Arkady Weisspapier
Photo: Alan Heath/Youtube
Last known Sobibor death camp survivor dies in Ukraine
One of the eight organizers of the Sobibor death camp uprising, who used their training as soldiers to devise their plan, passes away at the age of 96; after war he married and had two sons.
Arkady Weisspapier, the last known survivor of the Nazis' Sobibor death camp, has died in Ukraine. He was 96.
The Berlin-based Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe said Monday that Waispapir died January 11 in Kiev.
Arkady Weisspapier (Photo: Alan Heath/Youtube)
Born in southern Ukraine in 1921, Weisspapier was captured by the Germans while serving in the Soviet Army and eventually shipped to the Nazis' Sobibor camp in occupied Poland in 1943 because he was Jewish.
He was one of a few inmates spared immediate death in Sobibor's gas chambers, and instead ordered to a work detail.
In October 1943, prisoners organized an uprising against the guards and succeeded in killing nearly a dozen.
Weisspapier was one of the eight main organizers of the uprising, who used their training as soldiers to help devise their plan. In the end, about half of the camp's 600 prisoners managed to escape, although about 100 were caught almost immediately. Of the 200 who made it further, only 47, including Weisspapier, survived the war.
Following the uprising, the Nazi guards shot the remaining prisoners and razed the camp. Between March 1942 and October 1943, about 167,000 people were killed in Sobibor, almost entirely Jews, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Weisspapier lost his entire family during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, according to the German Holocaust memorial. He married after the war and had two sons, the memorial said, without providing further details.
Weisspapier lived and worked in eastern Ukraine until retiring in 1994 and moving to Kiev.
