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74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising
On the 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum paid tribute to its heroes and victims - including the 13,000 residents of the capital deported by the Germans to the Auschwitz camp. Precisely at 5 pm - the “W” hour, which commenced the insurgent fight; he laid a wreath at the Death Wall in the courtyard of Block 11 of the former Auschwitz I camp.
- In remembering the Warsaw Uprising, we must not only recall the heroic uprising of fighting Warsaw,butalso the tragedy of tens of thousands of families that ended up in concentration camps and slave-like forced labour most often via Dulag 121 transition camp in Pruszków - in most cases losing everything. 13,000 persons, including infants,were deportedin several transportsto KL Auschwitz - said director Piotr Cywiński.
During the Warsaw Uprising and after its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550 thousand inhabitants of Warsaw and about 100 thousand people from the surrounding areas of the city. They were sentto a specially commissioned transition camp in Pruszków near Warsaw, Durchgangslager 121. 55,000 people were deported to concentration camps.
In August and September 1944, about 13,000 arrested residents of Warsaw were deportedvia the transition camp in Pruszków to KL Auschwitz. Theywere imprisonedon the premises of Auschwitz II Birkenau. It is more than half the total number of Poles deported from the entire District of Warsaw from August 1940 to September 1944.
The deportees included people from various social backgrounds and professions (public servants, scientists, artists, physicians, traders, workers) of variousphysical condition (wounded, sick, disabled, pregnant women) in variousages - children from few weeks old infants to the elderly over eighty-six years old. In some cases, they were people of other nationalities; among them Jews hiding with the so-called Aryan documents.
In September, another transport brought 3,087 persons (women, men and children) from Pruszków to Auschwitz. The next two transportson 13 and 17 September, brought three women and 4,000 thousand men and boys. Most of the people from these transports were transferred after a few weeks, as part of the initial evacuation of KL Auschwitz to camps in the depths of the Third Reich and employed in the armaments industry. Many of them died in these camps.
In January 1945, five transportswere sent to Berlin carrying at least 602 women and children (including children born in the camp) Some of the prisoners from the mentioned Warsaw transports were evacuatedin January 1945 from the camp. Some of them died in the "death marches", others lived to see the liberation of the campsin the depths of the Reich. About 400 persons from the Pruszków transport, including 125 children and youngsters were liberatedfrom the camp.
The fate of persons deported to Auschwitz after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising is presented among others by a special exhibition prepared the Museum in the Google Cultural Institute and 10 volumes of the educational series Voices of Memory.
Book of Remembrance
The memory of Poles deported to KL Auschwitz from the so-called District of Warsaw is commemorated by a publication of the Museum in 2000 titled, The Book of Remembrance. The transports of Poles to KL Auschwitz 1940 - 1944 It also contains names of Warsaw residents well-known to historians, who were sentto the camp in connection with the Uprising.
Childhood in striped uniforms
In April 2007, the Museum’s publishing house released a new and expanded edition of the repeatedly reprinted collection of stories about children in Auschwitz titled Childhood in striped uniforms. It is one of the most touching documents on the tragic fates of Auschwitz prisoners and shocking images seen by a child deported from Warsaw to Auschwitz. It’s author Bogdan Bartnikowski, at the age of 12, participated in the Uprising in the Ochota district of Warsaw as a liaison. On 12 August 1944, he was deported along with his mother to Auschwitz.
