Militaryהלה פלנבאום-וייס

Hela Felenbaum-Weiss

Hela Felenbaum-Weiss was a survivor of the Sobibor extermination camp who later fought as a partisan in the Soviet Red Army.

1924 to 1988Surviving the Sobibor extermination campThe 1943 Sobibor prisoner revoltPartisan fighting in the Red Army

Born: 2 January 1924, Lublin
Occupation: partisan

Hela Felenbaum-Weiss was born in 1924 in Lublin

Hela Felenbaum-Weiss was born on 2 January 1924 in Lublin to a middle-class Jewish family of five. She and her siblings went to school in Lublin.

In 1940 the family was forced to move to Rejowiec and then to the labor camp at Siedliszcze, where they dug ditches. In 1942 her parents were judged unfit for work, and in November 1942 they were killed in the gas chambers of Sobibor. She and her brothers were sent to the labor camp at Staw, where they worked in a mill.

On 20 December 1942 she arrived at Sobibor. Her older brother was shot while trying to escape on the way, and her younger brother was gassed on arrival. She was kept alive to knit socks and iron shirts for the SS, and later worked in the laundry and the garden.

She escaped during the prisoner revolt of 14 October 1943 and hid in the forest with other survivors. The group later joined the Prokupyuk Brigade of partisans, and she was wounded several times in combat. She died in 1988.