Tomasz was born to a Jewish family in Izbica. After the war began in September 1939, the Germans established a ghetto in Izbica. Tomasz's work in a garage initially protected him from roundups in the ghetto. In 1942 he tried to escape to Hungary, using false papers. He was caught but managed to return to Izbica. In April 1943 he and his family were deported to the Sobibor killing center. Tomasz escaped during the Sobibor uprising. He went into hiding and worked as a courier in the Polish underground.
We heard a shot and the plan was disregard to march out to the front gate because probably the, the guard would know what's happened and we could go too close, very close to them ourselves. But I heard a shot, Sasha [Aleksandr Pechersky] jumping on the table, and he start to talk. "Listen," something in this sense, "Listen to me." I remember only one sentence from the whole talk--it was very short. "The time did come that we will take revenge. We killed practical all the Germans. Now, let's stood up and fight our way out." In this sense. But the sentence I remember exactly what he said, was, "If somebody of you will survive, you should remember to told...to tell the world the story of Sobibor." And that what I did never forget, and that what I am doing.
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![A group portrait of some of the participants in the uprising at the Sobibor killing center. [LCID: 10625]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/thumb/aa0189cc-81e0-45c3-a1a1-eb70ad9f1bee.jpg)