Militaryיוסף סרצ'וק

Joseph Serchuk

Joseph Serchuk was the leader of a Jewish partisan unit in the Lublin area of occupied Poland during the Holocaust, who later testified at trials of Nazis.

1919 to 1993Leading Jewish partisans near LublinEscape from SobiborTestimony at Nazi war crimes trials

Died: 6 November 1993, Tel Aviv
Occupation: partisan
Wars: World War II

Joseph Serchuk was born in 1919 in Chełm

Joseph Serchuk was born in Chełm in 1919. After the German occupation, he and his brother David were sent to forced labor. In 1941 his father and other relatives were killed in the ghetto.

The brothers were taken to Sobibor extermination camp. After one day there, they fled to a nearby forest. With other escapees, Serchuk formed the core of a partisan group that took in Jews who fled nearby ghettos and Sobibor.

After the war, he helped locate fleeing Nazi war criminals in Europe and was a witness at the Nuremberg Trials. In 1950 he received a passport and moved to Israel, where he was drafted into the army.

After his service he married, settled in Yad Eliyahu in Tel Aviv and opened a business. He traveled to Europe several times to testify against former Nazis, including Hugo Raschendorfer, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

He received the Fighters against Nazis Medal in 1967 and the State Fighters Medal in 1968. He died in Tel Aviv in 1993.