20 Mar Final Pictures Of Young Polish Girl In Auschwitz Are Even More Haunting In Color

The thought of mass genocide is something which few people alive today can imagine, let alone say they’ve experienced. The reality, however, was all too real for millions of “undesirables” during the Second World War who were systematically killed as part of the Nazi’s “Final Solution”.

Between 1941 and 1945, the regime targetted those they wished to “cleanse” from society. This included six million Jews who lost their lives in concentration camps, as well as ethnic Poles, the “incurably sick”, Romani people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponents and Soviet prisoners of war. In total, it is estimated that the Holocaust death toll stands at 17 million.

In the video below, artist Marina Amara explains how she is using her work to illuminate its horrors:

[[jwplayerwidget||http://content.jwplatform.com/videos/JYfFcWpo-Q0L14jDU.mp4||JYfFcWpo]]

One victim of the Holocaust was 14-year-old Czesława Kwoka, who arrived at the notorious Auschwitz camp with her mother on December 13, 1942.

Credit: Marina Amara

Kwoka was one of the “approximately 230,000” children deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945. At the tender age of 14, Kwoka was torn away from her home in the Zamość region of Poland after the Nazis began to clear the area to create “living space” for people who they considered more desirable.

Despite only being a teen, Kwoka was branded “subhuman” by Nazi ideology which was particularly brutal towards Polish Catholics. After they invaded Poland in 1939, the Nazis set to work murdering and suppressing the Catholic elite in Poland. They killed Catholic religious leaders, destroyed churches, monasteries and convents and stole sacred objects. The aim? To destroy Polish culture in order to smoothly Germanize the country – a way of life that didn’t support Christianity in any form.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Kwoka was photographed by fellow prisoner Wilhelm Brasse for the concentration camp records. Brasse, a professional photographer from Poland, was forced to take between 40,000 and 50,000 photographs of other prisoners whilst at Auschwitz. Threatened with imminent death if he refused to comply, Brasse had no option but to take the pictures which now haunt the world to the core.

Despite the large number of ‘identity pictures’ that he was ordered to take, Brasse can distinctly recall Kwoka. In an interview with The Portraitist, Brasse, who survived his ordeal and is still alive today at the age of 94, recalled:

“She was so young and so terrified. The girl didn’t understand why she was there and she couldn’t understand what was being said to her. So this woman Kapo (a prisoner overseer) took a stick and beat her about the face. This German woman was just taking out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful young girl, so innocent. She cried but she could do nothing. Before the photograph was taken, the girl dried her tears and the blood from the cut on her lip. To tell you the truth, I felt as if I was being hit myself but I couldn’t interfere. It would have been fatal for me. You could never say anything.”

The post Final Pictures Of Young Polish Girl In Auschwitz Are Even More Haunting In Color appeared first on Viral Thread.