Broken Heart
Can there be a more poignant sight than the sight of a sad child? And if it is an orphaned child, hurt, abused by adults, the heart breaks even more. The fate of children in the war was never joyful, but the fate of children imprisoned in a concentration camp, at the mercy of the enemy, who created this camp for them, was tragic. Usually, we don't realize it until we get some information about it.
On May 9, 1971, the Broken Heart monument was unveiled in the ‘Promienistych’ Park in Łódź. A special monument that deserves to be reminded, and some people should be made aware of what it symbolises and what the history of its creation is. Let's go back another 30 years. In 1941, the Germans decided to create a preventive camp for Polish children in the Polish territories included into the Third Reich, who, as a result of homelessness, orphanhood, theft and petty misdeeds, constituted a demoralising element.
I have been a resident of Łódź for several generations, but I found out about the existence of the only concentration camp in Central Europe intended for children and young people of Polish origin relatively recently. I did not know it from family tales, even though before the war my family lived in the part of Łódź where the place of the ordeal of the youngest Poles was located. It was a concentration camp for children whose only fault was that they had been orphaned by their parents who had died in the war, that they had been abandoned by their parents, who had been arrested for their conspiratorial activities by the Germans occupying Poland, and finally children who tried to stay alive to the best of their abilities and skills, often coming into conflict with the law as a result of begging, vagrancy, petty thefts.
The problem of the destructive influence of Polish youth on the German "ordnung" was noticed by the Germans as early as 1940, and in the middle of the following year, when repressions against Poles intensified and began to grow rapidly, it became so important that a decision was made to look for a location for the place of "upbringing" rebellious young Poles. On 28 November 1941, Heinrich Himmler signed an ordinance establishing a preventive camp for Polish children, justifying it as follows: "In our eastern territories of Germany, especially in the 'Warta District', the neglect of Polish youth has developed seriously and poses a dangerous danger to German youth. The reasons for this neglect lie primarily in the incredibly primitive standard of living of Poles. The war has broken many families, and those entitled to education are not able to fulfil their duties, and Polish schools have been closed. Hence, Polish children, wandering around without any supervision or occupation, trade, beg, steal, becoming a source of moral risk for the German youth."
In December 1942, in the block of today's Bracka, Górnicza, Emilii Plater and Zagajnikowa streets, in the area of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, surrounded by a high, tight fence, young Poles began to be imprisoned - children caught on charges of wandering or caught in petty thefts, street trading or smuggling, trying to cope with the difficult situation in which they found themselves, very often orphaned - their parents died at the front or were killed during interrogations - or left alone after their parents were arrested by the Germans or deported to forced labour. Children and young people from all over Polish were brought here: from Poznań and the surrounding area, from Silesia, Warmia, Kashubia and, of course, from Łódź itself. According to Jolanta Sowińska-Gogacz and Błażej Torański, authors of the book ‘Little Auschwitz. Children's camp in Łódź’, “you could be sent to the camp for everything, but above all for being Polish:
he smuggled bread into the ghetto
neglected Polish child
Polish orphan child
wanders around without any means of subsistence
daughter of a Polish professor
disturbed the environment and had a negative impact on German children
illegally acquired food stamps
father at work in the Reich, mother in Auschwitz
steals fruit in gardens with other children
father is dead
difficult to bring up, shakes her head, wets the bed
the pointlessness of further education due to a bad spiritual attitude and one's belonging to the Polish nation
son of a Polish officer
parents are dead
begs
roams
earns money by carrying suitcases from the train station in Katowice
he had matches with him
parents did not accept the Volksliste"
Formally, it was a camp for children and youth aged 6 to 16, but younger children, even 2-year-olds, were also sent here. The number of victims of the camp is unknown, because the German documentation has been lost. The discrepancies are large. It is estimated that several thousand children certainly passed through the camp. Until recently, the number of dozens of thousands was given.
Children were forced to slave labour beyond their strength. They received starvation food rations, which in no way satisfied the needs of the developing organisms. For every insubordination, violation of regulations, for picking fruit from a tree - basically for everything - they were punished in a cruel way. Many of them did not survive the tortures they experienced from their German "guardians" - beatings until unconscious, pouring cold water and exposing them to frost or immersion in oil for several hours. Many, very many children were destined for Germanisation. The youngest children were brought to the camp in trucks and, after anthropological measurements, directed to a distant barrack, from which they disappeared after some time.
The worst thing for the little prisoners, however, was the horrible sense of loneliness, the lack of a loved one who could cheer them up, hug them, calm them down, support them. Even in Auschwitz, adult prisoners could count on each other, hold hands. Here, the children were left to their own devices and their ruthless German oppressors. Although it was possible to see their loved ones, most of the parents were dead or had no chance of reaching Litzmannstadt. The few visits took place under the supervision of the Germans and under no circumstances were they allowed to approach each other. The authors of the shocking book 'Little Auschwitz' quote the account of the mother of 9-year-old Jureczek Rutkowski (grandson of doctor Jan Rutkowski, an outstanding anthropologist and social activist, member of the Secret National League), falsely accused of setting fire to an old barn): 'When I reached the camp gate, the guard told me that I could not see my son because there was a quarantine in the camp because of typhus. At my insistent request, the guard went to the camp authorities and returned with the news that my son would come to me. Suddenly, through the open gate, I see two boys approaching, holding hands, but I do not recognise a son in either of them. One of them, the stronger one, leads a weak and wobbly younger colleague. They were approaching me and suddenly one of them, a small, emaciated skeleton, in a weak voice in which I sensed joy, pronounced 'Mummy'... Then I recognised my son in him. I was shocked so hard that I couldn't utter a word in pain and despair, and I fainted. When I came to the office again 3 days later with another request for my son's release, Jurek was already dead."
The children wrote letters to their families, asking them to send various necessary items, primarily food, but also hygiene products. The package was due once a month, but it rarely reached the recipient in full. Most often it was stolen somewhere along the way.
The children imprisoned in the camp worked hard, beyond their strength. The boys straightened needles, made straw shoes, wicker baskets, gas mask straps and leather elements of military backpacks. The girls worked in the laundry and sewing workshops. Beaten, hungry, consumed by diseases and spreading epidemics, children died of exhaustion, some committed suicide. They had nowhere to run to (the older boys made such attempts), because behind the camp fence there was a ghetto area where Jewish policemen kept order, and outside the ghetto there was a Germanised city, settled after the expulsion of Poles by the Germans.
The camp at Przemysłowa Street existed until the Red Army entered Łódź in January 1945. 900 young prisoners in a state of extreme exhaustion lived to see freedom.
The traumatic memories left such a strong mark on the young prisoners that they were not able to pass them on to their relatives, historians or researchers of German crimes. Anyway, at that time no one tried to archive these memories. Attempts to interest in the history of the camp were downplayed, not believing the children's stories. Over time, the old camp buildings disappeared from the camp, and after the war a new housing estate was built there. The drama of the children was forgotten.
By coincidence, in 1968 a group of students from the School and Education Centre for Deaf Children from Przemyśl came to Łódź and there was someone who told them what had happened in Łódź with the youngest Poles 25 years earlier. The students, concerned about the fate of their peers, decided to write to the Łódź branch of the Association of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy with a request to build a monument commemorating the martyrdom of Polish children in the nearby German "educational" camp for Polish children and youth during World War II. The city authorities responded positively to the idea and indicated the location, which is historically located outside the camp, but in its close vicinity - in the former ‘Promienistych’ Park, now Szarych Szeregów. In 1969, the foundation act was laid. The monument by Jadwiga Janus and Ludwik Mackiewicz was ceremoniously unveiled on 9 May 1971. It depicts the figure of a small, emaciated boy against the background of a broken heart. In front of the sculpture there is an inscription: "Your life was taken away, today we give You only memory".
Wiolar
Translated by Kakooshka
