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6 December 1921 | A Pole, Marian Kołodziej, was born in Raszków.
Deported to #Auschwitz from Tarnów on 14 June 1940 in the first transport of Poles to the camp.
No. 432
He survived.
After the war he was a painter & stage designer.
Author of monumental „Negatives of Memory”.
@auschwitzmuseum we can see his work here : https://cms4vr.com/projects/harmeze/
Negatives of Memory. Labyrinths.Negatives of Memory. Labyrinths. : Entrance to the exhibitionMARIAN KOŁODZIEJHe was born December 6, 1921 in Raszków. He was 18 years old when the war broke out. As a young Boy Scout, he was involved in the activities of the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej), wanting to fight for a free Poland. Together with his friend Marian Kajdasz, he repeatedly attempted to cross the border in order to reach the Polish troops in the West. On May 14, 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Kraków and has been jailed in the Montelupich Prison, from where he was taken to a prison in Tarnów.On June 14, 1940, he came with the first transport to KL Auschwitz, where he received the number 432. He was employed in various jobs in the camp: demolition commando, gravel pit commando, street commando, and at Industriehof II – Bauhof. When he worked as water commando, he fell sick and was transferred to the Blechhammer sub-camp in Świętochłowice where he secretly copied the blueprints of the munition industry factories for the Polish resistance movement. He has been sentenced to death for this activity, deported to Auschwitz again, and was imprisoned in the bunker of Block 11. He rested in the camp until the end of 1944, from where, in the course of evacuation, he was transferred to Gross Rosen and, later, to Buchenwald. In February 1945, he was deported to Mauthausen and was liberated on May 6, 1945 by the 3rd Army of General Patton.After his return to Poland, he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, in the Faculty of Painting in the atelier of professor K. Frycz. He graduated in 1950 with the specialization of production designer. He moved to Gdańsk where he worked at the Wybrzeże Playhouse as a production designer. During the 40 years of artistic work in the theatre, he designed many productions working with Hübner, Goliński, Kreczmar, Minc, Okopiński, Hebanowski, and Babicki. He also worked as production designer for other theatres in Poland. He collaborated, among others, with Adam Hanuszkiewicz, Kazimierz Kutz, and Stanisław Różewicz. He created the sets for movies Westerplatte and Cross of Valour (Krzyż Walecznych).He was the creator of the papal altars in 1987 at Zaspa in Gdańsk and in 1999 in Sopot. In 1997 he became an Honorary Citizen of the City of Gdańsk.In 1992 he had a stroke and was partially paralyzed. It was then that, after almost fifty years of silence, he returned to the dramatic memories of his youth, to the years spent in the concentration camps, creating a series of works named by him Photographic Plates of Memory. Labyrinths. He introduced to the public the first works of this series in April 1995 in the sanctuary of the Holy Trinity Church in Gdańsk, then in Essen, Germany, and in the Italian Bolzano. Since January 1998, Marian Kołodziej’s exhibition Photographic Plates of Memory. Labyrinths is located in the lower level of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception church in the village of Harmęże near Auschwitz.On February 6, 2006, in the headquarters of The Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Gdańsk, he received the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for Merit to Culture from the hands of Jarosław Sellin, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, a decoration awarded by Minister Kazimierz Ujazdowski.On October 13, 2009, he died at the age of 88 in a hospital in Gdańsk. On October 23, he was buried in the cript of the Franciscan church in Harmęże.AUTOR ABOUT EXHIBITION“You were saved not in order to live. You have little time, you must give testimony” – Zbigniew HerbertFifty eight years ago, on the late afternoon of the scorching-hot day of 14 June 1940, an infuriated superman threw me out of the freight car of the Tarnów train with a brutal kick, straight into the swamp of Auschwitz. For five years.I was dying there, between the rivers of Soła and Vistula, in this malarial area, in permanent mud, I was rotting tortured by beating and labour beyond my strength, starvation, diarrhoea, typhoid, eaten by lice, subject to pseudo-medical experiments, inhumanely humiliated, stripped of clothing, bathed in Lysol, deprived of my name, just Number 432 – ready to carry out orders, orders of any kind.(…) It is not an exhibition, not art, not pictures, it is words enclosed in sketches. Art is helpless in the face of the fate people dealt to people. I am offering you a walk through the labyrinth marked by the experiences in the death factory. There is no martyrology in my sketches, I’m just showing the problem. It has its references. I’m not making them up, I’m borrowing them, quoting them, I’m talking to the history of art. I’m talking to Dürer, I’m talking to Memling. I’m taking from them their expressions of suffering, pain, despair, and I’m placing them in my 20th-century experiences. I was not looking for new ways of expressing suffering. The gestures of the Stations of the Cross are the same everywhere. I started to search for a symbol that would stand not only for man, but for an animal, an insect as well.In one of my sketches I depict myself as I was fifty years ago and as I am today. It is a kind of a double self-portrait. However, my Auschwitz face is a mask. My true face is the one of today. In the picture I am exposing myself. In the picture I have placed the things I regard as the most tragic: Grünewald’s Christ as an expression of the utmost suffering, and an alarm clock I dug out in the ruins of the crematorium.Now, as an old man, I am writing a letter to myself from years ago and I am trying to sort out and retain in pictures only the things that survived together with me, the things I managed to save and which are inside me now.(…) Please, read my drawn words which were created out of my yearning for clear-cut criteria, for distinct separation of good and evil, the truth and lies, art and its appearance. It is also my disagreement to the world as it is today. It is also about us, about what we did with our humanity.It is also a tribute to all those people who – reduced to ashes – passed away.OPINION ABOUT EXHIBITIONReverend Józef Tischner, professor of philosophyKraków, PolandThe real Auschwitz is here. First of all, it seems that every transformation of these images into words is a kind of damage to them. Images are so meaningful that any attempt to supplement them with verbal comment is futile. They do not need any comment, they make any comment unimportant. Obviously, we could develop the whole philosophy of Auschwitz around them, yet no matter how many words we say, they will not turn into the quality of these images. The images are simply their own quality.I think that they are – above all – pictures about Man. I would say – about Man in spiritual decay. Not only physical decay. These are pictures about death which lost any sense. These are not pictures about the Crucified, because the Crucifixion had sense. These are not pictures of martyrs’ bodies; these are pictures of death which is most naked, merciless, I would say – deprived of any depth, any reason.We can say that they express our contemporary demonism. Yet demonism was intelligent, while in these pictures we can see no intelligence of demonism. There is only death passing by, going, destroying, taking away – nobody knows why or what for. Indeed, you can say that it is the world of atheism.Here and there, Kolbe appears, sometimes some other prisoner in a slightly different situation. Kolbe brings some kind of light into this world. But if I was to say what atheism is, I would point at Auschwitz.The question “Where is God?” is hanging over the pictures. But God is not where He was not invited. The greatness of man lies in that he does not have to invite God into his world, he may expel Him out of his world. This is the world of God expelled, chased away, but on the other hand also, in a way, present – through Father Kolbe.I have been to Auschwitz several times, I have walked in Birkenau. But I have never seen there what I saw at this exhibition. My reaction is: the real Auschwitz is here.This is, in fact, all I can say: the real Auschwitz is here.Giuseppe Amelio,professor San Remo, ItalyFather Marian, I address you this way because I was born when you had already been imprisoned in Auschwitz for two years. I visited the exhibition at Franciscan Church /…/. For me you are a GREAT artist and have much in common with Dante Alighieri, because you knew how to illustrate the Inferno of Auschwitz in a “unique, direct, tragic, effective” way, like Dante did in poetry.In your art I find a lot from Leonardo da Vinci’s art, especially because of your technique, because of your strenuous search, unique ideas, solemn scenography.Your characters are permeated with both HOPE and DESPERATION, and I would say that they express this hope and desperation as human beings. These characters are crying out the whole pain of the world, exploring me from the inside, asking me and shouting WHY? But at the same time they are filled with hope /…/./…/ You have managed to give voice and life to a million and a half, maybe doubly, of CRUCIFIED HUMANKIND. You have given a life and voice to your friend Marian Kołodziej through your magical art, and also to a million and a half other martyrs. /…/ Your exhibition is the most noble and tragic depiction of concentration camps./…/ For fifty years, in your hardened heart you jealously kept memories, words. Faces (human larvae), screams, pain and hope. You depicted their real meaning, still in time, in a perfect way, as only the one who lived two lives is able to do /…/.Your work of art will live on to refresh future generations’ memory, you will be remembered as HOMER-PICASSO of concentration camps /…/.Reverend Zdzisław WójcikCzęstochowa, Poland/…/ I passed Birkenau Camp /…/ and headed for the village of Harmęże, invited /…/ to see Marian Kołodziej’s exhibition. I was aware that I would not see photographs of the camp life, even though the exhibition is called “Photographic Plates of Memory”. Photographs are supposed to render the truth about people and facts best.However, having seen the exhibition of sketches by an ex-prisoner of Auschwitz I can feel that there is still another truth about man, the truth that is the most personal, scarred, well-thought-out and well-expressed. The author of the exhibition brochure is right saying that Marian Kołodziej, Auschwitz prisoner No 432, takes us into the labyrinths of memories of what he experienced by means of his words-pictures that create the Plates of Memory. It must be added, however, that he takes us into what is present inside him all the time. The Artist himself admits that Auschwitz has been present in his work all the time – not literally, as the concentration camp cannot be told literally. Art is helpless in the face of the fate people dealt to people. So the Artist is not inviting us to a vernissage. He is offering going through the labyrinth marked by his experiences in the death factory. He is asking us to read his sketches which were also created out of yearning for clear criteria, for clear division between good and evil, the truth and lies, art and its appearances. This is his disagreement to the world as it used to be – but also to the world that still is today.The Artist calls his works an old man’s letter to himself from before 55 years ago; he also calls them a tribute to all those who – reduced to ashes – passed away.I have read this letter and I encourage others to do so. I am asking the Author – whom I have no reason not to believe – to forgive me. I am not surprised by this letter, not even horrified. I am only embarrassed, because I have heard on the radio today that now killing is done by people without faces and names, that there is no front line today, that the front may be anywhere, even in mail. I am neither surprised nor horrified, I am just sad, because I feel helpless when I read that mother killed her child, son murdered his parents, and on the stadium somebody shouted “Kill him!”. I am no longer surprised looking at the wild beasts in the drawings who seem to resemble human beings. I am not surprised any more, I only hope that… /…/.Jolanta Kupiec,historian of artMemorial and Museum Auschwity-Birkenau/…/ Thanks to his arduous work resulting in this enormous exhibition, Marian Kołodziej overcame a serious illness threatening him with paralysis. Physical exercises of his body and hands while making countless sketches and pictures assembled in sequences of cardboards arranged in huge display-boards turned out to be healing rehabilitation for his ailing body; they also helped him to get rid of the burden of his Auschwitz experiences he kept in his psyche.The Aushwitz “Plates of Memory”, painfully stored in his subconsciousness, were developed and demonstrated after fifty five years with a precision of a stage design for the thoroughly planned gloomy performance created by Nazism on the land of Oświęcim. The exhibition was arranged into a special, labyrinth-like exposition, where we can trace the Auschwitz experiences of the Author and all the others who went through the inferno, dying on the way in killing facilities designed with devilish precision./…/ There is a deep thought here, a warning, a moment for reflection in the frantic rush of today’s life. You can realize here the enormous evil that lies within human beings, but also the enormous good stored in humankind.Sometimes it is difficult to understand human inexplicable will power. Marian Kołodziej, who ten years before had been almost paralysed as a result of a serious illness, at the age of seventy was infused with a new life owing to his art and work, he went back in his mind to his youth, so painful and tragic. The return gave him the strength to overcome his illness and weakness of his body. His great need for recording his experiences, for transferring his experiences on dozens of metres of cardboard, resulted in this monumental work of art that he created for several years.
@capslock @auschwitzmuseum Thanks for sharing this.
