Last surviving organiser of 1943 Sobibór death camp uprising dies
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
12.01.2018 15:30
The last surviving organiser of a 1943 uprising at the former Nazi German Sobibór death camp has died at the age of 96, Ukrainian broadcaster Hromadske Radio has reported.
![Photo: By Sgvb (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://external.polskieradio.pl/files/01ebcab5-7c1f-4b4c-94b0-867c581cb1fa.file "Photo: By Sgvb (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Photo: By Sgvb (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Arkadiy Vayspapir was one of nine prisoners who in October 1943 organised a revolt in the camp in Nazi German-occupied eastern Poland, now on the Polish-Ukrainian border, according to Hromadske Radio.
Vayspapir died on the night of Thursday in Kyiv, Ukraine, Hromadske Radio said.
Preparations for the Sobibór death camp uprising lasted for three weeks, but the plan was carried out only partially after the prisoners failed to take possession of arms and had to break out of the camp through minefields, according to Hromadske Radio.
About 300 prisoners escaped from the camp during the uprising, but many were later caught and shot by the Germans. Only about 50 of those who managed to get away survived to the end of World War II.
The death camp in Sobibór was set up by the Nazi Germans in 1942. The total number of people who were killed there is not known.
It is estimated that between March 1942 and October 1943 the Germans killed about 170,000 Jews there, mainly from Poland but also from other European countries, according to the PAP news agency.
The Sobibór death camp was one of three death camps -- alongside Treblinka and Bełżec -- that the Germans established in occupied Poland during World War II as part of their Operation Reinhardt, a secretive plan to exterminate the entire Jewish population in the so-called General Government area of Poland under Nazi control.
The Germans murdered an estimated 2 million Jews from Poland and other European countries as part of Operation Reinhardt from March 1942 to November 1943.
(gs/pk)
Source: hromadskeradio.org, PAP