Alfreda Markowska

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Alfreda Markowska (2006)

Alfreda "Noncia" Markowska (born May 10, 1926 in Stanisławów ; † January 30, 2021 ) was a Polish Romni who saved around 50 children and young people from being exterminated by the National Socialists and was awarded for them.

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Markowska was born in Poland in 1926 near Stanisławów in eastern Kresy into a wealthy, horse-breeding and trading Roma family. From 1939 onwards, Roma who were supposed to be persecuted and exterminated as a racially stigmatized group were on the run. Many of them hid in the woods to seek protection, including Markowska's family. In 1941 German soldiers attacked their family near Biala Podlaska . When sixteen-year-old Markowska returned to her family with food, she found the camp destroyed and eighty people shot and buried by farmers. Her husband Gucio survived because he left the camp shortly before the soldiers discovered it.

Soon after the murder of her family, she was caught and deported to various forced labor camps and ghettos , including Lublin , Lodz and Belzec . But she always managed to escape. After escaping from her last detention, she made her way to Stalowa Wola . Here her husband worked with other Sinti and Roma as forced laborers for the Todt organization , a paramilitary construction group of the Nazis. She got a fake ID card and ID and was registered as a railroad worker. On these railway tracks she witnessed the transports to the surrounding camps. She laid railroad tracks and maintained the tracks, and the workers were forced to carry the dead off the deportation trains.

Child Rescue

One day a desperate woman from the train to Auschwitz secretly handed her four-year-old son over to Markowska. She took him to the barrack camp where she lived with her family without being noticed. The boy's name was Karol "Parno" Gierlinski. He was a German Sinto and later one of the children who witnessed Markowska's story. He received a note from his mother with his grandmother's name and her address in the Warthegau near Posen . In this way, he was able to get safely to his grandparents through a notified family member, where he was initially protected by the German name of his grandfather. But after the grandfather's death, the Nazis deported him and his grandmother to Hamburg for forced labor. Both survived and returned to Poland after the war.

Markowska looked for surviving children at mass shooting sites within a hundred kilometers under the bodies, and she got more children out of the trains to Auschwitz or Belzec. She brought the children home and made sure they survived. To do this, she looked for their relatives or willing foster families, forged documents, obtained food stamps and travel documents. Markowska, herself a youth, rescued Romani, Jewish and other children during the entire occupation at risk of death. According to Karol Gierlinski, sometimes more than ten children were in her care at the same time. She no longer knew how many children she saved in total by the end of the war. It is estimated that there are fifty children.

After the war

Markowska in a picture by Dariusz Paczkowski, fence of a school in Warsaw .
Markowska on a mural by the artist Leszek Michta on the premises of a school in Gorzow Wielkopolski

Markowska settled in Gorzów Wielkopolski . More than forty years later, on October 17th, 2006, when she was over eighty, she received one of the highest Polish awards, the Order Polonia Restituta . She is the only Roma who has ever received this badge of honor. The ceremony was carried out by Polish President Lech Kaczyński in the Presidential Palace. She never received any compensation for the persecution. In an interview, her grandson Robert Dolinsky Patryk complained that her small pension was barely enough to cover the cost of living and the medicines. Alfreda Markowska died at the end of January 2021 at the age of 94.

A short film was dedicated to her and she was made an honorary citizen in her place of residence. In May 2017, a mural of her made by the artist Leszek Michta was installed on the premises of the primary school No. 1 in Dbrowski Street. In addition, a restaurant serving Roma food was named in honor of Markowska U Babci Nobci .

Further literature and web links

  • Aleida Assmann: Forms of Forgetting. Historical humanities series.
  • Frankfurt lectures. (Eds.): Bernhard Jussen / Susanne Scholz, Vol. 9.
  • On trauma see: Jane Schuch: Antiziganism as an educational barrier, Dossier:
  • Perspectives and analyzes of Sinti and Roma in Germany, 2014. Under: Antiziganism as an educational barrier
  • Agnieszka Hreczuk: The woman who saved dozens of children from death , in: Tagesspiegel, January 26, 2014.
  • Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann: The Gypsies. A historical attempt on the way of life and constitution, customs and fate of this people in Europe, together with their origin, Dessau / Leipzig 1783.
  • Cf. Romani Rose: Civil Rights for Sinti and Roma. The book on racism in Germany, Heidelberg 1987.
  • Agnieszka Hreczuk: The Savior in a Long Skirt. 9 In: Daily Week, July 30, 2014.
  • How a victim of Nazi persecution became a savior herself , Die Welt Online from October 24, 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zmarła Babcia Noncia. Alfreda Markowska miała 94 lata
  2. ↑ Karol Gierlinski: Piekne zycie Alfredy Markowskiej . In: Romano Atmo . No. October 5 , 2006.
  3. ↑ https://www.roma-center.de/alfreda-noncia-markowska-retterin-der-kinder/
  4. ↑ a b c d e The woman who saved dozens of children from death. Retrieved September 2, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Agnieszka Hreczuk: The woman who saved dozens of children from death . In: Tagesspiegel . January 26, 2014.
  6. ↑ Karol Gierliński , on romarchive.eu
  7. ↑ Agnieszka Hreczuk: The woman who saved dozens of children from death . In: Tagesspiegel . January 26, 2014.
  8. ^ A b Isidora Randjelovic: New Rundschau . Ed .: Hans Jürgen Balmes, Jörg Bong, Alexander Boesler, Oliver Vogel, Manuela Bauche, Sharon Dodua Otoo. tape 2 . S. Fischer Verlag, 2018, p. 75-82 .
  9. ↑ Wyborcza.pl. Retrieved September 2, 2020 .
  10. ↑ https://www.roma-center.de/alfreda-noncia-markowska-retterin-der-kinder/
  11. ↑ Zmarła Babcia Noncia. Alfreda Markowska miała 94 lata
personal data
SURNAME Markowska, Alfreda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Markowska, Noncia (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish Roma and child rescuer during the Nazi era
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Stanisławów
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 2021