The voices of the survivors are the most important

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the world’s largest Jewish, Polish and Roma cemetery. This is neither rhetoric nor poetry. For centuries, the earth will continue to hide here the ashes from the crematoria and bits of unburnt bones. It will be saturated with human blood and fat. Literally. by Marek Zając   That’s how one should see it….


Note addressed to the Governments of the United Nations by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Edward Raczyński, regarding German crimes in occupied Poland

The double attack on Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR in September 1939 led to the effective dissolution of the Polish state. Although Poland lost its sovereignty, its legal authorities continued to function, organising the Polish armed forces in France and later in Great Britain. Under these circumstances, the primary aim of the Polish…


‘Threads were going from person to person, wispy threads of help...’: The Council for Aid to Jews ‘Żegota’

In the summer and autumn of 1942, in the General Government (GG), the Germans carried out mass deportations of the Jewish population to extermination camps. These actions, code-named Operation ‘Reinhardt’, aimed to exterminate all the Jews from that area. The few who managed to escape deportation sought refuge on the so-called Aryan side. In these…


Auschwitz. A Bitter Taste of Liberation

The end of Auschwitz came on 27 January 1945. That day, soldiers of the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army took control of the vast camp area. About seven thousand prisoners, including several hundred children, lived to see liberation in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowitz. The majority of the nearly 60,000…