"On Auschwitz" (55): The Evacuation and Liberation of Auschwitz in the Accounts of Witnesses

A collection of letters and documents related to Jan Nowak, a physician from Kraków who, as a prisoner of German Nazi concentration camps, worked in camp hospitals and helped other prisoners, has been donated to the Auschwitz Museum Archives. The documents, including a letter sent from the camp and seven letters sent to the camp by his relatives, were donated to the Archives by Marek Trybulski, owner of the Kraków Numismatic Salon. We invite you to listen to a conversation with the donor and Dr Wojciech Płosa, head of the Auschwitz Museum Archives. ===== Voiceovers: Mike Skagerlind, Grey Stafford and Michael Takiff

A special group of prisoners in the Auschwitz camp were prisoner functionaries, responsible, among other things, for maintaining discipline among prisoners, keeping order in the blocks, and supervising the work being carried out. Dr Wojciech Płosa, Head of the Auschwitz Museum Archive, talks about the first thirty functionary prisoners – Germans brought to Auschwitz on 20 May 1940 and assigned numbers from 1 to 30. ===== Voiceovers: Kate Weinrieb, Tom Vamos

Over the nearly five years of the operation of the Auschwitz camp, around 8,200 SS men and 200 SS female overseers served there. Dr Agnieszka Kita, Deputy Head of theAuschwitz Museum Archive, talks about what their leisure time looked like, what they did after duty, when they returned to the barracks, and what their days off looked like. =====Voiceovers: Sarah Edwards Weinstein, Kate Weinrieb

Among the unique artifacts held in the collections of the Auschwitz Memorial are fairy tales created while the camp was in operation. Crafted out of a heartfelt need, and in the hope of leaving behind a trace of their authors, these stories were smuggled out the camp. Their creators were prisoners employed in the camp’s Construction Office. With the help of people on the outside, they passed these fairy tales on to their loved ones. The story behind the fairy tales from Auschwitz is told by Jadwiga Kulasza, a retired employee of the Memorial Archives, as well as family members of the authors: Felicjan Świerczyna, son of Bernard Świerczyna, and Andrzej Czulda, son of Henryk Czulda.=====Voiceovers: Greg Littlefield, Michael Takiff, Kate Weinrieb

We discussed the group of functionary prisoners at Auschwitz in one of our previous podcasts. You can find it at: podcast.auschwitz.org. In this episode Dr. Wojciech Płosa, the head of the Auschwitz Museum Archives will talk about the post war fates of some of the functionary prisoners. ===== Artwork: Mieczysław Kościelniak, Praca przy walcu (Working on the roller), Auschwitz Memorial Collectons. ===== Voiceover: Therese Mc Laughlin, Mike Skagerlind