The name Czesława is derived from the Slavic ča which means to await and slava which means glory. What sort of glory awaits a fourteen-year-old girl—a gas chamber? a gunshot to the head? an injection of ten or fifteen milliliters of phenol directly into the heart?
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Czesława is from Wólka Złojecka, a small village in southeast Poland. The nearest town to Wólka Złojecka is Zamość, founded in the sixteenth century by—and named after—Jan Zamoyski. Built by the Italian architect Bernardo Morando, Zamość is a perfect example of a Renaissance town.
On special feast days and occasions, Czesława and her family go to the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Our Lord and of St. Thomas the Apostle, also designed by Bernardo Morando, in Zamość.
Czesława is Catholic.
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The time Czesława agrees to go to Zamość on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, the boy, Anton—he is older, blond—warns her: “Don’t tell your parents.” Czesława does not tell her parents or how on the way back from Zamość—after they had each eaten a creamy karpatka Anton bought from a food stall in the market square—Anton stops the motorcycle by the side of the road and tells her to get off and unbutton the front of her dress. She does not. As he rides off on the motorcycle, Anton shouts back at Czesława, “You owe me for the karpatka!” Although it has begun to rain, Czesława walks the six kilometers back to Wólka Złojecka.
Late for putting the chickens back in their pen, her father slaps her.
Czesława’s father’s name is Pawel.
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Anton’s secondhand motorcycle is made by Centraine Warsztaty Samochodowe (Central Car Works). A Polish prewar company, Centraine Warsztaty Samochodowe manufactured motorcycles until the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland. The invasion of Poland is sudden and quick and final. On September 27, 1939, the Poles capitulate to the Germans, after twenty-six days.
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Pawel knows nothing about the invasion by the Germans—only that there are soldiers everywhere. Pawel has never once left Lublin Province. Each fall, he and his brother, Czesława’s uncle, go to the Roztocze Forest—a part of the Zamoyski family estate—to poach for roe deer and red deer, taking him the farthest from the village of Wólka Złojecka Pawel has ever been.
One fall, in the Roztocze Forest, he shot a wild boar.
And, back home, in the evening, if there is company and after a glass or two of his homemade slivovitz, Pawel likes to tell stories about how he and his brother evaded and outsmarted the family game warden and, each time he tells of a narrow escape, he laughs loudly.
Haw haw!
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The name slivovitz comes from śliwka, the Polish word for plum. Slivovitz is easy to make: the plums with their pits ferment in sugar, water, and grain alcohol. The area Czesława is from in southeast Poland is traditionally well-known for its slivovitz production. Each year, 100,000 tons of plums and prunes are grown in Poland.
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In 1941, the German agrarian policy decreed: “God has helped us to conquer the Polish nation, which now must be destroyed; no Pole must have the right to own land or house. In ten years, the fields of Poland will be heavy with stacked wheat and rye raised and harvested by Germans, but not a Pole will remain.”[*]
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God made me out of nothing
God made me because he loves me Czesława learns at her first communion catechism class. She also learns that the metal door set in the floor of one of the chapels in the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Our Lord and of St. Thomas the Apostle leads to the crypt where the Zamoyski family is buried. The priest reads the inscription on the door: Fundatoribus grata memoria—In grateful memory to our benefactors.
“God made the members of the Zamoyski family,” the priest says.
The priest is young, nervous. He has heard news of the German invasion.
“God loves them, too,” he insists.
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For Easter, Czesława and her mother always decorate eggs—an ancient tradition called pisanki. Eggs are plentiful, the family raises chickens.
For once, her mother is not busy cleaning, washing, cooking, milking, and she tells Czesława about her life as a young girl, a different sort of life, before she married Pawel.
Her mother’s name is Katarzyna.
Katarzyna was once pretty, but mostly she is tired and too thin.
“How did you and Father meet?” Czesława always asks her.
Her mother does not answer.
With a metal pin, Czesława carefully makes a hole at each end of her egg, then, with the pin, she breaks the yolk inside—the part she is squeamish about: killing a chick embryo—and blows out the egg. Next, she applies melted wax with a special hollow stick to the shell before dipping the egg in various dyes, homemade from onion skins, berries, beets, and sunflower seeds. When the dyes dry, Czesława removes the wax.
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Czesława’s egg is red and green with a yellow flower design. To whom will she give the egg? To Anton? Thinking about him causes her to blush.
“What are you thinking about?” her mother asks. Her mother has a sixth sense.
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When Katarzyna was Czesława’s age, she fell in love with a boy—no, Tomasz was already a young man.
“I remember going to an air show in Blonia—a park outside of Kraków. I was thirteen or fourteen,” Katarzyna says while they are decorating their eggs. “I still remember the dress I wore—a red dress.” Katarzyna pauses and laughs. “One of the planes was an old biplane—a strange-looking contraption—and my father, who had worked at the Zieleniewski Machine Factory, built part of the engine and so of course he took us all to see the plane fly—me, my mother, my brothers, and my sister. I think my grandparents were there as well.” Czesława’s mother gives another laugh. “But to go on about the plane. Shortly after the plane took off—the plane was only a few feet off the ground—the engine exploded and the plane crashed to the ground, the wings breaking, and pieces of the plane scattering all over the field.”
After a silence, Katarzyna also says, “One of these days I will take you to Kraków and show you where I lived. There is so much to see in Kraków—Wawel Castle, Jagiellonian University, St. Mary’s Basilica—look how beautiful.” Czesława’s mother breaks off, holding up her own painted egg.
“One day, I would like to fly in an airplane,” Czesława tells her mother, but her mother is not listening.
Her mother is busy putting the dyes and the decorating tools away.
“For next Easter,” she says about the eggs.
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Of all the chickens, Czesława’s favorite is a pretty orange hen she named Kinga. Kinga lays delicate blue eggs that have a dark orange yolk.
A German soldier will wring Kinga’s neck, pluck, cook, and eat her.
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While they were in the Zamość market square eating their karpatka, Anton, his mouth full of cream, tells Czesława that he wants to be a pilot.
“You’ll see,” he tells Czesława. “Maybe one day, I’ll take you for a ride in my airplane.”
Anton laughs and, although Czesława does not believe him, she laughs with him.
Anton has a nice laugh.
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Germany has 4093 bomber planes. Poland has 397 bomber planes—all but the twin-engine PZL.37 Łoś are obsolete.
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Czesława and Katarzyna arrive at Auschwitz on December 13, 1942.
It is snowing on December 13, 1942.
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Ever since she was a little girl, Czesława has the habit of opening her mouth and tilting her head back when it snows and letting the flakes melt in her mouth.
A cold drink from heaven.
Again, she opens her mouth to the snow when she is standing in line at Auschwitz.
A guard yells at Czesława.
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From 1941 to 1945, prisoner number 3444, Wilhelm Brasse, took more than forty thousand photographs of the men, women, and children interned at Auschwitz. A few minutes before he takes her photograph, Wilhelm Brasse, according to his memoir, sees the guard hit Czesława across the mouth.
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Hesitantly, the girl came into the studio and sat in, or rather climbed on to, the revolving chair. She was like a frightened bird, and her haphazardly shaved hair gave her the look of a bald unborn chick. Brasse approached the seat.
“What’s your name?”
“Czesława.”
“Are you Polish like me?”
She nodded.[†]
In the photograph, a bruise is visible just under Czesława’s lower lip.
Photography was integral to the operation of some of the concentration camps. Whether taken for prisoners’ identity papers, or as evidence of the most abhorrent medical experiments, photographs appear to have played an important role. For the official production of photographs, specialist departments were established, known as the Erkennungsdienst, or camp identification service.[‡]
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Born in Austria on December 3, 1917, to Rudolf and Helena Brasse (his father was Austrian and his mother was Polish), Wilhelm Brasse grew up in Zywiec, in south central Poland. He was working in his uncle’s photo studio in Katowice, near the German border, when the Nazis invaded and he was arrested.[§]
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On February 15, 1941, after he had spent six months at Auschwitz, Wilhelm Brasse is examined and interrogated about his photography and developing skills before he is ordered by a commanding officer to take the prisoners’ pictures. He, the commanding officer explains, has two advantages over the other photographer candidates in the camp:
“The first is that you speak German, and I don’t want to have to communicate with gestures, like a monkey. . . . The second advantage is that you—despite the fact that you insist on declaring yourself to be Polish—are the son and nephew of Austrians. It’s my duty to pay special attention to Aryans. Even those who deny that status.”
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As the camp photographer, Wilhelm Brasse will wear different, warmer clothes, he will eat better food, live in more decent conditions, and perhaps survive.
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Czesława’s prisoner number is 26947.
Katarzyna’s prisoner number is 26946.
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[*] Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, The Rape of Poland, Pattern of Soviet Aggression (New York: Whittlesey House/McGraw-Hill, 1948), 15.
[†] Luca Crippa and Maurizio Onnis, The Auschwitz Photographer: Based on the True Story of Wilhelm Brasse, Prisoner 3444, trans. Jennifer Higgins (London: Penguin Books, 2021), 60.
[‡] Janina Struk, Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence (London: Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2020), 182.
[§] Dennis Hevesi, “Wilhelm Brasse Dies at 94; Documented Nazis’ Victims,” New York Times, October 24, 2012.