Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk (born August 4, 1921 , Pułtusk , Poland ; † September 1, 2015 , Warsaw ) was a Polish writer and dentist . She was a survivor of the Majdanek , Ravensbrück and Buchenwald concentration camps .

Life

Danuta Brzosko grew up in a socially upscale family. From September 1939 she continued her schooling at the Königin-Hedwig-Gymnasium in Warsaw illegally, although the German occupation forces had banned any further education in Poland. In July 1940, she and her class were arrested while taking high school exams. In Pawiak in Warsaw, she passed the remaining tests. Three weeks later, the students and teachers were unexpectedly dismissed.

Danuta Brzosko was active in the political underground in the Boy Scout Association and in the "Association for the Armed Struggle" (ZWZ). In August 1942 she was arrested again for this and taken to the Gestapo Pawiak Prison. In January 1943 she was taken to the Majdanek concentration camp. There she initially worked in the court column. She organized mutual support for the inmates and played in the improvised cabaret "Radio Majdanek". Since November she was a nurse in the sick barracks and at times the "maid" in the barracks of the SS guards.

In April 1944 she was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. In June she came to the Leipzig subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, where she had to work in arms production for the HASAG company . On April 26, 1945, she was liberated by Canadian troops on an evacuation march near Wurzen .

Danuta Brzosko returned to Poland. She studied dentistry in Łódź and worked as a dentist from 1949 to 1976. She married Jerzy Mędryk. In 1965 she visited Majdanek again for the first time and began to write down her memories. In 1968 her first novel "Sky Without Birds" was published. Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk was a witness in several trials against the staff in Majdanek, including the Düsseldorf Majdanek trial , where she described life in the camp in detail.

In 1971 she was involved in the establishment of the Memorial and Rehabilitation Center for Children's Health in Warsaw. Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk wrote several novels and memoirs, she wrote the script for the film Zagrożenie . She received several Polish awards, such as the Cavalier Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland . In 1989 she received the Aachen Peace Prize .

From 1996 to 2001 she was the representative of the female prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp in the International Buchenwald-Dora and Commands Committee. She was very committed to the interests of the former prisoners.

literature

  • "... because the memory is just not ideal ..." . Interview with Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk. In: Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider, u. a. (Ed.): The Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp and the justice system . Graz 2011. pp. 310-317
  • Ingrid Müller-Münch: The women of Majdanek. About the destroyed lives of the victims and the murderers . Munich 1982. pp. 27-33, 42-55

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ About life in the Leipzig camp. Speech at the opening of the exhibition "Forgotten Women of Buchenwald" on September 1, 2001
  2. ↑ Children's Memorial Health Institute (English)
  3. ↑ Zagrożenie (1976) Description of the film (English)
  4. ↑ Zagrożenie (Polish)
  5. ↑ "Honoring you, Dr. Brzosko-Mędryk, and thanking you includes two things. On the one hand - especially as a young German I am moved by this - respect for your fate and - combined with deep shame and great gratitude for it - that you Shaking hands with us Germans again today for a common future. On the other hand, it is also about the symbol and the example of Poland, especially for us Germans. Poland became a symbol of suffering ... "from Christian Lawan's laudation
personal data
SURNAME Brzosko-Mędryk, Danuta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish writer and concentration camp survivor
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Pułtusk
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 2015
Place of death Warsaw