Jankiel Wiernik

 ( 1889 Births ) 

He remembered the horrors of the enormous , 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." A Year in Treblinka, chapter 9. 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 Josef Hirtreiter 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." A Year in Treblinka, chapter 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. A Year in Treblinka, chapter 8 In chapter 8, he describes seeing a naked woman escape the clutches of the guards and leap over a three-metre high barbed wire fence unscathed. When accosted by a Ukrainian guard () on the other side, she wrestled his machine gun out of his grasp, killed the guard, and shot another guard before being killed herself.

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.

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 Warsaw Uprising, fighting in the Armia Ludowa. After the end of World War II, Wiernik initially remained in Poland (in 1947 he testified in the trial of Ludwig Fischer). He emigrated to Sweden and afterwards to the newly founded state of Israel.

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 Survivor guilt was expressed in chapter one of A Year in Treblinka. "I sacrificed all those nearest and dearest to me. I myself took them to the place of execution. I built their death chambers for them." He said that he had nightmares and had trouble sleeping. Apparently, the horrors he had experienced in Treblinka had caused him to suffer from survivor syndrome, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.