News
Camp Hospital Record Books Returned to the Museum after More than Sixty Years
The Museum Archives have received three original documents from the camp hospital. They are the surgery record book from block 21 for the period from October 1, 1941 to September 4, 1942, containing the names of over 6,300 prisoners, and the two last record books from the x-ray lab in block 28 for the periods from April 8, 1944 to January 15, 1945.
“These documents are an exceptionally valuable source of information for us about many prisoners whose names we previously did not know,” said Ewa Bazan of the Museum office for information about former prisoners. “They will also enable us to broaden our knowledge about the way the departments of the camp hospital functioned.”
The hospital record books and other camp hospital documents were lent to the Cracow branch of the Polish Red Cross in 1947 by Tadeusz Wąsowicz, a former prisoner who was then the director of the Museum, for use in compiling file cards intended to provide information on ex-prisoners.
When the Information Bureau in Cracow was closed in 1949, some of the hospital documents were turned over to the District Commission for Investigating Crimes against the Polish People, which in turn conveyed them to the Museum Archives in 1961. Other records, with data that had not yet been copied into the card file, were sent to the Polish Red Cross Information Bureau in Warsaw. These have now been returned to the Museum.
“We would like to thank the Polish Red Cross Information and Search Bureau for turning these documents over to us, as well as for many years of kindness and helpfulness to our Archives. As long ago as 2006, the Polish Red Cross made digital copies for us of over 47 thousand file cards from the Buchenwald camp employment office, 60 percent of which contained data on Auschwitz prisoners,” said Museum Deputy Director Rafał Pióro.
Under the terms of a contract signed with the Polish Red Cross, the originals will remain at the Museum with the Red Cross obtaining digital copies, reprints of the record books, and databases compiled from them.
The Polish Red Cross Information and Search Bureau functions on the legal basis of Articles 122-125 of the Geneva Conventions of August 12 1949, which oblige states to create information and search services to collect and provide access to information about the victims of wars and armed conflicts. Each national Red Cross association has its own search service and cooperates closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.
The main tasks of the Information and Search Bureau include
- searching for and determining the fate of victims of wars, armed conflicts, and natural disasters
- issuing certificates about the fate of missing persons on the basis of our records and records obtained through our efforts
- locating domestic and foreign war graves
- delivering so-called Red Cross Messages or family notifications to countries affected by armed conflicts or natural disasters
- participation in the exhumation of war victims
- carrying out so-called humanitarian searches in cases where families suddenly lose contact with relatives abroad despite being in possession of their addresses, including persons who traveled abroad in recent years in search of work (“economic migrants”)
- searching for immigrants from abroad who are missing on Polish territory.
