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My Life has Begun at its End …
Halina Birenbaum, former prisoner of the German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp Auschwitz, Israeli writer and poet, was recently a guest during an educational session conducted by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. During the two meetings, entitled “My Life has Begun at its End…”, which had taken place on March 23 and 24, over 300 individuals participated, mainly students, along with teachers as well as guides and the staff of the Memorial Site.
The former prisoner spoke about, among other things, her experiences in the German Concentration Camps of Auschwitz, in Majdanek, Ravensbrück, and Neustadt-Glewe. “I always told my children these stories, ever since they were very young. Others did not speak about this, because they did not want to frighten them with these histories. They were ashamed of the past. However, I had to speak, I had to explain to them who my mother was, who my brothers were, and who my father was. For me, these memories are always alive,” Halina Birenbaum stated.
During the educational session, the participants heard a lecture by Jadwiga Dąbrowska from the Museum Research Department, entitled “Women in Auschwitz”.
The next educational session conducted by the ICEAH, “The Mass Murder of Jews in Auschwitz”, will take place on the 24th of April. Historians will present lectures from the Museum Research Department: Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz as well as Dr. Igor Bartosik. During the session, participants will also visit the temporary exhibits created by the Museum that presents dozens of items that belonged to individuals, the vast majority of them Jews, who were deported to Auschwitz.
Halina Birenbaum was born in 1929 in Warsaw. As a child she survived the nightmare of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Concentration Camps of: Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Neustadt-Glewe, where she was finally liberated. In 1947, she emigrated to Israel.
During her countless meetings with young individuals from Israel, Poland, and Germany, she speaks about her experiences in the Camps. In 1967, she published her first book, entitled “Hope is the Last to Die”, in the following years she also released: Return to my Ancestor’s Land, Each Salvaged Day, A Scream for Remembrance, and additionally, volumes of poems: Even when I Laugh, Not about Flowers, How to Put it into Words. Her creativity is testimony to Holocaust remembrance, and, simultaneously, evidence of the indestructible nature of the most human of emotions: hope, love for the world as well as life in every form.
The volume is a collection of all the poetic creations of Halina Birenbaum. “My Life has Begun at its End”, was published in 2010 by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.