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Anna Hinel diary donated to the Museum Archives
The original diary, written during the war in occupied Warsaw by sixteen-year-old Anna Hinel, was given to the Museum Archives. The author perished in the Nazi German concentration camp and extermination camp of Auschwitz 70 years ago on 19 March 1943. She was 19 years old at the time.
Anna Maria Hinel was born on 31 January 1924 in Warsaw. She was the only child of Jadwiga and Wawrzyńca Hinel. In June 1939 she completed third class at the Queen Jadwiga Gymnasium.
In September 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, Anna began to write a diary, which many years later her father found under the floorboards in the kitchen of their apartment. Included in the records from the period September 1939 - August 1940 is a testimony to the cruel truth about that time, and they show how people survived in the bombed-out Warsaw.
“Anna entrusted in the pages of her diary her dilemmas, her pain as well as the rebellion against what was happening. The reader can live it, all that she experienced, and based on her experiences, desires, moods, they get to know the fate of her peers, deprived by the war of a normal childhood, the joys of growing up, the possibility to learn, and their attitude towards the occupier,” said Jadwiga Dąbrowska with the Bureau for Cooperation with Former Prisoners.
In occupied Warsaw, Anna Hinel became involved in secret classes taught by her former high school teachers, including Anna Białokurowa and Halina Nieniewska. However, she had not yet joined the matriculation examination. On the night of 28 to 29 April 1942, she was arrested and imprisoned at “Pawiak” prison, in the women’s part known as “Serbia”. The same thing happened to her school friends and both teachers, who acted with the Department for Underground Communication ZWZ/AK (Union for Armed Struggle/Home Army) at POW camps and workers’ centres in Germany. Letters were sent to people staying there. Responses – in order to prevent any suspicions – were sent to the addresses of the teachers’ pupils. As a result of treachery, the activity came to light.
“For several months, the entire group was subjected to brutal interrogations. Both teachers lost their lives in Pawiak. After completion of the investigation, on November 13, 1942, the girls were deported to the Nazi German camp of Auschwitz, where Anne received the number 24447,” said Szymon Kowalski, deputy director of the Museum Archives.
Anna Maria Hinel died in the camp on 19 March 1943 at the age of 19. After some time, Anna’s personal belongings were sent to her parents.
The dream of Anna’s father was that the world may know of the fate of his daughter, and that dream is being fulfilled by Stanisław Majewski, who, in 1980, published a book entitled “Anna Maria”. Reproduced pages of the diary and those that have been read are included in the publication. Majewski reconstructs the story of the girl, showing the wealth of life of pre-war Warsaw and its destruction during wartime. The author’s spouse, Barbara Majewska, presented the original diary of Anna Hinel to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Fragments of the diary of Anna Hinel
30 September 1939 (first entry)
Warsaw has surrendered; with these words I unfortunately have to start my diary, which I actually had to write much earlier due to the start of the war. But nothing is lost yet. All the experiences have stuck in my mind, so I will write down all of them to have a certain whole. The war was not declared; it broke out on the 1st of September on Friday when Germans illegally crossed the Polish border. I did not believe in the possibility of war until the last moment; it seemed so improbable and distant. I was so naïve that I wanted war as a certain change, partly also from idleness and curiosity, but I changed my mind so quickly. […] On the surface, it started quite innocently: a few shots, the whirr of an airplane and nothing; yet from the west, the German invasion was approaching – ruthless and relentless, like death. There was no excitement in the village; everybody thought that these were just trial raids; it was only in the city that we came face to face with the dangerous reality. I heard the word war for the first time from a speaker reading the text of President Mościcki’s address. At home, I immediately became immersed in the atmosphere of war; we had to seal and cover the windows, sew pad, prepare baking soda. All of this then turned out to be nonsense and pointless.
14 January 1940
(…) And then, the question was asked for the first time: why? In the name of what great truths and lofty ideals do people have to die in hundreds, in a horrible manner, like they are dying now in Warsaw? They were mulling over the issues of existence and non-existence with desperate hatred, these people pale and trembling with fear. No, it should not be possible to allow mass murders – at any price. To allow the siege of a city with a million inhabitants – this is a crime calling for vengeance. “The strength of a state relies on the nation. If the nation dies, what will be left?” they cried, and the apparent logic of this statement intensified their cowardly courage. Obstinately, they demolished the old gods, not being able to replace them with new ones. A typical dissonance between the young and the old became visible. The old believed that we were betrayed, cheated and sentenced to death – the younger considered it a blasphemy, full of exaggerated optimism. Yet the old were right; this was the tragic aspect of the situation; yes, they were right, and the truth, devoid of illusions, cruel and ruthless – was peeking out from every word. But back then, we did not know about it.
13 May 1940
Interrupted studies and the issue directly related to it, i.e. deportation to Germany – I use the word “deportation” here on purpose, because it describes the situation better than saying “departure for compulsory work”. Yes, deportation of people, just like transportation of cattle on open railway carriages and chased and caught on the streets, killed and stabbed to death with bayonets at every attempt of escape. The age limit from 16 to 25, marked in the relevant notification, is not complied with at all. I saw people over 50 and children below 14 dragged to covered carts, strangely resembling hearses, at least in my eyes. There is gossip about murderous blood transfusions performed on children; such procedures usually end with the victim’s death. They literally drink our blood. It is good that I am not a picture of health. A shabby look can be helpful sometimes; on the other hand, I hear such horrible things about the transport that I feel waves of heat and cold every time I think about it. In general, I am overcome by a terrible animal fear of the misfortune that is going to happen, and then by indifference, as if it did not concern me at all. They say that everything depends on fate and accident. So, my entire future depends only on accident? Such a trifle of no importance will determine my life?
5 August 1940 (final entry)
Life is constant forcing one’s way through a tangle of problems and worries. Problems lurk everywhere; they surround us, deride us with their cold impersonal faces, pull away our thoughts, desires and feelings towards them. Life itself is one big problem, which we get rid of along with death. This is the end; silence, darkness; a friendly darkness that softens the sharpness of contours, places a soft, matt curtain over everything.
