Jankiel Wiernik
Polish holocaust survivor (1889–1972)
Jankiel (Yankel, Yaakov, or Jacob) Wiernik (Hebrew: יעקב ויירניק; 1889–1972) 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. 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.
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.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6154832. VIAF identifies the subject as 70780932. The Library of Congress control number is n2004043634. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1889, 1972, 1943 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jankiel Wiernik” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.