Mordechaï Podchlebnik

Mordechaï Podchlebnik or Michał Podchlebnik (born in 1907, and residing in Koło) was a Polish Jew who survived for nearly two weeks as work detail at the Chełmno extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II. He was one of three (or more) prisoners who escaped into the surrounding forest from the burial Sonderkommando. Podchlebnik became a key witnesses at the Chełmno Trials of the former SS men from the SS Special Detachment Kulmhof in 1945. Decades later, he was interviewed for the controversial documentary film Shoah. He managed to survive the Holocaust, and in 1961 gave testimony at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. He is sometimes known by the Polish equivalent of his first name, Michal. He was born to a family of Jacob Podchlebnik and Sosia nee Widawska from Koło, and witnessed the deportation of his father, mother, sister with her five children, and brother with his own wife and three children.