At the KL Plaszow Museum in Krakow, on Sunday, Memory / Zachor will be held for the first time – a meeting commemorating the prisoners of the German Nazi labor and concentration camps. Shortly before sunset, participants of the meeting will read excerpts from the memories of those who survived.
“We try to refer to what is most important in the memory of the war and the Holocaust, to the fact that specific people suffered and died,” said Marta Śmietana from the KL Plaszow Museum.
“The tragedy and drama are visible in the fate of individual people – these are not some abstract numbers and events described in historical books. We refer to fragments of the survivors’ accounts, but the fact that they were able to pass them on after the war did not mean that for them the war then was over. What happens leaves a trace – it is our memory and the endless suffering of victims,” added Śmietana.
The date of the event – the first Sunday after August 6 – is a reference to the beginning of the liquidation of KL Plaszow when organized transports began to transfer prisoners deep into the Reich – and to Black Sunday, August 6, 1944, when the German occupiers in retaliation for the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising carried out a huge round-up in the streets of Krakow. About 6,000 people were arrested.