|
Post by Jaga on Mar 13, 2020 8:47:00 GMT -7
Nazi plan was to kill, remove and resettle people from Zamosc area (Eastern Poland) and resettle this land with Germans. It was done is a very cruel way. Here is more about it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Zamojszczyzna_by_Nazi_Germanythe actions were cruel, done by force, the temporary camp was created near Zamosc, then some people were moved to Auschwitz. Here is a Polish girl, Czeslawa Kwoka, who was beaten by a guard a moment before the picture was taken. She came there with her mother. She shows a strength and resilience... she was killed in 1943.
|
|
|
Post by karl on Mar 13, 2020 15:29:10 GMT -7
Jaga
My self do remember from some time in past of reading of this little 12 years age girl. Her life had just begin to then be cut short by the war and her family caught up and their lives ended. Even though her story is only one of thousands that suffered and died in those darn camps, it takes this spark to light the fires of the living to insure such an event should never again happen.
Karl
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Mar 13, 2020 17:48:22 GMT -7
Jaga/Karl,
Personal, individual stories count in this case of mass murder between 1939 and 1945. German and Austrian Nazi's wanted to dehumanize their victims and make them anonymous numbers. But these people were people with names, backgrounds, their personal stories and individuality, family members, people who had individual lives and stories, their talents and their professions or school lives like probably this 14 year old girl Czesława Kwoka.Czesława KwokaCzesława Kwoka (15 August 1928 – 12 March 1943) was a Polish Catholic girl who was murdered at the age of 14 in Auschwitz. One of thousands of child victims of German World War II crimes against Poles in German-occupied Poland, she is among those memorialized in an Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum exhibit, "Block no. 6: Exhibition: The Life of the Prisoners".
Photographs of Kwoka and others, taken by the "famous photographer of Auschwitz", Wilhelm Brasse, between 1940 and 1945, are displayed in the Museum's photographic memorial. Brasse discusses several of the photographs in The Portraitist, a 2005 television documentary about him. They became a focus of interviews with him that have been cited in various articles and books.Personal backgroundCzesława Kwoka was born in Wólka Złojecka, a small village in Poland, to a Catholic mother, Katarzyna Kwoka. Along with her mother (prisoner number 26946), Czesława Kwoka (prisoner number 26947) was deported and transported from Zamość, Poland, to Auschwitz, on 13 December 1942. On 12 March 1943, less than a month after her mother died (18 February 1943), Czesława Kwoka died at the age of 14; the circumstances of her death were not recorded.General historical contexts of child victims of AuschwitzCzesława Kwoka was one of the "approximately 230,000 children and young people aged less than eighteen" among the 1,300,000 people who were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1940 to 1945.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum's Centre for Education About the Holocaust and Auschwitz documents the wartime circumstances that brought young adults and children like Kwoka to the concentration camps in its 2004 publication of an album of photographs compiled by its historian Helena Kubica; these photographs were first published in the Polish/German version of Kubica's book in 2002. According to the Museum, of the approximately 230,000 children and young people deported to Auschwitz, more than 216,000 children, the majority, were of Jewish descent; more than 11,000 children came from Romani families; the other children had Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, or other ethnic backgrounds.
Most of these children "arrived in the camp along with their families as part of the various operations that the Nazis carried out against whole ethnic or social groups"; these operations targeted "the Jews as part of the drive for the total extermination of the Jewish people, the Gypsies as part of the effort to isolate and destroy the Gypsy population, the Poles in connection with the expulsion and deportation to the camp of whole families from the Zamość region and from Warsaw during the Uprising there in August 1944", as well as Belarusians and other citizens of the Soviet Union "in reprisal for partisan resistance" in places occupied by Germany.
Of all these children and young people, "Only slightly more than 20,000 ... including 11,000 Gypsies, were entered in the camp records. No more than 650 of them survived until liberation [in 1945]."
Czesława Kwoka was one of those thousands of children who did not survive Auschwitz and among those whose "identity photographs", along with captions constructed from the so-called Death Books, are featured in a memorial display on a wall in Block no. 6: Exhibition: Life of the Prisoners.Particular historical contexts of photographs of Czesława KwokaAfter her arrival at Auschwitz, Czesława Kwoka was photographed for the Reich's concentration camp records, and she has been identified as one of the approximately 40,000 to 50,000 subjects of such "identity pictures" taken under duress at Auschwitz-Birkenau by Wilhelm Brasse, a young Polish inmate in his twenties (known as Auschwitz prisoner number 3444). Trained as a portrait photographer at his aunt's studio prior to the 1939 German invasion of Poland beginning World War II, Brasse and others had been ordered to photograph inmates by their Nazi captors, under dreadful camp conditions and likely imminent death if the photographers refused to comply.
These photographs that he and others were ordered to take capture each inmate "in three poses: from the front and from each side." Though ordered to destroy all photographs and their negatives, Brasse became famous after the war for having helped to rescue some of them from oblivion.Auschwitz "Identification photographs" in memorial exhibits and photo archivesWhile most of these photographs of Auschwitz inmates (both victims and survivors) are not extant, some photographs do populate memorial displays at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, where the photographs of Kwoka reside, and at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Shoah.
Captions attached to the photographs in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum photo archives and memorial indoor exhibits have been constructed by the Museum Exhibition Department from camp registries and other records confiscated when the camps were liberated in 1945 and archived subsequently. These Museum photo archive captions attached to photographs assembled and/or developed from photographs and negatives rescued by Brasse and fellow inmate darkroom worker Bronislaw Jureczek during 1940 to 1945 identify the inmate by name, concentration-camp prisoner number, date and place of birth, date of death and age at death (if applicable), national or ethnic identity, religious affiliation, and date of arrival in the camp. Some photographs credited to Brasse, including the "identity picture" with 3 poses of Kwoka, are in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum's memorial to prisoners, part of a permanent indoor exhibit called Block no. 6: Exhibition: The Life of the Prisoners, first mounted in 1955. Kwoka's likeness is also featured by the museum's Exhibition Department on its official Website, in some of the Museum's published albums and catalogues, and in the 2005 Polish television documentary film about Brasse, The Portraitist, shown on TVP1 and in numerous film festivals.
The photo mural including Kwoka's "identity pictures" ("identification photographs" or "mug shots") displayed on a wall in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum's permanent indoor exhibition The Life of the Prisoners in Block no. 6 is captured in Ryszard Domasik's photograph cropped (without the photographs of Kwoka) featured on its official Website.Brasse's memories of photographing KwokaCzesława Kwoka in 1942 or 1943. (Photograph credit: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Wilhelm Brasse)Brasse recalls his experience photographing Kwoka specifically in The Portraitist, an account corroborated by BBC correspondent Fergal Keane who interviewed Brasse about his memories of taking them, in a Live Mag feature article "Returning to Auschwitz: Photographs from Hell", occasioned by the film's London premiere (22 April 2007), published in the Mail Online on 7 April, which does not include illustrations of these photographs of Kwoka.
As a visitor to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum memorial exhibit in Block no. 6, Keane also describes his own impressions of the photographs of Kwoka in some detail.
For days after viewing the photographs, I could not shake the girl's expression from my mind. She is around 14 [sic] years of age and looking directly into the camera.
The girl has only recently arrived at the camp. On her lower lip there is a cut. Her eyes stare directly into the lens and the fear transmits itself across the decades.
But until Wilhelm Brasse told me his extraordinary story I had no idea how the photograph came to be taken. His voice trembles as he recounts what happened.
She was so young and so terrified. The girl didn't understand why she was there and she couldn't understand what was being said to her.
So this woman Kapo (a prisoner overseer) took a stick and beat her about the face. This German woman was just taking out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful young girl, so innocent. She cried but she could do nothing.
Before the photograph was taken, the girl dried her tears and the blood from the cut on her lip. To tell you the truth, I felt as if I was being hit myself but I couldn't interfere. It would have been fatal for me. You could never say anything.Art"Bring[ing] Czeslawa's image and voice into our lives", Theresa Edwards (verse) and Lori Schreiner (art) created Painting Czesława Kwoka, a collaborative work of mixed media inspired by Wilhelm Brasse's photographs, as a commemoration of child victims of the Holocaust.
On the 75th Anniversary of her death, a colorized version of the photographs was published.
Presenter Pieter Source: Wikipedia - Google image search
|
|
|
Post by Jaga on Mar 13, 2020 22:46:38 GMT -7
Pieter, thanks for bringing her story and more pictures. Bringing face to the story makes it more human. I need to look for more pictures of children from Zamosc.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Mar 14, 2020 14:59:25 GMT -7
Faces Of AuschwitzJózefa GłazowskaJÓZEFA GŁAZOWSKA was born on March 19th, 1930, in the village of Sitaniec, near Zamość. Along with her parents and a group of around 370 people, Józefa was expelled from her village on December 6th, 1942. She was deported to Auschwitz in a transport of 318 women and children, and arrived at the camp in the same transport as Czesława Kwoka. Józefa was a child victim of Aktion Zamość.Aktion ZamośćExpulsions of Poles from the Zamość region in December 1942Aktion Zamość was carried out as part of a greater plan: the forcible removal of the entire Polish populations from targeted regions of occupied Poland in preparation for the state-sponsored settlement of the ethnic German Volksdeutsche. According to historical sources, during Aktion Zamość the German police (Ordnung Polizei) and military (Wehrmacht) expelled 116,000 Polish men and women in just a few months. The operation of mass expulsions from the Zamojszczyzna region around the city of Zamość (now in Lublin Voivodeship, Poland) was carried out between November 1942 and March 1943, on direct orders from Heinrich Himmler.
The operation of mass expulsions from the Zamojszczyzna region around the city of Zamość was carried out between November 1942 and March 1943, on direct orders from the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS) Heinrich Himmler
On December 13th, 1942, Józefa was registered with the no. 26886 at Auschwitz. She was deported with her mother Marianna, who in February 1943, was selected within the camp and transferred to Block 25 (the block of death – the isolation station where people awaited to be killed). Marianna was murdered in a gas chamber, while Józefa’s father was also deported to Auschwitz in a different transport, ultimately leading to his death. Like many children during the Holocaust, Józefa became an orphan.
Nazi Medical Experiments
In Auschwitz, Józefa went through pseudo-medical experiments – most likely causing her to be infected with malaria or typhus. Such experiments were conducted in many camps and on a wide scale, with prisoners being used as guinea pigs in the Nazis’ search for medical answers.
The participation of numerous German physicians in criminal medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners was a particularly drastic instance of the trampling of medical ethics. The initiators and facilitators of these experiments were Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, together with SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Grawitz, the chief physician of the SS and police, and SS-Standartenführer Wolfram Sievers, the secretary general of the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage) Association and director of the Waffen SS Military-Scientific Research Institute. The SS-WVHA (SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, in charge of concentration camps from March 1942) had administrative and financial authority. Support in the form of specialized analytical studies came from the Waffen SS Hygiene Institute, directed by SS-Oberführer Joachim Mrugowsky, an M.D. and professor of bacteriology at the University of Berlin Medical School.
Ernst-Robert Grawitz (8 June 1899 – 24 April 1945) was a German physician and an SS functionary (Reichsarzt, "arzt" meaning "physician") during the Nazi era.
Wolfram Sievers (10 July 1905 – 2 June 1948) was Reichsgeschäftsführer, or managing director, of the Ahnenerbe (ancestral heritage) Nazi think tank in Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945.
Oberführer and Chief of Hygiene Institute of the Waffen-SS, Joachim Mrugowsky (1905 - 1948), was a German hygienist, was born to a family of Polish origin.
Experiments were planned at the highest levels to meet the needs of the army (some were intended to improve the state of soldiers’ health) or postwar plans (including population policy), or to reinforce the bases of racial ideology (including advancing views as to the superiority of the “Nordic race”). Aside from experiments planned at the highest levels, many Nazi doctors experimented on prisoners on behalf of German pharmaceutical companies or medical institutes. Others did so in pursuit of their personal interests, or to advance their academic careers. A photo taken by the members of Soviet medical team documenting criminal experiments performed on prisoners in the camp. (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives)The Nazis deliberately destroyed evidence of these horrific medical tests, the majority of proof coming from the statements made by the organizers of these experiments, as well as the testimonials given by victims and the results of their medical examinations. Liberation
During the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945, Józefa Głazowska along with a group of children were transferred to the camp in Potulice, where she finally found liberation.
• Please do not share the photos without proper attribution and context.
Special thanks to Auschwitz Memorial and Museum for collaborating with me on this project and providing all the information above. Writer of this piece: Alexandra Cummings.
Sponsored by the Michael Frank Family Charitable Fund.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Mar 14, 2020 15:29:23 GMT -7
The Polish children of AuschwitzPolish children in Auschwitz concentration campPolish children and young Polish people arrived in the camp in transports of political prisoners. These were people who had cooperated with the resistance movement, who were being held as hostages, or who had been caught in street roundups (łapanka's) or crackdowns on Polish youth.
The first transports of Poles to Auschwitz in June, July, and August 1940 included boys of 16 and 17, and a few as young as 14.
There were also Polish children among the people expelled from the Zamość region. Among the more than 1,300 people who arrived in three transports, there were at least 150 children and young people. The fate of the boys was particularly tragic. Almost all of them were murdered by lethal injection of phenol after spending several weeks in the Birkenau men’s camp. Many of the girls from the Zamość transports also died in a short space of time as a result of typhus or starvation, or were selected along with their mothers and sent to the gas chambers.
The next large group of Polish children in the camp came from Warsaw, where they were detained along with adults after the start of the Uprising in August 1944. In August and September, almost 13 thousand people, including at least 1,500 children, young people, and infants, reached Auschwitz by way of the transport camp in Pruszków.
There were also children among the Poles held in the camp for trial by the summary court for such offenses as food smuggling or escaping from slave labor. As a rule, all the sentences passed by this court were death sentences.www.escape2poland.co.uk/poland-guide/fate-auschwitz-children
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Mar 14, 2020 15:46:49 GMT -7
Children in AuschwitzOn the basis of the partially preserved camp records and estimates, it has been established that there were approximately 232 thousand children and young people up to the age of 18 among the 1.3 million or more people deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
This figure includes about 216 thousand Jewish children and young people, 11 thousand Sinti and Roman children, at least 3 thousand Polish children and youngsters, over 1 thousand Byelorussian children, and significant numbers of Russian children, Ukrainian children, and children and youngsters of other nationality. The majority of them were deported to Auschwitz along with their parents in various campaigns directed against whole ethnic or social groups. Slightly more than 23.5 thousand children and young people were registered in the camp, out of the total of 400 thousand registered prisoners.Child survivors walk out of the children's barracks in Auschwitz. The fate of child and youth prisoners was no different in principle from that of adults. Just like adults, they suffered from hunger and cold, were used as laborers, and were punished, put to death, and used as subjects in criminal experiments by SS doctors.Cadavers of women and Children who died in cold weather at Auschwitz.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Mar 16, 2020 14:41:25 GMT -7
Ester PolackThe girl in photography is called Ester Polack. She was born in Amsterdam. She was brought to Auschwitz on June 28, 1942 with the transport of a thousand Dutch Jews. She was murdered in a gas chamber at the age of five (Photo and information from Anna Cyran Board, according to Yad Vashem).
I think instead of thinking about the number of more than six million murdered in the extermination of Jews, of which over a million and two hundred thousand were Jewish children, it is enough if, as a part of the secular retreat, each of you will look into the beautiful eyes of this Jewish girl and think of their children , and if they don't have them, it's about the children of your friends, friends, members of your families and imagine this child in the darkest darkness, among naked people, each of whom is desperate for breath, air, when the fumes of poison gas are floating in the chamber. Let each of us at least try to feel the fear that this little girl felt in the lungs of poisonous air, who did not understand why it all that could live if a certain Austrian got to the academy of fine arts.
The prisoners from the Sonderkommando said that the children were always underneath, at the bottom, under a pile of bodies. Most often crushed, crushed by desperate adults.
And when you have this image under your eyelids, then think about what the nationalism leads to, what the inhumanity of ethnic groups, political opponents, sexual minorities or judging people for any other reason by a group of those who want power remember that That's when it ended, among others, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Maydanek, Sobibor, Belzec or in trucks in kulmhof (CHELMNO NAD NEREM). That's when it found its final in babi pit and in rule, as well as in burning barns and in a starved ghetto.
At the end, think about this Jewish girl again. She was 5 years old. Her name was Ester Polack and she was brutally murdered just because she was born Jewish. If it was my four-Year-old daughter, I would have given her another year of life, which when I write these words is safe in kindergarten, more or less a hundred kilometers from the place where little Ester's short life is over.
Not all the children on this planet are as lucky as my daughter. And I'm not sure if the happiness my daughter has, because she is safe and filled, won't end someday.
Ester was murdered by people raised in Christian Europe. Yes! It's possible. It was possible then and it is possible now. Remember today about the five year old Ester.
|
|
jeanne
Cosmopolitan
Posts: 544
|
Post by jeanne on Mar 20, 2020 15:57:38 GMT -7
The extent of the evil that can come from a human heart is inconceivable to me...it seems the cruelty humans can do to one another has no bounds.
Thank God there are other human hearts who know how to love.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Mar 21, 2020 4:17:44 GMT -7
Dear Jeanne,This photo I saw in one of the Blocks of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Children, like Elie Wiesel, were numbered and photographed after arriving at Auschwitz concentration camp. Photograph: AFP/AFP/Getty Images. It will stay with me for the rest of my life, that visit of the Auschwitz concentrationcamps in Oświęcim in southern Poland. I thought about my Warsaw aunt who was in Auschwitz during the war back then.Thank God there are and were other human hearts who know how to love. My Roman Catholic Polish grandmother experienced the most vicious Nazi Waffen SS in Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising (German, Austrian and Ukrainian SS men) and German and Austrian SS-Totenkopfverbände SS officers and guards in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, but she also met very good (christian) Roman Catholic Austrian as a Polish slave labourer. Austrian farmers and priests who were compassionate, because she was a fellow Roman Catholic. She opened these Austrians their eyes about what their compatriots of the Third Reich (Deutsches Reich 1933–1943, and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 until May 1945) (Germans and Austrians) were doing in Warsaw in Poland. They were shocked. Indeed there were vicious nazi beast Austrian farmers amongst them as well and they had to be extremely careful, because the Austrian society was as poisoned by the Nazi ideology and the lang years of influence of the Austrian branches of the SA, SS, Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, The Nazi Secret state police), SD (Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi SS secret service) and the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) nazi party. In 1944, the Nazi's controled Austria for 6 years. And before that the Nazi's already had influence in the Austrian society, like they had in Germany. The chancellor of Austria Engelbert Dollfuß (4 October 1892 – 25 July 1934) for instance was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. Female prisoners after the liberation of Mauthausen concentration campIn March 1938 the local Gauleiter of Gmunden, Upper Austria, gave a speech to the local Austrians and told them in plain terms that all "traitors" of Austria were to be thrown into the newly opened concentration camp at Mauthausen-Gusen. The camp became notorious for its cruelty and barbarism. During its existence an estimated 200,000 people died, half of whom were directly killed. My grandmother survived that concentrationcamp Jeanne. She experienced terrible things in that camp, like the murder of a Sovjet prisoner of war (a Red army soldier) by an SS-Totenkopfverbände SS officer who unleashed his large vicious dog on the weakend, skelleton thin poor fellow. That memory of that man being torn apart by dogs stayed with my grandmother for the rest of her lives. She survived both the September 1939 Nazi German/Austrian attack on Warsaw, the Warsaw Uprising of Augustus/september/October 1944 and the Nazi concentrationcamp Mauthausen-Gusen (October 1944- early 1945). That few good hearted Austrians, even an Austrian priest who secretly in the early morning organised a mass for Polish slave labour women, were maybe the exceptions, but they were there. That Austrian Roman-Catholic priest in Nazi Austria (Third Reich) was an example a human heart who knew how to love.The proof of my grandmothers eye witness is the following story of the Mauthausen concentration camp Schutzhaftlagerführer GGeorg Bachmayer (August 12, 1913 – May 8, 1945), I quote Wikipedia encyclopedia:
"Georg Bachmayer was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände who served as the Schutzhaftlagerführer, with responsibility for prisoners while they were inside the Mauthausen concentration camp, he also oversaw granite production in the quarry. In this position he also inspected the satellite camps and supervised the construction of the Ebensee camp. He was considered a brutal sadist."Georg Bachmayer, SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände who served as the Schutzhaftlagerführer in Mauthausen concentration camp. His speciality was to set two mastiff-like bloodhounds (one in 1944 "Lord") on inmates, which would literally tear them to death. Pieter's grandmother Eleonora Kotowicz was an eye witness to this brutal method and war crime/crime against humanity."Bachmayer was clearly a sadist. His speciality was to set two mastiff-like bloodhounds (one in 1944 "Lord") on inmates, which would literally tear them to death. This was known in camp jargon as ‘dying from the dog’s kiss’. The real cause of death from a medical point of view was usually general sepsis, if the inmate didn’t die immediately of heart failure. Of the thousands of inmates that Bachmayer himself killed or tortured, just two cases are mentioned here. One day the evening roll call in block 20 didn’t tally and one inmate was missing. In block 20 the unfortunate victims of Action K were housed under special security measures [...] where they were left to die of hunger. When the missing inmate was noticed, all the other inmates in the entire camp were first required to fall in and remain standing in the roll call area. At the same time a search was initiated and the missing inmate was ultimately found in one of the normal inmate blocks where he had hidden in the hope of avoiding starvation. When Bachmayer received the report that the inmate had been found, he was standing by chance next to the undersigned. He began to tremble with gleeful excitement and said half to himself ‘I’ll batter this one to death myself’, which he then proceeded to do." Gerhard Kanthack, former German government official and political prisoner at Mauthausen (AMM V/3/20)
Several examples of Bachmayer's brutality are described by Vasily Bunelik ( bunelik.wixsite.com/bunelik#!books/cnec ) and General Officer Georges Loustaunau-Lacau :
"The most appalling scene is in February 1945: massacre with an axe of three hundred deportees driven back from another camp. The most revolting methods of destruction employed by Commander S.S. Bachmayer and his deputies completed the natural work of hunger and cold."Georg Bachmayer (left) with another SS man of the the SS-Totenkopfverbände in Mauthausen concentration camp.Bachmayer committed suicide nearby Prihetsberg (Austria) on May 8, 1945 after shooting his wife and two children." References- Thompson, Leslie. "mauthausen survivor". Retrieved 1 March 2015. - Loustaunau-Lacau, Georges (1946). "Chiens maudits - Souvenirs d'un rescapé des bagnes hitlériens" (PDF). Spirale. p. 15. - Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich - Wer war was vor und nach 1945, Frankfurt am Main, 2. Auflage, June 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 - The Box from Braunau: In Search of My Father's War By Jan Elvin Publisher: AMACOM; 1 edition (May 2009) Language: English ISBN 0-8144-1049-9 ISBN 978-0814410493 - The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy (Architext) by Paul B. Jaskot. Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (January 4, 2000) - Language: English ISBN 0-415-17366-3 ISBN 978-0415173667Soviet prisoners of war in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Austria, January 1942.Soviet prisoners of war at Gusen (KZ Mauthausen), October 1941Soviet POWs standing before one of the huts in MauthausenThese few compassionate, human, empathic Austrians must have been a great comfort for my babcia (grandmother) back then in the Austria of late 1944.Female prisoners after the liberation of Mauthausen concentration campSurvivors of Gusen shortly after their liberationCheers, Pieter
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Apr 18, 2020 15:36:03 GMT -7
Krystyna Trześniewska was born on December 8th 1929 in Lubelskie, Poland, she was a prisoner at Auschwitz, where she arrived in December 1942. Registered as political prisoner, Pole, camp number 27129. She died there on May 18th 1943.
|
|
|
Post by Jaga on Apr 18, 2020 21:18:53 GMT -7
It is hard to imagine that Krystyna was considered a political prisoner. Her face is so beautiful and full of emotion. She lived only a half a year there. She died because she was from the area that was going to be colonized by German resettlers.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Apr 23, 2020 17:31:39 GMT -7
It is tragic that so many Polish Roman Catholic, Jewish and Roma Children died in concentration camps.The image of this Gypsy girl became a symbol of the Holocaust. She was considered a long time to be a Jewish girl, but she was a Roma girl.Settela SteinbachAnna Maria (Settela) Steinbach (23 December 1934, Buchten – 31 July 1944) was a Roma girl who was gassed in Nazi Germany's Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Initially identified as a [jew], her personal identity and association with the Sinti group of the Romani people were discovered in 1994.LifeSteinbach was born in Buchten (now part of Sittard-Geleen, in southern Limburg in the Netherlands) as the daughter of a trader and violinist. On May 16, 1944, a razzia against the Romani was organized in the whole of the Netherlands. Steinbach was arrested in Eindhoven. That very same day, she arrived with another 577 people in Westerbork concentration camp. Two hundred seventy-nine people were allowed to leave again because although they lived in trailers, they were not Romani. In Westerbork, Steinbach's head was shaved as a preventive measure against head lice. Like the other Romani girls and women, she wore a torn sheet around her head to cover her bald head.
On 19 May Settela was put on a transport together with 244 other Romani to Auschwitz-Birkenau on a train that also contained Jewish prisoners. Right before the doors were being closed, she apparently stared through the opening at a passing dog or the German soldiers. Rudolf Breslauer, a Jewish prisoner in Westerbork, who was shooting a movie on orders of the German camp commander, filmed the image of Settela's fearful glance staring out of the wagon. Crasa Wagner was in the same wagon and heard Settela's mother call her name and warn her to pull her head out of the opening. Wagner survived Auschwitz and was able to identify Settela in 1994. DeathOn 22 May the Dutch Romani, among whom was Steinbach, arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were registered and taken to the Romani section. Romani who were fit to work were taken to ammunition factories in Germany. The remaining three thousand Romani were gassed in the period from July to 3 August. Steinbach, her mother, two brothers, two sisters, aunt, two nephews and niece were part of this latter group. Of the Steinbach family, only the father survived; he died in 1946 and is buried in the cemetery of Maastricht.LegacyAfter the war, the fragment of seven seconds in Breslauer's movie was used in many documentaries. The image of the anonymous young girl staring out of the wagon full of fear and about to be transported to Auschwitz became an icon of the Holocaust. Until 1994, she was only known as "the girl with the headdress". It was assumed she was Jewish, as for many years there was little attention paid to the genocide of the 500,000 to 1,500,000 Romani that were killed by the Germans in the Porajmos throughout Europe.
In December 1992, Dutch journalist Aad Wagenaar started to research her identity. By following the number on the outside of the wagon, number 10, 16 or 18, the description of the wagon, and the identity of a single suitcase that appears in the shot, he quickly discovered that the transport took place on 19 May 1944 and that it was a mixed transport of Dutch Romani and Jews. On 7 February 1994 at a trailer camp in Spijkenisse, Crasa Wagner was able to remember and to reveal the name of Settela Steinbach.
The quest for Settela Steinbach's identity was documented in Cherry Duyns' documentary Settela, gezicht van het verleden (1994) (Settela, Face of the Past). Wagenaar published his research in the book Settela; het meisje heeft haar naam terug.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Apr 23, 2020 17:39:49 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by Jaga on Apr 24, 2020 5:43:09 GMT -7
Pieter, really good idea to attach the story to the picture - like in the case of this gipsy girl, who perished with her whole family. Her father survived and died one year after the war. She is looking at something and she is surprised... and a bit scared. No wonder, maybe they were just stopping in the camp
|
|