The Virtual Museum of the Holocaust and the Resistance

INTRODUCTION

MODULE 1: World War, 1939-1945, German Concentration Camps and Prisons

Case Study: Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz

Case Study: Irena Matusiak: Cookbooks and diaries

Case Study: Women in Ravensbrück

Case Study: On the Way: Transit camps correspondence

MODULE 2: World War, 1939-1945, Jewish Underground Resistance collection

MODULE 3: Allied and German propaganda distributed by air drops and shelling

MODULE 4: The Underground Resistance in Europe

MODULE 5: Nazi culture, the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

McMaster University Library acquired from Michel Brisebois of Montreal in February 2008 a vast and rich collection of archival materials, books, and ephemera relating to the Holocaust and underground resistance in France. Since that time, we have added to and enriched the Brisebois collections by other purchases and donations.  On 21 January 2009 (International Holocaust Remembrance Day), we announced the acquisition of these extraordinary, multi-faceted collections. At that time we also mounted an exhibition: Anti-Semitism, Concentration Camps, and Underground Resistance in World War II, which can be viewed virtually at the library website. Those holdings are now further enriched through the University Library’s recent subscription to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (or VHA), making McMaster the first institution in Canada to have full access to the VHA’s collection of nearly 52,000 audiovisual testimonies of the Holocaust.

Drawing from the above Holocaust collections, and with the invaluable support of Madeleine and Monte Levy, McMaster University is developing an interactive digital archive entitled the Virtual Museum of the Holocaust and the Resistance.  The Virtual Museum will employ innovative digital technologies, creating an interactive archival infrasture containing interlinked digital images, metadata, an introduction, case studies, other explanatory texts, a time line, maps, bibliographies, a user interface, as well as hyperlinked lists and links to these archival resources and other relevant online resources.

In addition to a collection of at least 800 rare books and pamphlets, many of which can be found through the Library’s catalogue, there are six interrelated holding categories (or modules) pertaining to the Virtual Museum.  Through partnership with Gale Publishing, the holdings of the following modules have been digitized and are or will soon be fully available online to the McMaster community. Other institutions can, through Gale, acquire access to these important materials for research and study.  Portions of the archive will also be freely available from the Library’s website.

Our current areas of focus have been on both modules 1 and 2 as part of an effort to link those holdings with the Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive (VHA), thus representing a merger of very distinct yet extremely complimentary Holocaust recources.  To that end, for Module 1 we have developed a set of crucial case studies that draw from both the VHA and the archival collections held by the Library.

MODULE 1: World War, 1939-1945, German Concentration Camps and Prisons

The set of correspondence of prisoners held in German concentration camps, internment and transit camps, Gestapo prisons, and POW camps, during and just prior to World War II (2,000 items, mainly letters written or received by prisoners). The full list of items can be found at the finding aids. The collection is available online through the Digital Collections website (public access) as well as at the Gale Publishing (McMaster users only). The Virtual Museum presents a series of case studies that introduce the viewer into the collection.

CASE STUDY: Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz

Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz, 13 September 1942, Dachau

Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz, a Polish political prisoner, spent most of the war in Dachau concentration camp. He was deported to Dachau from Kalish,a town near Lodz, on 26 May 1940 and spent four years in this camp.  The Brisebois collection holds 29 letters sent to his relatives in Poland between 1941 and 1942. The correspondence continued after 1942 as well, since the Lørdahl collection lists his letter of October 8, 1944. In the beginning of February, 1945 Kaczmarkiewicz was transported to the Flossenbürg concentration camp.There is no data on his further fate.

Dachau was one of the first Nazi concentration camps (it opened in 1933) and was functioning till the end of the war. In the early 1930s, Dachau was designed for political prisoners, as well as homosexuals and other “asocials.” In October 1939 the camp was completely emptied, and the inmates were transferred to other camps. In February 1940, Dachau reopened as a concentration camp.  There were many nationalities there, mostly originating from Eastern Europe. Poles constituted the majority of the population by the time of liberation in April 1945. The number of inmates that passed through Dachau camp was about 250,000, of which 31,500 died or were killed. The population of Dachau reached its maximum in 1944 (100,000 inmates); when Dachau was liberated by the American troops, there were 67,664 inmates in the camp. One survivor of Dachau gives an insight on how everyday life went on in the early 1940s:

We were placed in the barracks. There were approximately 80 of us in a room. We had double deck beds. We were given a uniform, which was a miserable material made of wool, striped, with the star. The discipline of Dachau was extreme... We got up a little after four... had something that they called coffee; we were given a ration of bread for three days. In the evening we had a sort of a hot meal (cabbage, beans, lentil). We did not have any meat. But one has to get used to that.[*]

In his letters, Kaczmarkiewicz, aged 20 at the time of his imprisonment, addresses his mother and father, brother and sister, and sends regards to his friends and colleagues.  Since the envelopes were not preserved, we know nothing about either his parents’ names or their location. Based on the fact that Thadeus inquires about a friend from this hometown, they were probably in Kalish during the war. The letters in the majority resemble each other in being cheerful and reassuring, always reporting about his good condition and expressing some worries about his family in a unified and similar way (I am healthy and well; have no worries about me). Thadeus thanks his relatives for their letters, acknowledges the arrival of parcels and money orders, inquires about their health and mood, and regrets that he cannot be with them. In every letter he reassures his parents of his good condition, and cheers them up by hoping that the tough times will end and that they will meet again someday:

My dears, it is Christmas again, and again, we need to talk to each other about what still remains in our hearts. Therefore, do not be sad, and your hearts should rejoice, because God can unite all of us, and therefore, I am always with you. This evening, I am at the Christmas table with you, wishing you all the best. Maybe God will let us see each other again, and then there will be no end to our happiness.[*]

I am sending you my best New Year wishes to my dear parents, Masieck and Jas, all friends and acquaintances. May dear God fulfill our New Year wishes that we could live together in peace and comfort again. Do not worry about me, dear parents, and hope for the better times and future.[*]

Although very limited in detail, these letters still reveal some bits of information about life in Dachau. For example, Kaczmarkiewicz  repeatedly mentions that his work is hard and that he works six days a week; when writing about Easter holidays he notes that “the Holidays have passed quickly as a common workday,” [*]  which probably means that on these days they still had to work. As a former inmate of Dachau testifies, “the work in Dachau was miserable. We had to carry rocks, and some of the older people would collapse when they picked the rocks… Another job that was given to some people was to flatten the rocks on the road.” [*] Another Dachau survivor explains that the main purpose of jobs that the inmates were given was to get rid of them. Sometimes they were unloading stones and gravel from the trucks, only to load them all back.[*] In the correspondence of Thadeus there are no complaints about the hard work but on the contrary, he repeatedly reassures his parents that the work distracts him from homesickness.

Thadeus is guided by the major principle of all prisoners in totalitarian countries – one has to refrain from pronouncing anything directly. No details are given about life in Dachau, and when speaking of his parents’ life, Thadeus communicates his questions in an indistinct and abstract form. Even names that come up demonstrate very weak connections with their actual locations or situations:

Does Jarczak  live at the same position or has he already moved? What is Basia doing now, is she working together with Marysia or does she have another job?[*]

What does Basia do now and how is he in the new situation? (or position)[*]

Even such incidents as a death in the family are mentioned only indirectly, and again, without any names or references. For example, in the letter of 26 April 1942 Kaczmarkiewicz eagerly questions his parents about some unclear sad news and begs them not to conceal anything from him, since he has “so little to know.” “Have no fear, says he, because I need the first-hand news. I have come to terms with my lot.”[*] Thadeus’s suffering is always put aside, and the tone of his letters remains invariably optimistic. Only small bits of information reveal to us the degree of hardship he had to undergo in the camp. Thadeus always hails the warmth, anxiously waiting for the change of season from winter to spring. For people in the concentration camp, winter was grueling and miserable, as a former inmate of Dachau remembers, “There was no heating in the sleeping rooms, including in winter, when it was sometimes down to -20. We were close to the Alps, it gets very cold there. And yes, they cared for our health, and did not allow us to close the windows.”[*] Also, the eagerness with which Kaczmarkiewicz is waiting for the new letters is summarized in the very short yet significant phrases:

I am asking for faster responses, because the letters are the only joy for me![*]

I have been so far away from you for already two years, and my heart always pounds when I read every letter from you.[*]

Another detail that provides us with some information about the camp life is a number of the confirmations of parcel receipts. In some camps, the inmates would send the pre-printed acknowledgement as a response to the money order. In Dachau, the inmates usually used folded letters, as well as the pre-printed forms of permission to receive a Christmas package.[*] In most cases, they acknowledged the arrival of parcels by mentioning it in their letters. Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz also does that in every letter, which means that he received the money orders every week:

I have received your money transfer (10RM) on 17.12 and I thank you with all my heart.[*]

There are no traces of food parcels that were sent to camps, since at the given time span the prisoners were prohibited to receive them. In three letters, Thadeus writes on the back of the letters the regulations that were probably dictated by the SS official: We are not allowed to receive any packages. Do not send any packages or parcels. They will be sent back unopened.[*] The rules changed only by the end of 1942, when prisoners started to be used by Germans as slave laborers and also because of the war and shortage of food.[*] Thadeus also worries about his family’s wellbeing and asks them not to send too much money. Still, the money orders and later, the food parcels provided a great support for prisoners. Charles Hirsch says that when he was imprisoned in Dachau in 1939, his mother managed to send him some money every other week, which allowed him to buy canned sardine that kept him going.[*]

Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz, 4 January 1942, Dachau

The letters in the Brisebois collection demonstrate two samples of handwriting. The first and dominating sample most likely belongs to Thadeus, since the signatures on all letters are identical.  Two letters sent in January, 1942 (0578-0579) are written by another person, though the signature and the note on the back of these letters matches the principal handwriting. We might suppose that, first, Thadeus did not know German well enough and therefore asked different people to write letters for him; and second, that he might have wished to pass a certain message to his family by using two different types of handwriting. The number of letters was restricted, and the inmates had to invent ways to convey things to the outside world. As noted by the VHA interviewee, his father wrote letters from Theresienstandt ghetto by himself but signed with his son’s name. “This was the way to let our relatives know that we are still well and alive.”[*]

While there is no way to know who wrote letters for Kaczmarkiewicz, his family was definitely helped by their friend or acquaintance Mr. Fibiger, whom he repeatedly thanks in the majority of his letters (Kindest regards to all colleagues and acquaintances, to Mr. Fibiger and his family;[*]  Please thank Mr. Fibiger in my name for all good things he has done for me [*]). And then, in the letter of 7 December 1941 Thadeus inquires if Mr. Fibiger is sick or away, since he does not recognize the handwriting:

This time I have been astonished, since I did not recognize who wrote this letter. Is Mr. Fibiger sick or is he out of town? That’s why you do not mention that to me?  Please tell me more about that.[*] 

Some letters show half-erased traces of Polish translations, and this confirms that the recipients did not speak German, and someone had to translate the letters of their son. 

Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz, 12 April 1942, Dachau

All correspondence that circulated between Dachau and the outside world was heavily censored. In some cases, the inmates were directly instructed what to write to their relatives. The most infamous example is the Mail Action conducted in Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, when people were forced to write postdated letters and were then killed immediately afterward. In the concentration camps, the SS personnel often dictated the first letters notifying relatives of a prisoner’s address. When one of the transports of 1939 came to Dachau, the prisoners were gathered into a huge room and the Nazis commanded them to write the following phrases to their families: “My dear... , I am fine, I am well.” These letters went to their homes. After that, they could write personal letters but their contents were also highly regulated. Every letter or postcard had rules of writing printed on the left-hand side and stated that every inmate could send only two letters or postcards per month and that every page must contain only 15 lines [click to watch][*]. Because of that, the letters could be neither too long, nor too elaborate. The phrases that sounded as “I am alive and well” or “I am in a good health” were probably required in order to pass the censorship. If a censor did not like the contents of the letter, he would not let the letter through; he could cut some lines out or even punish the prisoner. In the VHA interviews, a woman whose husband was imprisoned in Dachau in 1939, shows a letter that he wrote from the camp with the lines that were cut out by a censor.[*] The Brisebois collection also holds camp letters with cut-out lines.[*]

In order to convey certain kinds of information and to get real news from the outside world, prisoners invented specific codes that would help their letters get past the censors.  In one of the VHA interviews, a Jewish survivor talks about passing a message to his mother-in-law that her brother, also a Dachau prisoner, had passed away. Being not allowed to talk about his death, he did that indirectly, by means of sending her his condolences.[*] Another former inmate of Dachau, while showing the postcard to the interviewer, explains how he asked his mother to contact “uncle Berthold,” a person who was neither his uncle nor anyhow related.  This “uncle” was a man who could help him be released from the camp. “My mother understood that, and the message came through,”- says Alfred Rosenthal [click to watch].[*]

Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz also encrypted secret messages into his letters. He asked vague questions that provided certain associations between people, whose situations and locations were known to him and his parents. The word “here” always implies being in Dachau: Dear Father! Mielcravek is not here, but you should be glad that everything goes well.[*] When someone they know is transported to Dachau, Thadeus lets his parents know by mentioning those persons in his letters. Thus, he repeatedly mentions Grzymala, his father’s friend or colleague as well as other persons that his parents knew:

 Grzymala that was sent to Wloclawek sends you dear father greetings and also to Jakowski and all other acquaintances in Kalish.

 Please let Stasio know that Dobrzanski sends him greetings and that he, like Grzymala, was in Wloclawek.

Both Grzymala and Dobrzanski were probably deported from Wloclawek (a small Polish town, also home to vast Jewish population) to Dachau. Thadeus mentions Grzymala several times (“Grzymala sends you, dear father, greetings;”[*] “Grzymala with the colleagues sends you, dear father, greetings from far away and wishing you all the best in life.”[*]) to let his father know that Grzymala is still with him. In several months his friend is deported or transferred to another block in Dachau, and Thadeus manages to notify his relatives that I do not have any news about Grzymala and Nowacki yet. They remain again where they were before.[*] In other letters Kaczmarkiewicz talks about his friend or relative Peter (or Piotr, in Polish), also a prisoner of Dachau. Before that, he keeps asking if his family knows anything about Peter, and then in the letter of 7 June 1942 Thadeus notifies his parents that Peter is now with him and that they are working together.[*] But when in the letter of 2 August 1942 he notes that Peter “is with Grymala now”[*] he implies that Peter was deported, relocated to another block, or dead.

All these messages are conveyed by the associations that require pre-existing knowledge of other people’s locations and situations. Although the percentage of these small hints is minimal, Kaczmarkiewicz still assumed a great risk, since the consequences could vary from the Postsperre  (a prohibition of correspondence) to severe punishment, execution, or deportation to death camps.  Roman Slupnik remembers how the phrase addressed to his parents “after the victory you may put it (the gravestone) back” was interpreted by the camp commandant as a prediction that Nazi Germany would lose the war. Because of that, he was prohibited to have any correspondence for three months and all letters that would come from his family were sent back.“They did not only punish me, they also punished my parents, and that was worse for them,” says Slupnik, “my family did not know what has happened to me.” [click to watch] [*]

Without knowledge of the circumstances, one can barely associate these letters with the reality of the concentration camp. Even the word lager (camp) comes up only a couple of times, in connection with safe subjects, for example, the weather: Today we had the first snow, and when we got up in the morning, the roofs of our camp were white.[*] In one of his letters Thadeus Kaczmarkiewicz hails his loved ones, and in this address one sees the greeting of a person thinking about them from a place, from which there is no return:

From the concentration camp I send greetings to Stas and Jas and wish them luck in their lives.[*]

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CASE STUDY. Irena Matusiak: Cookbooks and diaries

The diary notebook of Irena Matusiak. Brisebois Collection

The concentration camp diary is a phenomenon that by its very nature can be called unique. While many people who went through camps kept diaries few of them were preserved, though sometimes the diary would be the only trace of a person perished in the concentration camps. Generally, people cherished not only their own writings but also the writings of others. A VHA interviewee who participated in the partisan movement in Ukraine tells of a couple of instances when he would return to pick up his diary even though it involved risking his life. Moreover, a soldier from his regiment once rode back many kilometers to locate his bag containing his notebook.[*] The very act of writing ensured that the person would be preserved in people’s memory even if he or she did not survive the war. The Brisebois collection holds an even more unique set of documents, including self-made cookbooks, armband, and the diary that a prisoner of Kleinmachnow (Klein Machnow) and Ravensbruck camps kept during the death march of  April and May 1945. [*]  Irena Matusiak (Kuczyk), a young girl at that time, wrote down her experiences, and this simple and short text provides us with the most genuine picture of horrors and hopes of a person placed into these horrendous conditions.

Kleinmachnow, a subcamp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, was established in the summer 1944 on the outskirts of Berlin, and was designed entirely for female prisoners. The camp was situated on the premises of the Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH, a branch of the Bosch Corporation. After the Warsaw uprising, in September and October 1944, about 800 women, were first brought to Ravensbrück, and then transferred to Kleinmachnow. The factory was surrounded by the dense forest that served as camouflage. The prisoners worked in 12-hour shifts producing details for aircraft engines (fuel injections, pumps, and starters). The history of Kleinmachnow was barely known both to later researchers as well as to the contemporary town residents who  “did not know that there had ever been a camp there, and that women prisoners had worked there.”[*]  In 2002, Angela Martin published a book “Ich sah den Namen Bosch.” Polnische Frauen als KZ-Häftlinge in der Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH (Metropol, 2002), in which she gathered accounts of 45 survivors of the camp, including  Irena’s story “Als würden wir in die Hölle hinabsteigen” (As we were descending into the inferno). Thanks to this testimony, Irena’s documents can be placed into a specific historical context.

Irena Kuczyk (Matusiak), from "Ich sah den Namen Bosch: polnische Frauen als KZ-Haftlinge in der Dreilinden Maschinenbau," (Metropol, 2002). Courtesy of the Metropol Publishing House.

Irena Matusiak (born in 1921) resided in Warsaw, in the Ochota neighborhood with her parents and younger sister. After the Warsaw uprising, the Nazis conducted the mass arrests of city residents, and many people were either killed or deported to the various concentration camps. Irena’s family, including her older sister and a child, was deported to Zieleniak, a marketplace that the SS turned into the transit camp where the future forced workers were collected. Irena recalls how while being there she had the ominous task of dragging away and burying the corpses. From there they were transferred to Pruzków, also a large transit camp created for the deportees from Warsaw and its outskirts.[*]  The next day Irena and her younger sister were separated from their family:

A soldier came up, pointed his bayonet at me and said “You, criminal!” I had to follow him. My younger sister wanted to take some things from me for my older sister’s child but the soldier did not let her go and thus we remained together.[*]

They were taken to Bergen-Belsen, stayed there for a week and afterwards were selected to go to Ravensbrück [click to watch][*] This happened by the end of August 1944. Irena notes that the entrance into Ravensbrück gave her the most horrifying impressions, shared by the majority this camp’s survivors:

The most indelible memory I have is the moment of arrival in the camp in Ravensbrück. As a child I always had a sort of childish picture of how I imagined hell and, suddenly, there it was. An arched iron gate opens upwards, clanging and grating. Red lights of some sort. Night. And there we are, entering a black abyss. Pushed and shoved, we fall over each other. I had the feeling that we were descending into hell.

Irena spent about a month there, and afterward, in early September 1944 men from the factory arrived and selected the ones fit to work: “There were SS-men and civilians, says Danuta Porębska, arms akimbo, legs splayed, with dogs on leashes and there we were – naked – young and old. It was so humiliating! You can never forget something like that. Then they looked into our mouths. It was their way of assessing which of us were fit for work.” [*] Irena also remembers this episode: “On September, 1944, after the further selection, we were sent to Kleinmachnow. During this selection the doctors in white gowns were present as well. They checked our eyes. <…> Luckily, my sister remained with me.” Irena, together with other women of that transport, was placed into the cell situated under the main floor of the factory, in the damp and dark rooms, where “[t]he cellars were dark and damp, and water trickled from the ceiling and down the walls.” [*] However, Irena notes that all these hardships were nothing to compare to Ravensbrück: the work was hard but quiet; and her foreman was nice to her and liked to talk because he wanted to practice his Polish. In fact, in many testimonies the former inmates admit that the civil workers at the factories where they were forced to work were mostly decent people who helped them to be familiarized with the machines, gave them food and shared news.

The cookbook of Irena Matusiak. Brisebois Collection

The prisoners at the Bosch factory worked in 12 hours shifts, and the women experienced constant hunger and the mistreatment of the SS personnel.  Paradoxically, their response to such deprivation was imagining all kinds of complicated and delicate dishes, as testified by Danuta Goga: “And then we’d think up all sorts of recipes. And we’d write them down on pieces of paper which we pulled out of the mattresses. We would daydream of what else we could cook.”[*] Such reaction to hunger seems to be common among the women prisoners of Ravensbruck, it dominated the consciousness of the concentration camp prisoner.”[click to watch] [*] Talking and exchanging recipes “boosted women's sense of community. As women recollected recipes, they taught one another the art of cooking and baking, and, in the process of teaching, they reclaimed their importance and dignity.”[*]

One of Irena’s self-made cookbooks held in the Archives and Research Collections consists of recipes of baked items (poppy seed roll, chocolate truffle, or two ways of preparing halva) as well as soups, salads, and main course dishes. Another tiny-sized notebook consists entirely of the recipes of different kinds of tarts and cakes (fondant icing cake, chocolate cake, mocha cake, etc). Being constantly hungry, Irena filled her notebooks with the recipes of cakes, requiring plenty of butter, flour, sugar – all things that the prisoners were deprived of. This brings a sharp contrast with reality as remembered by Zofia Ruszkowska, whose utmost dream was to invite her friends “to a splendid feast after the war – bread with slices of potatoes – that was the height of luxury for us at that time. You should have seen how bread was divided up! We had a team leader and it was she who brought the bread for the whole team, and then divided it up. And since every scrap was worth its weight in gold, she made a sort of balance out of two sticks. She would cut up the bread with a piece of string and then ‘weigh’ the pieces.”[59] Both cookbooks are very small, because of, first, the shortage of paper and second, because of the necessity to hide the notebooks from the guards. As Halina Nelken, the survivor of several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, remembers, “In Auschwitz I got a small red notebook from a colleague of mine, so small that I could keep this in my hand. And there I wrote my poems, and that is how my diary took a concise form of a poem.” [click to watch] [*]

The cookbook of Irena Matusiak. Brisebois Collection

In April 1945, the camp was evacuated due to the approach of the Red Army, and the women were sent back to Sachsenhausen. On April 22, 1945, they were driven to the infamous death march in the direction of Schwerin, while Ravensbrück was evacuated on April 29, 1945. Irena Matusiak, together with other women, was forced to walk with guards shooting people who were unable to walk:

In mid April 1945, we were led out of the camp with an escort of SS-men and dogs… We had to walk tens of kilometres every day without any food or rest. My sister could hardly bear this, we were both very weak. We were driven only through the forests, because the streets were full of military columns.

The women who survived these marches report that the general goal of their guards was to starve and kill as many people as possible. One of the survivors tells that while marching they found out that the SS were taking them to the Baltic shore to load them on the old barges and to drown them in the sea.

In these impossible conditions Irena Matusiak records her experience – not after the war but during the death march. The uniqueness of this document is especially unmatched, as the prisoners usually spent the nights in fields or forests and would walk 30-40 kilometers every day. Her record starts on April 28, 1945, several days after they started their march. The “gates of camp” that she mentions in the first entry probably mean Sachsenhausen, since Kleinmachnow was completely evacuated several days before. The diary mainly revolves around the fear of being lead under constant bombings and in dire hunger. Although being aware of the approaching Allies and Russians, Irena does not pronounce any hopes of being free and alive. The SS guards are mostly represented as “them,” the unnamed force that drives the victims to unknown places. And the inmates are “us,” the persecuted group of people. In course of the march, the number of women gradually diminishes: some die or are shot, some escape and hide in the woods. Irena, along with a group of fellow inmates, tries to separate and keep on going on our own in a small group, but we do not succeed. They keep an eye on us and we have to continue together.

Irena’s transport was first moving eastward, and then turned westward, as she writes in the last entry of her diary  “SS guards are afraid of the Bolsheviks and direct us towards the Allies as if to surrender us into their hands.”  And as becomes clear from her later testimony, that very day they were liberated: “We were liberated by the Americans, in the neighbourhood of Schwerin but now I cannot remember the name of village. It was afternoon of May 2.” Wiesława Wnętrzewska gives more specific details of their liberation:

Irena Kuczyk (right group, fourth from the left), with other Kleinmachnow survivors at the ceremony of opening of the Kleinmachnow memorial, 2003. From Martin, A., Czerwiakowski, E.  Muster des Erinnerns: polnische Frauen als KZ-Häftlinge in einer Tarnfabrik von Bosch, Berlin: Metropol, 2005. Courtesy of the Metropol Publishing House.

We were liberated by the Americans, in the Wöbellin village. We were confined in a large barn, there was nothing to eat and we huddled up and managed to survive the night. In the morning, we heard a boy… call out: “Women, you are free! The Americans are here!” The soldiers in American uniforms came. Our appearance –we were dirty, covered with lice –shocked them so much that they ran away.” [*]

Irena and her sister were taken to the British zone, where they spent several months recovering from illnesses and injuries. In the early 1946, they returned to Poland and found their father. Together they went back to their home town. Irena’s mother told her later that she went to the train station day after day waiting for them.

The diary of Irena Matusiak, translated by Elizabeth Onyszko of Ottawa

28.IV.1945 – 2 :45

After a long time of anxious waiting, the camp’s gates are behind us – evacuation – nothing pleasant. The last transport was around 6.000. The camp is over, but it does not look that good – we are being escorted by the SS towards the front line or close to it. On top of that, most of us leave without any food provisions, all without warm food.

The diary notebook of Irena Matusiak. Brisebois Collection

Many among us without bread for as long as a week. We are marching in the Name of God – the road to liberty – to Poland. After only a few km it’s impossible to go further, they say that the roads are being blown up. We enter a young forest to wait through the night. There, a house with soldiers, not at all to our liking, we continue a few steps further and suddenly an explosion, the terror disperses us all, and drives us into the forest in all directions, and every other moment pushes us to the ground. Explosions continue, and falling to the ground I devote myself to St. Anthony. At last it goes away and dies down, but then it continues all through the night. Sitting somewhere in the bushes, clinging to each other, we wait through the night, hearing constant explosions and desperate calls for each other. We are also in despair because our Kostia and (illegible) are lost – found again with help from St. Anthony.

It barely dawns, when they start to gather us to continue our march on to Malechow and further. We want to separate and keep on going on our own in a small group, but we do not succeed. They keep an eye on us and we have to continue together. The group is now smaller – many died.

29-IV And again further, horror-stricken, along the road full of army supply columns and refugees.

It was a terrible passage, especially in the afternoon, airplanes and fire from them at the road, and no place to hide; so in the ditch in greater fear than before. There are also casualties of the shooting. The planes fly away and we pass quickly through a town full of soldiers and the army supply columns. And again a bit further and again planes and shooting. A terrible day. And again help from St. Anthony.

I believe it miraculous, escaping unhurt from this horror. Now only small groups of several people each are left. Our patrol stationed at the road directs us into the forest for the night, where our group’s guards are already waiting. There are (crossed out: “about”) 40 of us. We are laying down to sleep, and suddenly again planes and shooting for the third time. Our nerves can take it only by miracle, it seems. The night in the woods on the straw ends this horrible day.

30,31,IV. 1.V. and 2.V

Forced march to the west, that is further away from our destination. The SS guards are afraid of the Bolsheviks and direct us towards the Allies as if to surrender us into their hands.

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CASE STUDY. Women in Ravensbrück

A substantial part of the Brisebois collection consists of letters sent by women from various places of confinement, mostly from Ravensbrück, a concentration camp that was organized specially for women. There were more than 50 subcamps associated with Ravensbrück, where prisoners were forced to work for German factories (e.g. Siemens) to produce armaments for the war. Overall, 130,000 people passed through this camp, of which 20,000 were men. More than half of these women were young, less than 30 years old. Only 30,000 survived the war, and most of the children born in the camp died before the liberation. [*] The fact that Ravensbrück has been populated by women only did not bring any alleviation in the everyday life of the prisoners; many inmates of this camp died because of malnutrition, were shot, hanged or sent to the gas chamber. Ravensbrück is also known for the medical experiments conducted on women, an act that left almost all of them handicapped. However, as noted by Jack Morrison in the book Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women’s Concentration Camp 1939-1945, “Ravensbrück inmates displayed survival skills based upon abilities and outlooks unique to women prisoners... Most of them knew how to extend and apportion a restricted food supply, how to darn socks and downsize a jacket, and how to fashion a carry-bag out of rags...  They knew how to deal with cuts and bruises, and how to make a poultice for a sick child. Skills such as these had direct applications in a concentration camp, and their prevalence in a camp for women made it a more tolerable and survivable place than it might have been otherwise.”[*]

Steffi Kunke, 1930s. Courtesy of DOEW (Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes)

For us today, the letters of Ravensbrück inmates represent visual illustrations of such exemplary stoutness. Even within the strict limits of the format prescribed by the SS censorship they managed to convey their camp experience to relatives so that one could feel their true emotion. The correspondence of Stephanie Kunke provides us with the testimony that preserves the history of this courageous woman. Born in Vienna on December 26, 1908, she became an active socialist, along with her husband Hans Kunke. One of the pre-war acquaintances of this couple remembers how they met after the brief civil war that broke out in Austria in 1934: “As a result the Socialist party was outlawed and material that could have incriminated its members had to be destroyed,” and the Kunke couple was actively involved in helping to hide any evidence. [*] In 1938, Hans and Steffi were arrested and put into prison; afterwards, both went to different concentration camps, from which neither of them returned. Hans ended up in Buchenwald at the sock-darning labour detachment. Being severely abused, on October 31, 1940 “in act of desperation [he] ran through guard chain and was shot to death.”[*]

Steffi outlived her husband by  a few years:  after a brief stay at Lichtenburg concentration camp, she was deported to Ravensbrück, where, because of her political activity, she had to spend two years at Strafblock (according to testimonies, this “Punishment block” rated next to the gas chamber). The inmates of the Strafblock were forced to do extremely hard construction work, they had to carry heavy rocks, and move huge blocks, often without food or rest.  In the beginning of 1941, she was released from Strafblock and placed in Block 1 with the political prisoners, under the guidance of Rosa Jochmann.[*]  Steffi’s friend from Ravensbrück remembers that “this was the best time for her in the camp,” as she was able to write and to be with her peers. In early 1942 Stephanie, together with other German comrades, was sent to Auschwitz, where she died on February 14, 1943.

People who knew Steffi before the war or even in camp characterize her as a talented writer and a joyful person. Stella Klein-Low met Stephanie and Hans in Vienna in the 1930s “when they helped her to dispose of emergency supplies after the debacle of 1934: in February civil war briefly broke out between the Socialists and government forces. As a result the Socialist party was outlawed and material that could have incriminated its members had to be destroyed... My helpers were Steffi and Hans Kunke. I became friends with Steffi. She was a teacher and a great person: carefree, cheerful, open-minded. Her large, sparkling eyes spoke such a clear language of affection and enthusiasm.”[*]  Helen Potetz, a Ravensbrück survivor who met Steffi there remembers her as “the ray of hope that gave everyone lots of strength.” She also talks about Stephanie’s talent in composing poems and telling fairytales that unfortunately mostly were not preserved – when Rosa Jochmann, the leader of her block, was arrested in 1943, all papers were destroyed. [*]

Stephanie Kunke, 12 November 1939, Ravensbrück

The letters that Steffi wrote to her aunt Flora Jelinek  are filled with this mixture of cheerfulness and bitter wisdom at the same time. Her letters convey the piercing emotion of a condemned person who still could gain joy from just being alive by observing the clouds, the sun, and the mountains in the far. Her language is delicate and poetic, and the images are especially distinct and tangible:

Because of the blackouts we go to bed early. But I lay in bed for a long time, and think and muse. I am a night owl and need less sleep.

The best thing for us here is the sky, it is so beautiful. It is not as high as in Lichtenburg. Since the barracks are low and long, the whole camp makes an impression of being low and wide, and because of that the sky here is very low...  We have wonderful sunsets here, the colors are so beautiful ...

These shines are unforgettable, so clear, so dear. I often have this feeling when experiencing physical inconveniences, I feel happy in this flood of light.[*]

Steffi managed to stay within the limits of the camp correspondence and at the same time to express something that goes beyond censorship. Even the dangerously self-humorous remark reaches the addressee untouched: “Well ... I can find some beautifulness and fortune even in the wretched life.” By the end of her imprisonment in Ravensbrück, her mood changes, and the letters bear the traces of tiredness that Steffi’s comrade also remembers:  “she would always tell us that she will never leave the camp alive ... She had a weak heart and no will to live anymore.” In the last letter of our collection, dated from December 1941, probably foreseeing her deportation to Auschwitz, Steffi writes to her aunt:

The time goes overwhelmingly fast, and at times I wonder where all those weeks are gone. When sometimes I imagine myself living as a “private” again this seems to me as real as the fulfillment of a fairytale. And what does remain? I know, my dearest, that if I could live my life once more, then it would have been already wonderful. And while I just know that sometimes I doubt the possibility of its fulfillment.[*]

The commerative plate for Hans and Steffi at Hietzing cemetery (Vienna, Austria). Courtesy of Hedwig Abraham.

In the beginning of 1942, Steffi was commissioned, along with other comrades to go to Auschwitz. Release from the transport was impossible, and Steffi also did not want to let her friends down. About what happened in Auschwitz we find out from Potetz’s testimony:

This was a tough farewell for all of us... From the friends that came back from Auschwitz we found out that she got sick with typhus, and never recovered ...  The live will of those that spent time in the Strafblocks and led a miserable existence in Auschwitz was broken. Sometimes she suffered from the nameless homesickness, and her last days and hours were spent dreaming about Vienna and being at home.[*] 

One of Vienna’s streets was named Kunkegasse, as a tribute to Stephanie and Hans.

Janina Stefaniszyn, June 1944, Ravensbrück

Another set of correspondence belongs to the Stefaniszyn sisters, also prisoners of Ravensbrück. After Germany invaded Poland, Jozefa and Janina, Polish scouts and activists (Janina was a lawyer, and Jozefa was a teacher) joined the underground resistance. Both of them worked at the legal firm Sichrawów that served as a cover for covert activities and in reality was busy delivering information about the victims that were shot in the streets to their families. According to the recollections of Joseph Bieniek, “Janina wrote the letters informing families about the fate of those dear to them, while Jozefa dealt with the shipment.” With the spread of rumour among local families, the Sichrawów firm started to be frequently visited by Polish women frantically searching for news about their loved ones. Eventually, one of the associates was arrested and, being unable to endure torture, gave out the name of the firm. As a result, the company chief, and then the Stefaniszyn sisters were arrested in spring 1941 and deported to concentration camps. [*]

Concentration camp. Get out. We were packed into the truck, almost without air - you could suffocate. The gate of the camp. The Dogs are revolving around us and barking furiously. Gestapo - men in black cloaks, with evil faces, burning with a vengeance. This is all hell, hell here, hell on earth ... Search, a bath, we are now dressed in prison stripes, receive wooden shoes, hair shaved, beating, kicking.[*]

When we arrived to Ravensbrück we saw a huge camp, with the gas chamber, with the smoke. And everybody looked alike, with the shaved heads. As they marched us we saw corpses by the side of the road.[click to watch] [*]

Janina Stefaniszyn, post-war photo. Courtesy of Janusz Tajchert

In Ravensbrück, Janina and Jozefa joined the Polish underground organization Mury (“The Walls”). This resistance movement, established in November 1941 by the scout leader Jozefa Kantor, was mainly “organizing food and medical supplies for the sick fellow prisoners, moral, psychological and religious support for the group members and other women in the concentration camp.” Being not numerous in the beginning, by the end of the war it reckoned about 100 Polish women. The members of the “Walls” managed to fulfill the priceless task of preserving the “incoming list” of  25,028 Ravensbrück prisoners, since the rest of camp documents  was destroyed by the fleeing SS personnel to conceal the evidence . [*] In 1945, Janina and Jozefa were rescued – they went to Sweden with the transport organized by the Red Cross and Count Bernadotte. After the war, the sisters returned to Poland, and received various awards, including The Knight's Cross of the Order of Rebirth of Poland and The Golden Cross of Merit of Poland.[*] Jozefa returned to her teacher’s duties, and on the memorial website dedicated to the history of Mury she talks about the occurrence in her pedagogical practice that illustrates the impact that the survivors endured as a result of their horrible experience:

Jozefa Stefaniszyn, post-war photo. Courtesy of Janusz Tajchert

When I hear German music and songs on the radio, I am always wondering about this nation’s supposed love of music. Even the SS liked to sing, and yet they were capable of such crimes. How can one be reconciled with these things? The one that loves music is a good and honest person, and cannot cause any harm; and yet we have such criminals in this case. I do not understand that anymore. <...>  Let me give you an example of how I once reacted when one young boy sang the German song “Heili, heilo” (he got that melody from the movie). At first, I grabbed the brat by the ear, but then I restrained myself and gave them one-hour lecture. <...> I pointed out that with this song our parents were being shot. I took them to the nearest place of executions, told them that I was an eyewitness to shooting near my home. Finally, I added: Will that be nice to each of you, to have someone executed in the family, like father or mother, and then listen to the tune, with which the executions were carried out?[*]

The four letters (three from Jozefa and one from Janina) kept at the archive constitute a part of a bigger correspondence.  While obeying the rules of camp correspondence and speaking only about general things, the sisters are still able to personalize their writings, to add some genuine sentiment. Both of them are deeply religious, and this emotion dominates Jozefa’s letters:

Today is Sunday! I am now musing on different things about my life, and trying to find a source of joy. Finally, I have found that! Oh my quiet church! I know all your corners so well. How often have I visited you… Oh my beloved daddy! Oh! My dearest,  if only  I could go there with you and to sing my favourite song. The rustling acacia quietly sings this song in God’s care. “Oh, the God almighty.” I have sung that often, and I did not realize then how happy I was! [*]

Jozefa Stefaniszyn, October 1943, Ravensbrück

Being separated from their family, Jozefa and Janina were strongly supported by their Christian faith and kept their rituals and prayers even in the conditions of a concentration camp. When greeting their loved ones at Christmas, Jozefa writes, and this gets through censorship:  “On Christmas Holiday Jasia and I spent with you. On Holy Night, when the first star lit up, we sang the beautiful Christmas songs very loudly so that you could hear us. It seemed to me that Baby Jesus stretched his hands to us and said: “Come, you the sad ones, and I will sooth you!”[*] After the war, in a testimony dedicated to the icon of Mother of Consolation, Janina also wrote about the secret sermons carried out at their block and how morally supportive they were for the prisoners:

Longing for the church and Holy Communion was the heart of our second camp, which carved our souls, ennobled, and led us to our Consolation...  The Mother of Consolation knew prisoners from many cities, from Vilnius, Poznan, Gdansk, Sopot, Plock, Radom, Czestochowa, Krakow, Tarnow...  You were with us at the moment of suffering and joy, you heard at the catacombs of our camp songs sung to Thy honor, these common prayers that gave us strength to survive the tough leaden days of camp...  The block in which we lived was dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus...  Selection ... execution ... these things explicitly bypassed us...  No hunger, no flogging, no anguish, if faith is strong in us, if the Mother of Consolation is with us. Prayer and work, and we nourish ourselves happy and content.[*]

As in case of other prisoners, the majority of Jozefa’s letters are dedicated to her and Janina’s homesickness, but as opposed to male writers, she finds it possible to be more specific, sometimes speaking about the real life of a prisoner, even when confirming the arrival of a food package:

Greatest thanks for such wonderful packages. I have received three, and Jasia also three packages with food. First of all I kissed the bread… All my comrades wept loudly, when they saw my love to you. <..>[*]

Janina Stefaniszyn, June 1944, Ravensbrück

Though the handwriting of both sisters looks very similar and perhaps only one of them could write German (or that someone wrote those letters for them), Janina demonstrates a different style, and keeps to a less passionate manner. She asks questions about common friends and relatives, addresses different people and even asks her parents to let some acquaintance know that she is unreachable because of being in the camp. Janina also gives little insights into their life in camp and even mentions the woman who supposedly was mentoring and helping them in Ravensbrück:

The elderly lady that was so wonderful to congratulate our Jozja <Jozefa>  on her name day, is thanking you  for the money; she  is very happy. She treats us as her own daughters.[*]

In one of the VHA interviews, a Jewish survivor of Ravensbrück remembers how she and another girl prayed during the Yom Kippur Holiday, and then adds that in the camp they were “reduced to animals thinking only about food... No favours existed in Ravensbrück. Only few of us still did that, to remain human.” [click to watch][*] The examples of the Ravensbrück correspondents, such as Steffi Kunke or the Stefaniszyn sisters show how the very act of writing helped them to preserve their faith, their cheerfulness and stoutness in the conditions of imprisonment.  The emotional capability to get their personal messages through the grind of the SS censorship grants us the possibility to look into the very core of humanity.

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CASE STUDY. On the Way:  Transit Camps Correspondence

Yvonne Thomas, 25 April 1943, Drancy

Among the monstrous net of concentration camps created by Nazi Germany over occupied Europe, there were also so-called transit camps. As opposed to other camps, these places were not intended either for extermination or for labour but as waiting points where prisoners (mostly, Jews) were collected to be sent further, mostly, to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were located for the most part in Western Europe, such as Westebork in the Netherlands, Drancy and Beaune-La-Rolande in France, Mechelen in Belgium, and Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. The conditions of these camps were a bit better than the rest of concentration camps; in some of them (in Theresienstadt and Westerbork) various cultural activities were allowed; in some transit camps in France the prisoners were even allowed to be visited by their relatives. However, people lived under the constant fear of deportation to Poland, and this is the main emotion that characterizes the diaries and letters of these camps’ inmates.

This case study commemorates the prisoners of transit camps whose letters are kept at the archive. We will look at people being in transition – mostly to their fate but also at  those that managed to fulfill an enormous task of escaping not only the transit camps but also Auschwitz. All prisoners were typically in transition, and the majority of camp correspondents went through at least two or three camps. Also, the prisoners who were deported under the program “Night and Fog” (Nacht und Nebel) were secretly taken to Nazi camps and executed there. The main goal of Nacht und Nebel was to make political prisoners disappear without a trace. The ones who were not executed were continuously transferred between camps. However, the inmates of transit camps were in transition by nature, always being aware of the coming deportation to other and worse places.

The Nazis often deceived people by luring them into transports and saying that they were being taken to some safe place; instead, the transport would go to the extermination camps. Ruth De Wilde remembers how, after having spent some time at the collection camp in Berlin, they were told that they were going to Switzerland but in reality the transport went to Auschwitz. She managed to smuggle a note to her parents through the Dutch truck driver.[*] The role of Theresienstadt, the Jewish Ghetto in Czechoslovakia, was to show the world (and particularly, the Red Cross) that Jews are being well-treated; in 1944, the commission of the Red Cross visited Theresienstadt; soon after that thousands of ghetto inmates were deported to Auschwitz.  The survivors of Drancy also note that despite knowing about the persecutions of Jews in Europe they could not perceive the degree of danger that awaited them. Also, people were deceived by the cards that were sent from the east to convince them that the deportees are still well and alive:

There was a kiosk in front of administrative building with the Jewish personnel working there, and they posted letters sent to those persons... These were cards postmarked from Germany, saying “Dear so and so, we are doing well, we work hard on the farm... we work very hard from day till night but the kids are very happy, we have all the food we want.” ... We did not realize that by that time this person was already in the gas chamber, the minute he got there. These letters calmed the people, and the ladies in the kiosk would say – oh yes, I knew Ms. Cohen, or Ms. Kahn, I am getting cards from them all the time.  These people did not know either ... Who would have thought that they forced the people to write the letters before sending them to the gas chambers? We would believe the story until the moment when we got to the cattle cars.[click to watch][*]

Yvonne Thomas, 17 August, 1942, Drancy

The Brisebois collection holds a number of letters sent from different transit and internment camps located in the occupied France, such as Beaune-La-Rolande; Chateaubriant-Choisel; Gurs; Le Vernet D’arièges, and Drancy.   The camp of Drancy, founded in August 1941, became the biggest “hub for deporting Jews to the east, and new detainees kept on arriving there every day.” [*] People would spend some time there, but in many cases, they would stay there only for a day or two, and later, be sent further to the east. Yvonne Thomas was imprisoned in Drancy in 1942, and in 1943 transferred to Beaune-La-Rolande. Her letters are addressed to her daughter Micheline, probably a teenager or even a young adult. As with all other prisoners, she sends her detailed requests for food parcels and clothes.

As opposed to the unified style of letters from German concentration camps, letters from Drancy are written in a looser manner. First of all, the correspondents were allowed to write in French, and second, censorship was not as strict as in other places. While not going into details, M-me Thomas gives her daughter various hints of information about her life in Drancy, including the state of her health, or even camp restrictions:

I had 3 eggs confiscated, [since] only 2 are permitted; received your parcel, I am waiting impatiently, especially for the clothing, since 14 days passed without having changed and washed. Sleep has become unknown to me and tonight is the only day since my departure when I have rested for several hours. In so little time I have become an old woman, everyone has found that I have aged 20 years and it is not rare that someone supposes me to be 54 to 55 years old; I am unable to see anyone ...  there are 5000 of us and I don't know any names. Oh, I am so lonely.[*]

In contrast to the obligatory positivity of mail coming from Dachau or Ravensbruck, Yvonne openly talks about being hungry, sick, and physically exhausted (As for me, with my 44 kg, my head is better), and about the regulations that do not allow her to receive more than two eggs at a time. Also, she desperately tries to obtain the documents that would secure her release. In the first letters coming from Drancy (probably, soon after her incarceration) she asks Micheline to “send for the baptism certificate of father, his brothers and mother and 4 grandparents, do not wait at all and send them as soon as they are available so that I do not lose any time [here].” [*]Later, she sends instructions on how to obtain the confirmation of her Aryan descent: When you have received the baptism certificates, photograph them, take to the Bureau of Jewish Affairs...  and send this to me by registered mail. Keep the original close to you. Don't lose any time.  And then, a year later, after spending some time in Drancy and having been transferred to another camp, M-me Thomas still nurtured some hope, though one can see by her writing that it was waning: There have been many releases these days in my block. When will mine be? Will we spend our vacations together? [*]

Yvonne Thomas, 25 April 1943, Beaune-la-Rolande

Yvonne Thomas was able to stay for several months at the transit camps and to avoid deportation to the east; probably, because of being only half-Jewish, she got into the category of people who were protected from transports. In late 1942 or early 1943 she was transferred to Beaune-la-Rolande, another transit camp, which at that time was “used to detain those that the Germans transferred in from Drancy because they were not (at least not at the time) “deportable.” [*] Unfortunately, there is no data on her further fate. There is a possibility that she died in the camp, since the last letter says “you will surely take your vacations alone again ... According to the doctor I am no longer well ...  I have had so many injuries since this infinitely long captivity and the year has again passed far from you .[*]  Beaune camp was officially closed on July 12, 1943, and the prisoners were transferred to Drancy, which by that time was in the full control of the SS.

Some people did not have even this brief pause between deportations, and spent only one or two days at Drancy, on the way to Auschwitz or Sobibor death camps. In these cases, the prisoners were allowed to send a brief message to their loved ones indicating that they were being deported to some unknown destination. Such is the note written by Mr. Lerman to his friends or relatives in Paris saying that he is being sent further:

My dear friends, Mrs and Mr. Deudon. I am in good health. I wish the same for you. I will always count on your friendship. I will say good bye since I am leaving soon. I will send you news. Wishing you well, Lerman. [*]

Michel Brisebois proposes three candidates that could be Mr. Lerman (we do not know his first name) , of which Azmiel Lerman seems  to be the most likely candidate.  Born in Poland, he moved (probably fled) to France, was arrested in August 1942 during the large roundups in Paris, and perished in Auschwitz.[*]

While not knowing exactly their destination,  people sensed the upcoming doom and  tried to send their last notes to the outside world. The VHA survivors list many occasions of how they or their relatives when being deported would throw a letter out of a train, and how these messages would get to the addressees. Ernest Nives, as a Drancy survivor, identifies that as an “indicative of the anxiety we had to let people know where we were going to go and...it shows also that we didn't know where we going to go.” Another VHA interviewee shows a postcard that her uncle and aunt threw out of the train while being deported to the east (none of them returned).[click to watch][*] The Brisebois collection also holds one such letter written by the Polish prisoner Edek (Edward) Sowa who threw his letter when being transferred from the Gestapo prison in Tarnow (Poland) to Auschwitz:

Edek (Edward) Sowa, January 1943, Tarnow

I am leaving from Tarnow, they say the 27th of January or the 28th of January --- where I don't know. Maybe God will prevent anything from happening. If it will be possible to write from there, I will write. I was in jail with Staszek, but in the morning they called him out. I don¹t know if he is going with me ---pray for me and do make efforts [to help me] ... That's all for now -- may God have you in His care.[*]

Edward died two months later in Auschwitz, on March 4, 1943. These letters of people written on the brink of horrible death transmit to our times the horror of the person being put into an “absolute cold and cruel barbaric place.” [*]

Most of the deportees realized what fate was awaiting them when being put into the sealed cattle trains. All former inmates of Drancy describe the horrendous contrast between the relatively civilized transit camp where they were brought by regular passenger trains and the cattle cars filled with straw and with two buckets for people to relieve themselves. Leo Bretholz in a VHA interview talks about the utter dehumanization that one experienced on those trains. While realizing what fate awaits them, Leo and his friend succeeded in the daring and risky attempt to escape the train:

On the train, we tried to move the bars in the train, they did not, but they were rusty. We took off our sweaters and dipped them in the human waste, and twisted the sweaters around the window bars. We alternated with my friend. After several hours the bar started moving, and then we used our arms to twist them until we could squeeze through the windows. We escaped in the Champagne region of France. We waited for the curve so that the train would slow down, and tumbled into the ravine. We were noticed: the train came to a halt, there were shots and lights; the third fellow that was supposed to fly with us did not make it. We walked into a village, it was dark. We went into a village and stopped at the priest’s house, we spent a night there [click to watch].[*]

Even when being already imprisoned in Auschwitz, some people managed to escape. The collection holds the letters of two persons, Aleksander Martyniec and Antoni Wykret. Both of them successfully escaped from the camp by means of dressing as civilian workers or even as SS guards. Antoni Wykret arrived at Auschwitz I with the first group of men “from the prison in Tarnow by the Krakow Sipo and SD commander.” [*] In 1944, he, together with Henryk Kwiatkowski disguised themselves as SS officers and on September 9 fled from the camp with the group of Polish prisoners and joined the Home Army’s Sosienka Partisan Unit. Later, Wyrket and S. Furdyna, wearing SS uniforms, intercepted a horse cart carrying two prisoners and three guards. Passing themselves off as functionaries of the camp Gestapo, they conducted a thorough search of the cart, examined the pass of the SS guard and told him they were taking the prisoners with them for interrogation by the Gestapo.” [*] During the SS raid on the partisan unit Wykret was wounded and arrested but as soon as he regained consciousness he escaped from the truck that was taking him back to Auschwitz.[*]

Leonard Zawacki, also a camp escapee who fought in the same resistance unit as Antoni Wykret, describes in a VHA interview the complex planning of their escape from Auschwitz:

One day (after weeks of preparations) we changed into the SS uniforms and left our prisoners clothes (the prisoners said they would burn them as soon as we leave). Disguised as SS men we walked through the camp, met a group of prisoners that was waiting for us, told them in German to pick up the tools and march in front of us. Since we did not have proper passes (they were the wrong color), we did not go through the gate but took a “shortcut” and went to the tower with the SS guards.  The guard waved, and we passed to the other side. There was a search afterwards but they did not find us. [*]

As pointed out by Henryk Swiebocki in Anatomy of Auschwitz, the more precisely the prisoners planned their flight, the more chance they had to get away not only in the process of escaping but also after that, since many people were afterwards captured and executed.[*] Aleksander Martyniec, whose letter is also a part of the Brisebois Collection, described in the post-war account how accurately his flight was planned by him and his friend, Jan Sarapata.  They managed to disguise themselves as civilian workers and fled through the civilian canteen.[*]

Being on the transport on the way to death or being constantly in transfer under the threat of gas chambers, or flying from camps or trains with the hope of deliverance, their letters show us only one thing, the state of utter terror in the face of unnamed doom. Those who survived described later hours and days spent inside the sealed cattle cars as the most horrible and scary experiences of their lives. The mixture of hope and fear, and the bitter realization of us today that very few were spared and lived to see the end of the concentration camps is epitomized in the transit camp and Gestapo prisons correspondence.

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MODULE 2: World War, 1939-1945, Jewish Underground Resistance collection

The second module of the Virtual Museum is comprised of the Jewish Underground Resistance Collection, 1929-1945, compiled by David Diamant.  David Diamant is the pseudonym of David Erlich.  He was born 18 March 1903 in Hrubieszow, Poland, and emigrated to France in the 1920s where he remained for the rest of his life.  A Jewish communist, Diamant was a committed member of the underground resistance during World War II; on more than one occasion he was offered safe passage to England but chose instead to remain in France.  After the war he worked initially with the UJRE (l'Union des Juifs pour la Résistance et l'Entraide) and devoted himself to documenting the Jewish resistance by collecting original documents and writing and publishing extensively on the subject.  Diamant died in Paris on 24 August 1994.  The Collection consists of original documents collected by David Diamant over a period of approximately 30 years dealing primarily with the Jewish segment of the French underground resistance; many of the documents originate with communist groups, and some deal with Polish groups.  Most of the documents are in French, while some are in Yiddish.

The scholarly value of this collection is of substantial significance.  In part, historical literature that has documented French efforts to forge national unity and solidarity after the divisive experience of Vichy has encouraged a historical narrative that suggests a shared experience of wartime suffering, heroic resistance, and unwavering republicanism in the face of the Nazi and Vichy regimes. But this emphasis on unity in suffering and resistance did not unify all, as more recent scholarship has demonstrated.  Historians such as Pieter Lagrou, Megan Koremen, and Sarah Farmer have highlighted the contested nature of memory as the French struggled to reconcile their divisive experiences of occupation with national narratives of healing.  Though these historians offer impressive studies of the French state and society in the aftermath of the Liberation, they do little to examine how immediate postwar victims of genocide reacted to this formidable universalizing impulse during wartime.

The collections of sources housed in the second module of the Virtual Museum, however, complicate this historiography by showing the particularly Jewish forms of traumatic loss as well as resistance that took hold in France during the war.   In uncovering how Jews in France resisted and survived the Holocaust in ways that were sharply different from French non-Jews, this collection opens up the boundaries of what constituted resistance and challenges the long established notion that there was shared and equal suffering of all French citizens during the Second World War.

The collection is available online through the Gale Publishing (McMaster users only).The full list of items can be found at the finding aids.

MODULE 3: Allied and German propaganda distributed by air drops and shelling (finding aid). 

MODULE 4: The Underground Resistance in Europe

MODULE 5: Nazi culture, the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism

CONCLUSION

Upon completion, the Virtual Museum will provide a gateway to three different, albeit interrelated online portals. 

• Entry to the Virtual Museum and its curated collection of online exhibits, case studies, selected audiovisual testimonies (extracted from the Visual History Archive) and pedagogical excercises and resources for secondary and undergraduate Holocaust and genocide education.
• Through Gale Publishing, complete access for the McMaster University Community to the entire digitized collections associated with the Brisebois collection and the Virtual Museum.
• Full usability of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive for members of the McMaster University Community (McMaster users only).