Chloe Adams

The Death Camp Escape

The guards were calling all of them to line up- all of the Jews. 15 year old Thomas Blatt
thought this was the end of the line. He had traveled so far already and couldn’t believe this was
how it would end. The guard in his section turned his head to light a cigarette- this was his
chance. He snuck away from the Jews and hid amongst the Christian spectators. His best
friend, Yanukovych, was already with them.
“Yanuk, please! Save me!” begged Thomas.
“Of course Toivi”, the nickname he used for Thomas, “go and hide in my barn,” said
Yanuk.
Yanuk’s farm was not far away at all. Thomas snuck through the crowd and managed to
make it to Yanuk’s barn. Unfortunately, the gate had a big padlock on it. He couldn’t get in.
Thomas walked around the barn to see if there was another way inside when he was spotted by
a woman a little ways up the hill the farm sat on.
She started yelling, “Toivi run! Toivi run! Toivi run!”
He replied, “What's happened?”
“Yanuk is coming!”
‘Why should I run if Yanuk is coming? He can open the padlock,’ Thomas was thinking.
He wondered why she was so agitated about it, so he turned around. Yanuk was coming
towards him, only a few feet away, and with him a soldier…

“Grandpa!” It was his newest granddaughter, Masha, running at him. His daughter
named Masha after his mother.
“Oh, hi Masha,” Thomas replied as he picked her up onto his lap. Boy, he thought she
was getting big already.
“You can take this on the plane with you so you don’t get lonely,” she said as she handed
him her favorite stuffed bear.
Today he was leaving for Munich to testify in the trial for a former Sobibor SS guard, Ivan
(John) Demjanujuk. Thomas started to doze off on his flight.

…“Toivi!” his best friend called out to him, “run!”

 There were explosions all around them, and it felt like no escape. The guards were still
in pursuit, so he knew he had to run. There were three barbed wire fences in their way. He
started cutting a hole through one when shouting and shooting started coming from the guards.
People started climbing the fence and it fell on Thomas…

As the taxi pulled up to the courthouse, he began to worry about having to bring up the
past again. He had spent so many years trying to forget his experiences. The trial went on for
about an hour before he was asked to take the stand. He took a deep breath as they called his
name.
“Thomas Blatt, you may begin your testimony,” stated the Attorney.
“My dreams are so real. I cannot escape. I am still there,” started Thomas. “We knew
that we would die, that we would be gassed.”

…He was in the line with the men. He figured that he would have a better chance with
the men than if he stayed with his mother. The officers announced that they would be doing a
selection. They normally did not provide for selections because Sobibor was a death camp. He
hadn’t expected that a selection was even possible. The selection process at the death camp
gave him the smallest amount of hope to survive, but a small amount was enough. An SS
officer called Thomas’ name and his heart skipped a beat…

His memory brought him immediately back to what happened after his name was called.
He had been in Sobibor for over six months, being supervised by numerous guards, watched by
standard soldiers and SS troops. A revolt was being planned. He, along with 600 others tried
to escape, 300 making it out and only 54 surviving the rest of the war.
“I helped to plan the Sobibor revolt, and managed to escape. I do not remember if Officer
Demjanujuk was at Sobibor at the same time as me, but if he was, he was a murderer. However,
there were only 17 SS soldiers in Sobibor at any one time, so he could have easily slipped my
memory,” stated Thomas.
“Is that all Mr. Blatt?” asked the attorney.
“One last thing,” Thomas was exhausted. “I’m not looking for revenge. I want justice.”
 Works Cited

“Survivor Encyclopedia: Washington State.” Holocaust Center for Humanity,

www.holocaustcenterseattle.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-survivors-in-washington.
Preisinger, Irene. “Holocaust Haunts My Dreams, Survivor Tells Court.” Reuters, Thomson
Reuters, 19 Jan. 2010,
www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-demjanjuk/holocaust-haunts-my-dreams-survivor-tell
s-court-idUSTRE60I3ZE20100119.