Joseph Serchuk

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Joseph Serchuk (also: Yozhik Serchuk ; born 1919 ; died November 6, 1993 in Tel Aviv ) was the commander of Jewish partisan units in the area of Lublin ( Poland ) during the Second World War . After the war he was a witness at the Nuremberg Trials and received special recognition from the State of Israel .

Life

After his parents and other family members perished in the ghetto in 1941 , Joseph and his brother David were arrested and taken to the Sobibor extermination camp . After a day in the camp, he fled with his brother and others and formed the core of the partisan group. During the war, the group, led by Jews who had escaped from the ghettos, operated near Sobibor . The writer Dov Freiberg was also a member of the group .

After the war, Serchuk helped find escaped Nazi war criminals in Europe and served as a witness in the Nuremberg trials. He then returned to Poland to emigrate to Israel, but was initially rejected there. In 1950 he received a passport and went to Israel . As soon as he arrived in Israel, he was drafted into the army as a soldier . After serving, he married and settled in Yad Eliyahu near Tel Aviv .

Over the years Serchuk went back to Europe several times to testify against Nazi war criminals. In the trial of Oberscharführer Hugo Raschendorfer , he was the only witness for the prosecution. Raschendorfer was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Serchuk received a special award from the Israeli Police's Nazi Crimes Investigation Department. In 1967, Levi Eshkol , the then Prime Minister of Israel, presented him with the Fighters against Nazis medal . In 1968 he also received the Fighters Medal .

Serchuk died in Tel Aviv in 1993 at the age of 74. He left behind his wife, nine children and more than a hundred grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

See also

  • Dov Freiberg : To Survive Sobibor. Gefen Publishing, Jerusalem and New York 2007, ISBN 978-965-229-388-6 .
  • Dov Freiberg: A Journey To The Past With Dekel Shibolim . Ramla 1993.
  • Dov Freiberg: A Man as Any Other . Ramla 1996.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Serchuk, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Serchuk, Yozhik
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish resistance fighter in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH 1919
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1993
Place of death Tel Aviv