By Tal Ariel Yakir
The complete and extraordinary story of police officer Yaakov Biskowitz was never fully revealed until now.
As a young boy, Biskowitz became one of the few people who survived for an extended period in a death camp, participated in the revolt that led to the camp’s closure, and was the last Jew to leave Sobibor alive.
He testified at the Eichmann trial, taking the stand in police uniform and presenting the camp map he drew himself, which became the most detailed documentation of the site to date. The camp map he meticulously created contributed significantly to exposing Nazi atrocities and assisted in archaeological excavations that uncovered gas chambers and crematoria that had remained buried and hidden underground for decades.
Eighty-two years after his escape from the camp and 13 years after his death, the Israel Police Heritage Center has produced a virtual reality exhibit dedicated to his work exposing the mass murder at Sobibor.
Simultaneously, an academic article titled “Reassessment Based on Archaeological Excavations and Documentation as Tools for Reconstructing Sobibor Camp: The Testimony of Yaakov Biskowitz as a Test Case” will soon be published by Chief Inspector Dr. Yossi Hemi from the History Department of the Heritage Center and archaeologist Dr. Yoram Haimi, who excavated the area for 15 years and revealed the remains of the death camp to the world.
Sobibor was one of three death camps, along with Treblinka and Belzec, established as part of “Operation Reinhard,” a comprehensive plan to exterminate Polish Jews. The camp was established in 1942, and shortly afterward, 15-year-old Biskowitz arrived there with his parents and sister Hinda. His mother and sister were immediately sent to the gas chambers, while his father was selected to work in the camp as a carpenter.
“I, being a child, was dragged by my father,” he recounted during the Eichmann trial. “From that transport, they took about 12 people. From the first day, I worked with everyone. Initially, it was building the camp and barbed wire fences, and we dragged branches running from a distance of about 1.9 miles.”
With his father in the killing valley, Biskowitz witnessed how those who didn’t work were shot or sent to gas chambers, and he worried constantly about his father, who had fallen ill with typhus. “I would carry him to work every day,” he recounted. “We worked in the Ukrainians’ casino. He sat in the corner, and I worked for him too. I did my best, but the day came when I could no longer carry him. That day, two SS men came, removed him from the barracks, and led him to the shooting pit, accompanied by beatings and shouting. They shot him in front of me. I wanted to run after him, but the workers who were with me held me back.”
Biskowitz remained in Sobibor for one year and four months, making him one of the few Jews who survived so long in a death camp, as the average life expectancy in these facilities did not exceed two months.
Revolt in Sobibor
On Oct. 14, 1943, the famous revolt broke out that was later immortalized in the film, “Escape from Sobibor,” with a screenplay written by camp survivor Thomas Blatt.
“With the cessation of frequent transports to the camp, towards spring 1943, the Jews understood that the place would be closed and all its inhabitants eliminated,” Dr. Hemi explains. “Then the Jewish underground members began to organize for the revolt, in which hundreds of prisoners participated.” The Jewish prisoners set an ingenious trap for the Nazis, inviting them to try on new leather coats, shoes, or to inspect items they had crafted for them. Every SS man who entered was attacked with axe blows or knife stabs. Sixteen camp staff members were eliminated through this strategy. Biskowitz himself stabbed one of them.
The guards eventually recovered from the shock and shot hundreds of the Jewish prisoners. Those who managed to escape to the forests were caught and executed. Only 47 camp residents survived, but Biskowitz’s survival story is truly miraculous. Due to the commotion during the revolt, he failed to reach the fence and was forced to flee toward the crematoria. He hid in a shooting pit until after midnight, when only guards remained in Sobibor. Under the cover of darkness, he managed to escape and became the last living Jew to leave the camp.
In his testimony at the Eichmann trial, he described his harrowing escape from Sobibor: “I remained in the Lazarett, the shooting pit, until after midnight. After jumping over a fence two meters high, through the yard where people undressed before the gas chamber, several shots were fired at me from the guard on the tower. Since it was already dark, no bullet hit me. Later, many SS men came and started running in my direction, but they thought no one was running and left the place. Only at night did I start to penetrate through wire fences, tearing barbed wire with my hands. The guard wasn’t there by chance. Finally, I managed to get out of the camp.”
The hardships Biskowitz endured did not weaken his resolve. At about 17 years old, he joined the partisans and later enlisted in the Polish army, working in mine clearance. About a year later, he deserted the army following an antisemitic dispute and was sentenced to death. The army ultimately decided to grant him clemency, and he served four months in prison before returning to his position. A few months later, he deserted again, joined the Betar movement, and with its help relocated to a refugee camp in Germany.
Immigration to Israel
In 1947, he boarded an immigrant ship bound for Palestine that the British intercepted and diverted to Cyprus. He immigrated to Israel two years later and enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces. In 1952, he was discharged and joined the police force. During his law enforcement career, he served as a patrol officer, traffic policeman, embassy guard, member of the prisoner escort unit, and in the national headquarters guard.
In 1959, Biskowitz was called at night to a street in Tel Aviv following a report of a man threatening to jump from his apartment window. When he arrived, the man jumped, and Biskowitz extended his hands to catch him. While the man was saved, Biskowitz suffered severe injuries that required a month of hospitalization.
The incident was reported in newspapers at the time, and much was said about the police commissioner’s commendation awarded to him, but Biskowitz deliberately concealed the fact that he was a Holocaust survivor. Only with the opening of Adolf Eichmann’s trial in May 1961 did he reveal what he had endured, describe his role in the Sobibor revolt, and disclose that a friend from the death camp had managed to save some photographs from the crematoria – the only memento of his parents and sister. On his own initiative, he also presented his drawing of the camp to the court without realizing the historical significance it would later hold.
Throughout his life, Biskowitz married twice, to Bella and Tova, and left behind two children, Aryeh and Yechiel. He retired from the police force and passed away in 2002 at the age of 76. Four years after his death, the map he had drawn became one of the key tools that exposed what had transpired in the camp. The process began when archaeologist Dr. Yoram Haimi from Kibbutz Mefalsim in the Gaza border region discovered that his uncles had been murdered in Sobibor.
“I went there to see if there was a museum or archive, but there was nothing,” Haimi recalls. “There were only three monuments and a forest. As an archaeologist, I thought it was a place worth investigating. I met with the manager of a synagogue museum in the town near Sobibor, and he said if I get funding, he would arrange the permits.”
Haimi located Biskowitz’s map in the state archives, and it guided him throughout the excavations that began in 2007 and concluded in 2021. “We found 220,000 artifacts there, including jewelry, watches, tableware, perfume bottles, and teeth,” he says. “Unfortunately, the Polish authorities placed most of them in storage and didn’t allow us to bring them to Israel. Biskowitz’s map proved remarkably accurate and was enormously helpful. Wherever he indicated barracks or gas chambers had stood, that’s precisely what we found. Everything had been buried in the ground.”
As someone who experienced Oct. 7, 2023, in Mefalsim, Haimi commented on conducting similar excavations in the Gaza border region in the future. “I need to recover from the trauma, and since that Saturday I’ve taken a break from excavations.” JNS
{Matzav.com}