POSTER CAMPAIGN: ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST TRANSPORT TO AUSCHWITZ

At the beginning of June this year, posters appeared on the streets of Warsaw commemorating the first transport to the Auschwitz German extermination camp (14 June 1940).

Among the prisoners in that camp was Czesia Kwoka, who was just 11 years old, and who was beaten by one of the camp supervisors just before the camp photo was taken. Czesia was displaced from the Zamojszczyzna region that was intended for German settlers, and murdered in March 1943. At the end of the same year, her tragic fate was shared by Józefa Warchoł, a teacher from Husakowo. Even earlier, in February 1941, Jozef Baluk, an experienced employee of the Polish National Railroad, was murdered. The Germans also did not spare high school student Zbyszek Prawdziuk, who graduated less than a year before arriving at Auschwitz (killed in April 1941).

Photographs of the victims, victims of the genocide organized by the Germans, were shown on posters. They are complemented by animations made by Mr. Wojciech Korkut (i.e. the author of the posters), based on the available photos.

The German Death Camp, Auschwitz, has become a symbol of the planned and organized genocide that was carried out on an industrial scale, by the Germans in the areas they controlled during the Second World War.

During the operation of Auschwitz, the de facto death factory is estimated to have claimed the lives of nearly 1,500,000 victims, including many citizens of the German-occupied Second Republic. 

The poster campaign will last until 2 July and is organized by the Jan Karski Institute of War Losses.

#isw #BoBylPolakiem #pierwszytransport #14czerwca #pamietamy

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W. Kielar, Anus mundi. Wspomnienia oświęcimskie, Kraków 1976

A. Pietrzyk, Tarnowskie więzienie etapowe w procesie wyniszczania ludności polskiej w okresie okupacji niemieckiej (1939-1945) w: „Zeszyty Tarnowskie” nr 3 (1971), s. 293-307

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