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Bring Back the Humanity. A new publication recounts the stories of 5,453 prisoners from Wielkopolska
Memorial Book. Transportations of Poles to KL Auschwitz from Wielkopolska, Pomorze, ;Ciechanów and Białystok Areas 1940-1944 is a new three-volume scientific publication issued by the Auschwitz Museum in Polish language version. Prepared by the Museum’s historian, Bohdan Piętka, it presents the fates of 5,453 prisoners sent by the Germans to Auschwitz in 84 transports from western and northern Polish lands incorporated into the German Reich.
“Most of them, i.e. 4,674 persons, were brought from the Land of the Warta in transports from Łódź, Poznań, Inowrocław, Kalisz and Sieradz. Among them, there were important people from the Polish underground, representatives of local elites and members of all levels of contemporary Polish society, whose individual fates are often the terrifying testimony of the crimes committed by the German occupiers on the Polish nation,” said Bohdan Piętka. “Poles deported to Auschwitz in the so-called collective transportations were not taken into account here. This subject will be presented in a separate study,” added the author.
Memorial Book recounts the story of each of 84 transportations and focuses on the deported people. Descriptions are combined with fragments of memoirs, as well as documents and photographs deriving from archives and family collections. The publication also includes an extensive historical study discussing the German extermination policy on the Polish lands incorporated into the German Reich.
“The victims of deportations to concentration camps were, in the first place, members of Polish secret organisations or persons belonging to these environments, which constituted the natural recruitment resources for the defence movement. The second group of deportees were victims of reprisals undertaken by the occupier in retaliation for the defence movement activities and victims of the draconian occupational law, especially in the area of economic law and labour law. The objective of deportation to concentration camps was not isolation, but extermination of the most active and the most dangerous, from the occupier’s point of view, part of Polish society. Work on this publication lasted for over five years. It brings back to light the memory about the victims. It brings back first names and family names to camp numbers, it brings back the humanity that was illegally taken away from them,” we can read in the introduction.
The publication is the fifth in “Memorial Book” series, describing the fates of Poles brought to Auschwitz. So far, books devoted to inhabitants of the Warsaw district (26,000 names of deportees), Kraków area (18,000 people), Radom (16,000) and Lublin (7,000) were published. The publication was possible thanks to the support of the Memorial Foundation for the Victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Excerpt from memoirs of Anna Chomicz, prisoner No. 44174, brought to Auschwitz on 6 May 6 ,1943 from Łódź, regarding the registration procedure in the camp:
“In the Sauna within the BIa area, we were disinfected and tattooed. I was terrified by the moment of hair cutting and shaving. This was performed by male prisoners. Due to the fact of being completely naked, I was ashamed and crying; the prisoner who was cutting and shaving my hair said in a soft and compassionate voice: ‘Don’t be ashamed and don’t cry. These human beasts should be ashamed (i.e. Nazis).’ I had the number 44174 tattooed on me. When I was tattooed, I noticed that the SS members ordered the tattooing of the huge digits to these women who were screaming from pain.”
Excerpt from memoirs of former prisoner Stanisław Padło, prisoner No. 145735, brought to Auschwitz on 3 September 1943 from Poznań, regarding arrival of the transport:
“Hunger and exhaustion were bothering. I had no help outside the camp. In the hall in block No. 2, on the ground floor, I was assigned a wooden plank bed on the second elevation. I got a blanket. The block was overcrowded. Four men slept on a plank bed 80 cm wide and 2 m long. There were millions of fleas. You couldn’t do anything about them. The hall was under the management of a German prisoner. He was assisted by a Jew and a Gypsy. If somebody was guilty of something, the German would order him to do knee bend jumps between the narrow passages of the plank beds. After a week, we were taken for tattooing of the registration number. I got the number 125735 and the letter P in a red triangle, which I sewed on my shirt and trousers at the side. I was tattooed by Jews who did it by punching the number into your left arm below the elbow with three needles tied together and dipped in ink.”
Excerpt from the account of Mieczysław Kościelniak, prisoner no. 15261, brought to Auschwitz on 2 May 1941 from Kalisz:
“At a certain time, I lived in block No. 4. The block overseer was Krankemann. One of the manners of killing prisoners that Krankemann used was to throw a person to the ground and kick them from all sides and then place a stick on the massacred person’s throat. Another manner was to push a naked prisoner’s head into a pile of snow to their waist and then pat the snow down until the prisoner choked. Prisoners caught stealing sausage were strangled by Krankemann and had the fat sausage thrust into their throats.”
