Kiwa Zyto
August 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland
The railroad car with Kiwa and Zelda stops alongside a ramp. The prisoners from Kielce step out of the car and SS officers with sticks in their hands herd them in different directions. The men send the sick and elderly in one direction and those who seem to be able to work in another. Children must pass under a wooden stick. Kiwa’s head does not reach the stick. He is too small to work and is separated from his mother.
THAT NIGHT, KIWA SLEPT IN A LARGE BARRACKS full of children, the sick, and the elderly. It was so crowded in the barracks that he could scarcely roll over. When Kiwa woke up the next morning, the man next to him had died in his sleep.
High up near the ceiling of the barracks there were windows, and after two days without food Kiwa decided to try to escape. His fellow prisoners helped him clamber up and out onto the rooftop. He jumped down and ran into the barracks next door. It housed Jewish prisoners who had been deemed able to work. They hid Kiwa.
Some time later, Kiwa heard a rumour that some of the camp’s prisoners were to be transported to other locations. Deciding he had nothing to lose, he joined the group. Together with the other prisoners, he was herded aboard a train. Before long, it was rolling out of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Auschwitz – Birkenau
Auschwitz was a whole system of different camps. Auschwitz II, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, was built in the autumn of 1941. In the spring of 1942, Auschwitz-Birkenau became a combined concentration, labour and extermination camp. Later that year, the expansion of four large crematoriums and gas chambers began and these were put into operation in the spring of 1943.
Most of the prisoners who came to the camp were taken straight from the train to the gas chambers. About 1.1 million prisoners were murdered in the camp, including about 1 million Jews. There was a special Roma section in the camp. On the night between 2 and 3 August 1944, the SS guards emptied the Roma section and took almost 4,300 Roma to their deaths in the gas chambers.
Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on 27 January 1945.
Kiwa’s jacket from Dachau
