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A Sign of Gratitude
A highly interesting collection of decorated greeting cards made by Auschwitz prisoners has been added to the Museum collections. Helena Datoń-Szpak, who worked in the SS canteen as a young girl during the war, donated the priceless items to the Museum. Datoń-Szpak aided prisoners in various ways and acted as an intermediary in their illegal correspondence. The prisoners gave her the handwritten, hand-painted cards to mark holidays and name days.
The collection consists of a total of eleven decorated cards. Datoń-Szpak gave two of them to the Museum in 1990, and has now donated the remaining nine. Each of them is painstakingly made, dated, and features color decorations. The cards are signed by prisoners who were in contact with Datoń-Szpak. Most of them were employed in the camp canteen in block 25, which now houses the Collections Department: Wincenty Gawliczek, Jan Cyprych, Roman Nawrot, Michał Majewski, Roman Jaszczyński, and others who lived and worked in the block. The name-day cards feature bouquets of wildflowers or rose branches. There are pussy willows and chicks on the Easter cards, and a Christmas card depicts a rubicund St. Nicholas with a sack full of sausage.
The Auschwitz Memorial holds a large collection of greeting cards made in secret by prisoners for their friends in the camp or for people from the Oświęcim area who helped the prisoners. The inmates used hard-to-get materials from the SS offices and camp storehouses, as well as reused wrapping paper, and worked in an atmosphere of continual endangerment. The cards are proof that, despite the injustice surrounding them, the imprisoned people were aware of the needs of others and appreciated the great sacrifices made by those in the outside world.
Along with the cards, the Museum obtained two occupation-era identity cards and a secret message smuggled to Helena Datoń-Szpak by prisoner Wilhelm Gawliczek. The Museum obtained these valuable gifts thanks to Józef Jaskółka, a relative of Datoń-Szpak, and Dr. Adam Cyra of the Museum Research Department.
Born into a working-class family in Chrzanów on April 25. Her father died before the war wand her mother was left to rise her three daughters, of whom Helena was the oldest. After attending public school in Chrzanów, she enrolled in commercial school, and was also a member of the Sokół Gymnastics Society. She was seventeen when the war broke out.
Fearing that she would otherwise be deported for slave labor in Germany, she took a job in 1940 at the cafeteria at the Brzeszcze coal mine. The cafeteria was run by the parents of her friend Wanda Sztwiertnia, and Helena went to live with them. Here she came into contact for the first time with Auschwitz prisoners and the people who helped, including the leader of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) Brzeszcze Group, Edward Hałoń. She also helped in the collection drives for food and medicine, and delivered parcels to agreed places in Budy, Rajsko, and Brzeszcze where prisoners labored.
She returned to Chrzanów in 1942 and took a job at the SS cafeteria in Oświęcim, located in the co called “Haus, 7” a building near the Auschwitz I-Main Camp. In the same building, there were offices where prisoners worked. The job enabled Helena to maintain direct contact both with the prisoners working in the office and with the suppliers of merchandise to the cafeteria. From this point on, she served as a courier between the PPS Brzeszcze Group and the camp. Her main duty was to rely secret messages. She also helped to prepare escapes from Auschwitz and passed on illegal correspondence between prisoners and their families.
She also recruited her acquaintance to mail parcels to the camp, addressed to prisoners whose names she supplied, during the time when this could be done officially. She remained active until January 22, 1945. After the end of the war, she worked in the Social Welfare Office in Chrzanów, and also taught rhythmic gymnastics and dance at the schools there. She married Stanisław Szpak in 1946, and they had a daughter, Małgorzata. Helena Szpak retired in 1976. She lives in Chrzanów. In recognition of her services, she has been decorated with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Poland Reborn.
Biographical entry comes from: People of Good Will. Memorial Book of Residents of the Land of Oświęcim who Rendered Aid to the Prisoners of Auschwitz Concentration Camp" by Henryk Świebocki (Published in the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and TOnO in Oświęcim, 2005)
