Today, 5th of October 2016, is the 74th anniversary of bestiary homicide of women, prisoners of Female Penal Company (Frauen Strafkompanie) in subcamp KL Auschwitz-Bór/Budy in Brzeszcze.
As each year, our Foundation was the inititator and organizator of commemorating their memory and creating a ceremony of bringing uot the history about the massacre on inmates.
Lets remind the history: first inmates arrived to SK Bór/Budy in june 1942, after two months all the others left alive were sent to KL Birkenau. Next inmates from KL Auschwitz were sent to penal company Bór/Budy 25th of July 1942, they were young, french jewish women, treated by the SS as comunists, in this group there were also a few poles, emmigrants to France. They have been quartered in the school building, same as the group before, located in groups in the rooms on the ground floor and the attic. Oon the night of 5th of October 1942, six functional inmates ( among others Elfriede Schmidt – called „queen of axe”) along with SS soldiers guarding the penal company at the outer fence, procured a crime on the french inmates from the building. A fight went on, which transformed into a bestiary, inhumane massacre. From the hands of functioning prisoners and the SS soldiers, using clubs, axes and similar tools, more than 90 women lost their lives. Their massacred bodies were loaded on trucks the next day and driven to one of the crematoriums of KL Birkenau.
Investigation in this case lead by camp gestapo for the order of Commander Rudolf Hossa, which on the order of SS documented by photos one of the prisoners Wilhelm Brasse (no 3444), has been remited, and all the evidence was already in the time blurred by the officials. Commander ordered destruction of the negatives leaving only one copy – it may be that these photos survived and are still in someones hands.
We know the action of this historical happening, sadly, they are still anonymous victims of KL Auschwitz and Holocaust. There isn’t any known existing camp documentation, which would help to create a list of names not only of these women – inmates from the massacre, but also all the other victims of subcamp KL Auschwitz-Bór/Budy.
We are a Foundation trying to bring back from oblivion these memory sites left after the whole complex of KL Auschwitz, which are to this day avoided and exist only in the shadow of the mian camp and National Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. We hope, that thanks to our work, in bringing back the memory to all this sites and their victims, there will be a possibility to identify these people by name, to bring them back dignity and humanity, that they were not only numbers in german nazi death machine, which flooded our country and experienced it so much – leaving on our turf sites signed by death, tragedy and suffering of citizens of all the Europe and other countries.
In todays ceremony took part also representatives of, among others, political beuraus of Mrs B. Szydło (Prime Minister) and Mr Z. Biernat, Lesser Poland Voiyvode, Oświęcim County Foreman, authorities of Brzeszcze community, National Muesum Auschwitz-Birkenau in the person of vice director, and also representatives of local groups, including country club Borowianki, numerous group of school youth along with teachers, and the citizens of Brzeszcze.
This years ceremony was graced by a concert by Mr. Bartosz Słatyński and Mr Paweł Basak.
Thank You, for all the comers.
