new life - Auschwitz

Transcription

I SSN 1899- 4407
PEOPLE
CULTURE
OŚWIĘCIM
HISTORY
“NEW LIFE”—EXHIBITION
AT THE JEWISH CENTER
RETREAT
“AT THE DOORSTEP
OF AUSCHWITZ”
OTTO KÜSEL
—PRISONER NO. 2
“HISTORY IN BIOGRAPHY”
—ZOFIA ŁYŚ
no. 5
May 2009
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 5, May 2009
EDITORIAL BOARD:
EDITORIAL
Oś—Oświęcim, People,
History, Culture magazine
A few dozen Oświęcim residents
who left their hometown at different
times and for different reasons are
still living in Israel. They began new
lives in the new land. A New Life is
also the title of an exhibition that can
be seen at the Jewish Center, and we
warmly recommend it. These are 19
personal stories of former Oświęcim
residents—extraordinary stories of
victory, the will to live, the longing
to survive and to bring about the rebirth of the Jewish nation after the
catastrophe.
Editor:
Paweł Sawicki
Editorial secretary:
Agnieszka Juskowiak
Editorial board:
Bartosz Bartyzel
Jarek Mensfelt
Bogdan Owsiany
Jadwiga Pinderska-Lech
Leszek Szuster
Artur Szyndler
Columnist:
Mirosław Ganobis
Design and layout:
Agnieszka Matuła, Grafikon
Translations:
William Brand
Proofreading:
Beata Kłos
Cover:
Olga Chrapek
Photographer:
Tomasz Mól
We are publishing several of them in
Oś, and one of the beautiful photographs taken during the work on the
exhibition graces our cover. The hero
of one of the articles in the May issue
of Oś is Auschwitz prisoner number
2, Otto Küsel, on the one-hundredth
anniversary of his birth. In the memories of survivors, most of those first
30 German common-criminal prisoners are written in letters of blood.
Otto, however, was a wonderful exception. After the war, his Polish fellow-prisoners even applied for hon-
orary citizenship for him. Monika
Bernacka recalls his story.
Additionally, you will find the second part of the story by former prisoner Czesław Arkuszyński in Oś,
along with an interview with Dr. Igor
Bartosik about his book on Henryk
Mandelbaum, a report on a retreat at
the Center for Dialogue and Prayer,
and a text about a Polish-German
seminar focusing on Zofia Łyś.
Paweł Sawicki
Editor-in-chief
[email protected]
A GALLERY
OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Before the first day of May in the 1950s,
our city, like all cities, drowned in red,
in the flashing of holiday illumination,
and in official splendor and pomp. The
amusement of the crowd seemed authentic, although many people marched
in those years under the threat of punishment and repression. In the run-up
to the “May holiday” in our town for
PUBLISHER:
several years, a swath of white material
intended to serve as a screen hung on
the wall of a building on Kościuszko
Square, and a film was shown from
a truck-mounted projector—usually a
color “cloak-and-dagger” production.
The visual quality was poor and the
sound hopeless, but there was no shortage of “film fans.” The authorities of the
day provided trouble-free mass entertainment—unlike the nearby “Leader”
movie theater, where managing to buy
a ticket often bordered on the miraculous, and the windows were in danger
of shattering and the walls collapsing
under the pressure of the entertainment-starved masses!
Andrzej Winogrodzki
Auschwitz-Birkenau
State Museum
www.auschwitz.org.pl
PARTNERS:
Jewish
Center
www.ajcf.pl
Center for Dialogue
and Prayer
Foundation
www.centrum-dialogu.oswiecim.pl
International Youth
Meeting Center
www.mdsm.pl
IN COOPERATION
WITH:
Kasztelania
www.kasztelania.pl
State Higher
Vocational School
in Oświęcim
Editorial address:
„Oś – Oświęcim, Ludzie,
Historia, Kultura”
Państwowe Muzeum
Auschwitz-Birkenau
ul. Więźniów Oświęcimia 20
32-603 Oświęcim
e-mail: [email protected]
www.kasztelania.pl
www.pwsz-oswiecim.pl
Celebrations of the anniversary of the May 3rd Constitution. Photograph from the collection “A Gallery of the 20th Century”
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Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
TO FIND SOMETHING POSITIVE IN EVERYONE
rangements four months
earlier to meet with
a group, he would come
even if he had a fever.
He once even begged for
a hospital pass, in order
to make a prearranged
meeting. Beyond this,
he had a great understanding for people—he
tried to find something
positive in everyone. He
never got into conflicts,
which he felt were not
in any way needed. He
tried to find a common
language with everyone.
He made every effort so
that people lived with
each other as best they
could. “Why is it that
people cannot be kind
to each other and were
unable to smile?” he
would ask. I admired in
him the ability to reconcile himself to the great
tragedy that befell him;
after all, he lost his whole
family and himself was
mentally damaged. The
Sonderkommando
was
a monstrous shock. “ One
must not live in the past.
One should remember
it, but not live it.” Those
were his words. For him,
the only sense in going to
the former camp was to
safeguard the memory
of those who died there,
so that their deaths were
not in vain. Henryk declared himself an unbeliever, but there was no
fear of death in him. This
I also found fascinating:
that a man who survived
all of this did not look for
any explanation. He had
come to terms with it.
Until the very end.
And was it that way to
the very end?
Yes. He was not at odds
with the fact that man
passes on. He enjoyed
everything that he could.
In every situation in life,
he sought something joyful. This was often funny,
since people who came
to meet a former prisoner imagined someone
bitter, but instead saw
a man bursting with life,
loving humanity and the
world, saying that life
is the most miraculous
thing in the world.
Who came up with the
idea of making a book
out of all these conversations?
One could say that Henryk initiated it. Very often, the young people
photo: Private archive
I
Am From the Auschwitz Crematorium is a book by Igor Bartosik and Adam Willim—an in-depth interview with
Henryk Mandelbaum, a former Auschwitz prisoner and member of the Sonderkommando—the special group of
prisoners forced by the Nazis to service the machinery of mass killing.
Henryk Mandelbaum and Igor Bartosik
The Henryk Mandelbaum
whom I got to know thanks
to this interview is a man
of strong character, capable
and intelligent, sensitive to
human wrong and—despite
all his experiences—he has
an optimistic view of the
world and people.
The editing of the book
was completed in April
of 2008, two months before Mr. Mandelbaum’s
death. This book is a
summary of an important part of your life.
How did your friendship with Henryk Mandelbaum begin?
Igor Bartosik: I learned of
Henryk from documentary films and press articles.
I knew, that such a person existed, I knew what
he looked like, where he
lived; however, I did not
know at that time what
kind of person he was.
I very much wanted to
meet him, since my M.A.
thesis was devoted to
the Sonderkommando, but
I was too bashful. I could
not imagine myself going
up to his front gate, ringing and saying: I would
like to meet you. This
was a person so close to
all these matters, and all
of a sudden I wanted to
meet him. I lacked the
gumption. When I got
to the Museum’s Collections
Department,
the occasion arose quite
quickly—an interview
had to be made with him.
That sunny September
day is one I will always
remember, because it
was my birthday. It was
1997. I rang the doorbell
and was invited into the
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room. I was very tense.
I tried to ask my questions, which were needed
for the report, but Henryk, who was forthright
and relaxed, slapped
me on the knee and
said: “Please, my young
friend do not be nervous.
I will not harm you and,
if you like, I can tell you
my life’s story”. I remember that, the whole time,
I was conscious of the
fact that those hands,
those eyes, this man had
been right in the middle
of it all. This was not read
about, heard, or seen at
a movie theatre. He was
in the Sonderkommando.
I was already then fascinated by Henryk Mandelbaum, and I wanted
to maintain this contact.
And he said: “It’s good
that you’re here. Come,
as long as there is time.
There will come a day,
when you will want to
ask, but the professor
will be gone.” That is
how our talks started.
But the report went beyond talk of Sonderkommando history.
After some time and
many meetings a certain bond grew between
us. For example, I still
smoked cigarettes then.
He never told me outright that I was doing
wrong. He only said:
“I also smoked once, but
one day I thought that
a man must be free. He
shouldn’t be ruled either
by cigarettes, vodka, or
women.” I am free. I gave
up smoking.
When did you begin to
see him as other than
just a former prisoner or
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member of Sonderkommando?
It took two to three years.
I already knew his history, of course not all of
it, because right up to
the last months something new was always
revealed. He very often
spoke of his experiences,
but to get down to the
details was very difficult.
He had a photographic
memory, but did not
know the complete historical context. His interlocutor had to possess
factual knowledge pertaining to the Sonderkommando. I tried at first to
check how much he still
remembered, and only
later tried to guide him
into more details. Another matter is that he
was incredibly specific.
He was unable to embellish or confabulate—a
precise question brought
a precise answer. It was a
raw and rough memory.
He seldom gave exact
names, so as not to incriminate any particular
person. I am speaking, at
least, of the person who
informed the Germans
where he was hiding. He
knew the name well, but
never revealed it. He had
a great strength of forgiveness, and of reconciling himself to what had
happened.
What was it that attracted you to him?
He was, above all, an incredibly courageous person. Righteous, brave,
competent, truthful; one
can list many more of
these adjectives and give
quite an ordinary example; if he had made ar-
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that visited him would
ask him after the meeting
if they could find his story in some book. When
Adam Willim and I we
were already working on
the text, he encouraged
us to finish as quickly as
possible. We had a certain problem, since at the
outset it was to be a classical, chronological biography—birth, wartime,
ghetto, Auschwitz, postwar, as well as Henryk’s
thoughts on various subjects. Later, however, we
decided to divide it into
chapters by subject matter. We did not know,
however, what to do with
all the philosophical deliberations on contemporary man, the world, religion etc. In the end, they
formed their own postscript. I believe that this
is valuable, because we
dared to pose questions
on faith, death and what
is most important in life.
At some moment I felt, in
truth, that I did not want
to finish this book. It always seemed that there
was so much yet to do, to
ask. However, when we
noticed that Henryk was
beginning to fade, we did
the final editing and he
reviewed the entire text.
A month and a half later,
Henryk
Mandelbaum
died.
Interviewed by Pawel Sawicki
REMAINING
ALOOF IS
UNACCEPTABLE
T
In the guest book, the President of India wrote: “In a
place like this, words fail. My
head bows in prayers for the
peace of souls of countless
men and women, old and
young alike and the children
who were tortured with hard
labor and then gassed to
death at these camps. May
this be a chilling reminder
that such crimes of genocide
shall never go unpunished.”
Prime Minister Brown announced that his country is
joining the project to maintain the grounds and buildings of the former Nazi German concentration and death
camp Auschwitz-Birkenau
through the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. Founded
by Władysław Bartoszewski,
photo: Tomasz Pielesz
wo foreign politicians visited the Auschwitz Memorial in late April. The President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil,
toured the site on April 26. Two days later,
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited.
the Foundation has already
been registered and begun
operating. Its task is to raise
€120 million for a Perpetual
Fund whose annual interest
income of €4-5 million will
make it possible to plan and
systematically carry out essential conservation work.
Support has already been
pledged by Germany, France,
and the Czech Republic as
well. Positive reactions and
messages are coming in from
many other countries. Speaking about the Nazis, who
planned to remove all evidence of the crime at the end
of the war, Władysław Bartoszewski said that “We will
rescue from oblivion what
they intended to destroy.”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown with his wife, Sarah
THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER’S MESSAGE
IN THE MUSEUM VISITORS’ BOOK
What I have seen this afternoon is a harrowing testament to the murder of so many
who suffered here the extremes of terror. What happened here is a shared human story
—a perpetual reminder of all the darkness of which the world is capable, but also
a story of what the world can endure and survive. That is why our children and grandchildren must learn about this terrible place, and so become able to share the grief and
shame of mankind’s greatest evil, and also share the hope that comes from our ability
to choose, our ability to act justly. As the book of Deuteronomy tells us: “Justice, justice
shall you pursue.”
As Elie Wiesel wrote: “Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty
to reject despair.” The British people reject despair. We say with one voice that there is no
place for such hate in our world. In this place of desolation I reaffirm my belief that we all
have a duty—each and every one of us — not to stand by, but to stand up against discrimination and prejudice. As we remember the worst of our past, we must each commit ourselves
to serve the best of our future.
Gordon Brown, April 28, 2009
Paweł Sawicki
SHOES AND BREAD—AND SOUP (PART 2)
D
o you know what it’s like to starve to death? Your legs, arms, and face swell up. My colleagues are buried in
two mass graves at the cemetery there, where I was imprisoned for five whole months. I avoided working
underground. I worked as a quality checker in the building on the surface.
My foreman in that building was a German, a civilian
named Hahmann. It took
us a couple of weeks before
we trusted each other. He
once asked me if it was true
that Jews were murdered
on a mass scale with gas at
Auschwitz. I was petrified.
I thought it was a provocation.
After a moment’s thought,
I answered in the affirmative.
He turned white as a sheet.
He walked away from me
without saying a word.
boots that I had “organized”
while I was still in Auschwitz. Still, I was constantly
starving to death. Permanently. Night and day.
I wanted to sell my boots for
bread. There were no takers.
No one had bread.
Five kilometers from the
camp, I learned, there was a
disinfection and pest control
post, where civilians worked.
Russians. To get there, you
had to have lice. There was
a great shortage of lice here.
I offered my boots to the
Russians for bread or sugar. They had neither. They
promised me two bottles of
vodka. What kind of vodka?
Nu, kak skazats—liker!
I had no choice. I was standing naked in the showers.
I was a skeleton in human
skin. My clothes and blanket had gone for delousing.
I asked the Russians to give
me any old shoes, since it
was snowing outside and
minus six Celsius. They
bought me an old pair of
army boots—with no soles.
I put them on over some
modernized footcloths and
used the shoestrings to tie
them to my feet. After I got
my clothes back, just before
marching to camp, they
tossed me two lemonade
bottles with rubber stoppers, filled with some kind
of liquid.
I stuffed them inside my
waistband, pulled the blanket over my head, and returned to the lager under SS
escort. I expected a search at
the gate. I was right. However, I managed to slip the bottles unobserved to a friend
standing nearby.
From then on, I would find
two thin slices of bread
smeared with lard or liverwurst in the tool drawer of
my workbench every day.
My real treasure was on my
feet: a pair of lovely, soft ski
In the end, I bought a louse
form someone for half a portion of bread, and they took
me for delousing on the last
Sunday of February 1945.
I was gambling everything
on a single roll of the dice!
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photo: A-BSM
My real treasure was on my feet:
a pair of lovely, soft ski boots that I had
“organized” while I was still in Auschwitz.
Still, I was constantly starving to death.
Permanently. Night and day.
I wanted to sell my boots for bread. There
were no takers. No one had bread.
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Striped uniform and prisoners’ clogs
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Czesław Arkuszyński
ditches, the SS were killing
off all of those who had too
little strength to go on.
Nine of us came from the
same town and we stuck
together. An older SS man
came up to us and informed
us in Polish (he was from Bydgoszcz) of how far we were
from the Soviet lines. At one
I was completely exhausted. I wanted to stay there so that they
would finish me off. My friends would not allow it. My situation
was growing hopeless, since I had developed a horrible case
of diarrhea (camp Durchfall). My clothes and those wooden shoes
were badly soiled. The Germans referred to such a prisoner
as a “Drecksack.” I wanted them to shoot me.
with vegetables. Bread, of
course, was the most valuable. When the baker Hoffmann climbed a ladder to
take two loaves of the meticulously counted bread down
from the shelf and laid them
out on the clean sacks on
the cart, the prisoner standing beside him to take the
bread (usually me) had to
whisk an additional loaf off
the bottom shelf and throw
Badges with camp numbers
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it to the prisoner standing
next in line. All the additional loaves were our surplus.
The record, one fine day,
was thirteen loaves—one for
each of us, and two for the
Vorarbeiter. Need I say more?
Perhaps only that, today,
I cannot believe that Hoffman failed to notice that we
were stealing bread from
him. However, he did not
react because there were
two SS men standing nearby, and he knew that things
would end very badly for
us if he raised the alarm.
I could eat my fill and had
some left over to share with
my friends.
At the end of February,
a group of Dutch Jews joined
our group. They were crawling with lice. Within weeks,
the whole camp was infested. Incredibly lice-ridden.
Layers of lice covered the
blankets. They moved. My
job on the delivery cart lasted eleven days.
At 8:00 p.m. on April 12,
1945, a column of 2,000 prisoners was formed and left
Wansleben on the evacuation march. Eleven days
were too short a time to rescue a human organism from
the musulman state. I was
wearing a trenchcoat that
I had organized in Auschwitz, with heavy wooden
shoes, and I was dragging
a rolled-up, lice-infested
camp blanket. The column
marched by night along side
photo: Paweł Sawicki
time, since I swigged the
camp liquid straight from
the bowl. My camp luck was
coming back.
On Easter Monday (April 2,
1945) I decided to quit working underground. I reported
to Lagercapo Jup and explained my family situation.
I told him about my father
left behind in the hospital
“at Heinkel,” and my brother who was seriously ill in
the sick bay, and I asked him
for a new job assignment
that would give me a chance
to survive. Jup thought for a
long time about what to do
with me. Finally, he pointed
to a group of 11 prisoners
standing in the square. “Go
to work with them,” he said.
“It’s a good job.” Four Russians, four Frenchmen, and
three Poles. I was the fourth.
It was the best labor detail
in Wansleben am See. They
used handcarts to deliver
food to the camp and to
the SS; they also took food,
including dinner, to the
Neu-Mansfeld work site
two kilometers away. In
other words—Kanada! The
Kommando moved around
the town, where there were
cigarette and cigar butts lying on the street. Tobacco
brought a high price in the
camp. They brought bread
from Hoffmann’s bakery,
along with produce, sugar,
and other food items. I ate
as much as I could along the
way, and stiffed my pockets
photo: A-BSM
I was friendly with the
Lagerschutz, Rysiek from
Gałkówek¸ and I asked him
to find me a buyer for the
moonshine. He sold one
bottle to a functionary prisoner from the top of the hierarchy—for two loaves of
bread! Good Lord, that was
a fortune there!
No one wanted to buy the
other bottle. I couldn’t keep
it in my bed. So I invited six
friends to a banquet. Right
up against the ceiling, on the
fourth tier of the bunk where
I slept. The moonshine was
dreadful. It reeked of carbide.
We drank it. The next day,
I requisitioned some Holzschuhe (wooden clogs). Soon
afterwards, I was “turned
out of office” as a quality
checker and sent to work underground on orders from
the Gestapo. Unter Tage.
It was early March 1945.
The Germans knew what
kind of predicament they
were facing at the front.
My foreman, Hahmann, sent
me to Engelmann at the personnel office for a work assignment. Herr Engelmann
walked with a limp; he was
cheerful, and moved slowly
and majestically. He ordered
me to sit on a chair in the
corridor and wait. It was the
first time in two years that
a German called me “Herr.”
I waited. At 4 p.m., he handed me a small box full of
cards that I was supposed to
fill in at the mine, entering
various personal information on the prisoners working there. There were 8 or 10
blanks to fill in. Herr Engelmann told me to go down
the mineshaft on the last
elevator at around 11, and
come back on the first one
at 3:30, so that I could leave
the box at the office before 4.
He also told me to work so
that I’d have a job until the
end of the war. I replied in
German: “Jawohl!” A young
German woman leaving the
office to go home pointed at
a shelf full of files in binders. Behind the binders was
a china bowl of cold, good
soup from the German cafeteria. From that day on,
I always carried a spoon that
I had not used for a long
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roads in an unknown direction. We were convoyed by
a reinforced SS escort. We
did not realize that we were
heading for somewhere in
the north, between the eastern and western fronts.
At about three o’clock in the
morning, we were led into
a clay pit with 10-15 cm. of
water in it. I was so tired that
I lay down in that water, rested my head on my rolled-up
blanket, and fell asleep. An
hour later, I was awakened
by an exchange of gunfire
from various weaponry,
which I learned later was the
conclusion of an argument
among our SS escorts. They
were arguing over our lives.
Should they finish us off
right there in the clay pit, or
somewhat later? They called
us out to continue the march.
I discarded the soaked, lousy
blanket. We kept changing
our direction of march. We
were meandering. We heard
pistol shots from the tail of
the column. In the roadside
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moment, we were only five
kilometers from the Red
Army. The SS man gave us a
hunk of bread and reminded
us that he had always been
loyal to the Poles. “Yes, yes,”
we reassured him.
The gunshots at the tail of
the column grew more frequent. I marched and I fell
asleep. I woke up when
I fell over. I wanted to discard the wooden shoes, but
I feared cutting my feet on
the uneven road that was
gravel-covered in places.
I discarded the trenchcoat.
From dawn on April 13 to
5:00 a.m. on April 14, the
column moved without resting. It was dwindling. We
knew that several hundred
prisoners already lay shot in
the ditches.
We were herded into an
abandoned mill on the edge
of some city. After an hour,
they herded us out of that
mill to resume the march.
I was completely exhausted.
I wanted to stay there so that
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they would finish me off.
My friends would not allow
it. My situation was growing
hopeless, since I had developed a horrible case of diarrhea (camp Durchfall). My
clothes and those wooden
shoes were badly soiled. The
Germans referred to such
a prisoner as a “Drecksack.”
I wanted them to shoot me.
My friends took turns dragging me inertly along for 6
hours and preventing me
from sitting down in the
ditch. At 12:30 p.m., the
American army liberated us
in a field. We trudged to the
village of Hinsdorf. We started a bonfire to burn our liceinfested clothing, together
with the wooden shoes. The
mayor of the hamlet outfitted us with underwear, civilian clothing, and boots fit
for people.
I went to Wansleben am See
in 1997. There was a pile
of rubble where the “Kaliwerke” and our camp had
been. The Russians had
blown it all up. I visited the
two mass graves with 450
corpses of prisoners who
starved to death there. I was
a guest of the local commune.
I learned from a councilor
that the Nazis had shot 1,100
prisoners during the evacuation—in hardly more than 40
hours. That was close to our
estimates. I acquired a photograph of our prison camp.
Shoes and bread—and soup.
How frequently our lives depended on them!
(Czesław Arkuszyński)
Camp number Auschwitz
Concentration Camp – 131 603
Camp number Buchenwald
Concentration Camp – 96 285
International Youth Meeting Center
HISTORY IN BIOGRAPHY—ZOFIA ŁYŚ
B
efore long, there may not be any more occasions to talk with
a living witness of history who survived a concentration
camp; that is why, in order to take advantage of the still-existing chance, the idea arose to create a new film series titled: “History
in Biography,” as well as organizing a one-week seminar at which
Polish and Germany young people could meet with former prisoners with the aim of immortalizing the recollections of the victims’
tragedies and passing them on.
At the meeting with Zofia Łyś, I learned that sautéed cabbage tasted best sprinkled with sugar, and in case of a hole
in your pants, Zofia is eager to help with a needle and
thread. I also learned that, during her stay at the Birkenau
camp, she was one of the people, who dismantled the
houses of the displaced persons in Brzezinka. I remember,
how Zofia mentioned a pear tree that grew near one of
the ruined houses. It was summer and the prisoners could
secretly eat the fruit they picked. My grandmother at the
age of thirteen was sent to forced labor in the depths of
the Reich and her house in Brzezinka on Czernichowska
Street was razed; only an aged locust tree, walnut tree and
a roadside pear tree survived. Not long ago, Zofia moved
to Oświęcim. I hope that she will often be invited to the
IYMC. She tells stories that are worth knowing, because in
truth no book could take the place of another person.
photo: IYMC
Anna Marczak, Oświęcim
Zofia Łyś with the participants of the seminar
ZOFIA ŁYŚ
Née Bondyra, she was born on July 28, 1927 in the village of Mokre near Zamość. “Until the outbreak of the
war, I managed to finish four grades of high school. I was
arrested along with the whole family during the action
of displacing the Polish populace from the Zamość territories. Engaged in conspiratorial activities at the time
were my brother Tomasz, and sisters, Józefa and Stefania, who were couriers in one of the partisan groups.
The arrests came on the December 9, 1942. Our whole
village and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages
were arrested. All those arrested were taken to Zamość,
to a transit camp that was built there. Some of the people
brought there were sent to work in Germany and others to concentration camps. We stayed in Zamość for
two or three days. Our whole family was shipped to the
Auschwitz camp on December 13, 1942. I was assigned
to the Effektenkamer…” Zofia Łyś worked from April,
1942 on a farm in a small sub camp in Babice. She was
then deported to other camps: Natzweiler, Ravensbrück,
Berlin-Köpenick (she worked at the Siemens factory)
and Sachsenhausen. She was liberated during the Death
March from Sachsenhausen near Schwerin. Her parents
and brother were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her
sisters, Józefa and Stefania, survived the war.
life drama was the main
point of the meeting. The
starting point of the resulting
documentary film was the
individual biographies presented to the young people
in the context of Polish-Ger-
photo: IYMC
From April 1 to 7, Poles and
Germans working at the International Youth Meeting
Center in Auschwitz, designed together a screenplay
and made a documentary
film about Zofia Łyś, whose
man relations, which were
then joined to the history of
Zofia Łyś.
In the expulsion operation
in the Zamość region, Zofia
Łyś was arrested at the age
of 15, along with her parents,
brother, and two sisters. She
survived the AuschwitzBirkenau, Natzweiler, Ravensbrück, Berlin Köpenick, and
Sachsenhausen concentration
camps. Today she lives in
Oświęcim. We had the good
fortune to spend three days
with her at the Youth Meeting Center, where she told us
of her life.
The uniqueness of the seminar was based on the fact that
young people from Poland
and Germany had the occasion to jointly take up her
history. This allowed them
to look at the events from
another perspective, taking
responsibility together and
contributing to maintaining
in the collective social consciousness the fate of those
who survived the concentration camps, so that the
memory of the victims of the
tragedy will endure for future generations.
In November of 2008, the
first seminar in this series
was organized within the
framework modeled on the
art-space-memories project.
The main point was the
history of the life of Józef
Paczyński, who survived
Auschwitz, being forced to
work as the personal barber
to the camp’s commandant,
Rudolf Höss. Thanks to this,
an impressive documentary
film was made on the biography of a former prisoner.
Anna Meier
Translation: Hanna Jurczyk
Zofia Łyś and the seminar participants
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Being conscious of how ephemeral human knowledge is,
one should write down important experiences and share
them, since it enriches every participant in dialogue. The
seminar “History in Biography—Zofia Łyś” was an unmissable occasion for several generations to meet, discussing different ways of perceiving the world and expanding the perspective by looking at one’s own life history
thanks to confronting it with the biographies of others.
An eyewitness to history, Zofia Łyś, speaking candidly of
her painful war time memories, the perpetrated injustices
and the loss of loved ones, gave the project participants
a lesson in humanism and brotherly love. Her unpretentiousness and humility towards her own experiences are
living proof that, “you can destroy a man, but not defeat
him” (Hemingway). Even constantly observing cruelty,
destruction and violence, one can rescue in oneself an element of good and will to live. Meeting individuals who
can sit down at a table with Germans, even though earlier she never thought such a moment would ever come,
demonstrates that one must always have hope in life for
reconciliation. Therefore, one should be ready to shake
a hand extended to us.
Hanna Jurczyk, Toruń
Zofia emphasizes that she is today a normal grandmother, mother, neighbor, and friend, and that she lives so
as not to think of death. Thanks to this she has strength
that helps her in everyday life. In her memory there will
always remain, however, the moments that she lived
through. They have made an imprint on her memory that,
like the number tattooed on her left arm, will not disappear until death. In speaking to Zofia, making recordings
and pictures, we have already determined that she will
live forever and that the memory of the victims will not
disappear in the depths of the centuries.
Sławomir Koper, Żarnówka
Almost 67 years have passed since Zofia Łyś was, along
with her parents and three siblings, deported to Auschwitz. However, her personal recollection of these events,
which she told us of so calmly, seems to me to be very
much alive, vivid and in such detail that you quickly get
the impression that the concentration camps do not belong to the deep past. Despite her 81 years, she always
carries on a dialogue with us, gives answers, asks, sometimes is silent and wipes the tears away, when she speaks
of her mother who died in Auschwitz, and carefully observes us. She is patient during the strenuous setting up of
the cameras and she feels comfortable with young people.
The fact that we are a Polish-German group fills her in
its own way with pride. I also feel pride. Such seminars
as this project with Zofia Łyś, during which the Poles
and Germans deal openly and honestly with the past, are
a victory in understanding between nations, which enforces the 21st-century idea of a united Europe. Still, it surprises me and impresses me the way Zofia Łyś behaves;
she never speaks of hatred. One would think that hatred
is the natural effect after such horrific experiences. But she
never speaks of hatred of the Nazis, nor of the Germans
or the Soviets. Perhaps this is because she can still live in
Oświęcim and go on being a happy mother, grandmother,
and great grandmother.
Anne-Kathrin Topp, Bremen
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International Youth Meeting Center
THE GRASS COVERED
THE TRACES OF THE CRIME
O
photo: IYMC
n the April 2, we arrived at the bus station in Katowice, to start our trip to Germany for the International
Labor Camp in Bergen-Belsen. We were five—three journalism majors, a language major, and a mathematics major. Two things connected us: Thursday meetings at the International Youth Meeting Center
and a great interest in WWII history.
Participants of International Working Camp during anti-Nazi demonstration
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oners. The organizers asked
us to go inside. There were
around seventy of us from
different countries. It was a
harrowing experience—we
stood next to each other and
it was hot. It was easier for
us to imagine, how such a
transport looked and what
the prisoners must have felt.
In particular, we focused our
attention on Anne Frank,
a Jewish girl and prisoner
of the Bergen-Belsen camp.
After the takeover of power
by Hitler, she moved along
with her family to Amsterdam, where she wrote her
diary in hiding. Out of the
pages of her diary appears
a figure of a small, still immature who had to live in poverty and extreme conditions.
After being denounced by
a Dutch informer, on the
September 3, 1944, the whole
Frank family was transferred
from the transit camp, Westerbork, to Auschwitz (here
Anne’s mother perished),
and afterwards Anne and
her sister were transferred to
Bergen-Belsen. Anne Frank
died of typhus in February
or March of 1945, just before
the liberation by the British Army. The famous diary
of today was preserved by
a Dutch woman, Miep Gies,
who published it. It is an extraordinary document, since
it was written by a thirteenyear-old girl who was to become a victim of Nazi terror.
At Bergen-Belsen there is
a symbolic grave of Anne
and her sister Margot.
It was very interesting during the seminar to work in
groups. Each one of them
was different from the others in its scope and subject.
One group occupied itself by
cleaning up the forest near the
camp, where an exhibition
was to be set up on the “lost
transports”. The main task
of the Photography Group
was to preserve history in
pictures. The Contemporary
Group had one of the most
interesting assignments: they
photo: IYMC
After thirteen hours of
grueling travel we arrived
in Hannover, where a representative of the Anne Frank
House in Oldau was waiting
for us. We were to live there
for the ten-day seminar. The
organizers were the Anne
Frank House, Charyl Braun
and Horst Kroger.
The main aim of the seminar was to teach the history
of the Belsen-Bergen camp.
It was at first intended for
prisoners of war. Later it suddenly began to expand, and
in the end was divided into
sections: residential, neutral,
special and Hungarian. Bergen-Belsen was also a camp
to which prisoners evacuated from the death march
to other camps were sent.
The Commandant of BergenBelsen was Josef Kramer, an
SS physician, adjunct to Rudolf Höss at the Auschwitz
camp, later the commandant
of Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Fragments of his diary were
published in the book, Auschwitz Seen by the SS.
The former camp in BergenBelsen differs from Auschwitz. The terrain of the Memorial is much smaller; there
are no barracks there, blocks
or barbwire. It is surrounded
by a forest and an abundance
of greenery. It is hard to imagine what went on there.
Grass has covered up all traces of the atrocity. Already,
on one of the first days, we
were assigned a very interesting task. We were visiting the camp ramp, where
the
transports
stopped.
A cattle wagon stood on the
tracks—the same kind that
was used to transport pris-
discussed ways of combating Neo-Nazism. Strangely
enough, they had the opportunity to deal with the movement actively, since not far
from our house posters with
fascist contents were hung.
The first thing the members
of the group did was to paint
over the “illustrations” with
black paint, under cover of
night. The Road to Remembrance Group was busy renewing the rail line running
from the arrival ramp to the
camp itself. This is the path
that every newly arrived prisoner had to travel, without
exception. Aside from these
groups, there were teams of
actors and musicians to promote history through art.
The seminar allowed us to
get closer to other cultures.
We visited Celle, a city closely tied to the Nazi regime,
and Hamburg. On Easter
Sunday we all set out to an
Evangelical Church. What
is more, before each breakfast the representatives of
a given nation said prayers or
a blessing in their native language. In the evening there
was a summary of the day.
During them, we were able
to get to know each other
better and learn something
interesting about ourselves
and the country from which
our colleagues came. There
was a national evening, during which individual nations
presented themselves, and an
evening dedicated to South
Africa and Nelson Mandela
(his granddaughter took
part in the seminar). One of
the most interesting events
was our participation in an
anti Nazism demonstration.
We had earlier prepared the
Participants of International Working Camp
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appropriate banners, songs
and slogans. We went out on
the streets. It was incredible;
we stood on the street and
could protest against Nazism!
We felt a little like partisans.
Standing there, you could
feel the strength flowing from
our words. We were not even
very concerned with those
individuals who perhaps did
not understand what we said
and sang, or did not want to
understand.
The most difficult thing was
the farewell. Each of us received a piece of paper, on
which he could write whatever he wished. We could
leave it anywhere on the
grounds of the camp. Each
one of us went his own way.
We left our notes in the trees,
on the ground, on the symbolic graves, situated not far
from a small crematorium at
Bergen-Belsen. On some of
them, notes in Polish could
be found, dedicated to the
memory of the former prisoners of the camp, because
many at this camp were
Poles.
The seminar at Bergen-Belsen
was very important to us. We
not only broadened our historical knowledge, but also
had the occasion to meet incredible people and see interesting places. The experience
at Bergen will accompany us
for the rest of our lives. We
were also able to convince
ourselves as to the extensive
reach of Nazism; each one of
us was from a different country, which in a lesser or greater degree was touched by it.
Despite the difficult subject
of the seminar, we will miss
those people and the place.
Iga Bunalska
OTTO KÜSEL—GREEN TRIANGLE
(ON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH)
W
photo: A-BSM
ould anyone believe you if you told them that there once lived in this world a man who, despite the
fact that he is no longer alive, is nevertheless capable of changing your views on some issues and the
way you perceive other people? Three years ago, I would have answered that this is highly improbable. And yet, to my good fortune, I was wrong.
Postwar photograph
OTTO KÜSEL
Born in Berlin on May 16, 1909. Prisoner of Sachsenhausen.
Arrived in Auschwitz on May 20, 1940, along with 29 other German common-criminal prisoners who were later
referred to as “the founders of Auschwitz.” In the camp,
he wore a green triangle and the number 2. Until December 1942, he held the functionary position of kapo and was
Arbeitsdienst. He escaped from the camp on December
29, 1942, along with three Poles. After being caught, he
was re-imprisoned in Auschwitz. On February 8, 1944,
he was transferred to Flossenbürg, where he remained
until the end of the war. He died on November 17, 1984
in a small town in Bavaria. He was an exceptional man,
and a good one.
It all began when I had to
choose the subject for my
M.A. thesis. I had long been
interested in camp topics, so
my professor suggested that
I take up the subject of Otto
Küsel, a German criminal and
Auschwitz prisoner who was
a kapo. To this day I remember
reading the first account that
convinced me that Küsel was
no longer one out of thousands of prisoners for me,
and instead became someone
I felt close to. Here is that account: “Otto Küsel learned to
play our national anthem on
the violin and, to spite his pal,
a German kapo, he played it
over and over. As he was doing so, he told everyone that
he would stay in Poland after
the war.” Those two sentences
stirred such extreme emotions
in me that I knew the answer:
I would write about him.
Thanks to him and his story,
I understood several very
important things. In the
first place, Küsel’s attitude
proved to me that not every
German was blinded by the
Nazi propaganda, and not
every German was proud at
the time of belonging to the
“Aryan race.” I think that
gardless of the circumstances
in which I find myself. In such
difficult and cruel conditions,
he showed that it is possible
to remain human until the
end. However, the fact that
made the greatest impression
on me was something very
ordinary, but that nevertheless meant a great deal to
me. It was the date of Küsel’s
death. In the very same year
that Otto died, I came into the
world.
Before the war, Otto worked
as an office helper. His personal philosophy was: “People were created equal, but
they sometimes profit unequally from worldly goods.
Some have more than they
need, and others cannot make
ends meet. When the rich
man has what I lack, I will
take it myself, because I know
he will not give it to me voluntarily.” Unfortunately, it
was this very motto that led
to his being incarcerated in
one of the first concentration
camps in the Reich.
He was sent to Sachsenhausen
for numerous thefts that he
committed mainly in order to
give to the poor. He arrived in
Auschwitz in May 1940, as a
young man whose views, values, and dreams had already
been formed. He arrived for
a specific purpose: to become
a nameless instrument in the
hands of the leaders of the
Third Reich as they carried
out their criminal aims. No
one was interested in who
he was before he landed in
the camp. The only thing
that counted was who, or
rather what that man would
become as a small gear in
the criminal machine of evil.
However, Otto Küsel proved
that, despite the limitations
imposed on prisoners by that
pathological system, some alternative was possible. “The
first labor details began to be
formed when we were still in
the old Tobacco Monopoly
building. The Arbeitsdienst
us. We somehow managed
to communicate with him,
even though only a few of
us spoke German. At first, he
asked us what we were in for.
It was hard for him to believe
that we were innocent people who had been caught in
a street roundup or arrested at
He arrived for a specific purpose: to become
a nameless instrument in the hands of
the leaders of the Third Reich as they
carried out their criminal aims. No one was
interested in who he was before he landed in
the camp. The only thing that counted was
who, or rather what that man would become
as a small gear in the criminal machine of evil.
home in a crackdown. Küsel
promised to help and, thanks
to him, many prisoners did
indeed receive assignments
to good labor details,” wrote
Bronisław Cynkar.
Otto’s functionary post in the
camp gave him broad scope
for influencing the fate of the
prisoners under him. Here is
a fragment of a postwar article about Küsel, showing how
gallant he was. “This Berliner
bubbles with good humor and
has a gift for putting everyone
around him in a good mood.
When I asked him in the fall
of 1969 how it was that he had
no enemies, Küsel replied,
‘Obviously, I could not assign
everyone who asked me for
help to a good labor detail.
If I was forced to turn someone down, I told him, “Come
again!” In the end, it always
worked out. I gave new arrivals the bad assignments,
and transferred those who
had already worked there for
a while to better ones.’”
“Arbeitsdienst Otto Küsel was
always cheerful, smiling, and
helpful. He took us up into the
loft of the block, pulled away
the roofing tiles, and showed
us the vicinity of Oświęcim.
We sat on the rafters with
someone standing watch, and
then Otto began talking to us
Arbeitsdienst Otto Küsel was always cheerful, smiling,
and helpful. He took us up into the loft of the block,
pulled away the roofing tiles, and showed us the vicinity
of Oświęcim. We sat on the rafters with someone standing watch,
and then Otto began talking to us about how we shouldn’t
break down, and that the stay in the camp wouldn’t last long.
the most important thing I
learned from this exceptional
man is how to go through life
with my head held high, re-
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functionary post was filled by
Otto Küsel, prisoner number
2. He was friendly to us and
started conversations with
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what we had been arrested
for, and also whether we
were in touch with our families. Despite the fact that I had
only two meetings with him
the whole time I was there,
those meetings are what I remember best. They restored
my faith in humanity. I came
about how we shouldn’t break
down, and that the stay in the
camp wouldn’t last long. He
asked about our families and
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to believe that, even among
the Germans, who were particularly cruel to us, there
were individuals worthy of
the name ‘human being,’”
says Stanisław Białos.
In the camp, Otto spent most
of his time in the company of
Poles. When he learned that
three of them, close friends of
his, were planning to escape,
there was only one way he
could react. “I wouldn’t have
escaped, because I had a good
life in Auschwitz, after all. . .
. Poles from my labor detail
intended to escape. Mietek
was an officer, and he knew
that he would be shot sooner
or later. Functionaries from
the Politische Abteilung hunted down everyone they suspected of having held some
kind of post in the Polish
army. I had a choice: inform
on them, or escape with them.
If they had escaped me, no
one would have believed that
I had not observed their preparations. Then it would be my
turn. However, I did not want
to inform on them,” he said
after the war.
According to an account by
former prisoner Wilhelm
Brasse, the preparation for
the escape looked like this:
“Otto needed an identity
photo to use on some sort of
document. The only place in
the camp where such pictures
were taken was, of course,
the Erkennungsdienst photo
studio. When the prints were
ready, Otto took them and
a second escapere (Baraś) prepared them in the required
way—that is, he had to very
artfully brush into the photo
the SS uniform that Otto was
supposedly wearing.”
The four daredevils had to
plan their escape down to the
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where four men were waiting for us. One of them was
Andrzej Harat of Libiąż, the
brains behind the escape. We
walked from the bridge to
Libiąż in pairs, at intervals
of a kilometer, taking all cautionary measures because we
had to pass two German police outposts.
“It was afternoon when we
met up at the Harat house,
and then came dinner and we
posed together for a picture.
the SS. He was well known,
and he knew who was on
duty at that checkpoint.
“Near Cracow, they slept in
a barn. When he woke up early in the morning, Mietek and
Kuczbara were gone. They left
him alone, and all he had was
the address of a safe house in
Wilanów outside Warsaw,
and part of the money. His
friends took all the dollars,
about $4,800 in gold, and vanished. In that hopeless situa-
and two days later Oberscharführer Lachman and Dylewski
arrived from the Politische
Abteilung in Auschwitz and
transported him to the bunker in Auschwitz, to my cell.
He did not know who had betrayed him, but he suspected
Kuczbara—he had been safe
until that contact. He was
angry at Kuczbara. It wasn’t
about the money, but about
betrayal, and that was what
he always complained about.
Otto had been planning to escape for a long time, and saved up
for that purpose money and valuables that he received
in large part from the Sonderkommando from Mietek Morawa,
a prisoner from Cracow, through Izaak Wołkowicz
from the Sonderkommando, a Polish Jew who came from Będzin.
As we talked with our hosts,
we realized that, in the general haste, our camp documents
had been left behind in Broszkowice. A special messenger
delivered them that evening.
Later, they were sent to Warsaw.
“Our way from Libiąż to
Warsaw led across the border
of the General Government.
We set out for the border on
bicycles. We rode singly, at
long intervals, each of us with
a guide. In one village, in the
evening, we were ordered to
blend in with a crowd on its
way to church. That was how
we reached the border zone.
We crossed the border in the
open countryside at night,
to the accompaniment of an
exchange of gunfire that (as
we were later informed) was
started by the organization in
order to distract the Germans
and make it easier for us to
cross. On the other side of the
border, we said our farewells.
Kuczbara, now Janusz Sikorski, and Küsel went straight
to Warsaw by train. I never
saw them again.”
The archival records also contain an account by another
prisoner Edward Kiczmachowski who presents this
textbook escape by a quartet
of “camp friends” in a somewhat different light.
“After being made an Ehrenhaftling [honor prisoner], Otto
had been planning to escape
for a long time, and saved up
for that purpose money and
valuables that he received in
large part from the Sonderkommando from Mietek Morawa,
a prisoner from Cracow,
through Izaak Wołkowicz
from the Sonderkommando, a
Polish Jew who came from
Będzin. I personally gave Otto
two packages. Naturally, no
one knew about their planned
escape. They planned the escape together with Mietek
Januszewski and Kuczbara—
the camp dentist, who later
turned out to be a swine. Otto
drove them out of the camp
on a cart, in wardrobes, since
Otto was not checked at the
Postenkette [guard cordon] by
tion, he bought a fiddle with
a case and made his way to
Warsaw as a deaf-mute. He
found the safe house belonging to the professor, who was
a friend of Surzycki’s, and he
stayed there for about eight
months, until his arrest.
“The betrayal occurred because of a Polish woman
who was informed about his
situation. He asked her to
find Kuczbara, who was not
particularly concealing himself in Warsaw at the time,
spending time in nightclubs,
dressing like a German in
high-topped boots, a leather
coat, and a hat, so that he
looked like a Gestapo agent.
That, in short, is what the case
of Otto was like.”
“When the SS men addressed
him in German during the interrogation in the Political Department, [Otto] said that he
did not know that language,
and for this he was beaten
and jailed in the bunker,” recounts Erwin Olszówka.
Death awaited Otto after he
was captured and re-imprisoned in the camp. He was
perfectly well aware of this.
However, fate was watching
over him. The replacement of
the camp commandant saved
Küsel from death. The new
commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel, announced an am-
Death awaited Otto after he was captured
and re-imprisoned in the camp. He was
perfectly well aware of this. However,
fate was watching over him. The replacement
of the camp commandant saved Küsel
from death. The new commandant,
Arthur Liebehenschel, announced an
amnesty for the prisoners in the bunker.
Otto knew about his behavior in Warsaw through that
Polish woman. She found
Kuczbara in Warsaw and informed him of where Otto
was staying, and asked for
a meeting. Three days after
that incident, the Gestapo
arrested Otto and the family who were sheltering him,
nesty for the prisoners in the
bunker. On February 8, 1944,
Otto was transferred to the
camp in Flossenbürg. There,
too, he helped prisoners during the final evacuation death
march. The American army
liberated the Flossenbürg
camp on April 23, 1945.
The postwar fate of this re-
markable man was not well
documented. From fragmentary material and accounts,
we can draw certain conclusions. It is a fact that, through
the efforts of Polish Prime
Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz,
himself a former prisoner of
the camp, number 62933, and
thousands of other prisoners,
a motion was passed at the
founding meeting of the Union of Polish Political Prisoners to give Otto Küsel honorary Polish citizenship.
Former Auschwitz prisoner
August Kowalczyk told me
that Otto became the director
of the UNRRA in Vienna after
the war. There is also a great
deal of information about
Otto’s later life in an account
by Eugeniusz Niedojadło,
as printed in issue 30 of the
Bulletin of The Auschwitz
Preservation Society. The
correspondence quoted there
indicates that Otto married,
became the father of daughters, and lived to see his
granddaughters. The account
also indicates that he suffered
from asthma, which may have
been the cause of his death.
Despite the fact that only
short fragments of the correspondence were published, it
can be surmised that, near the
end of his life, at the age of 75,
Otto was contented with his
lot, happy, and, in a certain
sense, fulfilled. Eugeniusz
Niedojadło sent him eloquent
wishes in one of the letters
he wrote: “that your children
and grandchildren might
read about you, so that they
know that their father and
grandfather did many good
things in his life. Your nation
did much evil. You, on the
other hand, have nothing to
be ashamed of, and you need
not live with a feeling of guilt.
You are not an atheist. You
bore witness to love of one’s
neighbor without kneeling,
without praying, but by being
helpful wherever help was
needed urgently.”
Otto Küsel died on November 17, 1984.
Monika Bernacka
photo: A-BSM
smallest detail. They thought
of everything. One of them,
Jan Baraś-Komski, told about
how they pulled it off: “On
December 29, 1942, the escape
came to fruition. On that day,
Mietek and Otto went to the
head of the Landwirtschaft to
borrow a pair of horses and
a cart in exchange for two
office cabinets. They drove
back to the camp and loaded
four cabinets on the cart, and
delivered two of them to the
Landwirtschaft as part of the
bargain. Then they set out
for the pre-arranged meeting place. At the meeting
place, Kuczbara was already
dressed in an SS uniform, and
he looked dangerous.
“It was 10 o’clock when we
all set out through the Bauleitung, towards the gate. Otto
drove, with Mietek assisting
him. I sat behind them facing
backwards. Kuczbara—the
SS man—took a place on one
of the cabinets, at the far end
of the cart. Halfway to the
Bauleitung, we had to stop and
our whole plan threatened
to go disastrously wrong. In
front of us, 60 meters down
the road, Lagerführer Aumeier
appeared out of nowhere.
He stopped and was thinking about something… Then
we saw him move… as if he
intended to come our way…
then he stopped again… he
waved and turned back towards the camp, and our
cart sprinted like lightning
through the gate. Kuczbara
waved the exit pass (which
the Arbeitsführer had signed
the previous day), the barrier
went up, and in the twinkling
of an eye we were on the
public road along the Soła.
The cart flew along so that
we could get away from the
labor columns as quickly as
possible.
“Along the way, we had
to pass through the railroad crossing, and the barrier came down, as if in spite.
A train was coming, and
in the meantime, they had
spotted us from a labor gang
working nearby. The kapo and
several men began running in
our direction—a confrontation could have endangered
our escape—but fortunately
the barrier went up and we
bolted forward. Not long
afterwards, we came to the
village and found the right
farmhouse. In an instant, they
led the horses to the stable
and put the cart in the shed.
“We changed into civilian
clothing, threw the striped
camp uniforms and the SS
uniform down the well, and
went out onto the road. Once
again, things turned dangerous. The surveyors, with SS
[guards], were coming our
way. We had to linger in
a lane and wait. When they
had passed, we set out towards the Vistula bridge,
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December 29, 1942. Photo taken at the Harat house, soon after the escape of Küsel and his three companions (Poles).
From left: Mieczysław Januszewski, Jan Komski (Baraś at the camp), Otto Küsel and Bolesław Kuczbara.
Second from right: Andrzej Harat
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Jewish Center
A NEW LIFE
F
rom May 5, 2009, at the Jewish Center, one can see the much anticipated exhibition, “A New Life.”
It presents nineteen personal and moving histories of former Oświęcim residents living at present in
Israel. There are among them those who left Poland in the 1930s, just before the beginning of World
War II, and those that survived the Holocaust under the German occupation or in the depths of the USSR,
as well as those born after World War II.
The Oświęcim Jews in Israel established a society, to
which both the survivors of
the Holocaust, as well as pre-
war immigrants, belonged.
Like Jews from other localities, they also founded their
own organization. Irgun Jo-
cei Oświęcim recruits former
residents of the town, and its
objective is to commemorate
the history of its community
and care for the memory of its
murdered members. In 1977,
through their efforts, a Memorial Book was published
in Jerusalem dedicated to the
history of Jewish Oświęcim:
Sefer Oshpitsin—OświęcimAuschwitz Memorial Book.
Every year on the Holocaust
Memorial Day—Yom HaShoa—Auschwitzers (Oświęcim natives) meet at the
monument commemorating the Jewish community
of Oświęcim at the Kiriat
Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv.
With the passing of time, the
few remaining witnesses of
those events pass on, and
their unique histories often—aside from the family—
have no chance of reaching
a wider audience. At present,
there live in Israel only
about several score former
Oświęcim residents. Considering this, the exhibition
A New Life also functions as
documentation and commemoration. It is the bridge
between modern Israel and
modern Poland; it reveals the
personal histories and losses
of the survivors, whose lives
were inseparably entangled
with these two countries.
The exhibition A New Life is
a story of victory, of the will
to live, the desire to survive
and give new birth to the
Jewish Nation after the catastrophe. Below, we present
some excerpts.
GEORGE AND ABRAHAM FEINER
George (born 1925) and his older brother, Abraham (born 1922), were born in Oświęcim. Both,
along with two siblings and their parents, Leopold Feiner and Ewa Appel, lived on 4 Kolejowa
Street. The parents ran a hat store at the intersection of Plebańska and Kolejowa streets. Before
the war erupted, George and Abraham attended Queen Jadwiga Grade School, and in the afternoon the cheder—a Jewish school. In 1940 the brothers worked as forced laborers clearing
up the terrains of the future Auschwitz camp. In the fall of that year, Abraham ended up in
the Annaberg camp. The rest of the family was displaced to Chrzanów in 1941, and from there
George was sent to the Blechhammer labor camp, where he met Abraham. Together, they made
it through Zwittau and Gross-Rosen. In May of 1945, they were liberated by the Red Army at
the Reichenbach camp. After the war, they returned to Oświęcim for a short time in search of
the rest of their family. Unfortunately, of the four siblings, only George and Abraham survived.
They left Poland, first to Czechoslovakia, and arrived in Israel in March of 1949. George married
Gerda Fisch in 1950 and they settled in Tel Aviv. George ran his own company, which serviced
refrigerators and air conditioning equipment. He retired in 1990. In Israel, Abraham married
an Oświęcim girl, Ester Schnur. He worked as a driver for the Egged Bus Company, as well as
repairing tires. He is now retired. Both brothers live close to each other in Ramat Gan, and are
widowers. Abraham has a son and three grandchildren, while George has a son and daughter
with four grandchildren.
REFLECTIONS
GEORGE FEINER
For me, Poland was the country, where I was born, where I lived my whole youth and attended
the Górnicki and Queen Jadwiga schools in Oświęcim. Israel is my country; now it is my…
homeland. I live here with my whole new family, newly built, that I built anew, because I was
left only with my brother. The whole family was destroyed and lost.
ABRAHAM FEINER
Israel is everything to me. It is my country, my future, the children are here, the future, my grandchildren will have a future. I am ready to do anything for my country.
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Jewish Center
ter
ESTER LAHAT
Ester was born in 1924 in Oświęcim as the daughter of Szaloma Kohane and Bertie Goldberg.
The family lived at 13 Berek Joselewicz Street. In 1941, along with her family, she was displaced
to Sosnowiec, and then to the ghetto in Środula, where, in one of the so-called shops, as a forced
laborer, she repaired coats and packs for the German soldiers returning from the front. In May
1943, she ended up in Annaberg and in November of 1943 in Auschwitz-Birkenau. On January 17, 1945, during the evacuation of the camp in the Death March, she walked all the way to
Włodzisław Śląski and from there to the Malchow camp in Germany, where she was liberated by
the Red Army on May 2, 1945. After the War, she returned briefly to her hometown, where she
met her future husband, Lolek Lehrhaft, who also came from Oświęcim. In 1945 they left for Fohrenwald, Germany, which was then a part of the American occupation zone. At that displaced
persons camp, they were married and in 1947 they both left for Palestine. In Israel they changed
their name to Lahat. Ester, throughout her life, was a kindergarten teacher. She now lives at
a nursing home in Bat Jam. She has two children, six grandchildren and a great grandson.
REFLECTIONS
Poland is a country that I often recall for different reasons. I had good times and less than good
times, and, unfortunately, I had to leave Poland under terrible conditions. Oświęcim is, to me,
another life. I think of Oświęcim every day; Israel is my second homeland.
We also had our ordeals in Israel. It was not so easy, arriving and getting settled. Today,
thank God, the children are married; we have grandchildren and great grandchildren and
all that, which gives us our happiness.
RACHEL JAKIMOWSKI
Rachel was born in 1923 in Oświęcim in an Orthodox family. Her parents, Natan Edelstein and
Regina Posner, along with Rachel and her four siblings, lived at 3 Sienkiewicz Street. On the
same street at number 1, her parents ran a delicatessen and pastry shop. Rachel finished the
Klementyna Tański-Hoffman Grade School in Oświęcim, where she also attended an Orthodox
school for girls, Beis Jaakov. In the Spring of 1941, the family was displaced to Sosnowiec and
later shipped to the ghetto in Środula. In 1943 Rachel was sent to the work camp in Graben and
from there in the Death March to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated on April 15, 1945.
Her whole immediate family was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1947, she married Icchak Jakimowski, and in August of 1948, they both fortunately made it to Israel. Their material
situation at that time was lamentable. Icchak was taken immediately into the Israeli Army for a
year, and took part in the War of Independence. Rachel worked in a sweater factory, and later as
a room maid at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv. Subsequently, Icchak finished law school and, in 1961,
opened his own law office, where he still works. Rachel and her Husband live together in Bat
Jam and have two daughters, five grandchildren and fourteen great grandchildren.
REFLECTIONS
Poland to me is only a memory. I travel there often, I do not forget the language, I like the Poles as
people and I feel good there. Ha! Oświęcim, Oświęcim, Oświęcim … Those are childhood memories. We were not rich, but we were well situated for those times and we never lacked anything
at home. I received intense warmth and love from my family, the relatives, my grandfather, and
my grandmother. Those are such memories, that more often than not make it impossible to sleep,
because I still live Oświęcim. I do not know why. My husband always asks me; can you not separate yourself from Oświęcim? I say; No, I cannot, I try but I cannot. I love Oświęcim. Israel is
my home. I came here, here I developed, here I … I got married in Cyprus on the way to Israel. Here my children were born, my grandchildren and great grandchildren.
ELINA SHAKED
Elina was born in 1949 in Oświęcim. Both her parents, Regina Grunbaum and Salomon Kupperman, also came from Oświęcim. Regina, a prewar activist in the Zionist youth organization Akiba,
was displaced in 1941 to Sosnowiec and from there to Annaberg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen and
Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated. Salomon, an activist in the leftist Zionist party Hitachdut,
fled together with his brother at the outbreak of the war to the USSR, spending time in Siberia
and Uzbekistan. They both returned to their native town after the war. Even though Regina and
Salomon knew each other already from prewar times, they got married only after returning to
their hometown. The religious ceremony took place in 1948 in Wałbrzych, with the civilian ceremony in Oświęcim a year later. The Kuppermans lived at 1 Parkowa Street. Salomon worked at
the Chemical Plant in Oświęcim as an office worker. Elina only completed six grades at the Queen
Jadwiga Grade School; in 1962, along with her parents, she left for Israel. The Kuppermans left by
train for Warsaw and later traveled to Italy and finally to Haifa. They settled in Holon, where Elina
completed high school. She also kept in touch with her school friends, as well as her teachers back
in Poland. Later, for the next 27 years, she worked for the Israeli Army. She is now retired but still
works part time. Elina, her husband Daniel, and their two children live in Holon.
REFLECTIONS
Poland is a country to which I always willingly return. I feel at home there, because of the Polish
language. In the last three years I have been in Poland three times, year after year. To my—this
is very difficult to say—to my homeland? Yes, Israel is also my homeland. That means there
are… I have two homelands: both Poland and Israel. Oświęcim. The town where I was born,
where my parents were born, where I spent 12 years of my life, which I always warmly recall and with a smile, where until now I have many friends and acquaintances from my childhood and school times. Just this year we met; I have many good memories from Oświęcim.
More so. Israel—the nation, where my children were born, where I got married, where I live,
for better or worse, and where I served in the army. Homeland, home—for me, that is Israel.
[Excerpts form the transcripts are unedited].
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Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation
A RETREAT “AT THE DOORSTEP
OF AUSCHWITZ”
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? In His cry of abandonment, the unfathomed suffering of the God-Man
becomes enlightened and every pain of humanity takes on sense, while the deep unity of the Father with the Son in the
Holy Spirit, offered just then in His cry, becomes a model of unity between people.” Chiara Lubich
humanity will never again
have to cry out so desperately
to God. I think that it is prayer
and dialogue that are the
foundation to building an authentic and healthy relationship with another individual.
From this perspective desiring Jesus, “that everyone be
one,” resonates even stronger
in my heart. This earth saturated with such great suffering, hard to imagine, still
moves me. And the awakening beauty of the surrounding
nature fills me with hope, that
also from these seeds of suffering Spring will blossom.
photo: CDPF
Iwona Sapała
Participant of the retreat during their visit at the Museum
The Retreat that took place
“At the Doorstep of Auschwitz” at the beginning of April
at the Center for Dialogue and
Prayer was co-organized this
year by the Focolari Movement. Aside from the regular Retreat program, such as:
a tour of the camp, Stations of
the Cross in the former Birkenau camp, Holy Mass for the
intention of peace, adoration
of the Cross, Holy Mass at
the Carmelite Sister’s Chapel,
on Palm Sunday the Retreat
participants acquainted themselves with the spirituality of
the Focolari Movement, which
may be summarized in two
statements: God is love and Jesus forsaken; spiritual unity is
the road to reconciliation.
Unity and love to the crucified and forsaken Jesus are
the spiritual heart of the Focolari Movement, founded by
Chiara Lubich during WWII.
From Italy it has spread to
about 190 countries in the
world. This spirituality has
a distinct communal character and as spiritual unity is the
road by which together we go
to God. Sharing the testimony
of the Gospels is one of the basic elements constituting the
community. In reference to
the topics presented, the members of the Focolari Movement
shared their life experiences
demonstrating among others,
the four steps to loving Jesus
the forsaken—the road leading from suffering into love,
from forsaken to resurrected.
Below we present the notes of
several participants in the “
“At the Doorstep of Auschwitz” Retreat.
The Heart Sinks
To any man who knows anything of what the tragedy was
that was perpetrated on the
grounds of Auschwitz, this
place evokes many feelings
and summons up images of
the most tragic experiences,
which burned an indelible
stigma on the history of humanity. Against immeasurable evil and suffering one
lacks words, the heart sinks.
The Retreat experienced
in Auschwitz very literally
planted me on the foundation
of life and death, raised questions on the limits of humanity, about evil and sin, to what
ends a man is capable, who
turns away from God. This
place, the abyss of evil, all the
more cries for love, faith in
love.
God is Love and loves each
human being with infinite
love. Revealing himself as
our Father, he thereby expressed the truth, that we are
all brothers. It was exactly
this “discovery” achieved by
Chiara Lubich during WWII,
which appears to be an even
greater paradox, since the circumstances were more horrific, during which it was born.
Chiara and individuals, who
like her wanted to answer
God’s love with their lives by
living the words of the Gospels every day, were strongly
touched by Jesus’ words in
the New Testament: “… that
they all be one; even as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in
thee, that they also may be in
us, so that the world may believe that thou has sent me”.
(John 17, 21). Understanding
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the truths of faith is always
a question of blessing, God’s
mystery, which is difficult to
enunciate in words. Especially difficult is to face suffering
and uncover the sense in it.
Chiara in every manifestation
of suffering was able to envisage the human face of Jesus
the Crucified and Forsaken,
who as the key to unity with
God and every neighbor, became the foundation of spiritual unity. It could be said
—a measure without measure. The more I became aware
that this is also exactly what
my response should be. Towards past suffering—prayer
remains, but also a debt to
pay. In learning to accept my
brethren, dialogue, every gesture of kindness, love—is also
my part in healing this particular wound. Participating in
this Retreat “At the Doorstep
of Auschwitz” also allowed
me to experience the feeling
of community, which on the
most solid foundation facilitates the presence of God.
Agnieszka Zagrajek
Prayer and Dialogue
The Retreat at CDP became
for me a deep and powerful
experience. During the Stations of the Cross at the former
Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp,
I had the impression that Jesus once again cried out: My
God, My God, why have you
forsaken me? Such a particular and holy place, where the
echo of that cry still resounds
today, does not leave anyone indifferent. A conviction
grows in one’s heart that everything must be done so that
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Without Masks
The Retreat at the Center for
Dialogue and Prayer touched
upon many hidden chords in
our souls. We arrived with our
sufferings, to immerse them
in Christ’s Cross. We were
encouraged by the maturity
of the participants and their
sincere search for truth and
their way to God. A particular
surprise was their age—the
majority of them were young
or middle-aged. Our desire
was to show the “treasure” of
our spirituality, so expressive,
in such a place as Auschwitz:
Jesus Forsaken. Through our
conversations we became
aware that some people carried heavy crosses. Therefore,
the visage of Jesus Forsaken
was not alien to them, and
certain pointers could help
them in traversing from suffering to Resurrection. Giving
testimony was made easier
thanks to the dominating atmosphere of goodwill, openness and attentiveness to the
speaker. After all, we all probably felt that in such a place
one must be in truth, devoid
of masks and empty words.
We were all quite impressed
by Father Manfred—a person
internally focused, prayerful
and completely dedicated to
the cause, widely understood,
of reconciliation. Visiting the
camp, and later the Stations of
the Cross with such a guide,
a priest of German nationality, had its deep expression.
Dobromiła and Stanisław Salik
The Place
Auschwitz and Birkenau—
what places! These are places
of extermination. A place that,
according to the Cabalists, is
one of God’s names. Kielce,
where I live, is also a place.
The place of the last attack in
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the Holocaust. A year after
the end of the war, there was
a bestial murder of the survivors.
***
The idea of the Retreat “At the
Doorstep of Auschwitz” could
appear from the perspective
of this Place to be very obvious, but it is enough to drive
a kilometer from the gate of
the Center for Dialogue and
Prayer, for it to appear to be
insane and inappropriate.
And from the perspective of
a hundred kilometers it is just
a sick idea. Do we really have
nothing else to do, especially
just before Holy Week, so
close to the Lord’s Resurrection, life’s Triumph?
Two prominent Polish writers—Jerzy Andrzejewski and
Adolf Rudnicki—as witnesses from the Holocaust period,
titled their testimonies Holy
Week, and Easter, respectively.
***
I do not have the courage to
call myself a Christian. Of
course, there are social circumstances which demand
from me such a declaration,
definition, self-determination,
making it easier for others to
recognize whether to include
or exclude. I do not have the
courage to call myself a Christian, not only because I feel an
acute confusion, when I pose
to myself truthfully, by myself before myself, the question, just who do I take Him
for?—or another troublesome,
self-imposing question: Do
I love Him? Especially since
I do not know what love is or
how one feels it or recognizes
it. I do not have the courage
to call myself before myself
a Christian, and not because
of the dissonance between the
way I live or the way I believe
I should live, but because of
what the Christians did to
their Jewish sisters and brothers. And because of what
they did not do. And because
I know that I am, after all, one
of them, from Jesus’ crowd.
***
The most important moment
of the Retreat—the Saturday
Stations of the Cross in Birkenau. There Jesus, “ascended
into heaven with the smoke
from the crematorium.”
I participated in the Stations
of the Cross in the streets of
Jerusalem, holy Hierosolyma.
I walked on these old lifeless stones. In Birkenau we
walked on live earth, awakening from its winter lethargy.
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Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation
Butterflies, the trees’ young
leaves, birds’ arias, blue sky,
the sun’s warmth, frogs in
the marshes. We walked on
ground raised by the ashes of
millions.
The Polish writer Andrzej
Kuśniewicz, in his novel
Nawróceni (The Converted),
wrote, “There is no raising
the dead and will never be,
there are only exhumations.
In Birkenau there were no
exhumations, nor will there
be any. There will only be
a resurrection.
***
I once had a dream. I saw in
it how the hand of the Almighty had removed my soul
out of me, to show it to me.
I saw it, cancerous, defective
and curled up in horror, hiding myself as a turtle or snail
would. And it did not at that
moment register in me, what
the Almighty had said; that
He showed me my soul so
that I would know how much
He loved me, how much He
had forgiven me, so that
I would feel His unmeasured
charity and compassion.
So that I would know how
much I must give to others,
I had received so much from
Him, so that I could give it
back to others and not just to
keep it to myself. But I did not
then clearly hear that in my
dream: I chose my fear and
aversion to myself and on
them I concentrated. When
I am “depressed” in Birkenau
—I feel it, I feel compassion,
I am compassion. Not only
for those whose ashes are
scattered here, but also for
those who scattered them,
for those, who ordered it to
be done, who planned it, for
everyone… “for the whole
world….” It only lasts a moment, because then thoughts
appear and then I do not
know whether I am crying
over those million souls,
whose bodies were burned,
or over my own torn and
cancerous soul.
***
After the Retreat in Birkenau,
I know that for us Christians
and for my Church, new
questions and new answers
are needed. To the old questions we resonate with ever
more empty phrases.
In how many Polish churches on Easter Sunday did the
people hear: “The Jews crucified the Lord Jesus”? It was
so in my church.
After all, it was the Christians that crucified the Lord
Jesus in Birkenau. I was
a witness of it a week ago.
I could swear.
***
We did not forget, but we do
not remember. Father Manfred knows.
Bogdan Białek
THE TOWN OF THE LIVING VERSUS
THE TOWN OF THE DEAD
F
or the average Pole, who associates Oświęcim only with the
camp, this town is a symbol of unimaginable cruelty, pain,
suffering, and abasement. We, Class Ih of the General Secondary School of the Piarist Order in Cracow, must admit that we, too,
shared this view. When we were offered a chance to spend this year’s
retreat at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer in Oświęcim, a mere
few hundred meters from the site of the Auschwitz camp, many of us
therefore found the idea questionable. Nevertheless, we accepted the
proposition because we realized that this could be a new experience
that would help us to understand the evil that had been committed,
and to learn to deal with it.
Our classmate Tymek, who
comes from the Oświęcim
area and sees the issue from a
somewhat different point of
view, also gave us something
to think about. He made us
aware that it is impossible
to regard Oświęcim and
Auschwitz as synonyms—
the camp, as a monument
and Holocaust Memorial,
must be distinguished from
the town which, despite the
burden of the war, tries to
develop in a normal way.
Life has its own rhythm,
children are born, the elderly die of old age, and no one
murders anyone else. “We
remember because it is impossible to forget, but we do
not live in the past. Remembering is important, but the
future is even more important. To fight for it, we must
show others what Oświęcim
is really like, so that they will
bury the dead and permit the
living to live.”
In the final analysis,
Oświęcim is not only a
“town of the dead” but also
a “town of the living.” These
two places are in constant
conflict. On the one hand,
there are the victims of the
Second World War, and on
the other hand—we who
live here. It might seem that
we are doomed in advance
to lose. However, this is not
the case. In the ultimate reckoning, life triumphs over
death. The town is a symbol
of that victory.
A. Czarnik
I was in Oświęcim for the first time. I had imagined the
place as empty, silent, and depressing—a kind of cemetery. I think that, in order to understand the essence of
the tragedy of Auschwitz-Birkenau, it’s necessary to go
there alone some time and pay tribute to the “Calvary of
our times.”
J. Cebulak
Before visiting Auschwitz, I always wonder how the place
will affect my faith. Yet my faith is getting stronger because, when I come face-to-face with the tragedy and the
murder of a million people, I believe that human life does
not end with the present, because God is good, despite the
existence of evil.
R. Wieczorek
This retreat was different from the ones I went on before,
but it will surely leave an indelible mark in my memory.
A. Płucienik
A retreat in Oświęcim—the idea seemed questionable at
best, and risky. A time of concentration, silence, and intimate conversation with God—in a place so burdened
by history, marked with the stigma of a crime that is unimaginable and exceeds the human capacity for thought?
Seeking the voice of God in the land of Oświęcim for
me—I knew about the nightmare of the camp only from
textbooks—a completely new issue, but an unusually enriching one.
W. Czaja
Class Ih
photo: CDPF
Auschwitz unavoidably became the focus of the retreat.
A visit to the site of the camp
was therefore the culmination of the trip. We had a
chance to exchange impressions during our evening
meetings with Father Manfred. We were all greatly
moved by what we saw.
Many of us mulled over the
problem of how people had
been capable of doing such
wrong to their neighbors.
There were bitter questions
about God, His presence,
and His tacit consent to this
apocalypse. We also considered how we ourselves
would have acted in those
times—would we have been
capable of upholding our
own dignity and humanity?
This year’s retreat in Oświęcim provided me with second
occasion to visit the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The mood of silence and prayer, seriousness and reflection on one’s own life helped make this experience exceptionally difficult in emotional terms.
Class Ih of the General Secondary School of the Piarist Order in Cracow
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Culture
WE WERE READY FOR THIS VISIT
O
n the April 25 in the concert hall of the Oświęcim Music School, the Ensemble Voix Étouffées Chamber
Orchestra of France gave a concert. It was the only appearance in Poland by the ensemble, which for many
years has been commemorating the works of composers persecuted by the Nazi regime. The concert was
attended by over 200 people, among whom was a former Auschwitz prisoner, Helena Niwińska, who also played
in the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Below we present a conversation with the orchestra’s conductor, Amury du Closel.
concert for the inhabitants and their town. We
are aware of how difficult it must be for the
residents of Oświęcim,
a name almost exclusively associated with
a tragic history.
How could music, or art
in general, be applied to
teach this tragedy and
draw some conclusions
from it?
photo: Jarek Mensfelt
During the Third Reich
many works were destroyed. Maybe not literally, but they just simply
disappeared from the
repertoire—not at all
because of their inferior
musical value, but rather
because of politics. Composers chose to spend
their lives in exile, or
ended up in places like
Auschwitz. Their works,
however, did survive,
and for that reason we
are obligated today to
display that which was
to vanish from our culture. To this day, great
voids exist, and we do
not know of them. It is
a great loss for all of us.
Unless someone turns up
who will want to counter
this, these works will be
lost forever. These compositions should be revived. A lot still remains
to be rebuilt. There is a lot
of work before us. I hope
that this project is the beginning of a long and interesting cooperation.
Concert at the Oświęcim Music School
Amury du Closel: Everything surpassed my
expectations, especially
the fervor of the whole
orchestra. Every one of
us was somewhat anxious about coming to
a place of such great historical significance. After
all, most of us are here
for the first time. That is
why we tried the entire
time to remember that
we live in the present.
History must be remembered, but that horrible
world belongs to the
past. All the labor that
we put into performing the music created
by the composers who
were persecuted by the
Third Reich serves to fill
the gap between something that disappeared,
between the past and
the present. We wish to
show that, despite the
absence of those people,
their music still lives.
This is a place you probably had to come to.
It was imperative, if only,
for a deeper understanding, to become more involved. For almost ten
years, I have been examining this subject and,
the whole time, I have
been waiting for this moment. We were probably
ready for this visit.
Could you stand in exactly the same place
where the camp orchestra played?
the audience. That over
200 people attended was
something remarkable
for us. Also the cooperation with the school’s
pupils, teachers, management, and their great
commitment—that was
proof to us that we were
doing something appropriate. It was very good
that we did not appear
on the grounds of the
former camp. I thought
of the matter on the first
day during the tour—
personally I would not
be able play music here.
It is too difficult, it is too
much of a holy place.
Cooperation with the
music school, thanks to
the museum, was the
best solution. It symbolically connected together
the past, present and future. I am glad that we
had a chance to play a
Interviewed by Pawel Sawicki
It was a horrible feeling.
The music was manipulated here. People were
forced to play to survive. It was an inhuman
world, in which everything was destroyed,
even art. The amazing
thing is that they could
play here at all.
How do you evaluate the concert itself at
the Oświęcim Music
School?
photo: Paweł Sawicki
We are speaking the day
after the concert. May
I ask you about your
personal reflections on
your three-day stay in
Oświęcim?
Fantastic. I had no notion of how many people would show up in
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Members of the orchestra during their visit to the former camp Birkenau
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History
PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL
MARIAN WĘGLARZ (1918-1945)
He was born on December
4, 1918 in Głębowice in the
land of Oświęcim, where
his parents, Stanisław and
Stefania (nee Żabińska) had
a farm. He attended primary school in Głębowice,
and later in Brzeszcze. After
completing primary school,
he enrolled in the Marcin
Wadowita State Gymnazjum
in Wadowice. He passed his
matura examination in 1937
and was drafted that same
year for military training at
a cadet school. Afterwards,
unable to find work, he
traveled to the vicinity of
Lwów in August 1939 and
joined the Volunteer Labor
Corps.
After the outbreak of the
war and the entry of the
Red Army into eastern Poland on September 17, 1939,
he was interned in a camp
for Polish prisoners of war
in Szepetówka in Podolia,
where Polish civilians were
also held. He and the rest of
the civilians were released
from the camp in October.
On November 2, he arrived
back in Głębowice and went
to work on his parents’
farm until a German colonist arrived to take over in
1942. Marian Węglarz then
moved to nearby Osiek,
where he held a job in the
local dairy before going to
work in the nutrition department (Ernährungsamt)
of the Osiek Commune Office. His duties included
preparing and distributing
the ration cards.
While living in Osiek, he
FROM GANOBIS’S
CABINET
joined the local ZWZ/AK
underground and helped
supply aid to the prisoners of Auschwitz. He took
advantage of his job to pilfer ration cards, which he
passed on to the organization to use to purchase food
to be smuggled to the prisoners. He would be in great
danger if the German occupation authorities learned
of this. An informer betrayed the organization and
Węglarz was arrested along
with dozens of other people when the Gestapo held
a sweep of Osiek and the
vicinity. The arrestees were
taken to Gestapo headquarters in Oświęcim.
After brutal interrogation and
torture, Węglarz and some
of the other arrestees were
taken to the camp and jailed
in block 11 (the Death Block).
He was there until evacuation
began on January 18, 1945.
He joined other prisoners
in the Death March all the
way to Wodzisław Śląski,
from where he was taken by
train to Mauthausen where
he became prisoner number
119419. On March 24, he was
transferred to the Amstetten
subcamp and later to the
Ebensee subcamp, where
American soldiers liberated him on May 6. Marian
Węglarz died shortly after
regaining freedom, at the
age of only 26.
Jadwiga Dąbrowska
Research Department A-BSM
VESTIGES OF HISTORY
FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF
THE AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM
I
received this item from an acquaintance. He invited
me to his home, where he kept a great deal of hishis object was made in the camp metalworking
torical material in the attic. These included not only
shop by an anonymous prisoner, probably Jewthings connected with our town, but also various docuish, referred to by his colleagues as Kupferschmied
ments, photographs, and family keepsakes.
(“Kupferstich” is German for engraving).
Handmade greeting card
Among the boxes of correspondence, I found some letters from the
Auschwitz camp, but the thing that
riveted my attention was a rolled-up
piece of paper. When I unrolled the
small piece of carton, it turned out
to be a handmade greeting card with
a color drawing and a dedication.
An angel was painted at the very
top, hovering above a barbed-wire
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fence and dispensing food from
a platter. Just beneath the drawing
was an inscription in meticulous calligraphy: “Greetings,” and, below
this, the brief epigram: “Whether
in heaven or in hell, I will always
love you well.” Below this were
two illegible signatures and the date
“May 8, 1940.”
Mirosław Ganobis
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The vase is made from a shrapnelshell casing from an Austrian field
gun (8 cm. Feldkanone M.5) used
in World War I. An engraved chalice decorates the lower part of the
bronze vase. A figurative ornament
decorates the upper part.
Originally, the vase was taller, as
indicated by the engraved profiles
of two horses that are cut in half,
along with part of a human hand.
The artful rendering of the details
of the ornamentation, like other
extant works by the same maker,
show that he was a true master of
his craft. Jan Liwacz, the master artistic blacksmith responsible for the
greatest number of works of this
sort from the camp, writes about
“Kupferschmied,” mentioning him
as the artist responsible for six objects that have come down to our
day. The empty shell, or perhaps
only the casing, may have been
found by prisoners on the grounds
or in the immediate vicinity of the
camp, which was founded on the
site of old army barracks (including
artillery units). Probably made illegally, the vase shows the great scale
of the need for aesthetic experiences in the dehumanized world of
the camp. Every material available
to the prisoners served such purposes: stones, toothbrush handles,
packing paper, string, bread, and
even cartridge casings. This priceless craftwork was frequently given
to people who helped the prisoners.
This was the only form of gratitude
that a prisoner could offer in return
for such help. This was probably
the case with the vase, which was
donated to the Museum along with
several other items from the camp
metalworking shop by a woman
from Oświęcim who helped prisoners during the war.
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The collections also include a candlestick, also made by a Jewish prisoner, in the Auschwitz III-Monowitz workshops. The person to whom
the candlestick was given remembers that the artisan was a master
artistic blacksmith from Berlin.
It could have been the same artist
(as may also be indicated by similarities in the method of stamping the
metal), although the name of the talented artist is unknown in the cases
of both objects.
Agnieszka Sieradzka
Collections Department,
photo: A-BSM
photo: Mirosław Ganobis
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Vase
Photographer
THROUGH MOL’S LENS
photo: Tomasz Mól
photo: Tomasz Mól
photo: Tomasz Mól
photo: Tomasz Mól
photo: Tomasz Mól
About 6,000 young Jews from 55 countries and some 1,000 Poles joined the 18th March of the Living—in tribute to and remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. The March of the Living traditionally starts at the Auschwitz I gate. The marchers cover the three-kilometer route to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. They included Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom of Israel, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Borkowski, and Meir Lau,
the chairman of Yad Vashem and the former chief rabbi of Israel.
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new life - Auschwitz

Transcription

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