Jack Waksal

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Jack Waksal was born Yitzhak Waksal on 15 September 1924 in Jedlińsk, Poland, into a Jewish family with one brother and two sisters. His father was a shochet, a Jewish ritual slaughterer. Following the German invasion in September 1939, his family endured persecution and confinement in the Jedlińsk ghetto, followed by deportation to the Kruszyna forced-labour camp.

During his imprisonment, Jack narrowly escaped execution beside a mass grave, struggling with a guard before fleeing into the forest. He was later imprisoned again and forced to work in military labour camps and ammunition production, including at Pionki. His parents and both sisters were murdered during the Holocaust.

In 1944, Jack escaped from Pionki with a small group of prisoners and survived in the surrounding forests, searching for food while avoiding German patrols. His brother, Yechiel, was shot shortly before liberation, leaving Jack the sole survivor of his immediate family. Soviet troops liberated him on 15 January 1945—a date he later regarded as a second birthday.

After the war, Jack reunited with Sabina, an Auschwitz survivor from his hometown. They married in Ravensburg, Germany, on 28 April 1946, and emigrated to the United States in 1950, settling in Dayton, Ohio, where he established a scrap-metal business and raised three children. Later settling in Bal Harbour, near Miami Beach, he became active in Holocaust education.