Resistance documents
Description of the document
A list of female prisoners, Poles deceased and murdered in the KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, was prepared on the basis of the Book of deceased women, kept in the office of the female camp's hospital (Schreibstube HKB) in Birkenau (BIa). Records in this document were prepared with accordance to dates of deaths, on the basis of reports submitted to the hospital's office from separate blocks of the female camp.
The hospital office employed the prisoner Monika Galica (No 6814), who worked there as a writer, secretly preparing extracts from the Book of deceased female prisoners on small pieces of typewriting manifold paper. Afterwards, she handed the notes with numbers, last names and the date of death of the prisoners to Antonina Piątkowska (No 6805).
Time of preparation
The list of deceased and murdered female prisoners includes 6664 last names of women deported to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau in the period from 28.03.1942 to October 1944. Dates of their deaths cover the period between 10.08.1942 and 5.01.1945.
History of retaining the document
Extracts from the Book of the deceased women, prepared by Monika Galica, were stored by Antonina Piątkowska in various places within the whole female camp, among others under concrete floor of the washing room in the block No 4. She was support in moving and hiding the documentation by the female prisoner Zofia Gawron (No 44097) and male prisoners Władysław Urbański (No 62452) and Wacław Szparadziński (No 11013), employed in the Zimmereibarakenbau commando, at repairing and transforming the barracks.
In October 1944, because of the liquidation of the BIa and BiA fragments of the female camp, and the female prisoners' transfer to the BII fragment, Piątkowska was forced to take the hidden documents out of the hiding places. Afterwards, she sewn them into a belt, smuggling them into the former Gypsy camps (to the BIIe fragment), where female prisoners from the female camp's hospital were transferred. Not knowing the new territory, Antonina Piątkowska was unable to hide the documents, so she carried them with her for two weeks. Within this time, Zofia Gawron established some contacts with the male camp, and sent the documentation outside it, to her parents living in Brzeszcze, near Auschwitz, through a civil worker - Franciszek Zabuga. The Gawron family hid the received documents in jars, which they buried in the garden.
After coming back from the camp, in May 1945, Piątkowska collected the documents from Gawronowie, and together with the List of deceased and murdered female prisoners she passed it on to the cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, for the "Caritas" organization in Cracow. In January 1946, the Rev. Stanisław Jasiński, managing the "Caritas" organization, handed this documentation to the Cracow District Commission for the Investigation of Hitler's Crimes.
A database
The database was prepared on the basis of the List of deceased and murdered female prisoners, Poles. It includes 6664 personal records of the female prisoners, who were incorporated into the Central Register of Prisoners, kept by the Digital Repository of the National Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.