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Chamber Memorializing Auschwitz Sub-Camp Prisoners Opened in Goleszów
Oct. 10, Goleszów (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – A memorial chamber dedicated to the prisoners of Golleschau, an Auschwitz sub-camp, was opened on Tuesday at the cultural center in Goleszów, Cieszyń Silesia, Poland. The chamber is complemented by an educational walking trail around the local stone quarry, where prisoners, most of them Jewish, worked under murderous conditions during the war.
The opening of the memorial chamber is a joint effort between the Goleszów local government and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. It occupies 2 rooms in the cultural center and contains items associated with the prisoners including original camp art work on loan from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and reproductions of several murals that prisoners painted on the walls of the cement factory, now closed, during the war. The murals were removed from the walls in 2000 and added to the collections of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
There are sketches by the French Jew Jean Bartichand, who was deported to Auschwitz from the Drancy transit camp. The mural, in charcoal, depicts labor under inhuman conditions in the cement factory and stone quarry at the Golleschau sub-camp.
Another part of the exhibition is the figure of a prisoner, dressed in the characteristic striped garment, loading stones onto a special wagon. The chamber is the brainchild of Goleszów councilor Paweł Stanieczek, who mentioned at the opening that each prisoner was forced to load 6 tons of stones per day.
The memorial chamber also contains photographs documenting the prisoners' life and labor, the aid given to them by local civilians, and the activities of the resistance movement. There is a lecture room, as well.
Stanieczek noted that the educational walking trail is a supplement to the memorial chamber. It leads through the grounds of the cement factory and the stone quarry where prisoners labored.
The Golleschau sub-camp was founded in July 1942 on the grounds of a cement factory belonging to Ostdeutsche Baustoffwerke GmbH – Golleschauer Portland Zemment AG. At its peak in October 1944, there were 1,059 prisoners held there, of whom 1,008 were Jews. Some of the prisoners in the sub-camp were slave laborers in the cement plant and the nearby stone quarry. The camp was liquidated on January 18-21, 1945. (PAP)
