Jan Komski

Jan Baraś-Komski (February 3, 1915, Bircza, Przemyśl County, Poland – July 20, 2002, Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.) was a Polish painter. He studied painting, anatomy, and art history at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts.

During World War II, he worked in the resistance movement. In 1940 he fled Poland and headed toward France to join Sikorski's Army that was being formed there. However, he was arrested at the border of Czechoslovakia and imprisoned in Nowy Sącz and Tarnów before being sent to Auschwitz I in the first prisoner transport to that concentration camp. He was given prisoner number 564 under the name Jon Baraś, due to the forged identification papers he was carrying when arrested.

On December 29, 1942, he escaped Auschwitz I with three other prisoners: Mieczysław Januszewski, Bolesław Kuczbara, and Otto Küsel.

He was featured alongside fellow concentration camp survivors and artists Dinah Gottliebova and Felix Nussbaum in the 1999 documentary film Eyewitness, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject.