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Only a Trace Remains... The extermination of Jews from the Dąbrowa Basin" - online seminar, 30 October 2023

The International Center for Auschwitz and Holocaust Education invites you to participate in the online seminar, "Only a Trace Remains... The extermination of Jews from the Dąbrowa Basin," which will take place on the Zoom platform on 30 October 2023. The session will be simultaneously translated into English.

Program (time zone CET, UTC+1):

4:00 PM | Session Opening

4:05 PM - 5:05 PM | The Kingdom of Merin: The Jewish Community in the Dąbrowa Basin During the German Occupation - lecture by Dr. Aleksandra Namysło, Institute of National Remembrance

5:05 PM - 5:50 PM | The Tragic Fate of the Jews from the Dąbrowa Basin: The Mandelbaum Family's Story - lecture by Dr. Igor Bartosik, Auschwitz Museum Research Center

6:00 PM - 6:45 PM | Rutka Laskier's Diary: Life in the Będzin Ghetto Through the Eyes of a Child - lecture by Adam Szydłowski, President of the Rutka Laskier Jewish Culture Center Foundation

6:45 PM - 7:00 PM | Before They Perished... Photographs DIscovered in Auschwitz - presentation by Dr. Maria Martyniak, ICEAH

Participation in the session is free. Please register using the online form by 27 October. After this date, you will receive an email with a link to join the meeting.

During the period from May 1942 to July 1944, the Germans deported approximately 58,000 Jews from the Dąbrowa Basin to the Auschwitz camp. Over 90 percent of them were immediately murdered upon arrival at the camp after the selection process, while the rest were registered as prisoners.

The Jews from the Dąbrowa Basin registered in the Auschwitz camp became scattered within the prisoner community, sharing the fate of other inmates. Some of them were forced to join the Sonderkommando, a work group responsible for removing corpses from gas chambers and operating the crematoria. Others were transferred to different concentration camps.

It is difficult to determine precisely how many people among the roughly 70,000 Jewish residents of the Dąbrowa Basin survived the Holocaust, but it is estimated to be around 3,000. Undoubtedly, only a small portion of them were Jews from the Dąbrowa Basin who survived Auschwitz.

See our exhibition at Google Cultural Institute about deportation of Jews from Dąbrowa Basin to Auschwitz.