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The Death March Passed This Way on January 18, 1945
As they do each year on the anniversary of the start of the Death March by prisoners of the Jawiszowice sub-camp of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, a delegation of miners from the Brzeszcze Coal Mine placed floral tributes at the memorial marking the event.
Adam Nawalany, Zdzisław Zawadzki, and Janusz Augustyn represented the miners of Brzeszcze on the anniversary of the Death March. They stated that they were not acting on behalf of any organization. They placed flowers and lighted a symbolic lamp at the memorial, which now stands in the Brzeszcze town park, at the site of the Jawiszowice sub-camp.
"It must be admitted that the area [around the memorial] is more tidy than it was last year. It was a problem then," said Adam Nawalany. "The graffiti and drawings on the former camp bathhouse have also been removed."
A group of 1,948 prisoners from the Jawiszowice sub-camp, who had been laboring in the Jawiszowice coal mine and the Brzeszcze mine, were added to the last transport leaving Auschwitz-Birkenau on the night of January 18-19, 1945. The sick and those incapable of marching were left behind. The marching route passed through Miedźna and Pszczyna before reaching Wodzisław on January 21. Those who survived the march were sent to the Mauthausen and Buchenwald camps. Numerous graves marked the route of the march.
