The complete and extraordinary story of police officer Yaakov Biskowitz was never fully revealed until now. He embodied heroism both as a Holocaust survivor from the Sobibor camp in Poland and as an Israeli police officer who received a commendation for saving a human life.

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.

On October 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 stands out as 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.

In 1947, he boarded an immigrant ship bound for Palestine that the British intercepted and diverted to Cyprus. Two years later, he immigrated to Israel 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 October 7 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."

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Personal identification tags bearing the names of four Jewish children who were deported to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland have recently been retrieved in an archaeological excavation at the site.

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The metal tags, worn around the neck, carry the names of young Dutch Jews Lea Judith De La Penha, Deddie Zak, Annie Kapper and David Juda Van der Velde, all from Amsterdam, who ranged in age from five to 11.

Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Yoram Haimi, who ran the dig in conjunction with colleagues from Poland and the Netherlands, said that as far as he knew, ID tags bearing the names of children had been found only at Sobibor.

Haimi said that it is likely that the tags, which also note the children's birthdates and hometown, were prepared by their parents.

"They probably wanted to make sure they could find their loved ones. The metal tags allow us to attach faces and stories to the names [of the murdered Jews]."

To find out more about the children who wore the tags, researchers reached out to the memorial center at the Westerbork transit camp.

"I've been digging at Sobibor for 10 years. This was the most difficult day. We called the center and gave them the names. They sent pictures of young, smiling kids to our phones. The hardest thing is to hear that one of the kids who tag you're holding in our hand arrived at Sobibor on a train full of children ages four to eight, who were sent here to die alone," Haimi said.

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Historians in Germany have released previously unseen photos of the Nazi Sobibor death camp, including what they believe are images of John Demjanjuk, who was sentenced in 2011 for his role in the killing of about 28,000 people there.

"This claim is unfounded," his son John Jr. told Israel Hayom, adding this is was "an attempt at creating sensationalist fake news."

He added that the new photos "are a fascinating artifact with great historical importance for the Holocaust and the crimes carried out at Sobibor, and may even clear my father if they are examined forensically."

Ukraine-born Demjanjuk, who had been No. 1 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of "Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals", was deported to Germany from the United States in 2009, where he had spent much of his life as a car worker, to face trial.

The photos, described by historian Martin Cueppers as a representing a "quantum leap in the visual record on the Holocaust in occupied Poland", had belonged to Johann Niemann, once deputy commandant of Sobibor.

Between March 1942 and November 1943, some 1.8 million Jews were murdered as part of a Nazi scheme called "Aktion Reinhard", mostly at the extermination camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Few photos of Sobibor, which was razed before the end of World War Two, have survived so the pictures offer new insight into how the camp worked and into the individuals involved.

"It was a breathtaking experience for me to see these pictures of Sobibor," said Jetje Manheim, 72, from the Netherlands whose grandparents were murdered at the camp where Jews were killed with exhaust fumes in gas chambers.

"For the first time I saw what my grandparents glimpsed at the end of their exhausting 72-hour train journey. On that day, their lives ended," she said at the presentation, at a museum on the site of the former SS and Gestapo headquarters in Berlin.

The newly discovered photos, made available by Niemann's descendants, have helped keep alive the memory of her relatives.

Some pictures showed Niemann himself, including one of him posing on a horse on the ramp where deportation trains arrived.

Others are of Trawnikis, non-Germans enlisted to work at the camp, often as guards. Two prints probably show Demjanjuk who was transported to Sobibor in March 1943, said Cueppers.

The historians approached police to help them identify Demjanjuk. "The conclusion that it is probably John Demjanjuk was a combination of the most modern police methods and historic research," said Cueppers.

Demjanjuk was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of about 28,000 Jews at Sobibor although he denied he was there.

He died in 2012 but the landmark verdict in Germany opened the way to more trials as it allowed a conviction on the grounds that presence in a camp alone was sufficient evidence of guilt.

Sobibor was razed after a prisoner uprising in October 1943 in which Niemann was killed.

The collection has been handed over to the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

His son John Jr. issued the following statement: "Regarding the latest reports out of Germany claiming newly discovered photos, it is a baseless theory to say any may prove my father was in Sobibor. The portion of the story relating to the Demjanjuk case is a sensational fake news attempt to sell more books. During the Israeli lower court proceedings in 1987, the defense produced previously concealed FBI reports of investigation and the findings of Donald J Ortner of the Smithsonian Institution both of which specifically cast doubt on the Trawniki picture being that of my father. Therefore, any that claim similarity to the Trawniki photo cannot credibly be my father. The new photos in their entirety are an exciting find and certainly of significant historical value regarding the Holocaust and the crimes committed at Sobibor, but they are not proof of my father being in Sobibor and may even exculpate him once forensically examined. Further, it's shameful for Germans to continue generally blaming Ukrainian POWs for the crimes of the Germans. Historical evidence has proven that many captured Soviet POWs were coerced to serve under a threat of death if they were not one of the over a million murdered in German POW camps."

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Shamgar joined Israel's highest court in 1975 and became chief justice eight years later. He retired in 1995.

He was known for his "firm stance" in favor of freedom of speech, according to a short biography released by the court.

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Shamgar "had an important role in shaping the foundation of Israeli jurisprudence, including legal policy in Judea and Samaria," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

His tenure on the Supreme Court consisted of overturning the conviction of John Demjanjuk, a Nazi guard at the Sobibor death camp, who was facing capital punishment for crimes against humanity as a Treblinka death camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible."

The reversal was based on new evidence that cast uncertainty over the identity of "Ivan the Terrible."

He also led the committee that investigated the lapses revealed in the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Shamgar was born in Poland in 1925 and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1939.

Five years later, he was arrested by the British for his role in the Irgun and was sent to a prison in Eritrea, where he studied law through the University of London's program. After his release, he completed studies in history and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Shamgar had three children with his wife Geula, who died in 1983. After her death, he married Michal Rubinstein, a retired judge who served as vice president of the Tel Aviv District Court.

"We mourn the loss of one of Israel's greatest jurists who served as President of the Supreme Court for 12 of his 20 years as a justice," said the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in a statement. "He earned universal respect and admiration. He addressed the Conference of Presidents both in Israel and on his visits to the United States. We extend our condolences to his family."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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In 1940, at age 18, Rosenfeld enlisted in the Soviet army. While he was fighting the Nazis, his entire family was murdered and buried in a mass grave near the Ukrainian village where they had lived.

In 1941 Rosenfeld was taken captive by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp in Minsk. In 1943, the camp at Minsk was dismantled and the prisoners were sent to the death camps at Majdanek and Sobibor in Poland.

On Oct. 14, 1943, Jewish laborers at the camp shot and killed 11 SS officers and three Nazi prison guards. After the uprising, 300 prisoners escaped the camps and fled to the surrounding forest. Only 50 survived.

With the help of friends, Rosenfeld escaped the forest and was able to continue fighting the Nazis. When the war was over, Rosenfeld returned to his native Ukraine, where he married and started a family. In 1990, he made aliyah to Israel.

Between April 1942 and October 1943, some 250,000 Jews met their deaths at Sobibor. The Germans razed the camp at the end of 1943 and planted a forest to help obscure their genocidal acts.

Chairman of the Jewish Agency Isaac Herzog expressed "great sadness" at the news of Rosenfeld's passing.

"Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, he became a hero. Semyon fought the Nazis as a member of the Soviet Army and was later sent to the Sobibor death camp as a prisoner of war. There, he saw death daily until the famous uprising.

"We have an obligation to remember and pass on to future generations the story of Semyon Rosenfeld's life and heroism, as well as that of everyone of his generation, of whom fewer and fewer remain," Herzog said.

Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said, "Even when Semyon was taken prisoner and, because he was Jewish, sent to the Sobibor death camp, he took part in an uprising that today still serves as a symbol of Jewish heroism. Only a few survived the uprising and escape from Sobibor, and now that the last eyewitnesses are gone, the responsibility to tell the story of their heroism falls on us. We are committed to continuing our commemorative activity for the sake of the victims, the survivors, and humanity as a whole."

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The plaques were unearthed during excavations by Israel Antiques Authority archaeologist Yoram Haimi, his Polish colleague Wojciech Mazurek and Dutch archaeologist Ivar Schute.

Haimi, who has two relatives that perished in the Holocaust, told Israel Hayom the nameplates were an exciting find "because there is clearly a human story here."

One of the names that appear on the plaques is M. Nunes Vaz. Extensive research by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial pointed to two different names: Marcus Nunes Vaz and Meijer Nunes Vaz. According to Dutch Holocaust memorial books where those names appear, Marcus was born in Amsterdam on May 19, 1899. He was murdered at Sobibor on June 4, 1943. Meijer was also born in Amsterdam, but on Oct. 29, 1878. He, too, was murdered on June 4, 1943. According to Yad Vashem, the name Vaz is Portuguese in origin. The organization further noted that the nameplate had likely been installed on a mailbox outside the family's home.

According to Haimi, the discovery of the nameplate "is proof the Jews that were brought to Sobibor thought they were coming to a place where they would begin new lives. It illustrates their innocence and the Nazi fraud, which led Jews to believe they were moving to a new place of residence. Jews therefore took their plaques with their names with them."

Haimi said he and his partners plan to track down the surviving relatives of the families whose nameplates they discovered, "so that they might hold a memorial ceremony for their relatives who were murdered at Sobibor."

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