Holocaust survivor Philip Bialowitz at SMU in 2011.
Photo Credit: Sidney Hollingsworth / SMU Daily Campus
DALLAS (SMU) — Nearly 70 years to the day Philip Bialowitz escaped from the Nazi death camp Sobibor, the Holocaust survivor will share his powerful story at SMU Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. in McCord Auditorium, 306 Dallas Hall.
Sponsored by SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program, the event will be free and open to the public. Bialowitz, 83, will discuss his story of rebellion and survival alongside his son, Joseph.
Bialowitz is reportedly one of only eight living survivors from an extermination camp where some 250,000 people were killed between 1942 and 1943 in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He survived after helping a small group of Jewish prisoners overpower their guards on Oct. 14, 1943 — an act of daring that allowed 200 of Sobibor’s 600 slave laborers to escape (though only 50 escapees survived the war).
Before the legendary revolt, Bialowitz had been tasked with helping unload the transports of Jews arriving at Sobibor. “I helped them out of the trains with all their baggage. My heart was bleeding knowing that in half an hour they would be reduced to ashes,” he told the BBC. In many cases, Bialowitz also had to remove dead passengers who had succumbed to the Nazis’ unimaginably inhumane transport conditions.
“Philip Bialowitz is one of the few people alive today who can speak with firsthand knowledge of the Nazi extermination process in eastern Poland,” says SMU Embrey Human Rights Program Director Rick Halperin. He believes SMU students should embrace this unique opportunity — and man.
“This generation of Holocaust survivors will pass away in the years ahead, so this generation of SMU students will be the last group of young people who can ever speak with, and hug, such special people,” Halperin says.
After the event, Bialowitz will sell and sign copies of his 2010 book, A Promise at Sobibór: A Jewish Boy’s Story of Revolt and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland.
