Together with the Prószyński I S-ka publishing house we proudly present our latest book – the memoir of the former KL Lublin prisoner Zacheusz Pawlak. It is the third edition of his account, but enriched with previously unpublished contents – the author’s description of the Majdanek camp hospital and his report from the perpetrators’ trial in Düsseldorf.

My decision to once again cross the Majdanek camp gate and to revive my life there was not an easy matter. There are some things that I lived through, things you just cannot pour onto paper. […] Today even for me it’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that Hitler’s genocidal machine of concentration camps was real. That apart from the ‘common’ world there was a different reality – the world of concentration camps.

Zacheusz Pawlak (1922-1991) was a member of the Grey Ranks and a solider of the Polish Union of Armed Struggle (later Home Army). In September 1942 he surrendered himself to the Gestapo in order to save his brothers arrested as hostages in his place. He was imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured at the German prison in Radom until January 1943, when he was deported to the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin. There, he was imprisoned for another 441 days. Later, he was transferred further to other concentration camps: Natzweiler, Neckarelz and Dachau. He escaped from the evacuation march on 3 May 1945. After World War II Zacheusz graduated from medicine and worked as a physician in Radom. As a prisoner of Majdanek he promised himself that if he survived, he would write a memoir of his camp experiences.

We are hosting three events dedicated to the book and its fascinating author. Stay tuned for details.