News
Commemorating Sixteen Thousand Poles Deported from Radom and Other Localities in the Kielce Region
The five-volume Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków do KL Auschwitz z Radomia i innych miejscowości Kielecczyzny 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from Radom and Other Localities in the Kielce Region, 1940-1944] has been published.
From 1940 to 1944, the German authorities arrested more than ten thousand residents of the Kielce Region and deported them to concentration camps. Almost 16,000 of them (about 14,000 men and 2,000 women) ended up in Auschwitz. This figure includes at least 13,000—and more probably about 14,500—Poles, over 1,100 Jews, and dozens of Russians, Gypsies, Germans, and Czechs.
The first transport of 69 men was sent to Auschwitz on November 8, 1940; the last one arrived in the camp on September 18, 1944.
Despite exhaustive research, it has proved impossible to establish the names of 2,173 deportees to Auschwitz from the Radom District. Only the dates of their arrival and the camp numbers assigned to them are known. Only about 3,000 of the 16,000 deportees survived the war.
The lists include the deportees’ camp numbers, first and last names, dates and places of birth, occupations, ethnicities, and, in some cases, their subsequent fates. Several thousand camp and private photographs are included in the list, as are other documents.
For each transport, there is a description of the course of its journey to Auschwitz, and information about people it included who were known or outstanding on account of their public activities or participation in the camp resistance movement. All the material is indexed, making it easier to find data on individuals.
This is the third in the series of Memorial Books intended to commemorate Poles deported to Auschwitz by the Nazi Germans.
Further plans envision the publication of Memorial Books devoted to Poles sent to Auschwitz from the Lublin region and from areas incorporated into the Third Reich: Great Poland (Wielkopolska), Pomerania (Pomorze), and the lands of Ciechanów and Białystok.
These will be followed by studies of the extant documentation on the deportation of Jews from Upper Silesia to Auschwitz and of the fate of clergy of various denominations in Auschwitz.
The publication of the Memorial Book is made possible by financial support from the Polish-German Cooperation Foundation, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp Victims’ Foundation in Oświęcim, and the German-based Lagergemeinschaft Auschwitz-Freundeskreis der Auschwitzer.
