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70th anniversary of the penal company revolt. Testimony of August Kowalczyk, No. 6804
70 years ago, on 10 June 1942, the penal company revolted and fled together from the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau. On this occasion an exceptional ceremony took place in the Memorial Site. Its honorary hero was August Kowalczyk, the only still surviving participant of those events.
August Kowalczyk, who in the camp was tattooed with the number 6804, for more than 30 years has been giving testimony about his escape and about the courageous people, who helped him in the days following the escape and saved his life. So far, he has shared his experiences with audiences on several continents. Exactly on the 70th anniversary of his escape, the number of times he tells his story equal his camp number. At the site of those events of 10 June 1942 August Kowalczyk told his story for the 6804th time. His testimony was dedicated to all those who perished in Auschwitz and to the survivors, who bear inside them the sigma of this place.
"Here, at the backyard of Birkenau, 70 years ago, a new stage in the life of the then 20-years old August Kowalczyk began. The escape of the penal company meant risking everything to save their lives. The effects of that courageous choice last untill today. It can be proven by all 6804 meetings, during which Mr. Kowalczyk was warning generations of people about themselves. It can be proven by his entire faith in the sense of the struggle to preserve the memory. It can be proven by his warm, human and empathic gaze he rests on people he meets," said director of the Museum, Piotr M.A. Cywiński.
The ceremony was also attended by Róża Sklorz, who - as a 14-year-old girl - helped August Kowalczyk to survive the first difficult moments after the escape, until, with the help of Polish families Sklorz and Lysków and adjacent to the camp resistance movement, he went to the AK.
For many years August Kowalczyk has been cooperating with the Auschwitz Memorial Site and the International Centre of Education on Auschwitz and the Holocaust which operates on its premises. Many times he hosted the ceremonies commemorating the subsequent anniversaries of the camp liberation. His memoir on the camp life titled A Barbed wire refrain has continuously maintained high interest of its readers. In recent years August Kowalczyk has become involved in the project of construction of the Memorial Hospice in Oświęcim, which would be an exceptional symbol commemorating those, who risking their own and their loved ones' lives, brought help to Auschwitz camp prisoners.
The original plot to escape from the penal company reaches back to the events of 27 May 1942. On that day approximately 400 Polish political prisoners were forced into the camp penal company. They had been deported to Auschwitz in 1941 and 1942 from Warsaw and Krakow. Every few days Germans were selecting several prisoners from among the penal company and shot them. The threat of death hovering over the prisoners made them think up a plan to flee. The prisoners intended to flee after the signal announcing the end of the workday spent at digging an amelioration ditch in Birkenau, and the return to the camp. The date of 10 June 1942 was chosen.
Due to the pouring rain the chief officer of the penal company, SS-Hauptscharfuehrer Otto Moll, the future head of crematoria in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, announced the end of the workday much earlier than usually. The prolonged whistle confused the prisoners. Approximately 50 prisoners started to flee. Several of them were turned back by capos. In the result of the immediate manhunt 13 prisoners were shot to death and two were captured: Tadeusz Pejsik and Henryk Pajączkowski. Among those who made an attempt to flee to freedom only nine prisoners succeeded: August Kowalczyk, Jerzy Łachecki, Zenon Piernikowski, Aleksander Buczyński, Jan Laskowski, Józef Traczyk, Tadeusz Chróścicki, Józef Pamrow and Eugeniusz Stoczewski.
The penal company prisoners were herded back into the Auschwitz camp. The bodies of the 13 shot prisoners were carried into the camp through the main entrance gate with an inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei”. On the following day, in an act of retribution, 20 prisoners were shot and approximately further 300 Poles from the penal company were murdered in the gas chamber. On the 14 June, approximately 25 km from Auschwitz, two fugitives, Aleksander Buczyński and Eugeniusz Stoczewski, were captured. Both were brought back to the camp, where after a month they were shot.
