Philip Bialowitz (December 25, 1925 in

Izbica Izbica ( yi, איזשביצע ''Izhbitz, Izhbitze'') is a village in the Krasnystaw County of the Lublin Voivodeship in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina administrative district called Gmina Izbica. It lies approximately south of Kr ...

– August 6, 2016) was a Polish

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...

and resistance fighter. Bialowitz was transported to Sobibor in April 1943 and quickly heard that his sisters and niece had been murdered in the gas chambers there. He credited his brother Simcha with saving his life, since when he arrived at the camp Simcha said he was a pharmacist and that Philip was his assistant. He was given the role of "working Jew", doing menial tasks such as shaving prisoners while avoiding being executed. The prisoners often believed they were merely being deloused instead of sent to extermination chambers. One day his task was to empty piles of dead bodies from train cars. He tried to pull a woman from the train but her skin stuck to his hands, amusing his Nazi overseer. He and his brother joined a rebellion on October 14, 1943, which overpowered the Nazis and freed 300 of their prisoners. He heard one of the revolt's leaders say as they stood on a table, "If you survive, bear witness! Tell the world about this place!" Russian prisoners of war showed the Jews how to fight. Bialowitz served as the messenger, telling SS officers that they had boots and leather coats for them. When they came, the resisters killed eleven of them with knives and axes. Bialowitz recalled jumping over the barbed wire to run towards German officers quarters in order to cut off the electricity. After escaping the extermination camp, he wandered Lublin District with his brother and other survivors. They eventually found shelter with a Catholic couple named Michał and Maria Mazurek, who hid them in their barn until the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

arrived. Only about 50 escapees survived to the end of the war. He was trained by a former Nazi doctor to be a dental assistant. After the war he married and had children while pushing for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Bialowitz moved to Columbus, Ohio. He eventually settled in New York and worked as a jeweler. Along with fellow survivor

Thomas Blatt Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (born Tomasz Blatt; April 15, 1927 – October 31, 2015) was a Holocaust survivor, writer of mémoires, and public speaker, who at the age of 16 escaped from the Sobibór extermination camp during the uprising staged by the ...

, he was one of the witnesses for the prosecution at the trial of

John Demjanjuk John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, ...

in 2010. He wrote the acclaimed book, ''A Promise at Sobibor'', which detailed his early life growing up in Poland, his experience during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, and his postwar life. Later in life, he traveled around the world lecturing about the Holocaust and his personal experiences. Bialowitz often said that he had "a mission to perform." He died in Florida on August 6, 2016, at the age of 90.

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