Mordechaï Podchlebnik or Michał Podchlebnik (1907 – 1985) was a Polish Jew who managed to survive

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. He was a member of the '' Sonderkommando'' work detail for nearly two weeks at the Chełmno extermination camp in occupied Poland. Podchlebnik was one of three who escaped into the surrounding forest from the mass burial zone out of a population of 400,000 prisoners.Shoah outtake footage
at the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...

Life

He was born to a family of Jacob Podchlebnik and Sosia (Zosia) née Widawska from Koło, known also by the Polish equivalent of his first name, Michał. He witnessed the deportation of his father, mother, sister with her five children, and brother with his own wife and three children. Podchlebnik became a key witness in 1945 at the Chełmno Trials of the former ''SS'' men from the SS Special Detachment '' Kulmhof''. Decades later in 1961 he gave testimony at the Eichmann trial in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

.According t
Yad Vashem Diaries
the Grojanowski Report is available at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (copy in YVA, JM/2713), and it was also translated into Hebrew by Elisheva Shaul, "Taking of Testimony from the Forced Undertaker Jakob Grojanowski, Izbice-Kolo-Chelmno," Yalkut Moreshet 35 (April 1983), pp. 101-122. Podchlebnik was also interviewed by Claude Lanzmann for the documentary film '' Shoah''.

References

External links

Mordechai (Michael) Podchlebnik - Chelmno
at

(USHMM) 1907 births 1985 deaths People from Piotrków County People from Piotrków Governorate Chełmno extermination camp survivors Jews from the Russian Empire 20th-century Polish Jews Sonderkommando {{Poland-bio-stub Holocaust commemoration