|
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski (Polish pronunciation: ; born 8 April 1917, Warsaw died 17 April 1991, Bielsko-Biała) was a Polish boxer, Polish Armed Forces soldier, and a prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Neuengamme concentration camps run by the German Nazis during World War II. He was part of the first mass transport to Auschwitz in June 1940, and was transferred to Neuengamme in 1943. He is remembered as the boxing champion of Auschwitz. Pietrzykowski's life story has been the subject of several books and movies. Early life Pietrzykowski was born on 8 April 1917 in Warsaw to father Tadeusz, an engineer, and mother Sylwina (''née'' Bieńkowska), a teacher, both members of the Polish intelligentsia. In his youth he joined the boxing section of the Legia Warsaw club, where he trained under Feliks Stamm. He received a number of positive write-ups in the interwar Polish sports press, and was nicknamed "Teddy" or "Teddi". He was at the height of his sports career in the years 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officially estimated at 1.86 million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.1 million residents, which makes Warsaw the 7th most-populous city in the European Union. The city area measures and comprises 18 districts, while the metropolitan area covers . Warsaw is an Alpha global city, a major cultural, political and economic hub, and the country's seat of government. Warsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town in Masovia. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Kraków. Warsaw served as the de facto capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, and subsequently as the seat of Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invasion Of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. The invasion is also known in Poland as the September campaign ( pl, kampania wrześniowa) or 1939 defensive war ( pl, wojna obronna 1939 roku, links=no) and known in Germany as the Poland campaign (german: Überfall auf Polen, Polenfeldzug). German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. Slovak military forces ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maximilian Kolbe
Maximilian Maria Kolbe (born Raymund Kolbe; pl, Maksymilian Maria Kolbe; 1894–1941) was a Polish Catholic priest and Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications. On 10 October 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe and declared him a martyr of charity. The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur radio operators, drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and prisoners. John Paul II declared him "the patron of our difficult century". His feast day is 14 August, the day of his death. Due to Kolbe's efforts to promote consecration and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Stein (boxer)
Harry Stein (born January 20, 1905, in Bytom, than East Prussia; date of death unknown, before 1948) was a German amateur boxing champion in 1922 and 1923 in the flyweight(- 51 kg) and featherweight divisions, who won the BDB German Flyweight Championship in 1925, and the VDF German Featherweight Championship in 1932. He was forced to flee Germany for Prague, Poland in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution, and by the 1940s, he had moved to Russia. Early life and amateur career Stein was born on January 20, 1905, in Bytom, East Prussia, currently part of Poland to Jewish parents. He was the German Amateur Flyweight Champion from 1922 to 1923. His primary residence was Berlin, Germany from 1924 to 1933, while he established and pursued his boxing career. In the 1920s Stein was recognized by the German Maccabee organization, boxing club, 'Jüdischer Boxclub Maccabi' of Berlin with a boxing trophy on the occasion of his 30th fight. The Maccabee organization managed a few German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruno Brodniewicz
Bruno Brodniewicz (also spelled Brodniewitsch) born 22 July 1895 in Posen, was a German prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Brodniewicz was the first Lagerälteste (camp elder), carrying prisoner tag number 1. He died in April 15–16, 1945 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Life As a convicted criminal, Brodniewicz was transferred to a concentration camp during the late summer of 1934. He was held temporarily in the Lichtenburg concentration camp. Brodniewicz was one of the first 30 prisoners, defined as the so-called 'professional criminals', who, on 20 May 1940 accompanied by the roll call officer Gerhard Palitzsch from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ... were taken to the newly established concentration camp at Au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kapo
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks. Also called "prisoner self-administration", the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS overseers. If they neglected their duties, they would be demoted to ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious, and racial prisoners; such criminal convicts were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system. Prisoner functionaries wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945). He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed.Piper, Franciszek & Meyer, Fritjof"Overall analysis of the original sources and findings on deportation to Auschwitz" Review of the article "Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz. Neue Erkentnisse durch neue Archivfunde", ''Osteuropa'', 52, Jg., 5/2002, pp. 631–641. Hö ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki (13 May 190125 May 1948; ; codenames ''Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold'') was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. As a youth, Pilecki joined Polish underground scouting, and in the aftermath of World War I, Polish militia and later, the Polish Army. He participated in the Polish-Soviet War which ended in 1921. In 1939 he participated in the unsuccessful defense of Poland against the German invasion and shortly afterward, joined the Polish resistance, co-founding the Secret Polish Army resistance movement. In 1940 Pilecki volunteered to allow himself to be captured by the occupying Germans in order to infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp. At Auschwitz he organized a resistance movement that eventually included hundreds of inmates, and he secretly drew up reports detailing German atrocities at the camp, which were smuggled out to Home Army headquarters and shared with the Western Allies. Af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Związek Organizacji Wojskowej
Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (, ''Military Organization Union''), abbreviated ZOW, was an underground resistance organization formed by Witold Pilecki at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1940. Beginning In 1940, Witold Pilecki, a member of the Polish resistance organisation Tajna Armia Polska (Secret Polish Army, TAP, later known as Armia Krajowa or Home Army), presented a plan to enter Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp, gather intelligence from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. . Last accessed on 21 November 2007. His superiors approved this plan and provided him with a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafiński". On 19 September 1940, he deliberately went out during a ''łapanka'' in Warsaw, and was caught by the Germans along with other civilians and sent to Auschwitz. He was the only known person ever to volunteer to be imprisoned in Auschwitz. Forming ZOW in Auschwitz In the camp Pilecki was known as Tomasz Serafiński (Prison Number 4859) and b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Identification Of Inmates In German Concentration Camps
Identification of inmates in German concentration camps was performed mostly with identification numbers marked on clothing, or later, tattooed on the skin. More specialized identification in Nazi concentration camps was done with badges on clothing and armbands. Numbers A practice was established to tattoo the inmates with identification numbers. Prisoners sent straight to gas chambers didn't receive anything. Initially, in Auschwitz, the camp numbers were sewn on the clothes; with the increased death rate, it became difficult to identify corpses, since clothes were removed from corpses. Therefore, the medical personnel started to write the numbers on the corpses' chests with indelible ink. Difficulties increased in 1941 when Soviet prisoners of war came in masses, and the first few thousand tattoos were applied to them. This was done with a special stamp with the numbers to be tattooed composed of needles. The tattoo was applied to the upper left part of the breast. In March 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question. After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years. In May 1940, German criminals brought to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tarnów
Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarnów Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east–west connection from Lviv to Kraków, and two additional lines, one of which links the city with the Slovak border. Tarnów is known for its traditional Polish architecture, which was influenced by foreign cultures and foreigners that once lived in the area, most notably Jews, Germans and Austrians. The Old Town, featuring 16th century tenements, houses and defensive walls, has been preserved. Tarnów is also the warmest city of Poland, with the highest long-term mean annual temperature in the whole country. Companies headquartered in the city include Poland's largest chemical industry company Grupa Azoty and defence industry company ZMT. The city is currently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
