Adam Czerniaków (30 November 1880 – 23 July 1942)[1] was a Polish engineer and senator who was head of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council (Judenrat) during World War II.

He committed suicide on 23 July 1942 by swallowing a cyanide pill, a day after the commencement of mass extermination of Jews known as the Grossaktion Warsaw.

Over the course of the day Czerniaków obtained exemptions for a handful of individuals, including sanitation workers, husbands of women working in factories, and some vocational students.

The orders stated that deportations would begin immediately at the rate of 6,000 people per day, to be supplied by the Jewish Council and the Ghetto Police.

The theatre company Voices of the Holocaust toured England during 2013–14 with the play Fragile Fire based on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising which featured scenes depicting Czerniaków.

The play depicted Czerniaków as a conflicted character, torn between the need to ameliorate the worst excesses of the Nazis and the danger of being manipulated into becoming a collaborator.

82 is a half-hour classical music work composed in 1986 and scored for full orchestra and a narrator, who reads selected diary entries.