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Portrait from the Eintrachthütte subcamp in the Collections of the Museum
A portrait made in the camp depicting Zygmunt Salwerowicz, a prisoner of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, has been donated to the Collections of the Memorial by his son, Adam Salwerowicz.
‘The portrait of Zygmunt in a civil sweatshirt and a striped prison beret on the head, was illegally made in 1944 in the Auschwitz subcamp, Eintrachthütte (Świętochłowice) by a French Jewish inmate named Jacques de Metz,’ said Agnieszka Sieradzka, an art historian who works in the Museum’s Collections.
Adam Salwerowicz from Starachowice, who donated the family memento to the Collections of the Memorial, never met his father. He was born in April 1943 after the arrest of his father by the Germans and his deportation to the concentration camps, from which he never returned.
‘Zygmunt Salwerowicz was deported by the Germans to Auschwitz on 18 March 1943 from the Radom District in a transport of 465 prisoners. He was registered with the no. 108,881. From surviving documents, we know that in mid-February 1944, he was an inmate of the Eintrachthütte subcamp, and in December of that year he was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he received the number 112,626. However, due to the lack of full documentation we have not been able to determine his fate,’ said of Sieradzka.
Jacques de Metz, a French painter of Jewish origin, arrived in Eintrachthütte subcamp in 1943. ‘He drew at the request of the SS men, based on photographs presented, and also drew illegal portraits of fellow camp inmates. His drawing skills helped him survive the toughest moments in the camp,’ added Agnieszka Sieradzka. During the evacuation of the camp in January 1945, he was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp. His further fate is unknown.
Until now, the Auschwitz Memorial had three portraits of prisoners from the Eintrachthütte camp, authorship of Jacques de Metz: the portraits of Jerzy Rogocz, Józef Cepak, and Tadeusz Chmura.
The Eintrachthütte subcamp in Świętochłowice was built next to the Eintracht steel plant, which is a part of the Berghütte concern. In May 1943, the Directorate of the plant signed an agreement with the SS authorities to rent 1,000 prisoners, whom they had intended to place in the former forced labour camp for Jews. The prisoners were accommodated in a camp surrounded by a double fence with barbed wire under voltage. Inside the camp were six wooden barracks, kitchen, sick room, warehouse, bathhouse with a disinfection chamber and latrine.
The prisoners, most of whom initially were Poles, and later Jews, worked in two shifts, mainly in the processing of antiaircraft components and assembly of barrels and mechanisms imported from outside. Working conditions at the lathes, grinders and milling machines would have been bearable, if not for the extremely brutal treatment of prisoners by the SS men.
In January 1945, the camp housed almost 1.3 thousand prisoners, who were later evacuated by train from Świętochłowice the Mauthausen concentration camp. Several dozen sick prisoners were left in the subcamp, who lived to see the liberation
