Yakov Grojanowski

Szlama Ber Winer postcard by Abram Bajler
Postcard sent to Warsaw by Abram Bajler, nephew of Szlamek Winer, informing about the final deportation of his uncle with family
Born	23 September 1911 Izbica Kujawska
Died	c. April 10, 1942(1942-04-10) (aged 30) Bełżec death camp
Nationality	Polish
Other names	Yakov Grojanowski
Known for	Holocaust deposition called the Grojanowski Report

Szlama Ber Winer, nom de guerre Yakov (Ya'akov) Grojanowski (23 September 1911 – c. 10 April 1942), was a Polish Jew from Izbica Kujawska, who escaped from the Chełmno extermination camp during the Holocaust in Poland. Szlamek (the diminutive form of Szlama) is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Szlamek Bajler in literature by the surname of his nephew, Abram Bajler, from Zamość (see postcard). Szlama Ber Winer escaped from the Waldlager work commando at Chełmno (German: Kulmhof), and described in writing the atrocities he witnessed at that extermination camp, not long before his own subsequent death at the age of 31, in the gas chambers of Bełżec. His deposition is commonly known as the Grojanowski Report.

Szlama Ber (Szlamek) was born in Izbica Kujawska near Koło on 23 September 1911 (or the 10th, in Julian calendar) to a Jewish merchant Iccak Wolf Winer (35 years of age) and Srenca née Laskow, his lawful wife according to birth certificate from the Office of Public Records. They lived in Izbica just north of Chełmno before the Holocaust. It was an area of interwar Poland which had been annexed in 1939 by Nazi Germany as part of the new territory of Reichsgau Wartheland earmarked for complete "Germanization". In 1940 the Nazis created a ghetto in Izbica for 1,000–1,600 Jews. On 12 January 1942 Winer was deported to Chełmno extermination camp, to slave labour with the camp's Sonderkommando. Two days later his Izbica Ghetto was liquidated through deportations of 900–1,000 others to extermination on 14–15 January 1942. The young Szlamek was spared but had witnessed the death of his own family in the gas vans. He was assigned by the SS to the burial commando. On Monday, 19 January, Szlamek escaped by slipping out of a lorry on the way to the Rzuchów forest subcamp.