Strug­gling to remem­ber all of the details, Philip Bialowitz recounts the agony of Sobi­bor, his strug­gle to sur­vive and the pris­on­er revolt to his son, Joseph. Sobi­bor was not a tran­sit camp, nor a work camp. Its one and only pur­pose was mass mur­der, but Philip nev­er gave up hope or allowed him­self to degrade to a musel­man, some­one bare­ly alive. His father hon­ored life and human dig­ni­ty by nev­er aban­don­ing hope and by engag­ing in many forms of resis­tance while in the camp. Joseph notes that this instinct for sur­vival was not root­ed in fear, but by the mem­o­ry of a lov­ing fam­i­ly, deep friend­ships, a sup­port­ive reli­gion and a hope for a bet­ter life. On Octo­ber 14, 1943, the almost 650 pris­on­ers still alive at Sobibi­bor dared to plan a revolt. They killed SS offi­cers, fled through mine­fields and machine-gun fire into the sur­round­ing forests, farms, and towns; but only 42 of them, includ­ing the author, are known to have sur­vived until the end of the war. This is the sto­ry of where, how, and why it hap­pened. Sur­vival often depend­ed on assis­tance from coura­geous Gen­tile peo­ple out­side of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. His father and uncle, Sym­cha, were giv­en shel­ter after they escaped from Sobi­bor, by a coura­geous Pol­ish Catholic cou­ple who were farm­ers, Maria and Michal Mazurek. Notes.