Jankiel Wiernik

Jankiel Wiernik
Born1889
Died1972 (aged 82–83)
Resting placeIsrael
OccupationMaster carpenter
Known forParticipation in the uprising of Treblinka and testimony at the Eichmann trial

Jankiel (Yankel, Yaakov, or Jacob) Wiernik (Hebrew: יעקב ויירניק; 1889–1972)[1] was a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor who was an influential figure in the Treblinka extermination camp resistance. He had been forced to work as a Sonderkommando slave worker there, where an estimated 700,000–900,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered.[2] After his escape during the uprising of 2 August 1943, Wiernik reached Warsaw and joined the resistance. He also wrote a clandestine account of the camp's operation, A Year in Treblinka, which was copied and translated for printing in London and the US in English and Yiddish.

Following World War II, Wiernik testified at Ludwig Fischer's trial in 1947. He left Poland, emigrating first to Sweden and then to the new state of Israel. In 1961, he testified at Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. He returned to Poland in 1964, to attend the opening of the Treblinka Memorial. Wiernik died in Israel in 1972 at the age of 83.

  1. ^ Ghetto Fighters' House Archives, Ya'akov Wiernik, "A Year in Treblinka". Hebrew translation, published as a booklet in Tel Aviv, 1944. Labor Federation of Mandate Palestine. [Also in:] Arad, Yitzhak (1987). Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, p. 209. ISBN 0-253-21305-3.
  2. ^ Answers.com, Treblinka.