Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (born Tomasz Blatt; April 15, 1927 – October 31, 2015) was a Holocaust survivor, writer of mémoires, and public speaker, who at the age of 16 escaped from the Sobibór extermination camp during the uprising staged by the Jewish prisoners in October 1943. The escape was attempted by about 300 inmates, many of whom were recaptured and killed by the German search squads. Following World War II Blatt lived in Communist Poland until the Polish October. In 1957, he emigrated to Israel, and in 1958 settled in the United States. Life Thomas "Toivi" Blatt was born on April 15, 1927, to a Jewish family in Izbica, Second Polish Republic, where his father Leon Blatt owned a liquor store. The population of the town was 90 percent Jewish at the time according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Tomasz (Toivi) also had a brother. During the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II, his family was forced into the Izbica Ghetto created by the SS in 1941, the largest transit ghetto in the Lublin Reservation. In October 1942, the family decided to split up and leave Izbica to increase their chance of survival. Tomasz Blatt tried to reach Hungary. On the way he was captured and imprisoned, first in a prison in Stryj and then in the Ghetto Stryj. In early 1943,with the help of an acquaintance of his family, Blatt went back to Izbica to his parents and his brother. On April 28, 1943, Blatt was taken to Sobibór by truck with about 400 Jews from Izbica. Members of his family were killed there on arrival. Thomas (age 16) along with 40 young men was selected to join the Arbeitsjuden in the Lower, and later, the Upper Camp, where he cut the hair of naked women before gassing. During the one year and a half in which the Sobibór killing centre operated, at least 167,000 people were murdered there, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; virtually all of the victims were Jews, mostly from Poland, France and the Netherlands. Other estimates range from 200,000 (Raul Hilberg) to 250,000 (Dr. Aharon Weiss, and Czesław Madajczyk). Escape from Sobibór Blatt was among some 300 prisoners who escaped from the camp during the uprising staged by the Sobibór underground on October 14, 1943. Emigration In 1957, Blatt emigrated from Stalinist Poland to Israel and in 1958 settled