01.02.2021
Majdanek. Poets in striped uniforms
Alina Paradowska "The Christmas Eve at Majdanek"
On December 24, 1943, camp labour units finished their work earlier, no evening roll-call took place. The Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs and Russians in the men’s camp sat down together to Christmas Eve supper. One of the Polish prisoners, Franciszek Jackiewicz, recalled: For Russians the Christmas Eve supper was a new thing. Novelty were also some of the traditional Christmas treats (...). Later the exchange of observations on Polish and Russian national dishes took place. After the supper we stood up from the table. We wished each us Merry Christmas (...). It was a moment of true reconciliation of nations at the manger of newly born Christ.
In the female camp Polish and Russian women organised the exchange of Christmas greetings. Thanks to the Polish Red Cross and the Polish Central Welfare Council, Polish prisoners received packages with traditional dumplings with poppyseed, borscht, Christmas wafer, also spruce twigs and Christmas cards. A former prisoner of KL Lublin, Wiesława Grzegorzewska-Nowosławska, recalled: Regardless of the heavy sadness that was overwhelming us at the time, we managed to recreate a reminiscence of the homely atmosphere. On Christmas Eve 1943, the Christmas trees, which were sent from Lublin, did it.
Polish political prisoners deported from Pawiak to Majdanek were walking to the blocks with a paper star attached to the stick while singing Christmas carols and wishing Merry Christmas to the prisoners. Following the official part of the evening, in some of the barracks there was an artistic part with singing carols and reading poems – remembered from the times of freedom and those created inside the camp. One of those poems called ‘’The Christmas Eve at Majdanek’’ was created by Alina Paradowska, an 18-year-old Polish student arrested in Wesoła near Warsaw on July 1942. She was suspected of being involved in assassination of a denunciator collaborating with Gestapo and imprisoned in Pawiak. On January 17, 1943, she was transported to the German concentration camp at Majdanek, where she remained until the camp’s evacuation. On April 1944, she was transported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, later to the camp in Leipzig. She died in 2003.
Maria Bielicka-Szczepańska "Little Baby Jesus"
The first day of Christmas 1943 was a time of celebration for members of the German camp staff and a day off for most labour units. This did not apply to prisoners working in the camp office and basket workshop. A Polish prisoner, Franciszek Jackiewicz, recalled that in the male camp: on Christmas there was a roll-call as usual, then we were doing the basketry work. In the afternoon, some small cleaning up. The following days did not differ from the previous ones.
Christmas mood was created in the female camp thanks to Christmas trees given to prisoners by the Polish Red Cross. Suddenly, this empty and deprived of all greenery camp smells like the forest, in which the trees come to life, are wandering through the whole field and then disappear among blocks. Freedom, freedom came to us! It makes you want to cry and be mad with joy. Everyone wants to snuggle to these sharp needles and delve into freedom. The sick women ask for a twig or a few tree needles. Those who are able to stand up cuddle up to the twigs and breathe resinous nectar – as reminisced by Wanda Ossowska, a nurse who worked in the female camp hospital. We also learn from her accounts that a group of artistically gifted female prisoners made a crib for patients. Yet somehow, they get thick but clear piece of paper, on which they paint or put stickers with figures of the Holy Family and Christmas creche. There are also animals' heads and a shepherd boy kneeling in front of Baby Jesus (...). It looks so beautifully and natural that women get out of beds and pray on their knees (…).
For many prisoners such a semblance of normality created in the harsh camp conditions, as well as secret letters and packages given by their families and charities, were a source of hope for survival.
Author unknown - *** (A Merry Day at Majdanek)
Only Polish prisoners could be released from the Lublin concentration camp. However, this did not apply to Poles with a record. Peasants-hostages, as well as those arrested during street round-ups in Lublin, Warsaw and Lwów, who were brought to the camp in the first quarter of 1943, had the best chance of regaining freedom. Due to the efforts of charity organizations, such as the Central Welfare Council and the Polish Red Cross, 2,100 out of 8,600 displaced men, women and children from the Zamość region were released from the camp.
When someone was leaving the camp, the others felt happiness and hoped for survival. The female prisoners farewelled their few friends releasing from the camp with the song "A Merry Day at Majdanek."
Longing for freedom, for the reunion with the family, or for a simple stroll along the streets of Lublin – the city just outside Majdanek’s barbed wires – these were the most popular motives in the camp poetry of Elżbieta Popowska, née Plater-Zyberk. Born on August 30, 1887 in Podzamcze, she not only proved to be the most prolific author from among the poets in striped uniforms, but also enjoyed the greatest popularity among the prisoner-audience. Elżbieta Popowska was arrested in September 1942, during the sweep in her brother’s apartment in Podkowa Leśna. She was detained in the Gestapo Pawiak prison and deported to Majdanek in January 1943. In KL Lublin she remained until April 19, 1944, when she was transferred to KL Ravensbrück, and then to KL Bergen-Belsen. In 1945 she returned to Warsaw, where she started her teaching career. She passed away in 1964.
On March 26, 1943 a transport of 804 prisoners deported from the Gestapo Pawiak prison arrived at Konzentrationslager Lublin. The group included both the political prisoners and the civilians caught in the round-ups organised by the Nazi authorities in the streets of Warsaw.
The poem “Striped Uniforms” written in the camp by Zofia Karpińska is related to that transport. The chant achieved great popularity among the women deported from Pawiak who sang it in the melody based on “Uhlans, Uhlans!” – a Polish patriotic song.
“We walk towards our barracks. We can hear the verses of the song written by Zofia Karpińska coming from inside. The chant welcomes the new group from Pawiak that arrive on March 26.” – reminisced Danuta Brzosko.
Zofia Karpińska “Zofka” was an active resistance member within the Polish Underground State. She enlisted in the Polish Workers’ Party in 1942. In the autumn of 1942 she was arrested by the Gestapo and then detained at the Pawiak prison. On January 17, 1943 she was deported to the German Nazi concentration camp in Lublin. On April 19, 1944 she was transferred to KL Ravensbrück. When the war ended, she returned to Warsaw. Zofia Karpińska passed away in 1973.
April 19, 2021 marks the 78th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. That day in 1943, the SS units who entered the ghetto area were met with resistance, when the members of the Jewish Combat Organisation (ŻOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) made a stand against the Germans. Despite their fierce determination and courage, the insurgents could not withstand the assaults of the well-trained regular troops. On May 16, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto ceased to exist. The Jewish survivors, who endured despite mass executions and the quarter being reduced to rubble, were deported to camps. Many of them were sent to Majdanek – the German concentration camp in Lublin, where they were being systematically murdered in the gas chambers and mass executions.
The State Museum at Majdanek joins the commemoration of the Holocaust Remembrance Day by presenting “The Dead Men’s Boots” – a poem written in late 1943 by a twelve-year-old Polish-Jewish girl detained at the camp. She was among the few Jewish women whose lives were spared during Aktion Erntefest [Operation Harvest Festival], the largest mass execution of World War II, held on November 3, 1943. That day, the Germans murdered approximately 18.000 Jewish women, children, and men, who had been imprisoned both at Majdanek and several labour camps across Lublin. A small group of women was separated and forced to sort the clothes left behind by the victims.
Although the poem’s author survived Majdanek, as a direct witness to the atrocities committed on November 3, she was deemed for execution. In April 1944, the Jewish women remaining at Majdanek were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were murdered in the camp’s gas chambers.
Krystyna Tarasiewicz – *** (There are such tears, like a lump in someone’s throat)
June 14 marks the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of the German Nazi Concentration Camps and Death Camps. On this occasion, we present a poem by Krystyna Tarasiewicz, a detainee of the Pawiak prison and the German concentration camps: Majdanek, Ravensbrück and Velten.
At the outbreak of the war, Krystyna Tarasiewicz was a junior high school student. For her activity in the Szare Szeregi [Gray Ranks], she was arrested by the Gestapo in November 1942 and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison. On January 17, 1943, she was deported to the German concentration camp at Majdanek, from where, on July 15, 1943, she was transferred to KL Ravensbrück, and then to Velten. She returned to Warsaw in May 1945. After passing her final exams in high school in 1947, she began her studies in journalism, during which she started her first job at the editorial office of “Wolni Ludzie” [Free People], a periodical of the Polish Association of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps. In February 1980, she testified as a witness in the 6-year trial of Majdanek criminals in Düsseldorf. She died on March 20, 2018.
Beside the camp realities, the most popular motifs utilized by prisoners, who missed freedom and created art in the German concentration camp at Majdanek, were elements of nature, such as flowers, birds, the sun, the moon, stars, fields with wayside shrines, cottages with tchatched roofs and domestic landscapes. These motifs, apparently trivial and frequently used by poets, in the camp poetry were regaining its original freshness and could deeply touch the audience. The poem “Storks” is another, presented here poem of the rich legacy of Elżbieta Popowska, Polish female political prisoner, one of the most popular poets, who was writing in the camp at Majdanek.