Tomasz Blatt was the Polish-Jewish son of Leon Blatt and an unnamed mother.


 He was born in Izbica on the 15th of April 1927. He had a younger brother, Henryk 

In 1941, the family was forced into the Izbica transit ghetto. In October 1942, the family decided to leave Izbica but split up, hoping it would somehow be safer. Tomasz tried to reach Hungary, but was captured and imprisoned in a prison in Stryj and then in its ghetto. In 1943, he managed to get back to his family in Izbica. On the 28th of April 1943, the Blatt family was deported to the Sobibór death camp with 400 Izbican Jews. His parents and brother were sent to the gas chambers.


Tomasz on the other hand, joined the slave laborers in the camp despite Sobibór being mostly focused on murdering the majority of arrivals. He was one of 40 slave laborers who cut the hair of women who were going to be gassed. On the 14th of October 1943, a prisoner revolt resulted in the killing of almost all the Nazi guards and over 300 out of the 600 prisoner attemptees to escape the camp. Unfortunately, many of these escapees lost their lives on the minefields surrounding the camp. The prisoners fled through holes cut in the fence, many of them being killed by machine gun fire and so in a desperate attempt, many tried to climb it. Tomasz was trapped underneath the fence as it collapsed but the hesitation saved him.


The first prisoners free from the fence were killed in the minefields. Tomasz broke free from his coat and fled into the wood. Tomasz and two young fellow prisoners were among those who successfully escaped. They found refuge with a farmer who hid them for money. However, the three boys were betrayed and shot. Tomasz managed to escape with a bullet in his jaw. He went into hiding then worked as a courier in the Polish underground. He survived the war and died in the US in 2015 aged 88. He was a public speaker and wrote 2 books memoires: "The Ashes of Sobibór" and "Sobibór: The Forgotten Revolt". He had 2 children

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