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...the memories live on...

An exhibition titled ...the memories live on... will open at United Nations Headquarters in New York on January 24 to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It presents drawings from a sketchbook belonging to an unknown prisoner at the German Nazi Concentration Camp Auschwitz. These are the only art works made in the camp with scenes depicting the fate of Jewish transports from arrival at the ramp to death in the gas chambers.

"The notebook containing the drawings was found two years after the war in the foundations of one of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau barracks, near crematoria IV and V. The artist put incredible effort into capturing every imaginable detail on paper: the precisely described armbands of the prisoner functionaries, the labels on the suitcases, and the license numbers of the trucks that delivered the infirm to the gas. This involved tremendous risk," said Agnieszka Sieradzka, an art historian at the Museum Collections Department.

"The artist memorized the crimes that he witnessed and put them down on paper. He painstakingly preserved the notebook, hiding it away from the eyes of bystanders. He did this so that the world could learn the truth—even if he himself did not survive," said Sieradzka.

Former Auschwitz prisoners Roman Kent and Marian Turski will speak at the opening of the exhibition, which is being mounted in New York by the International Auschwitz Committee in cooperation with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and other institutions.