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A Six-Year-Old Boy in the Resistance Movement
Not many of the prisoners of the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp lived to see liberation. Local residents helped them, sometimes at the cost of their own lives, in the unequal struggle to survive.
Museum historians have managed to establish the names of over 1,200 Poles from Oświęcim and the vicinity who aided prisoners. The Germans arrested at least 177 people in revenge. Sixty-two of them perished in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. One of the newest Museum publications is devoted to the memory of these people who helped prisoners.
Niezwykli Oświęcimianie. Jak ratowano więźniów KL Auschwitz [Extraordinary people from Oświęcim: how they aided Auschwitz prisoners] arose as an initiative by the former prisoners who belong to the Auschwitz Preservation Society. This slender volume is a supplement to Ludzie dobrej woli [People of good will], published last year.
This valuable testimony protects these heroic Oświęcim residents from being forgotten. It is all the more significant because it is one of the first attempts, along with Ludzie dobrej woli, at an overall presentation of the subject.
Accounts by Jewish and Polish former prisoners are enriched by the accounts and biographies of residents of Oświęcim and nearby localities who helped the prisoners by supplying them with food and medicine. Excerpts from secret messages, delivered by local residents as a way of making it possible to stay in touch with their families, bear direct witness to history.
The many people who distinguished themselves in this effort include Julia Ilisińska of Oświęcim, Helena Płotnicka of Brzeszcze, and Father Jan Skarbek of Oświęcim, who headed the local Roman Catholic parish. There is also a noteworthy interview with Bronisław Jacek Stupka, who joined the aid effort as a boy of six.
The book concludes with an interview with Professor Władysław Bartoszewski on the contemporary state of knowledge about Polish participation in the rescue of Auschwitz prisoners. Two other interviews, with Museum historians Henryk Świebocki and Piotr Setkiewicz, provide insight into the social and political situation in occupied Oświęcim.
The publication of Niezwykli Oświęcimianie fills a gap in our knowledge about the civilians living near the camp, and their reaction to the crimes being committed there. It is also an attempt at according at least partial justice to the people who risked their lives to aid the prisoners of the Nazis.
The book is accompanied by a 30-minute film on DVD, containing narratives and accounts by participants in those events, accompanied by commentaries by historians. The Museum will surely use the material contained in this book in its planned exhibition devoted to heroic local Oświęcim residents.
