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Poles from the Memorial Book
A book launch for Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków do KL Auschwitz z Krakowa i innych miejscowości Polski południowej w l. 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from Cracow and Other Localities in Southern Poland from 1940 to 1944] was held in the gallery of nineteenth-century Polish art at the Cloth Hall in Cracow.
The book is the result of work by researchers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, with support from the Auschwitz Preservation Society. The Nazis deported approximately 1,300,000 people to their Auschwitz concentration camp during the five years that it was in existence. Some 1,100,000 of them were Jews, while 140,000 to 150,000 were Poles, 23,000 were Roma (the people also known as “Gypsies”), 15,000 were Soviet POWs, and approximately 25,000 came from other ethnic groups. Approximately 1,100,000 of these people died in the camp.
The names of the majority figured in various documents associated with their arrest, registration, and murder. In the later years of the war, as the Nazi authorities attempted to cover up evidence of their crimes, they painstakingly destroyed most of this evidence. In response to an initiative by the Auschwitz Preservation Society, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum undertook the task of reconstructing a list of the names of the people deported to the camp, and publishing these names in a series of volumes titled Memorial Books.
The Memorial Book presented in Cracow contains records of approximately 17,000 Poles deported to Auschwitz in 200 transports. The work notes their camp numbers, names, dates of birth and birthplaces, occupations, ethnic backgrounds, and subsequent fates. The lists are supplemented with approximately 3,000 photographs from the camp and private sources, and reproductions of documents.
For each transport, there is a description of the course of the deportation to Auschwitz Concentration Camp and information about deportees who were well-known personages or who distinguished themselves through their careers and public activity, or who took part in the resistance movement in the camp.
The deportees included representatives of all strata of Polish society. Many of them were well-educated: university professors, artists, teachers, physicians, lawyers, actors, clergy, officers, and students. Large numbers of these prominent figures, such as Jagiellonian University professor Marian Gieszczykiewicz (a bacteriologist), or Cracow mayor Bolesław Czuchajowski (a lawyer), were shot. Aside from the 17,000 Poles, the Memorial Book also contains information on approximately 1,000 persons of other ethnic backgrounds who were deported along with the Poles. Krystyna Jaskólska spoke about her father Ignacy Miziura, a stoker at the municipal electric power station in Cracow who was arrested in the fall of 1941 and became Auschwitz prisoner number 26032: “In April 1942, I came home from school as usual. My mother’s hair was as white as a dove. That morning, she had not had a single gray hair. There was a telegram from Oświęcim lying on the table. Father had died ‘of an intestinal obstruction’ on April 13, 1942.”
A note in the Memorial Book notes that it has been determined that approximately 3,000 of these deportees survived the camp. It can therefore be assumed that the other 15,000 died in Auschwitz or after being transferred to other camps. These people are listed in the Memorial Book as “died” (approximately 7,000) or among those for whom there is no information on their subsequent fate (approximately 8,000). The first book in the Memorial Book series, published in 2000, was Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków z Warszawy do KL Auschwitz 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles from Warsaw to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1940-1944], devoted to the 26,000 Poles deported from Warsaw (through Pawiak prison or the Pruszków transit camp). Forthcoming volumes will include Memorial Books on Poles deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from the Radom and Lublin districts and from the Polish territory that was annexed to Third Reich Germany.
