Hero of the Week 47

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This week's hero is...

Jankiel Wiernik

Jankiel Wiernik was born in 1889 in Poland. For the first half of his life, he worked as a carpenter around the country before settling in Warsaw. However, his life changed forever at the breakout of World War II. After the fall of Poland to Nazi Germany, Jankiel Wiernik was one of thousands of people who were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. After spending over a year in the ghetto, he and thousands of others were forced onto a train that took them to a death camp in Eastern Poland. It was a place called, Treblinka.

As soon as they arrived, the prisoners were separated into two groups. One very small group (including Wiernik) were lined up and sent to the barracks to prepare for work. The rest of the prisoners were immediately taken to Treblinka's gas chambers to be murdered.

At first Wiernik was forced to work as a Sonderkommando. He was part of the group that was supposed to retrieve the bodies of the people who had been gassed and take them to the cremetorium to be burned. He was eventually selected to become part of Treblinka's main work force when he revealed his skills as a carpenter to the guards. 

This revelation saved Wiernik's life. He was taken from the Sonderkommando and placed with a handful of prisoners who were being forced to help run the extermination process at Treblinka. For the next year, Wiernik was forced to repair buildings, fix the railroad, and to lead new prisoners to the gas chambers. He witnessed thousands of people being murdered on a daily basis and (along with his few prisoners) was subjected to sadistic brutality by Treblinka's guards. However, they were also secretly resisting.

Due to his position as a carpenter among the prisoners, Wiernik was able to view multiple areas of the death camp. As a result of this, he became a valuable asset to his fellow prisoners who were planning an uprising. The prisoners had been planning this ever since they had heard of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising from new prisoners who had survived the selection process. They were determined to fight back and obtain their freedom or else to die trying. 

On August 2, 1943, the Treblinka Uprising began. First, they broke into the guard's weapons storeroom and seized guns and ammunition. After this, some of the prisoners attacked the guards and set the camp on fire while others broke the gate to the camp open and made a break for the woods. Although the guards were initially caught by surprise, they quickly retaliated. The uprising in Treblinka was crushed within a few hours. By then however, over 300 of the prisoners of Treblinka (including Wiernik who had killed a guard with an axe) had managed to successfully escape. 

After his escape, Jankiel Wiernik managed to evade the pursuing SS and Gestapo. He was given shelter by a kind Pole who made contact with the Polish resistance in Warsaw. Wiernik eventually joined the Resistance and reported what he had witnessed in Treblinka. The leaders of the resistance urged him to write an account of his experience. In 1944, Jankiel Wiernik wrote a short biography titled, A Year in Treblinka. The book was smuggled out of Poland by the resistance and was published in England and the United States. It was the first written account of what would be known as the Holocaust to ever be published by a survivor. 

For the rest of the war, Wiernik fought with the Polish resistance. When it was over, he testified at the Nuremberg Trials for Nazi war criminals. In 1947, immigrated to Israel. For the rest of his life, Wiernik was continually haunted by his experience in Treblinka. He dedicated much of his later life to building models of the death camp which he donated to museums. In 1961, he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He died in 1972 at the age of 83.

From the time that it first opened (July, 1942) until the it was liquidated (October, 1943), more than 800,000 people were murdered in the death camp known as, Treblinka. Although 300 prisoners had escaped in the uprising, only around 100 (Wiernik included) survived the war to bear witness to the atrocities that were committed. The last survivor of Treblinka (Samuel Willenberg) passed away on February 19, 2016. 

Jankiel Wiernik truly was a remarkable person. He found the courage and the resilience to survive a terrible ordeal and make sure it was never forgotten. After his escape, he dedicated the rest of his life to preserving the memory of the victims of the Treblinka death camp. Because of men like him, the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust will never be forgotten (even when all the survivors have passed on).

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/wierniktestimony.html

http://www.zchor.org/treblink/wiernik.htm

https://www.chroniclesofterror.pl/dlibra/show-content?id=305&navq=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jaHJvbmljbGVzb2Z0ZXJyb3IucGwvZGxpYnJhL3Jlc3VsdHM_cT13aWVybmlrJmFjdGlvbj1TaW1wbGVTZWFyY2hBY3Rpb24mbWRpcmlkcz0mdHlwZT0tNiZzdGFydHN0cj1fYWxsJnA9MA&navref=MzE3OzMwNSAzMTU7MzAzIDI5MTsyNzk

https://www.ushmm.org/research/the-center-for-advanced-holocaust-studies/miles-lerman-center-for-the-study-of-jewish-resistance/medals-of-resistance-award/treblinka-death-camp-revolt