Bad news for the Germans
More German WWII crimes on Polish children see the light of day
More documents from the German Concentration Camp for Polish Children in Łódź have been recovered and revealed!
The Museum of Polish Children – Victims of Totalitarianism in Łódź, set up less than two years ago, is a thriving institution. This may not yet be fully evidenced by limited exhibitions or the groundbreaking lecture from January 18, 2023, on the plight of 13-year-old Gertruda Nowak, who miraculously survived a bestial German children’s concentration camp, although this too has its importance. Museum workers are unearthing completely forgotten, untouched materials from dusty archives. Let’s face it. The most moving war stories involve children. After all, the presentation of children’s letters from this concentration camp, which existed between 1942 and 1945, literally tears one apart. Eleven or twelve-year-old children who write to their parents begging for a spoon or shoes, asking tearfully, why “daddy didn’t write back to the previous letter,” not knowing that these letters were not even sent, stories of children beaten and shot or boys who were to be burned in the German evacuation during the withdrawal from Łódź are faces of crimes that are no less striking than the stories from Auschwitz. There were 2,000 – 3,000 such children!
On January 18, 2023, at 5:00 pm at the Provincial Public Library in Łódź, Dr. Andrzej Janicki will talk about the story of Gertruda Nowak, which is groundbreaking in that, for the first time, we will be able to see the complete file of documents that the Germans – oh, they were meticulous criminals indeed – set up and completed on their 13-year-old (!) prisoner.
When the children, in the panic during the German evacuation of the camp, managed to escape from this crime scene in January 1945, Gertruda grabbed her documents and carried them away. Many children survived the evacuation because the invaders did not have the time to shoot all the girls and burn all the boys. At Dr. Janicki’s lecture, thus far unknown documents acquired just last year by the Museum of Polish Children – Victims of Totalitarianism will come to light for the first time.
This is a critical issue for the Museum. Intensive research is currently underway to find out the full truth about the camp on Przemysłowa Street in Łódź. The youngest prisoners of the German camp were born in the 1930s – the age of our parents and grandparents. For seven decades, much has been neglected in researching the history of this camp, but now, thanks to the new Museum, the truth will be documented, archived, compiled, revealed, and presented in broader projects. More German crimes will come to light. It will probably become an argument in the debate over reparations to Poland – and that’s fine. But the issue is much bigger than that. This bestiality will, at last, be reliably documented – to the eternal shame of the German criminals.
For the article in its Polish original, please see: https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/630303-muzeum-w-lodzi-ujawni-nowe-zbrodnie-niemieckie
