liquidation of the Camps . Retrieved on 2010-08-28
The leadership of the Polish Jews were aware that Bełżec and Treblinka had been closed, dismantled and all remaining prisoners had been sent to the gas-chambers and they suspected that Sobibor would be next. There was a great urgency in coming up with a good escape plan and Pechersky, with his army experience, was their best hope. The escape had to also coincide with the time when the Sobibor's deputy commandant, Gustav Wagner, went on vacation, since the prisoners felt that he was sharp enough to uncover the escape plan.Blatt, Thomas Toivi. From the Ashes of Sobibor. Northwestern University Press. 1997.US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Interview with Esther Raab Retrieved on 2009-05-08
Luka Pechersky clandestinely met with Felhendler under the guise of meeting Luka, a woman he was supposedly involved with. Luka is often described as an 18-year-old woman from "Holland", and that her real name was . However, records indicate she was in fact a 28-year-old married woman from Germany who was accompanied by her husband, which raised doubt about her being the same Luka. After the war, Pechersky insisted that the relationship was platonic. Her fate after the escape was never established and she was never seen alive again.Schelvis, Jules. Vernichtungslager Sobibor. Published by Unrast. Hamburg, 2003 During an interview with Thomas Blatt, Pechersky said the following regarding Luka: "Although I knew her only about two weeks, I will never forget her. I informed her minutes before the escape of the plan. She has given me a shirt. She said, 'it's a good luck shirt, put it on right now', and I did. It's now in the museum. I lost her in the turmoil of the revolt and never saw her again." Toivi Blatt interviews Sasha Pechersky about Luka in 1980 Retrieved on 2009-05-08
“Her Name Was Luka” is a 2023 historical article by Aline Pennewaard that reconstructs the identity of a previously unnamed female participant in the 1943 Sobibor uprising. Drawing on archival research, survivor testimony, and a Dutch database of Holocaust victims, the article argues that “Luka,” a young Dutch Jewish woman remembered by uprising leader Alexander Pechersky, was in fact Liselotte Karoline Rosenstiel.
According to postwar testimonies by Pechersky, Luka played a supporting role in planning the uprising by helping facilitate secret meetings among prisoners, including distracting guards by posing as his romantic partner. Although approximately 300 prisoners escaped during the revolt, Luka’s ultimate fate remained unknown, and Pechersky spent years attempting unsuccessfully to identify her.
The article details a process of historical investigation that combines fragmentary personal recollections with transport records, family histories, and immigration files. Key identifying clues included Luka’s age, background, family composition, and her father’s political profile. Pennewaard links these details to Rosenstiel, a German-born Jewish woman deported from the Netherlands to Sobibor in March 1943 along with her family.
Further evidence is drawn from archival photographs, documentation from the Dutch National Archives, and testimony from a Dutch acquaintance who confirmed that Rosenstiel was known by the nickname “Luka.” The article concludes that this identification restores the historical identity of a previously anonymous participant in the Sobibor uprising.
Rosenstiel is believed to have escaped during the revolt, though she did not survive the war. The reconstruction of her identity contributes to broader efforts to document individual victims and participants in the Holocaust and to recover overlooked personal histories.
The uprising According to Pechersky's plan, the prisoners would assassinate the German SS staff, leaving the auxiliary guards leaderless, obtain weapons and kill the remaining guards. Jewish Poles were assigned German SS guards that they were supposed to lure inside the workshops under some pretext and silently kill. Ester Raab, a survivor of the escape, recalled: "The plan was, at 4 o'clock (pm), should start (the escape), everybody has to kill his SS man, and his guard at his place of work". Only a small circle of trusted Jewish Pole inmates were aware of the escape plan as they did not trust the Jews from other European countries.