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Remembrance of the Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising broke out 67 years ago, on August 1, 1944. The heroic combat went on for 63 days. On the anniversary of these events, Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, himself a native of Warsaw, joined Oświęcim mayor Janusz Chwierut and his deputy Maria Pędrak in laying a wreath at the Death Wall on the grounds of the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz , paying homage to the heroes and victims of the Uprising including the thousands of residents of the capital deported to Auschwitz.
In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and after its suppression, as a result of repression operations, the Germans deported more than a half a million of the inhabitants of Warsaw. About thirteen thousand people including infants, children and the elderly were incarcerated in the Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Earlier, director Piotr M.A. Cywiński took part in municipal ceremonies during which floral tributes were placed on the stone of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Tadeusz Kościuszko Square in Oświęcim. “Polish civilian losses in the Second World War were greater than the total losses of France and Great Britain combined, and no other city lost more than half its population in this war,” said Piotr Cywiński. “Warsaw wanted to fight and Warsaw had a right to fight. However, the cost of that fight turned out to be enormous. Yet without the Uprising Warsaw would not be Warsaw today and Poland would not be Poland. As it was written in the first proclamations on August 1, ‘Poland will win its own freedom. From Europe it demands only justice.’ It is hard not to add that, in the end, Poland won that freedom—half a century later.”
Numerous Museum publications perpetuate the memory of these events. In 2000 the Museum published the monumental Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków z Warszawy do KL Auschwitz 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles from Warsaw to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1940-1944]. It is devoted to Poles deported to Auschwitz from the so-called Warsaw district and contains all the names of residents of Warsaw by the Germans in connection with the outbreak of the Uprising that historians have managed to trace. In 2007 the Museum published a new and expanded edition of the often reprinted collection of stories about children in Auschwitz that was published under the title Dzieciństwo w pasiakach [Childhood in Stripes]. This is one of the most moving documents about the tragic fate of Auschwitz prisoners as well as a disturbing image of the camp as seen through the eyes of a child. Its author, Bogdan Bartnikowski, participated at the age of twelve as a courier in insurgent fighting in Ochota. He and his mother were deported to Auschwitz on August 12, 1944.
Transports of Poles to Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz from Warsaw after the Outbreak of the Uprising
Almost thirteen thousand arrested men, women, and children from Warsaw were deported to Auschwitz by way of a transit camp in Pruszków in August and September 1944. They were imprisoned on the grounds of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.
Among the deportees were people from various social groups and occupations (government officials, scientists, artists, doctors, merchants, and blue-collar workers), in various sorts of physical condition (wounded, sick, disabled, or pregnant), and of various ages from infants a few weeks old to people of 86 or more. In a few cases they were also of non-Polish ethnicity, including some Jews who were in hiding “on Aryan papers.”
The largest transports, carrying a total of almost six thousand people (including about four thousand females and two thousand males; more than a thousand of these deportees were children and young people of both sexes), arrived in Auschwitz on August 12 and 13.
Another transport of 3,087 men, women, and children was sent from Pruszków to Auschwitz on September 4. The next two transports, on September 13 and 17, involved almost four thousand men and boys; there were also three women among them. As part of the initial stages of the preliminary evacuation of Auschwitz, the majority of the people from these transports were sent within a few weeks or months to camps in the depths of the Third Reich and put to work in the armaments industry. Many of them died in these camps.
At least 602 women with children, including children born in camp, were deported to camps in Berlin in January 1945. Some of the prisoners from the Warsaw transports mentioned above were evacuated from Auschwitz in January 1945.Some of them died on the “Death March” and others survived to be liberated from camps in the depths of the German Reich. At least 298 men, women, and children deported there from Warsaw lived to see liberation at Auschwitz.
Memorial Books
Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków z Warszawy do KL Auschwitz 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles from Warsaw to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1940-1944] is devoted to the remembrance of Poles deported to Auschwitz from the so-called Warsaw district. It contains all the names of residents of Warsaw by the Germans in connection with the outbreak of the Uprising that historians have managed to trace.
Memoirs of a Child of the Uprising
In 2007 the Museum published a new and expanded edition of the often reprinted collection of stories about children in Auschwitz that was published under the title Dzieciństwo w pasiakach [Childhood in Stripes]. It is one of the most moving documents about the tragic fate of Auschwitz prisoners and a disturbing image of the camp as seen through the eyes of a child. Its author, Bogdan Bartnikowski, participated at the age of twelve as a courier in insurgent fighting in Ochota. He and his mother were deported to Auschwitz on August 12, 1944.
Excerpt from the Book Childhood in Stripes
“The Gate of Death,” says the railroad man. “I recognize it. I once saw it from far away. We’re gong through that gate, which means we’re going into the camp. It’s the end. The end of us. There are Germans all around the tracks. We’re done for.”
“Maybe we’re only passing through. Maybe we won’t stop. Maybe we’ll keep going.”
“No, this track is a spur. There’s no way out of there.”
“Oh, there are people there! In striped uniforms! They’re prisoners. Tomorrow we’ll be just like them.”
“So where’s the gas?” I ask out loud, because I’m starting to get interested in the terror of the grownups.
“Where’s the gas? There!” The railroad man lifts me up to the little window. “There! See that chimney?” Rows of lamps on low poles move past the windows, and far off behind clumps of trees flames several meters high belch from square chimneys. A hideous, unknown stench stunned me. “Where are we?” I ask. “And what stinks?”
The railroad man didn’t answer. He set me down on the floor so hard that it hurt.
What a terrible racket! The doors opened with a bang and the bright lights blinded us. The barking of dogs, SS men all around in green uniforms with guns in their hands and the enormous bellowing of those people in striped clothes: “Out! Take everything with you! Hurry up! Hurry up! Schnell!”
I jump out of the train car. I look around. Two women, one older and one younger, are clinging on to a boy and don’t want to let him go where the SS man is pushing him. The German screams something, the women hold on to the boy, and they cry. The German raises the gun in his hands. Is he going to shoot? No, he’s only threatening them. No! He’s firing! Now they’re lying on the ground, all three of them. Nobody’s shouting anymore, only the dogs are yelping and the crowd trudges in silence beside the train cars, lining up obediently in rows and waiting. “Schnell! Fast! Fast! Move it” The cry resounds along the column. The prisoners in stripes run up to us again, lining us up in rows of five. We start off. There is a road between walls of barbed wire. Beyond the barbed wire are rows of barracks. It’s empty there, like something out of a dream or a fairy tale. Far away among the trees, however, the flames belch and the stink is even worse. Look—someone’s standing against the wall of the barracks.
”Where are you from?” he shouts, and he\s shouting in Polish! He’s one of us, a Pole!
“From Warsaw” people in the column shout.
“From Ochota!” I shout, but he must not have heard me because he didn’t even look, but only scurries to the barracks next door and disappears.
“Oświęcim,” someone behind me murmurs. “So this is Oświęcim.”
Oświęcim! I know! I’ve heard about Oświęcim. So this Auschwitz is simply Oświęcim? My school friend Jarek’s father died here. My uncle and our teacher died here. In Warsaw they say the word Oświęcim in hushed tones, with respect, and probably with dread. “Nobody comes back from there,” Papa said once. So this is Oświęcim.
