Escape from the Death Camp Trains - Sobibor "Jumpers"
Testimony of Yacov Gurfein about the
Israeli Police
6th Bureau
Date: 23.6.1960
Investigating Officer: Rosenfeld
Yacov Gurfein
Date of Birth: Born 1921
Place of Birth: Sanok, Poland
Profession: Carpenter
Father’s Name: Abraham Gurfein
Read the full testimony here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/sobijumper.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;
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I was very interested and gratified to see information about my cousin, Yaakov Viernik, on your site. I spent over thirty years tracking him down after the Eichmann trial appeared in the Jewish Daily "Forvitz". My grandfather, Nathan Warnick, was a first cousin to Yaakov and read the reports of the trial each day. When Yaakov was first mentioned in the paper, I was in Grampa Nathan's kitchen as he read Yaakov's name for the first time. He gasped loudly, and everyone present wondered what had happened because Grampa Nathan did not display emotion easily. Slowly the story came out via my grandmother, but Grampa Nathan would not try to contact Yaakov whom he thought had perished with the rest of the family that originated in Kobryn, Poland. His sense of guilt was so overwhelming that he would not talk about it to anyone.
I was consumed with interest about Yaakov - Jankiel - and without the help of the www started to research him back in 1962. Information was very scanty but I learned slowly about cousin Yaakov's role in the Treblinka uprising. When I finally got a computer and learned quickly how to search, I found the Ghetto Fighter's Museum in Haifa, Israel on the internet. There, I was able to research their archives and found pictures of cousin Yaakov. The first time I saw a picture of him, I became faint; he was like an identical twin to my Grampa Nathan right down to the full head of white hair and square face.
Five and one-half years ago, I finally visited the Ghetto Fighter's Museum in Haifa after having made contact with them. I had been there for my first grandson's Bar Mitzvah, and took that opportunity to see the model of Treblinka that cousin Yaakov had built with such care and incredible precision. I was even allowed to go inside the protective fence and touch the model. I felt as though I had finally made contact with my long-lost cousin, as I whispered to him, "Yaakov - you are not alone anymore. I have come to take you back into the family that you thought you lost."
Thank you for your work on my cousin Yaakov. My aim is to write a book on my search for him as a memorial to what he went through, and what he finally accomplished after the Holocaust.
Most sincerely,
Miriam Warnick
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