Jankiel Wiernik

Jankiel Wiernik
Jankiel Wiernik
Born	1889 Biała Podlaska, Poland
Died	1972 Rishon Lezion, Israel
Resting place	Israel
Occupation	Master carpenter
Known for	Participation in the uprising of Treblinka and testimony at the Eichmann trial
Home town	Kobrin, Poland

Jankiel (Yankel or Yaakov) Wiernik (Hebrew: יעקב ויירניק‎) (1889–1972) was a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor who was an influential figure in the Treblinka extermination camp uprising. After his escape during the uprising of 2 August 1943, Wiernik wrote a clandestine account of the camp's operation titled A Year in Treblinka consisting of his experiences and eyewitness testimony of a Sonderkommando slave worker at a Nazi secretive death camp responsible for the annihilation of anywhere from 700,000 to 900,000 innocent victims.

Following World War II Wiernik testified in the Ludwig Fischer's trial in 1947, the Eichmann Trial in 1961, and was present at the opening of the Treblinka Memorial in 1964. After the Soviet takeover, Wiernik emigrated to Sweden and later relocated to Israel where he died in 1972 at the age of 83.

He had first lived in Kobrin, Poland but he and his father, both master cabinetmakers, did not wish to be in competition with family members (Natan Wiernik) who were also master cabinetmakers, thus they moved to Biala Podlaska.

Jankiel Wiernik was a member of the "Bund" movement from 1904. He lived in Warsaw and worked as a property manager at a house owned by the family of Stefan Krzywoszewski (1886-1950), popular writer, publisher and theatre director in the Interbellum. When the World War II began with the 1939 invasion of Poland, he was 50 years old. In late 1940 the German Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto and Wiernik was forced to relocate there along with all Polish Jews in the capital. He was transported to Treblinka on August 23, 1942 during the murderous Grossaktion Warsaw. Following his successful escape from the extermination camp Krzywoszewski family rescued him.

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