I am honored to be here today. To remember with you. My mother Esther Turner Raab escaped from this very spot eighty years ago. She was one of the 300 men and women who crawled over barbwire fences, broke through them, dodged bullets, skirted around land mines, and made it to the pine forest. They not only escaped from Sobibor.
They made history.
I am here today not only to remember their heroism, but also to remember the 160,000 men, women, and children whose ashes are mixed with the soil we walk on. I am here to remember the pain and loss they all suffered. And I am here to remember the Righteous Gentile who risked his life and the lives of his family when hid,fed, and protected my mother for nine months…until the Red Army liberated Eastern Poland.
His name is Stefan Marcyniuk.
But don’t be fooled by words. Those who escaped from Sobibor didn’t escape. As my mother put it: “There is no escape from Sobibor. Not for me. Not for Poland. Not for Germany. Not for the world. Even God cannot escape from Sobibor.”
My mother took the final words of Rabbi Leon Feldhendler, the leader of the escape, seriously: “If anyone survives, tell the world what went on here.” She testified in a string of Nazi trials in Germany. She was bullied by defense attorneys who tried to prove she was a liar. Anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers sitting in the courtroom snickered and laughed as she described what happened on this hidden spot in Eastern Poland.
My mother testified against SS Officer Hubert Gomerski who supervised the forest brigade– the band of prisoners who cut the wood that heated the Nazi quarters and the wood that burned the bodies of those murdered by the Nazis. One day, Sobibor survivor Samuel Leher saw Mr. Gomerski in Berlin. He was standing next to a carnival carousel. Samuel reported him to the police. They told him they needed two eyewitnesses to identify a Nazi war criminal. Samuel rushed to get my mother. She saw Gomerski standing at the fair with his family…as free as a bird. She turned him in to the police with anger and a bitter taste of revenge. Then, she faced him in court. SS Officer Hubert Gomerski was sentenced to life in prison.
My mother testified against SS Officer Erick Bauer. He operated the gas chambers…just a short walk from where we sit. SS Officer Eric Bauer was sentenced to life in prison.
My mother testified at the trial of SS Officer Karl Frenzel. He was a roving supervisor of the Sobibor workforce. She described how he murdered a child in front of its mother, then he tossed the child’s body away like a dead rat. Mother’s emotions got the best of her that day in court. She shouted at Frenzel from the witness chair: “You got to be a beast.” SS Officer Karl Frenzel was sentenced to life in prison.
For my mother, testifying in the German trials was almost more than she could bear. She did it for the voiceless 160,000 buried in a cemetery called Sobibor.
My mother chose to tell her story and the story of Sobibor to school children. She was determine to reach them before society and their elders warped their minds and poisoned their souls. Even though it was painful, she talked to them for more than thirty years. Thousands of school children listened with open ears and hearts…and tears. My mother went back…into Sobibor…for them. And they told her they would never forget. They would tell their children.
My mother commissioned the powerful and moving play Dear Esther. But only if the playwright guaranteed that children would be able to understand it. So far, more than 200,000 school children in America and Poland have seen the play. It is based in part on the wise and touching letters they sent her.
My mother is smiling today. I can feel her with us. I know she is pleased with the museum and its artifacts on display, proving that death camp Sobibor really existed. I know she is pleased with the visitors center that reaches out to school children from the European Union and Israel. I know she is pleased that all of us here today are doing what Rabbi Leon Feldhendler asked her to do 80 years ago. Tell the world what went on here and remember those who suffered and died here. And that’s why I am here today, October 14th, 2023. I am carrying on my mother’s mission. With pride and a heavy heart.