
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Auschwitz, the German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp has evolved into an international symbol. 27 January, the anniversary of its liberation, was proclaimed the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations.
Representatives of almost all European nations occupied by Germans – the vast majority being Jews – were imprisoned and murdered in Auschwitz. Over 1,1 million people did not survive until the liberation, falling victim of the largest of all Nazi death factories.
Despite the fact that many victims of the Holocaust do not even have their own graves, the memory of them lives on. It is passed on by people, memorial sites and institutions. Sometimes, the memory is inscribed in the objects which recall the tragic fate of their former owners. On the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we present such objects from the POLIN Museum collection.
These objects tell stories of various experiences of Polish Jews during the Holocaust. They reminisce the life in the ghetto, living in hiding, concentration camps, Christians rescuing Jewish children, deportations to the Soviet Union, or the post-war void and loneliness of those who survived.
Owing to these objects, we can today retell the stories of Bronia Morgenstern, Romuald Waszkinel, Grania Klitenik, Krystyna Sigalin, Anna Stupnicka-Bando, Zygmunt Marczewski, Paulina and Artur Włodawer, Celina Glücksberg and Ryszard Moszkowski. These objects are the only trace left of their families.