Alexander "Sasha" Aronovich Pechersky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Аро́нович Пече́рский; 22 February 1909 – 19 January 1990), also known as Oleksandr Aronovych Pecherskyi (Ukrainian: Олександр Аронович Печерський), was a Jewish-Soviet officer.

In 1948, Pechersky was arrested by the Soviet authorities along with his brother during the countrywide Rootless cosmopolitan campaign against Jews suspected of pro-Western leanings but released later due in part to mounting international pressure.

[3] Pechersky, a son of a Jewish lawyer, was born on 22 February 1909 in Kremenchuk, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine).

[4] After graduating from university with a diploma in music and literature, he became an accountant and manager of a small school for amateur musicians.

"[4] The appearance of Soviet POWs produced an enormous impression on Sobibor prisoners: "hungry hope-filled eyes following their every move".

[5] Pechersky wrote about his first day in Sobibor: I was sitting outside on a pile of logs in the evening with Solomon (Shlomo)[8] Leitman, who subsequently became my top commander in the uprising.

I did not believe him, but he continued: He told me that the camp existed for more than a year and that almost every day a train came with two thousand new victims who are all murdered within a few hours.

He said around 500 Jewish prisoners – Polish, French, German, Dutch and Czechoslovak work here and that my transport was the first one to bring Russian Jews.

He said that on this tiny plot of land, no more than 10 hectares [24.7 acres or .1 square kilometer], hundreds of thousands of Jewish women, children and men were murdered.

[4][5]During his third day at Sobibor, Alexander Pechersky earned the respect of fellow prisoners by standing up to Karl Frenzel, a SS senior officer, as the incident was recalled by Leon Felhendler.

Pechersky, still wearing his Soviet Army uniform, was assigned to dig up tree stumps in the North Camp.

Pechersky split the stump in four and a half minutes and Frenzel held out a pack of cigarettes and announced that he always does as he promises.

[5] Five days after arriving at Sobibor, Pechersky was again approached by Solomon Leitman on behalf of Felhendler, the leader of the camp's Polish Jews.

From a note found among the clothing of the murdered, the Sobibor prisoners learned that those who had been killed were from work groups in the Bełżec camp.

"[10] The leadership of the Polish Jews were aware that Bełżec and Treblinka had been closed, dismantled and all remaining prisoners had been sent to the gas-chambers and they suspected that Sobibor would be next.

Jewish Poles were assigned German SS guards that they were supposed to lure inside the workshops under some pretext and silently kill.

During the day, several German SS men were lured to workshops on a variety of pretexts, such as being fitted for new boots or expensive clothes.

[5] The escapees were armed with a number of hand grenades, a rifle, a submachine gun and several pistols that the prisoners stole from the German living quarters, as well as the sidearms captured from the dead SS men.

[15] Earlier in the day, SS-Oberscharführer Erich Bauer, at the top of the death list created by Pechersky, unexpectedly drove out to Chełm for supplies.

Bauer came back early from Chełm, discovered that SS-Scharführer Rudolf Beckmann had been assassinated and began shooting at the prisoners.

Pechersky was able to escape into the woods and at the end of the uprising, eleven German SS personnel and an unknown number of Ukrainian guards had been killed.

[5] Within days after the uprising, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the camp closed, dismantled and planted with trees.

[25] This report was included in the Black Book, one of the first comprehensive compilations about the Holocaust, written by Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg.

For fighting the Germans as part of the penal battalions, Pechersky was promoted to the rank of captain and received a medal for bravery.

The mass murder of Jews at the Sobibor death camp became part of the charges against leading Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials.

The International Tribunal at Nuremberg wanted to call Pechersky as a witness but the Soviet government would not allow him to travel to Germany to testify.

The Soviet government prevented Pechersky from testifying at the Eichmann Trial in Israel, only allowing a short deposition in Moscow which was controlled by the KGB.

[28] According to his daughter in an interview, Pechersky was prevented by the Soviet government from testifying in international trials related to Sobibor.

Alexander Pechersky features prominently in a Dutch-Soviet documentary Revolt in Sobibor (1989) by director Pavel Kogan.

The revolt was also dramatized in the 1987 British TV film Escape from Sobibor, in which Rutger Hauer received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Television) for his portrayal of Pechersky.