Jankiel Wiernik
Jankiel Wiernik | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1889 |
| Died | 1972 (aged 82–83) Rishon LeZion, Israel |
| Resting place | Israel |
| Occupation | Master carpenter |
| Known for | Participation in the uprising of Treblinka and testimony at the Eichmann trial |
| Part of Auschwitz , May 1944 |
Jankiel (Yankel, Yaakov, or Jacob) Wiernik (
Following World War II, Wiernik testified at
Life
Wiernik grew up and lived with his family in Kobryń, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), where he followed his father in becoming a master cabinetmaker. To avoid competition with artisan family members (Natan Wiernik) who were also master cabinetmakers, they moved to Biała Podlaska.
From 1904 Jankiel Wiernik was a member of the Bund movement.[3] He lived in Warsaw and worked as a property manager at a house owned by the family of Stefan Krzywoszewski (1886-1950), a popular writer, publisher and theatre director in the Interbellum.
When World War II began with the 1939 invasion of Poland, Wiernik 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 23 August 1942, during the murderous Grossaktion Warsaw. Following his successful escape from the extermination camp in August 1943, he was rescued by the Krzywoszewski family.[4]
Treblinka
On his arrival at Treblinka aboard the Holocaust train from Warsaw, Wiernik was selected to work as a Sonderkommando; otherwise he would have been immediately gassed and killed that day.[4] Wiernik's first job with the Sonderkommando required him to drag corpses from the gas chambers to mass graves. He was traumatized by his experiences and later wrote in his book: "It often happened that an arm or a leg fell off when we tied straps around them in order to drag the bodies away."[5]
He remembered the horrors of the enormous pyres, where "10,000 to 12,000 corpses were cremated at one time." He wrote: "The bodies of women were used for kindling" while Germans "toasted the scene with brandy and with the choicest liqueurs, ate, caroused and had a great time warming themselves by the fire."[6] Wiernik described small children waiting so long in the cold for their turn in the gas chambers that "their feet froze and stuck to the icy ground" and noted one guard who would "frequently snatch a child from the woman's arms and either tear the child in half or grab it by the legs, smash its head against a wall and throw the body away."[7] At other times "children were snatched from their mothers' arms and tossed into the flames alive."
He was also encouraged by occasional scenes of brave resistance.
When the SS recognized that Wiernik was a professional carpenter, they put him to work constructing various camp structures, including additional gas chambers. Given his skills, Wiernik was not subjected to the same treatment as others and no longer had to handle dead bodies. He attributed his survival to being able to build structures needed in the camp. Given the shortage of skilled construction workers accustomed to the killing process, Wiernik moved between the two divisions of the camp frequently. As a result, he became an important contact between the camp zones when the revolt was being planned.
Escape
Wiernik escaped Treblinka during the revolt of the prisoners on "a sizzling hot day" of August 2, 1943. A shot fired into the air signalled that the revolt was on. Wiernik wrote that he "grabbed some guns" and, after spotting an opportunity to make a break for the woods, an axe. A camp guard in pursuit shot Wiernik with a pistol but the bullet did not penetrate his skin. Wiernik said he turned around and killed his pursuer with the axe.[9] Wiernik continued to Warsaw, hiding in a freight train.
He hid in Warsaw, secreted initially by the Polish family of Krzywoszewski, his former employers. They got him false papers, a Kennkarte in the name of Kowalczyk. Next, Wiernik assumed the name of Jan Smarzyński. He made contact with members of the Jewish underground working in the 'Aryan' part of Warsaw. They realized he was a valuable eyewitness of the extermination process in Treblinka. He was persuaded in late 1943 to write A Year in Treblinka, in spite of his initial reluctance (Wiernik had little education and was not a skilled writer). He continued to live in Warsaw in relative comfort, believing that his 'Aryan' appearance allowed him to do so.
He took part in the 1944
.There in the 1950s, Wiernik built a model of the Treblinka camp. It is displayed in the Ghetto Fighters' House museum in Israel. In 1961 Wiernik testified in the Eichmann trial in Israel.
Wiernik suffered the after-effects of trauma from his time in the camp. His feeling of
A Year in Treblinka
Jankiel Wiernik published Rok w Treblince (A Year in Treblinka) in 1944 as a clandestine booklet. It was printed through the efforts of the
See also
- Chil Rajchman, Treblinka revolt survivor, author of a memoir The Last Jew of Treblinka (1945)
- Richard Glazar, author of memoir Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka (1992)
- The Final Solution
- Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942
- The Holocaust in Poland
References
- ISBN 0-253-21305-3.
- ^ Answers.com, Treblinka.
- ^ a b c "Lohami Ha'Gettaot Museum site (Hebrew) Ghetto Fighters' House archives.
- ^ a b c d e Władysław Bartoszewski, Historia Jankiela Wiernika (The Story of Jankiel Wiernik) Archived 2014-05-09 at the Wayback Machine in Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej... pp. 633-634, available online at WladyslawBartoszewski.blox.pl as reprint from Miesięcznik "Polska" (monthly), Warsaw Nr. 8 / August 1964.
- ^ A Year in Treblinka, chapter 3.
- ^ A Year in Treblinka, chapter 9.
- ^ A Year in Treblinka, chapter 7.
- ^ A Year in Treblinka, chapter 8
- ^ A Year in Treblinka, chapter 14.
Sources
- Yankel Wiernik (1945), A Year in Treblinka: An Inmate who Escaped Tells the Day-to-day Facts of One Year of His Torturous Experience (see scanned 1945 original in PDF format), New York: digitized by Zchor.org, )
- Testimony of Jankiel Wiernik, in "Chronicles of Terror" testimony database
External links
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