EUROPEAN UNION GRANT FOR PRESERVATION CAMP ART EXHIBITION I LOOKED AT THEIR MOUTHS: A JOURNAL FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO

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1 O Ś WIĘ CIM ISSN -0 CULTURE PEOPLE HISTORY EUROPEAN UNION GRANT FOR PRESERVATION CAMP ART EXHIBITION I LOOKED AT THEIR MOUTHS: A JOURNAL FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO THE HORIZON ABOUT EUROPEAN VOLUNTEER WORK no. March 00

2 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 EDITORIAL BOARD: Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine EDITORIAL 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: Paweł Sawicki Photographer: Tomasz Mól PUBLISHER: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum PARTNERS: In the March issue of Oś, we recommend two texts connected with art. The first of them, by the director of the State Museum in Oświęcim, Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, presents the concept of the exhibition of camp art planned for the kitchen building at the site of the Auschwitz I camp. The exhibition will focus above all on the emotions memorialized on canvas by the artists. This means that, when there are no more eyewitnesses left, works of art will still be capable of expressing and conveying the essence of the experience of Auschwitz. The second text is about contemporary photography. It is an interview with Ambroise Tezenas, a Frenchman who completed part of an international project in Oświęcim. We also recommend an account of a trip to Germany organized as part of the observances of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism. Participants in international projects organized by the International Youth Meeting House took part in week-long seminars. Brief reminiscences of the trip, by the young people themselves, accompany the article. We also write in Oś about a meeting of the German Horizon Volunteers Association at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer, and publish a text devoted to an extraordinary document, the book I Looked at Their Mouths: A Diary from the Warsaw Ghetto. There was a meeting at the Jewish Center about the book, with Dr. Piotr Wieser of the Jewish Historical Institute. We also invite you to the Center throughout March for the series of films on Jewish themes, titled Jewish Motifs Retrospective 00. A GALLERY OF THE 0TH CENTURY The Oświęcim Machine and Automobile Factory was founded on April, on the initiative of Count Artur Potocki and Count Roger Raczyński. It manufactured cars with a full range of bodywork: roadster, cabriolet, coach, and coupe. Oświęcim-Praga cars were renowned for their reliable construction and solid workmanship. The fact that they took part in the Monte Carlo Rally is testimony to their endurance. In a complimentary letter to the manufacturer, Wojciech Kossak wrote: I have owned such cars as Cadillacs, Napiers, and Locomobiles, so my opinion about your automobile might mean something. I can therefore state with all impartiality that my Oświęcim-Praga automobile can stand comparison with even the best motorcar. The excellent, reliable motor, the solid and precisely fitted chassis that comes into its own on Polish roads, and the elegant lines of the bodywork... (from the historical collections of the OMAG factory). Paweł Sawicki Editor-in-chief os@auschwitz.org.pl The factory closed in. In its early years, the Oświęcim factory produced around 00 cars a year on average. Much was said about the solid workmanship of the interwar craftsmen who worked at the factory as the example above testifies. It was a beautiful and outstanding car, from Poland and from Oświęcim a lovely example of the Polish motor industry. Kasztelania.pl Jewish Center Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation International Youth Meeting House IN COOPERATION WITH: Kasztelania State Higher Vocational School in Oświęcim Editorial address: Oś Oświęcim, Ludzie, Historia, Kultura Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau ul. Więźniów Oświęcimia 0-0 Oświęcim os@auschwitz.org.pl A group of workers from the car factory Oświęcim-Praga in Brzezinka. A photo from Mirosław Ganobis s collection A Gallery of the 0th Century

3 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum The proposals submitted by the Museum received high marks, out of a possible points, the second-best results in the category Protection and Preservation of the Cultural Heritage with Extra-Regional Significance. The total amount of the two EU grants to the Museum is almost million złoty. The Museum applied for financing for conservation work on two blocks ( and ) at the Auschwitz I site, and the conservation of five wooden barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau site. The projects have already received excellent marks for their subject matter, said Rafał Pióro, head of the Museum Preservation Section. Now we must update the previously submitted documentation and supply additional annexes on the planned work. We are very well prepared for this and are not at all concerned. The only thing that remains is to sign the contracts and begin the work, which is of vital importance, on the Museum grounds. The conservation work on blocks and at the Auschwitz I site is essential because of the changes to the main Museum exhibition, which will be housed in blocks -. Before the new display elements can be installed, the buildings must undergo conservation in order to preserve as much of the original structure as possible, and to ensure the safety of the people who visit the new exhibition. EUROPEAN UNION GRANT FOR THE MUSEUM Two Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum projects have received grants under the Infrastructure and Environment European Operational Program. Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski announced the grant awards on February. photo: Paweł Sawicki The conservation situation is much more challenging at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau site, said Pióro. The barracks were erected in great haste, and we are now in a race with time to preserve their authenticity. In the s, we obtained money from Belgium, Greece, and Luxembourg to preserve several wooden barracks. We will now conserve five barracks, and there are two more to be done after that. However, we must also remember that there are still dozens of brick barracks at Birkenau, along with an enormous number of ruins that should also undergo conservation in the immediate future. The high marks for our proposals show that our conservationists and engineers are excellently prepared for the large projects required on the vast grounds of the Memorial as a part of our mission to maintain authenticity. So far Poland has done the most to upkeep and preserve this site, said Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński. We are working on a solution that will make it possible for us to plan long-term preservation work on almost 00 hectares of grounds, where there are buildings and 00 ruins, not to mention the archives and collections. This solution is the Auschwitz- Birkenau Foundation, which we have just launched. I think that the excellent marks for these projects means that the European Union will take an even more favorable view of the Foundation. It is my ambition for culture to be a leader in the absorption of European funds, and for the quality and efficiency of the distribution of financing in the cultural sphere to be as high as possible, said Zdrojewski at the press conference. A total of of the 0 cultural proposals submitted to the ministry have received European Union funding this year. Paweł Sawicki photo: Paweł Sawicki Block no. Block no. THE AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU FOUNDATION The aim of the Foundation is to amass a Perpetual Fund to cover the conservation of the original camp buildings, grounds, and ruins, and to preserve and securely maintain the archival holdings and other authentic objects. The revenues and endowment of the Perpetual Fund will provide for the operation of the Foundation; the Fund will generate the means necessary for a long-term conservation program. Ensuring the preservation of the original Auschwitz remains will require a Perpetual Fund of approximately 0 million euro. The Museum Preservation Department will establish the conservation priorities under the strict supervision of the international Auschwitz Council. The Foundation Board of Trustees will oversee the management of the Fund and the dividend. The highest priority tasks that must be carried out in the coming years include the conservation of the brick and wooden barracks that are in the worst condition, of the remains of the wooden barracks at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, and of the eleven blocks at the Auschwitz I site that will house the new main Museum exhibition. The building at Auschwitz I that housed the camp kitchen must be conserved and adapted for the exhibition of camp art and the building known as the Old Theater must be adapted as the headquarters for the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. photo: Paweł Sawicki Former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp site

4 Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 What project are you working on at Auschwitz? I am a photographer from France. Outside of my journalistic work for various publishers, I am also realizing my own project. It does not perhaps speak literally of the phenomenon of black tourism, but of the growing interest in places where people suffered. It is not about the financial aspect, but people s interest in the subject of death. I know that this is nothing new after all, when we consider the Roman Colosseum, that s where the public came to see how wild animals kill people. What strikes me in today s situation is the issue that the normal inhabitants of wealthy countries travel to poor countries to observe human suffering. That is cheap. I have read a lot about this and was surprised that, when people began to analyze black tourism, they placed many different places on the same level for example, Jim Morrison s grave at the Pere-Lachaise Cemetary in Paris, where many people travel, the KGB prison in Vilnius, where one can see places where victims were tortured, and right next to it is Auschwitz and many other places. Before coming here, I was in Chernobyl. Today, you can hire a guide and visit the dead city near the electrical plant. These places and their histories are very different, yet they are equated on the same level. Therefore I decided to travel and see them with my own eyes. TO SEE WITH YOUR OWN EYES I n February, the French photographer Ambroise Tézenas, visited the Auschwitz Museum. The photographs taken there will be part of a larger project of his. Do you have any personal connection to this place? For me, a Frenchman, Auschwitz is a name with which I have been acquainted since childhood. My grandparents took part in the last world war, and someone from among my parents friends was a prisoner of the camp. I even saw the tattoo on his arm. I remember it perfectly, even though I was very young at the time. However, I was never here earlier. To me, this place is unlike any other of which I have spoken before. I have traveled here to stay two days, since, in the first place, I wanted to see it with my own eyes and take some pictures, and then to consider its meaning in my project. In what sense? When you begin a project, you always know your starting point, but you never know how it will all end. I work slowly and reflect the whole time upon where I find myself, and modify my initial idea. You cannot hold on to it restrictively, because then one finds oneself facing a wall. Chernobyl, for example, was very different. There is no great lesson to be learned beyond the question of ecology. Here, the former Auschwitz camp presents a great educational project. And it seems to me now that, when we ponder black tourism, we cannot perceive all these places in the same way. Of course, at this moment I look at it from the perspective of a tourist I came here for only two days. Maybe I should return? Not only to take more photos, but, if for no other reason, to teach something to my children. photo: Ambroise Tézenas Auschwitz, after all, is a symbol of something more important. It is not only death and gas chambers. Here, one can reflect upon the tragedy of war, on the question of repression committed by the state, and in the end on planned genocide. The people who travel here certainly have very different motivations, and it would be difficult to throw Auschwitz into a bag labeled black tourism. I think that is true. Certainly, there are those who do that. In some guidebooks, after all, it is written that, when traveling in Europe, one of the places that one absolutely should see is Auschwitz. But in truth, is that important? Now, I know that what is most significant is to see this place with one s own eyes, because this is an exceptionally important and symbolic place with a great message. In many places, visits are only entertainment. In the KGB Museum there are many people dressed up in uniforms intended to re-create the atmosphere. There is no symbolism behind this. This is comparable to visits to the impoverished Brazilian favelas where tourists, after bathing in the ocean, set out on exciting excursions. There s something wrong with this. What impressed you the most in this place? The contrasts. There are many here. For example, that people live several hundred meters from the grounds of the former camp. That is very powerful. Aside from that, the reactions of people vary greatly on the one hand, someone screams, and on the other, someone weeps; on the one hand, you find some silly graffiti and next to it an elderly couple lost in thought. It is strange. Beyond that, I admire the people who work here. It must be incredibly depressing. The education and care of this place are, of course, very important, but when I think about it, the work here is somewhat like emotionally wallowing in mud. How do you see Auschwitz as a photographer? It is difficult to avoid thinking of history. This place is very theatrical and unusually photogenic. One could compare it to a prepared film set. Birkenau is located on very flat terrain, thanks to which the space and horizon can be taken advantage of. I also noticed the grass, which is neatly mowed. You can imagine that you re back in England. The vegetation is unusual. Some snow also fell, which visually changes the whole place. However, in the buildings at Auschwitz I, the windows are darkened, which makes for fantastic light. I tried, for example, photographing people there, but in a somewhat different manner. I used long exposures, so that the figures would come out blurred. I think, however, that it is impossible to separate the pictures taken here from the historical layer. Interviewed by Paweł Sawicki AMBROISE TÉZENAS Born in. A graduate of the Applied Arts School in Vevey, Switzerland. In the years , a member of Editing Agency. In 00, he co-founded an independent photographic association, Think Pictures. He photographs mainly landscapes. In the years 00-00, he realized a project in Beijing, where he captured the transition of the city brought about by the coming 00 Olympics. For this he was awarded the Leica European Publishers Award for Photography. He currently lives in Paris. photo: Ambroise Tézenas photo: Ambroise Tézenas

5 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum A FORUM FOR OPEN REFLECTION pro memoria has published its first issue. The magazine is published by the Museum and is a continuation of the issues previously published by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp Victims Memorial Foundation. The re-launched magazine has a new graphic design, and publishes articles in departments including history, the museum, eyewitnesses, remembrance art, profiles, and discussions. This is a magazine intended for a general educated readership. We are targeting not only researchers, but above all everyone interested in the issue of Auschwitz, people who feel a need to learn about history and who can perceive the vestiges of the history of Auschwitz in the contemporary world, said pro memoria editor-in-chief Katarzyna Nowak. It is our publishing mission to join in a forum for open scholarly, social, and artistic reflection on the history of the Auschwitz camp and its contemporary contexts. We regard the historical and contemporary aspects as equally significant, says Nowak. We will be respectful to the individual sensitivities of the eyewitnesses to history, whose experience makes it possible to verify and expand memories that have already become established. For this reason, as well, our pages welcome people from various artistic disciplines and artists in the belief that a diversity of perspectives is the best way of expressing our reality, which has always been a multicultural one, Nowak adds in the editor s foreword to the new edition. pro memoria features articles about depictions of the Holocaust in Russian literature, the epidemic of suicide during the Nazi period, a new symbol in papal expressions of honor, the factors that influence the official versions of remembrance, the building of a monument at the site of the Bełżec death camp, the artistic realizations of Gustav Metzger and Zofia Lipecka, and the Auschwitz Museum s digital archive and the efforts it is making in conservation. The cover photos depict monumental paintings by Izaak Celnikier in full color, and there is an interview with the artist in the issue. pro memoria is available for purchase in the Museum s online bookstore at www. auschwitz.org.pl as well as on the grounds of the Memorial. Paweł Sawicki THE HISTORY OF THE WOMEN S CAMP IN PICTURES BY JANINA TOLLIK On Their Last Legs is the title of a new educational catalogue by Jolanta Kupiec, published by the Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum. It is dedicated to the work of former Auschwitz prisoner Janina Tollik, whose main subject was the life of the women in the Birkenau camp. The Museum in Auschwitz holds of the artist s pictures. They depict many aspects of camp life: the trauma of arrival, the long exhausting hours spent at roll call, the nightmare of camp conditions, patients in the hospital, destructive labor, starvation, and death. The book also describes works that were lost in a fire in England in. The catalogue includes a total of works on Auschwitz themes, as well as documents and archival photographs. These pictures are a new, powerfully eloquent visual warning against the human degeneration born out of the apocalypse of war, we read in the introduction. The book is divided into three parts corresponding to the stages in Janina Tollik s life the camp period, the Belgian period, and the Polish period. She did not confine her works to sketches and paintings connected with the subject of Auschwitz. She painted a range of other subjects: landscapes, portraits, figure studies, nudes, and ornamental designs based on Kashubian motifs. In an account that she deposed at the Museum in, Tollik said: When painting on the subject of the camp, I wanted in the first place to convey the atmosphere the climate of camp life. In my pictures, I wanted to show the camp as I saw it, being a weak, exhausted prisoner lost in the crowd, among the gray mass of my brother prisoners. photo: Archive of A-BSM On Their Last Legs is available for purchase online at the Museum bookstore: The camp photograph of Janina Tollik Gabriela Nikliborc JANINA TOLLIK Born in Janów in. In the years -, she studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Cracow. Once the war broke out, she worked as a nurse in Pomerania. She continued in this line of work after being expelled to Cracow. She also took a job as an office helper at the Hydrology Bureau in Cracow, where she organized a small information-espionage unit. The Gestapo arrested her in May. After brutal interrogation at the Montelupich prison and imprisonment at the Helcel Institution in Cracow, she was sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner in April and given number 0. Janina Tollik was assigned to numerous labor details in Auschwitz, including the penal company. It was in the penal company that she began sketching scenes from camp life. She destroyed many of these sketches because she could not imagine that they would ever be of any use to anyone. In October, she was sent in an evacuation transport to Flossenbürg in Bavaria, where she remained until liberation. In the years -, she lived in Belgium, where she recuperated, studied, and worked. She returned to Poland in and devoted herself to art, working at the State Museum in Oświęcim and at the Central Board of the Cepelia Folk and Artistic Cooperative. She made many artistic designs, including exhibitions and series of paintings and musical works. She died in Warsaw on December,.

6 International Youth Meeting House Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 REMEMBRANCE DAY FOR THE VICTIMS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM For thirteen years, the German Bundestag has been observing Remembrance Day for the Victims of National Socialism on January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. On this occasion, it holds international meetings for young people, for those engaged in projects and initiatives relating to the history of National Socialism, for those working against anti-semitism and racism, and for those personally involved in Remembrance Day because of their origins, religion, or loss of loved ones, as well as for instructors in the areas of education, media and social work with youth. Wednesday, January, 00 The train from Cracow, in which Edyta, Gosia and Tomek were traveling, pulled into the Gesundbrunnen Station in southern Berlin a few minutes before :00 AM. On the platform, we met up with Gosia from Olkusz, a German philology student at the Jagiellonian University, who joined our group. The program seminar did not start until :0 PM. Therefore, we resolved to go to my place for breakfast. At :0, we went to the metro station Mehringdamm and got off at the Franzosischestrasse station in the Mitte district, which is Berlin s showcase for tourists. At :0, on schedule, we were in the government district, where we had our first meeting at the Paul-Lobe-Haus building. Next, we gathered in the seminar room, where we received additional seminar material in a navy blue bag with the Bundestag logo on it, and at :0 PM the official part of the seminar began. After a short greeting, it was time for us to get acquainted. Afterwards, we listened to a lecture by Hannes Heer, a German historian, who first initiated the exhibit on the Wermacht at the Institute of Social Sciences in Hamburg. The theme of the paper was the role of the Wermacht in WWII Der Krieg heiligt die Mittel der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Rolle der Wermacht (The end justifies the means The Wermacht and its role in WWII). The lecture ended with a short discussion, and the next hour of the program was designated for work in subject groups. The subject for our group was: Memory Contest: Polish Victims of National Socialism. The discussion was to last a few minutes, but dragged on for an hour. It came out that the Germans, French and Poles have very different experiences concerning their first history lesson on WWII. The last item on the agenda was a tour of the Bundestag building, which ended with our having dinner together at the Bundestag restaurant. Late that evening, the bus took us to our hostel on Friedrischstrasse, where we were assigned our rooms, and after setting the alarm clocks in our cell phones for :0 AM, we went to sleep exhausted. Ania Marczak Thursday, January, 00 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PROJECT BY THE PARTICIPANTS: On Thursday morning at :0 AM, a bus took us to Tegel airport. The flight was one of those pleasant moments, especially since the weather was fine and we were able to see a beautiful sunrise. We landed at a rain-flooded Paris-Orly airport, from where we were taken by bus to our hostel. The Paris program began with visiting the city. Our group, along with another group, went to the Jewish quarter. Our group was led by Jochen Guckes, who had lived for some time in Paris. We were already familiar with the Jewish Quarter in Cracow, and therefore it was with great interest that we observed this teeming, vital part of Paris. Near the synagogue there was a cluster of small stores and cafes. At :00 PM we met at the Mémorial de la Shoah. At the beginning, we visited the museum and educational center in depth. We were divided into small groups, which allowed each of us to ask our guide questions and stop to linger over the more interesting displays. After this part of the program came time to talk to a witness of history, Henri Borlant, who told us his story. He was born in a Jewish family in France and his parents, who worked a small farm, were completely assimilated. They thought after some time that the town had forgotten that they were a Jewish family. On July, Henri Borlant along with his father and brother were shipped to Auschwitz. He alone survived the camp. Shortly before the liberation of the camp, he was able to escape back to Paris, where he found his mother. After the war, Henri Borlant graduatred in medicine in France and married a German woman. From that time on, he has been heavily involved in the French-German reconciliation process. Our stay at the Mémorial de la Shoah ended late in the evening. Some of the participants returned by bus to the hotel, while others went to see Paris by night. Ania Marczak This year, the International Youth Meeting House in Oświęcim was represented by young participants in projects at the IYMH Oświęcim: Anna Marczak, Edyta Hnatyszyn, Tomasz Kobylański, and Małgorzata Bartuś. The young people spent a week in lectures and workshops in Berlin, Paris and at the Oradur-sur-Glane Memorial, where they considered the main question of the civilian victims of armed violence and the Holocaust against the background of World War II, from the perspective of the victims, the perpetrators and observers. This was facilitated by visits to the Paris Jewish Quarter, the Marais, the Mémorial de la Shoah, and the village of Oradur, which is preserved as a museum. They also met with witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust, as well as with the former Chairwoman of the European Parliament, Simone Veil. Among the eighty young The everyday rhythm of life is interrupted by the regular wailing of the alarm sirens and the search for the next shelter on the outskirts of town or in schoolyards. The many killed, and the destruction by war in the Gaza Strip, are a part of a diabolical ring of violence which must be broken; the world must unite in order for peace to be possible in the Near East, and it is this process that the Federal Republic of Germany wishes to actively engage in, said President Kohler. attendees were representatives from Germany, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Israel countries and nations that were in some way touched by the terror and crime of National Socialism and the Holocaust. The various historiographies, as well as cultural and communicative memories of the given countries, were discussed during the seminar. Critical analysis of the sources also had an important place. After a day of preparation, the delegates left for the French Oradur-sur-Glane Memorial. In Germany or in Poland, very few associate anything with this name. In France, Oradur is a symbol of suffering of the civil population during WWII; under the guise of fighting with the partisans, an SS squadron in June of pacified a village near Bordeaux. The great majority of the inhabitants, more than 00 people, were murdered. After the war, the ruins were left un- Friday, January, 00 On this day we visited the Parisian Bernardine Fathers College. The main point of the meeting was a discussion with Simone Veil, who was a prisoner in the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp and chairwoman of the Shoah Remembrance Foundation. Veil mainly spoke of her efforts on behalf of French-German reconciliation. Not wishing to be kept in the center of attention, she gave the floor to Patrick Desbois, a French priest who for years has traveled around Ukrainian villages in search of evidence of mass executions perpetrated by SS special operations squads. Thanks to him, we realized that the question of the Shoah in Ukraine remains in the sphere of forgotten events and commands little interest. Dozens of Ukranian villages were treated in a barbaric manner, but who knows of this? Who today remembers their names? Together, we considered a worthy way of commemorating these events. This is immensely significant, since we do not want to observe the phenomenon of a completely forgotten occurrence. Edyta Hnatyszyn photo: Anna Marczak Planning of a night trip around Paris

7 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 International Youth Meeting House Saturday, January, 00 photo: Anna Marczak touched. Today, they serve as a monument to the victims of that operation, and a Memorial has also been erected on the site of the village. At the end of the seminar, the young people had an occasion for discussion with the chairman of the German Bundestag, Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert. The most important event, in terms of protocol, was a formal session of the German Bundestag, which was presided over this year by the German President, Horst Kohler. This year, for the first time, there was no official representative of the Jewish Community in Germany at the ceremony, which caused major reverberations in the media. In his address, President Horst Kohler emphasized Germany s specific obligation to be vigilant in maintaining the memory of the crimes of National Socialism, which is a result of the German nation s past. A large part of his speech was dedicated to the many initiatives in communities, towns and schools, where the memory of the Holocaust is cultivated. Before his appearance in the Bundestag, the President also met with the youth delegates, and a debate arose centering on how to preserve the memory of these events after the last eyewitnesses have passed away. Horst Kohler On a train thanked the former prisoners of the concentration and extermination camps for the work they were doing with the young generation; he also spoke of the shame resulting from the fact that places of Jewish life and worship in Germany must be guarded from extremists. This was received with applause by the members of the Reichstag, the guests on the tribune, and members of the Bundeswehr and police cadets as well. If we stand on the side of our Jewish citizens, then anyone who attacks them, also attacks us, said Kohler. The President also mentioned his visit in 00 to the Israeli town of Sderot. The everyday rhythm of life is interrupted by the regular wailing of the alarm sirens and the search for the next shelter on the outskirts of town or in schoolyards. The many killed, and the destruction by war in the Gaza Strip, are a part of a diabolical circle of violence which must be broken; the world must unite in order for peace to be possible in the Near East, and the government of the Federal Republic of Germany wishes to play an active role in this process, said President Kohler. Edyta Hnatyszyn Tomasz Kobylański Anna Marczak Ela Pasternak (IYMH) A cloudless sky. Not today. Despite the unfriendly cold, we traveled to the French town of Oradur sur Glane. The name itself says nothing either to the Poles or the Germans. For the French people, however, it has a symbolic meaning and is a place of unthinkable suffering for the civilian populace. In this place, on June,, the SS squadron Das Reich murdered almost the whole civilian population of the town. The men were shot and the women and children were shut in the church and burned alive. The village was set ablaze. The reason for this barbaric act was revenge for the killing of an SS officer in Oradur-sur-Vayres by the French resistance movement. In total, people perished; only residents survived. We had the good fortune of meeting two of the living eyewitnesses. One of them was Robert Hebras, with whom we went to see the symbol of Nazi atrocities. When we arrived at the scene, our eyes were met with an unimaginable sight; we were surrounded by the remains of a torched village. We felt as though time had stood still. In an atmosphere of concentration, we registered every word that Mr. Hebras spoke. It was not just a simple report. We stood in a particular place; questions and doubts pushed themselves to our lips. We were remarkably moved by the discussion with Mr. Jean-Marcel Darthout, the second survivor. Just the fact that he came to talk to us, despite not feeling well, is meaningful. We are aware of how important it is to them to sensitize the young generation to the harm and suffering of individuals, who were killed in this place. We admire them for their commitment. We bow our heads before them and are thankful for an incredibly moving lesson in history. Leaving town, our attention was drawn to one banal but nevertheless extremely significant word appearing on the monument: Remember! As young adults, we feel obligated to preserve the memory of the victims of National Socialism, not only within the context of Oradur-sur-Glane, but in a much broader sense. It is our obligation towards those who suffered and perished. Edyta Hnatyszyn Sunday, January, 00 Sunday passed mainly on the trip from Limoges to Paris. The several-hour bus ride turned out to be a moment of relaxation for everyone in the program. The majority tried to make up for lost sleep and some admired the spring scenery outside the window of the bus. In the late afternoon, we arrived at a Paris suburb, Champigny-sur-Marne, where we visited the Museum of National Resistance. It is a small museum with an exhibit mostly associated with the French resistance. The museum management received us with great kindness. Aside from the permanent exhibition, we were allowed to see the museum s archives, where there was a great number of prewar journals even in Polish! We also were able to meet and talk with a city resident, a Jew of Polish descent. Unfortunately, time was running, and despite the pleas of our hosts, we could not stay any longer in Champigny. :0 departure from Paris. Au revoir France! : landing in Berlin. Guten Abend Deutschland! Tomasz Kobylański Monday, January, 00 The key word for the following day was Arbeitsgruppentag; that is, working in groups. The teams had the occasion to work in Berlin s Jewish Museum, at the seat of the Bundestag, at the seat of the permanent exhibition on the Topography of Terror, at the German Federal Archives, as well as at the Memorial and Educational Site in Wannsee. Three of the participants from Oświęcim took part in classes on the grounds of the villa at Grosser Wannsee / where, on January 0,, the conference organized by Reinhard Heydrich on the final solution of the Jewish question was held. The young people had an occasion to learn in more detail about the history of this place, thanks to their coordinator Anna Rosenhein-Osowska, who normally works as a guide at the Memorial. At :00, we went to Paul-Lobe-Haus, where we took part in the opening of an exhibition, Anti-Semitism? Anti-Zionism? Criticism of Israel? by Gerda Hasselfeldt, the deputy speaker of the German Bundestag. The opening of the exhibition gave occasion to learn the German point of view on issues of contemporary anti-semitism, as well as meeting some interesting people, such as the Bergers from Berlin, emigrants from Eastern Europe, or Mr. Emmanuel Rund, a film director from Berlin. Headed by Dr. Susanne Terwey, group leader, we made our way to the Topography of Terror Museum. It was here that we had the opportunity of acquainting ourselves with the history of this part of the district, where the institutions of National Socialism were located: the SS, SD, Gestapo and the headquarters of the Reich Security Services. Keeping time with the unfolding of events, as illustrated on black and white posters, we learned how the terror apparatus of the Third Reich was constructed. We then analyzed the profiles of selected heroes of the civil resistance movement. This was a perfect moment for some personal reflection and thinking. The exhibition made an incredible impression on us and we were agreed that it was a good tool that allowed us to understand the dark side of contemporary German and European History. Tomasz Kobylański and Edyta Hnatyszyn Tuesday, January, 00 photo: Tomasz Kobylański Workshop at the Haus der Wannseekonferenz in Berlin January, because of its symbolism, turned out to be the day of the main ceremonies. It is not only the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Concentration Camp, but, since 00, the International Day of Remembrance of Holocaust Victims. At :00 AM, at the seat of the Bundestag, we summed up the results of the six working groups. We were accompanied by Prof. Dr. Gesine Schwan, a member of SPD, born in. Towards the end of the war, her family sheltered a Jewish girl. Schwan is a candidate for the presidency of Germany (elections will be held on May ) and is Plenipotentiary for relations with Poland. However, the main ceremony was only beginning. At :00 AM, in the plenary hall of the German Bundestag, the Gedenkstunde began, during which the president of the Federal Republic of Germany, Horst Kohler, and the chairman of the Bundestag, Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert, spoke. Among those seated in the hall were Chancellor Angela Merkel, ministers, German parliamentarians, and representatives of the many religious communities. Then the time came for the seminar participants to take part in a discussion with Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert. For over an hour, the young people had an opportunity to exchange views with the chairman of the Bundestag. The discussion was moderated by Gesine Schwan and attentively observed in its entirety by the various German media. Around :00 came time to sum up the whole program with the participation of the coordinators of the project and its participants. Tomasz Kobylański

8 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 ART EXHIBITION IN FORMER CAMP KITCHEN BUILDING The last eyewitnesses to the tragedy of Auschwitz are departing. Henryk Mandelbaum is gone, and Szlomo Venezia is perhaps the final prisoner from the Sonderkommando alive in Europe. A few are still alive in the world. After them, there will not be anyone left who saw the heart of the darkness of the Shoah. Young people will still learn as they do today in history class or as visitors about what went on in the gas chamber undressing room, how the bodies of the victims were reduced to ashes, and where the ashes were dumped into the Vistula. There is one thing that they will never do again: they will never ask, How did you feel when they forced you to participate in that inferno? The subject of emotions and feelings is more important than it might appear at first glance. The whole life of a prisoner, which we observe through the prism of loneliness, fatigue, starvation, punishment, roll call, labor, and sickness, is an emotionally extreme life. Living through Auschwitz means more than surviving something it also means experiencing something, to such a powerful degree that the years and decades pass, but ex-prisoners still undergo the camp trauma in their nightmares. This subject has nagged at me since the inception of work on the new exhibition. How can we talk more about people, and less about dates and statistics? How can we How can we talk more about people, and less about dates and statistics? How can we avoid losing sight of the individual amidst the throng of victims? How can we grasp, and then express and convey, the things we ourselves never lived through, which nevertheless constitute the core of the Auschwitz experience? avoid losing sight of the individual amidst the throng of victims? How can we grasp, and then express and convey, the things we ourselves never lived through, which nevertheless constitute the core of the Auschwitz experience? The main exhibition at the Memorial has been, and will continue to be, a narrative, historical, fact-based exhibition. Recognizing cause and effect is the basis of any understanding of how the Shoah came about. Yet it is not the be-all and end-all. Understanding the dimensions of the tragedy transcends the learning of facts. Dates, statistics, and events cannot encompass the things that young people most frequently seek in discussions with survivors. We all need to discover the individuality amidst that inhuman history, to perceive the murdered as people, to feel their uniqueness and vulnerability and, at the same time, to intuit their experience and understand their success. Without words or language, the ex-prisoners inscribed that whole internalized, untold story of Auschwitz in their pictures. Not the success that allowed them to survive, but the success that permitted them to go on living. The truth is that without them, the ex-prisoners, we cannot re-create the emotions, reactions, feelings, and spiritual states in other words, everything that, surely far more than regulations, reveille, and roll call, made up daily experience in the camp. We cannot recreate the things that even We all need to discover the individuality amidst that inhuman history, to perceive the murdered as people, to feel their uniqueness and vulnerability and, at the same time, to intuit their experience and understand their success. ex-prisoners sometimes had trouble expressing. Yet we must try. That is why prisoner accounts are filmed all over the world, so that something remains of their words, the look in their eyes, or their reticence. However, there is one more source where, without words, we can find those feelings and emotions that accompanied the inmates of Auschwitz. This is prisoner art: drawings, paintings, watercolors, and sketches, created while the camp was photo: Archive of A-BSM photo: Archive of A-BSM Czesław Lenczowski, The phantoms come back Mieczysław Kościelniak, The sick prisoner

9 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 photo: Archive of A-BSM photo: Archive of A-BSM Halina Ołomucka, The last kiss operating or, as unvoiced accounts, right after the war. When I first saw the art collection, the expressiveness of the emotions emanating from these drawings stunned me. I went back frequently, to confirm my impression. I showed the works to many people, watching to see whether they read the canvases the way I did. In these works, the artists former prisoners unburdened themselves of what they remembered best, and what tormented them for many years after : the sense of hopelessness, resignation, powerlessness, nostalgia, regret, terror, suffering, pain, hunger, and cold. Without words or language, the ex-prisoners inscribed that whole internalized, untold story of Auschwitz in their pictures. The world s largest collection of such works of art exists in the Museum Collections Department. It comprises several thousand pictures and graphics. There have often Włodzimierz Siwierski, A head of prisoner II been questions over how to display them perhaps by artist or style, as any art museum would do? Auschwitz, however, is no art museum. The works could be arranged by the subjects they depict, as any respectable historical museum would do. Yet Auschwitz is more than a historical museum. In this Memorial, we will be able thanks to these exceptional visual accounts to show people from the inside: the prisoners feelings and emotions. All the more so because, before long, none of them will be able to tell us about it themselves. Piotr M.A. Cywiński The exhibition is planned for the camp kitchen building. The new scenario, portraying the timeless emotions and internal feelings of the victims, was developed in 00 and 00. Cost estimates for the conservation and adaptation run to about. million. Halina Ołomucka, Before selection photo: Archive of A-BSM

10 Jewish Center Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 A BOOK FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL story is written in blue ink on pages of a school graph-paper notebook. The story is on pages to. A It was the subject of a conference at the Jewish Center on February. It is difficult to write unemotionally about the ghetto. It is hard not to attribute a symbolic dimension to everything that the people there did. It is also difficult to write about a thing that one has not experienced for oneself, or about a place that no longer exists, that was demolished and had a new Warsaw built on its ruins. The ghetto is present only in books, school texts, and photographs. It also remains alive in the memory of eyewitnesses. There are fewer of them each year. The ghetto was a microcosm whose inhabitants were to be murdered, who were supposed to vanish without a trace. In this way, a pure Aryan world was to come into being. Nazi propaganda presented the Jews as insects who had to be eliminated in order to protect the health of society. They tried to depersonalize the Jews so that the crime that was about to be committed would go unnoticed; after all, there is nothing wrong with killing insects! No problems were expected, because the Jews would not put up any resistance, would not revolt. It was supposed to be a simple job. And, at the beginning, it was. Even if the Jews in Warsaw eventually came to suspect the truth, those who lived there still knew nothing. When Treblinka was beginning to take on a definite meaning for the Warsaw Jews, it still meant nothing to those from abroad. Now yesterday I learned that someone received a card from Holland asking what the climate and living conditions in Treblinka were like, since plots of land there were up for sale to resettled Jews. I felt myself starting to choke Many things are associated with the Warsaw ghetto. Filth, starvation, poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding, orphans, waiting, and waiting. Waiting. Then the Umschlagplatz and deportation to Treblinka. In, the uprising. Bunkers, rifles, bullets, fire, and Jurgen Stroop. And then only rubble. In that horrifying world, a young woman had the strength to write down what was going on. She wrote live, and smuggled it out beyond the wall. Katarzyna Nowak, editor in chief of pro memoria, published by the Museum in Oświęcim, spoke with Dr. Piotr Weiser of the Jewish Historical Institute about Patrzyłam na usta... Dziennik z warszawskiego getta [I Looked at Their Mouths: A Journal from the Warsaw Ghetto]. The diary conveys both its author s personal feelings and the events taking place inside the ghetto walls. The author of the diary is a mystery. Her name, Maryla, occurs but once in the text. We know that she was a young Polish Jew and that she looked Jewish, which made it hard for her to seek a hiding place on the Aryan side. She also mentions Adam, who would seem to have been her husband. She writes nothing about her family. She probably did not have children, since she does not mention any. Her meticulous, almost calligraphic handwriting and her excellent command of grammar indicate that she was well educated. We do not know how many notebooks Maryla filled. Only two of them were found at Majdanek, at the Bauhof warehouse there, and there may have been more. Franciszek Marciak, an employee of the Majdanek Museum, took an interest in the first of the notebooks, which was in very poor condition, and wrote a summary of its contents. Not long afterwards, that notebook disintegrated completely. The second notebook is now in very poor condition, but all its pages have been photographed, and these photographs appear in the book, alongside printed transcriptions of them. What is this journal about? It describes ghetto life in simple language. Maryla s diary is a private chronicle of events in the world behind the walls. It describes various aspects of life in the ghetto. Maryla writes about death, hunger, and return from the Aryan side. However, she writes nothing about herself. She describes all the situations and events on the basis of information from her acquaintances or acquaintances of her acquaintances. On one of the first extant pages, she speaks about a cabaret evening in the ghetto: This evening has given me a great deal of satisfaction and the quiet hope that there is still some strength in us, the strength emanating from inside, great and life-giving, which is here and... across the ocean, and which they will not kill. photo: Paweł Sawicki I Looked at Their Mouths: A Journal from the Warsaw Ghetto

11 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 Jewish Center photo: Paweł Sawicki Katarzyna Nowak and Dr. Piotr Weiser Maryla has her opinions, and states openly that she is opposed to the party the Jews fighting for freedom. She has contact not with the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB), but rather with the Jewish Military Alliance (ŻZW). She is perfectly well aware that isolated risings against the Germans could end in the death of many innocent people. When the uprising begins, however, her journal notes it in lofty words: The ghetto has risen up. The ghetto has risen up.... A grand, splendid moment has come to pass for history and posterity.... Maryla was not one of those girls described by Stroop or Marek Edelman (one of the Jewish freedom fighters) who fought against the Germans on an equal footing with men. For her, the uprising was not as heroic as it was depicted after the war. It might even be said that she was an unconscious adherent of Edelman s position, which he has stuck to ever since, about the necessity of taking the insurrection down from the pedestal. It must be emphasized that the uprising was not a fight for life, but rather a fight for a chance to choose how to die. To die with dignity. The uprising in the ghetto was intended to catch people s attention, to remind them about the tragedy taking place in the fragment of the city surrounded by the wall. Edelman states explicitly that the Jews, who were destined to be killed, had two options: either to hide from the Germans (as Maryla did), or to die with their guns in their hands, which was intended as a sort of gesture to the renowned romanticism of the Poles. Edelman and a few others chose the latter option. Maryla decided to go into hiding and continued to believe that everything would turn out OK, and that the story of Vittel, in France, would be repeated (there was a transit camp there for Jews with American and British citizenship, who were to be exchanged for German POWs). The bunker where she went into hiding may have been located near Leszno street. There were hundreds of shelters scattered throughout the ghetto, which makes it hard to locate them. Maryla s fate would be decided in this bunker. She decided to commit suicide. One of her motives was the nature of her companions there, whom she regarded, in her own words as repulsive. Her grim awareness that she would die with those people made things worse. Someone accidentally knocked one of the tablets out of her hand and made it impossible for her to end her life. When she made her final entry in her diary, the shelters and bunkers were falling one by one. The last entry is dated April,, when the uprising was dying out overhead: In our shelter, we keep hearing the sounds of the footsteps of people and groups passing by, and, on the basis of past experience, in our blessed naïveté, we are beginning to believe that the Wersterfassung is at work. During the meeting, Dr. Weiser spoke about various hypotheses about how Maryla s diary reached Majdanek. She might have been deported there and gassed immediately after arrival. She may have given her journals to a prisoner who later hid them. She might also have passed successfully through selection and been assigned to labor, only to be killed during the Erntefest, the notorious Harvest action in which tens of thousands of Jews were shot over the course of two days. Maryla s view of Poles is especially interesting. She describes some examples worthy of imitation, who disinterestedly rescued Jews, aided them, and supplied them with food, as well as others who behaved badly, by informing on Jews and extracting financial benefits in exchange for help. There are noticeable similarities between I Looked at Their Mouths and the diary of Anne Frank. For Anne, the most important things were maturation and her problems with her parents and her body s time-scale. Death did not apply to her. Maryla was surrounded by death all the time. She did not try to escape from the reality of the ghetto, instead becoming a chronicler of the events there. I Looked at Their Mouths is a book worth reading. It is a warning against the possible results of human hatred, but at the same time it is a very intimate story of a woman whose death resulted from that hatred. One might say that Maryla is still alive, and that the people she describes, the buildings that were demolished, and the world that no longer exists all remain alive with her. Maryla s diary could be an excellent supplement to assigned historical readings about this subject. It is a different view of the ghetto. There are few books describing what the people there felt. There is a great deal of talk about death and hunger, but not much space devoted to the internal feelings of the people. If they are spoken about, it is in a very emotional, idealistic, and symbolic way. There is therefore a need for a book written with a dash of objectivity, or, what is more, a lack of emotion. And that is why it is worth reaching for Maryla s journal. Most importantly, however, it is a symbol. Although the fate of the author is not known, the letters written in blue ink are a proof of her existence. Iga Bunalska Piotr Weiser, I Looked at Their Mouths: A Journal from the Warsaw Ghetto, Homini, Warszawa 00.

12 Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 THE HORIZONS OF EUROPEAN VOLUNTEERISM At the end of January, Oświęcim played host to the Horizon Volunteer Association. The date was no coincidence, since the group scheduled their trip to take part in the ceremonies marking the th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, the main goals of their seminar were to work out a standpoint on the burden of national history, and to learn about the German perspective on Auschwitz, in order to compare it to the Polish perspective. The Association was founded in 00 on the initiative of former volunteers who served in Poland. These young people, sent to Poland for a year by various German organizations, returned to their home country and began losing contact with the Polish culture, language, and people that they had only begun learning about. The aim of Horizon is to maintain those contacts and strengthen the bonds with Poland. Its members are young people from Germany and Poland who want to play an active role in the Polish-German dialogue by organizing The members of the Association are young people from Germany and Poland who want to play an active role in the Polish-German dialogue. joint projects that make use of what they learned during their volunteer service. The beginnings were modest, starting with ten people. Today, there are about a hundred people in Horizon. Although most of them are now pursuing full-time university-level studies, they still find time to organize projects. The association has no office. It is a group of enthusiastic people who share a fascination with a country that is new to them. The beginnings were modest, starting with ten people. Today, there are about a hundred people in Horizon. Although most of them are now pursuing full-time universitylevel studies, they still find time to organize projects. Their projects target various groups. The themes are wide-ranging and limited only by the imagination of the members. The broad spectrum of projects includes a bicycle trip along the Polish-German border, a German-Polish-Belarusian ramble aimed at discovering smaller and larger towns along the route, workshops in Mikuszewo on questions of identity and communication, and a Mentor program to prepare people to help volunteers adjust to new environments in the future. The visit to Oświęcim is one of the Horizon projects.

13 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation This year s trip was the third of its kind. This time, only German members took part. Aside from the liberation day ceremony, the group led by Simon, a volunteer at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer also spent several days on other tasks. In the first part of their seminar, the members took a study tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau site to learn about the history of the camp. Next, in order to learn about eyewitness accounts, they visited Marian Kołodziej s Labyrinths exhibition in Harmęże. As opposed to the Museum, this is a place of few facts and figures. Instead, there are the amazing images the artist s subjective vision that make a great impression on everyone who sees them. An invited guest at the group s seminar was Zofia Posmysz-Piasecka, who told about the infernal daily routine at Auschwitz and her own experiences. For many members, this was the most important and fruitful item on the schedule. The program would have been unthinkable without a discussion with the Rev. Manfred Dessaelers, who has spent almost 0 years in Poland and has worked for Polish-German dialogue. In this meeting, he concentrated on the role of Pope John Paul II and his visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, while also presenting the Polish view of Auschwitz in a broader historical perspective. The group The program accomplished more than teaching the Horizon members a great deal about Auschwitz and Poland. Their meetings and the things they learned also offer the hope that they will become even better ambassadors for Poland. also had a meeting with Dr. Thomas Gläser, the consul general of the German Federal Republic in Poland. The program accomplished more than teaching the Horizon members a great deal about Auschwitz and Poland. Their meetings and the things they learned also offer the hope that they will become even better ambassadors for Poland, and that they will reach young people, above all, with their message. Pictures form the meeting with Zofia Posmysz, a former Auschwitz prisoner photo: CDP Wiktor Boberek The website has more information about the Association and its current projects.

14 History Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 Born September, 0 in Brzeszcze near Oświęcim. Daughter of Augustyn and Wiktoria Michalska PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL STANISŁAWA MOROŃCZYK (born 0) Morończyk. Attended primary school in her hometown and then enrolled in the Ursuline gymnazjum in Bielsko and the Ursuline liceum in Rybnik, where she passed her matura examination in May. The outbreak of World War II made it impossible for her to continue her education. In, she joined the scouting movement. She belonged to the Emilia Plater troop in Brzeszcze, which was part of the Oświęcim scout district. During the occupation, she joined the resistance and aided Auschwitz prisoners. She joined the secret Brzeszcze unit of the Home Army (AK) Oświęcim district in. Serving as a courier, she went by the pseudonym Mała Stasia. In the fall of, she established contact with prisoners laboring in the vicinity of Brzeszcze and began helping them. This consisted above all of supplying them with food. Over time, she extended her protection to groups of prisoners laboring in other places, such as Harmęże and Pławy. Aside from food, she also supplied them with medicine. She also served as an intermediary in clandestine correspondence between prisoners and their families. In February, fearing arrest, she left Brzeszcze and went into hiding in Komorowice near Bielsko. Despite the danger, she returned to the vicinity of Auschwitz several months later, in order to continue helping the prisoners. On behalf of the AK, she also prepared clothing for Auschwitz escapees. From -, she and her mother Wiktoria sent food parcels to Polish POWs in the Murnau camp. She lived in Brzeszcze until the end of. During this period, she was associated with the Peasant Party youth group, Wici, and worked at the Communal Agricultural School in Jawiszowice. For 0 years, with time out to study at the University of Warsaw from -, she worked as a teacher in various schools that specialized in agriculture. After retiring, she taught at the mining school in Brzeszcze. She never had a family. After the war, she was decorated with the Home Army Cross, the Gold Service Cross, and the Gold Teacher s Badge. Biographical sketch from: Ludzie Dobrej Woli. Księga Pamięci mieszkańców ziemi oświęcimskiej niosących pomoc więźniom KL Auschwitz, Henryk Świebocki, ed. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Auschwitz Preservation Society, Oświęcim, 00 photo: Mirosław Ganobis FROM GANOBIS S CABINET In my cabinet, there are numerous mementoes connected with the history of Oświęcim. At times, it is hard for me to recall the story associated with a given object. Today, my collection numbers some one thousand items: photographs, postcards, documents, bottles, and labels. Each of them has a story of its own, which I have either ascertained or am in the process of discovering. I try to evaluate the items in my possession, and to learn where it has been and to whom it belonged. Today, I should like to present a certain memento from the times of the occupation, which was discovered in the Old Town of Oświęcim. More precisely, it was discovered on the grounds of what is now school no.. One day, my father-in-law and an acquaintance who lives near the school were walking across its yard. The school playing field was being resurfaced at the time. As they walked past an earthen heap, they noticed some strange little metal tags sticking out. They bent over them to have a closer look. To their surprise, they saw that the tablets were some sort of badges, and that they bore dates from the occupation period. They decided to take them into their safekeeping, and asked the people working there if they could have the metal tags. The stencils Having received their assent, they immediately brought the tags to me. I began investigating their provenance. I decided to go to my acquaintances at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and ask them what the tags could be. They told me that they were matrices for documents belonging to conscript prisoners. The matrices recorded their names, dates of birth, hometowns, and dates of arrival. The matrices were made of tin and had the inscriptions stamped on. I managed to establish what the building next to which the tags had been found had been used for during the war. I do not, however, know by what miracle the tags came to be there, which is another riddle that I hope to solve some day. Mirosław Ganobis HISTORY OF OŚWIĘCIM MARCH March, The first train, driven by the engineer Klimczok, arrived in Brzezinka near Oświęcim on the Emperor Ferdinand Privileged Imperial and Royal Northern Railroad. The single-track connection with Czechowice was a harbinger of better days for Oświęcim and a way out of the economic doldrums. Twentyeight years later, the town gained a connection with Trzebinia, Mysłowice, and Cracow (through Skawina and Podgórze), and the Oświęcim transshipment station became an important railroad junction, and Oświęcim became a significant border town. March, The first issue of The Voice of the Land of Oświęcim was published. Its editor in chief, Jan Macek, said that he embarked on the magazine not to... satisfy [his] own ambition, but in the great cause of serving all the citizens of our township, whether they profess this or that religion, and regardless of their political convictions or party allegiances. March, 0 Emperor Francis I of Austria issued a decree detaching the duchies of Oświęcim and Zator from Galicia and annexing them to the German Confederation. March, The Womens League, an organization of Oświęcim women who played a very active role in the independence movement, was founded in Oświęcim. The ladies organized collections of goods and money for the Polish Legions, in whose ranks about 00 soldiers from the Land of Oświęcim enlisted. March, Duke Kazimierz of Oświęcim joined other Silesian princes at the coronation of Sophia of Halshany, the fourth wife of Władysław II Jagiełło, as queen of Poland. March, The Council of State of the Polish People s Republic awarded the Grunwald Cross Second Class to the town of Oświęcim for civilian participation in the resistance movement and aid to prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. During an international rally in Brzezinka on March 0, the decoration was incorporated into the flag of the town. March, Kajetan of Brzeź Russocki died in Oświęcim. He served at the side of the emperor of the French during the Napoleonic campaign, and was his adjutant. He opened a horseback postal relay station in Oświęcim in, and bought the castle and the adjacent grounds in. March -, 0 The first refugees from the Ostrava district of Zaolzie arrived at the barracks settlement, also known as Oświęcim III. March, The Germans began expelling the Jewish residents of Oświęcim. The first transport was sent to the ghetto in Chrzanów. March, The President of the Council of State of the Polish People s Republic performed the ceremonial opening of the Factory House of Culture in Oświęcim. Designed by architects from Warsaw in, the building was erected by the Oświęcim Chemical Works to meet the needs of the plant s workers. Popular in its day, the House was taken over by the municipal government in the s, and renamed the Oświęcim Culture Center (OCK). March, Szymon Syreński (Simonis Syrenius Sacrani), an Oświęcim nobleman who was a professor of the Cracow Academy and a doctor of medicine and botany, died in Cracow. His numerous travels around Europe, his studies in Ingolstadt and Padua, and his Renaissance view of the world all contributed to his,0 page Herbal. Frequently reprinted as late as the th century, it was a pioneering work of medical botany. Compiled by Leszek Żak, local

15 Oś Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no., March 00 Photographer TO THE EYES OF TOMASZ MÓL On February, 00, a charitable concert was held at the Oświecim Culture Center to raise money for an Oświęcim boy, Patryk Wieczorek, who suffers from cystic fibrosis. The concert was combined with an auction, and the proceeds went to pay for Patryk s treatment. The stars of the Saturday concert were Trick, Jedyny Sensowny Wybór, Who know s, Marcin Boiński z Dzikim, and Krzywa Alternatywa. Also appearing were Jean and Robert Lubera, Artur Malik, Marek Piekarczyk, and Paweł Mąciwoda. photo: Tomasz Mól photo: Tomasz Mól photo: Tomasz Mól photo: Tomasz Mól photo: Tomasz Mól photo: Tomasz Mól