Sigmund Sobolewski

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Sigmund Sobolewski (born 1923) is a Polish Catholic who was the 88th prisoner to enter Auschwitz on the very first transport to the concentration camp on June 14, 1940 and remained a prisoner for four and a half years during World War II. Now residing in Canada, he is an opponent of Holocaust denial and is notable for having confronted modern neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers.

Sobolewski, the son of the mayor of a small Polish town who was also an officer in the Polish army, was detained at Auschwitz at the age of 17 as a result of the anti-Nazi activities of his father.

Fluent in German, Sobolewski was pressed into service as a translator.

"I survived also because I was young," said Sobolewski. "I didn't realize the seriousness of what was going on. Most of the people who survived were simple people; workers, peasants from Polish villages who couldn't read and write, but who were used to the hard work. Lawyers, doctors, technicians, university graduates: many of them after three or four weeks in Auschwitz had committed suicide because they realized their chances of surviving were very, very slim."[1]

He is the sole surviving witness of the October 7, 1944 revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau when a group of Jewish prisoners blew up Crematorium Number 4 and attempted to escape. Sobolewski was on the fire brigade and was ordered to put out the fire. He witnessed the execution of 450 Jewish Sonderkommandos in retailation.[2]

"I survived only to live with the nagging question, 'What distinguished me from them (the Jews)?'", he said in an interview.[3]

He traveled the world following the war and settled in Alberta, Canada. In 1967, he initiated his activity protesting neo-Nazism by donning a facsimile of his Auschwitz prison uniform and picketing the appearance of a German neo-Nazi leader on Canadian television. In subsequent decades he would do the same to protest Holocaust denier Jim Keegstra and, in 1990 to picket Aryan Fest, a neo-Nazi festival organized by Terry Long in Alberta.[4]

Sobolewski works as a realtor in Alberta[5] but also travels the world lecturing audiences on his experiences in Auschwitz and warning against Holocaust denial.[6]

His life is the subject of the biography Prisoner 88: The Man in Stripes by Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum[7]