Zalman Gradowski
{{short description|Auschwitz Sonderkommando diarist}}
Zalman Gradowski or Chaim Zalman Gradowski (1910 – 7 October 1944) originally from Suwałki,{{cite web | url=http://db.yadvashem.org/names/nameDetails.html?itemId=1042371&language=en#!prettyPhoto | title=Chaim Zalman Gradowski from Suwalki, Poland, born in 1910 to Shmuel and Sara, later residing in Lunna, Poland (now Belarus)| publisher=Yad Vashem | work=The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names | date=2015 | access-date=9 April 2015 | author=Shulamit Lifshitz}} was a Polish Jewish prisoner of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Holocaust in occupied Poland, who kept a secret diary.
On November 2, 1942, he was deported, as were all Jews then living in Lunna, as well as neighboring towns, to the Kielbasin (Kolbasino) transit camp (Transitlager or Sammellager). On December 5, he and all his Jewish townsfolk (numbering approximately 1,500) were forcibly marched from the Kielbasin transit camp to Lososno, Poland, where they boarded a train bound for, as he later discovered, Auschwitz. The train arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on the morning of December 8.{{cite web | url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/grodno/13,miejsca-martyrologii/34493,kielbasin-ul-o-solomowoj-byly-nazistowski-oboz-tranzytowy/ | title=Kiełbasin, ul. O. Solomowoj - były nazistowski obóz tranzytowy | publisher=Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN | work=Kiełbasin transit camp | date=2015 | access-date=9 April 2015 | author=POLIN}} After "selection" at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his family members as well as all women and children, and most of the men who were on the transport, were immediately sent to the gas chamber and murdered. Shortly afterward, Gradowski and several others from the transport who survived the “selection” were sent to work in crematoria as part of the Sonderkommando slave labour unit.
Secret diary
In order to bear witness for future generations, Gradowski wrote a secret diary, in Yiddish, describing his life and the camp. He buried his notebook in the camp as a time capsule. In it, Gradowski provided a detailed description of the extermination process in Birkenau. He was one of the key figures in the Sonderkommando underground at Auschwitz, where he was murdered during the revolt of 7 October 1944.{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mub823JQrdUC&q=Zalman+Gradowski | title=Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp | publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=0-253-20884-X | date=1998 | access-date=9 April 2015 | author=Yisrael Gutman, Michael Berenbaum | pages=522–529}}{{cite web | url=https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202279.pdf | title=Weeping Without Tears | publisher=Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies | format=PDF file, direct download | work=Source: Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 29, Jerusalem, 2001, pp. 433–446 | access-date=9 April 2015 | author=Michael Berenbaum | pages=3}}{{cite journal |last1=Adamczyk |first1=Kazimierz |title=Report and lament – Zalman Gradowski's notes from Auschwitz |journal=Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica |date=11 May 2017 |volume=46 |issue=8 |doi=10.18778/1505-9057.46.09 |url=https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/polonica/article/view/3049 |access-date=7 February 2020|doi-access=free }}
A quotation from the diary is used as an epigram for the 2015 book KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps: "May the world at least behold a drop, a fraction of this tragic world in which we lived." In another memorable passage, he wrote: "I pass on to you only a small part of what took place in the hell of Birkenau-Auschwitz. It is for you to comprehend the reality. I have written a great deal besides this. I am certain that you will come upon these remnants, and from them you will be able to construct a picture of how our people were killed... In this way I hope to immortalize the dear, beloved names of those for whom, at this moment, I cannot even expend a tear! For I live in an inferno of death, where it is impossible to measure my great losses.”{{cite news |last1=Laqueur |first1=Thomas |author-link1=Thomas W. Laqueur |title=Devoted to Terror |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n18/thomas-laqueur/devoted-to-terror |access-date=18 January 2020 |work=London Review of Books |date=23 September 2015 |language=en}}
The introduction of the book is him immortalizing his family and his last wish for them to not be forgotten. His murdered family was: his mother (Sarah), sister (Libe), sister (Esther Rokhl), wife (Sonia), father and brother-in-law (Raphael and Wolf).{{cite book|url=https://www.brandeis.edu/tauber/publications/pdfs/roskies/gradowski.pdf|title=The Literature of Destruction : Jewish Responses to Catastrophe|author=David G. Roskies|publisher=The Jewish Publication Society|pages=548–564}} All named members of his family were gassed for being "unfit". His father, two brothers and another sister were also taken and he did not know what happened to them. He wrote of all of them in the introduction to his diary.
See also
- People Love Dead Jews, a 2021 book by Dara Horn, in which Gradowski is discussed
- List of Holocaust diarists
- List of diarists
- List of posthumous publications of Holocaust victims
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{cite web|ref=none |title=The Literature of Destruction - Zalmen Gradowski, Ch. 93 |url=https://www.brandeis.edu/tauber/publications/pdfs/roskies/gradowski.pdf |website=Brandeis University |access-date=18 March 2021}}
- Horn, Dara, People Love Dead Jews. New York: W. W. Norton. (2021) {{ISBN|978-0-393-53157-2}}. Chapter 1: Everyone's (Second) Favorite Dead Jew.
- {{Cite book |last=Gradowski |first=Zalman |url=http://archive.org/details/nybc214613 |title=אין הארץ פון גיהנום |date=1970–1980 |publisher=Ḥ. Ṿolnerman |others=Digitized by Yiddish Book Center |language=yi |trans-title=In harts fun gehenem (In The Heart of Hell) |author-link=Zalman Gradowski}}
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Category:Polish people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp
Category:Polish Jews who died in the Holocaust
Category:Jewish Polish writers