As the Germans expanded their plans to create living space under Hitler’s regime, the
Nazis and the Wehrmacht invaded and occupied many different territories.
For the development of Nazism, Hitler believed it vital that they controlled lands away from
Germany in Central and Eastern Europe, and it was with his invasion of Poland that the
Second World War began on the continent.
On the 1st September 1939, German Tanks and armed forces rolled into Poland, and during
their occupation of the country they would devastate the lives of millions.
Inside of the country, huge deportations of Jews occured to first ghettos where they were
forced to live in squalid and terrible conditions, and then eventually once these were liquidated
they were sent to concentration camps such as Auschwitz, and extermination camps such
as Belzec or Treblinka.
The Nazis invasion of Poland resulted in the deaths and murders of millions, with most
being innocent civilians.
Upon entering auschwitz, there was a Polish photographer who also was a prisoner who worked
in the Erkennungsdienst, and he was tasked with photographic much of the goings on at
the evil camp.
Wilhelm Brasse produced an estimated 50,000 pictures for the Nazis, and many of them were
of prisoners.
But there was one image of a young teenage girl which shows a girl in the depravity of
Auschwitz, wearing her striped uniform.
This image is haunting, as it shows a girl who years before would have had her whole
future ahead of her, but because of the Nazis, she was forced into the horrific concentration
camp that ultimately took her life.
Join us today as we look at ‘The HORRIFIC Execution Of Czesława Kwoka, and remember
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Czesława Kwoka was born inside of a small village in Poland on the 15th August 1928,
and her mother Katarzyna was a Catholic.
It’s assumed that like so many young children in Poland she had a normal school life, but
when the Germans invaded the country everything changed.
Czeslawa was just 11 when they did this, and within a very short amount of time her whole
world would change.
After taking control of the country, the Germans sought to displace the native Polish population
from the areas where German settlers had been introduced.
Heinrich Himmler ordered a huge resettlement of the Zamosc region, and in this operation
there were numerous war crimes committed by the Germans.
They would murder and rob many civilians, looting houses and also carry out huge scale
mass executions in which the Polish population would be incredibly fearful of.
They reigned with terror, and in the operation over 110,000 people were displaced from their
homes and 30,000 of these were children who had been separated from their parents.
Children who showed traits of being Germanic in their nature and looks were sent away to
German families or orphanages where they were then Germanized.
But thousands of children who did not meet this specific criteria were then sent to concentration
camps where eventually they were exterminated inside of the camps.
Czesława Kwoka was one of these children who was not saved.
She had been living with her mother before they were both sent to a transit camp for
deportation.
Inside of this camp, the sanitation was terrible, and children were locked in the stables and
were kept in barracks with no bunks, sleeping arrangements, beds or access to any medical
care.
Disease was rife, and many of the children were forced to sleep in the mud and many suffered
from lice and other diseases.
Czeslawa and her mother were then deported to Auschwitz on the 12th December 1942.
Auschwitz had grown in it’s size rapidly following the camps creation, and it eventually
became the largest death centre of the Holocaust with over 1 million people being murdered
within it’s walls.
It was incredibly tough, but along with her mother Czelawa arrived there, and they managed
to make it past selections.
As prisoners arrived at the camp, SS doctors and other members of staff such as guards
would conduct selections in which they admitted people into the camp based on how good a worker
they believed they would be.
Upon entering the camp, Czelawa was photographed for the Third Reich’s concentration camp
records, and because of this she has been identified as one of 50,000 people who were
forced under duress to have their image taken by Wilhelm Brasse.
The photographs of her showed her in three poses or positions, from the front and then
from each side.
Brasse had been ordered as the Second World War turned against the Germans to destroy
all of the photographs taken and their negatives, but he managed to rescue some of them, and
Czelawa’s was one.
Her portrait shows a young girl, who was most probably terrified by where she was and the
fact she had been separated from her mother.
She was one of 230,000 children and people under the age of 18 that arrived at Auschwitz,
and Brasse was ordered to take good photographs of the prisoners.
He later said of his photograph of Czelawa that, ‘the girl was terrified and upset.
She did not know where she was.
One of the SS Aufseherin’s, German supervisors had beaten her with a whip or a stick for
not understanding her commands in German.’
In one of the photos it showed Czeslawa with a swollen faced, and traces of blood on her
lips and with tears in her eyes.’
Brasse stated that she wiped her face before he took the image, and her hair had been cut
short and was roughly cut when she arrived at the camp.
It’s likely that before she had longer hair, and she was marked with a letter P on her
triangle which denoted she was a Polish prisoner.
Sadly that is all we know about Czelawa Kwoka’s time inside of Auschwitz.
Her mother died on the 18th February 1943 inside the camp, and Czelawa died at the age
of 14 on the 12th March 1943 she was killed.
The circumstances of her death were not recorded or written down, but one must assume that
she probably was killed inside of the gas chambers in Auschwitz.
The year before, many Polish prisoners had been driven into the gas chambers, and the
killing operation at the camp was expanded with the creation of more crematoria.
Czesława Kwoka would be one of thousands of children who did not survive the horrific
camp of Auschwitz, and months after arriving at the camp she was dead.
She was one of many who’s photograph lives on also, and her image is a horrifying reminder
of the evils of the Nazis.
Before the war, she had her whole life ahead of her, but the evil regime of the Nazi party
would change her life upside down, and it would ultimately be the Nazis who would end
her life.
She was also one of 30,000 children who were snatched from their parents, deported to camps
and also deported to Germany being stolen from their families.
The story of Czeslawa Kwoka is a harrowing one, and one which must be remembered in History.
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