ABSTRACT
The revolt of Sobibor was a result of the shifting tide of the war and the slow victory of the Red Army, which meant that the Germans needed new and more labor. This chapter focuses on the world of Aleksandr Pechersky in the camp and on how he began to organize the uprising. The most extensive early description of Sobibor is an account in Russian written by Pavel Grigoryevich Antokolsky and Veniamin Alexandrovich Kaverin. The most informative books were written much later, such as Yitzhak Arad's 1987 work that placed Sobibor in the context of the Reinhard camps and opened up academic study of the topic. Sobibor was known not to be a "normal" labor camp. Despite the shouting and the violence of their reception at Sobibor, some victims—especially Western Jews—believed they would simply be allowed to wash and dress in clean clothes, and then would be sent to work.
