Tadeusz Szymański
Tadeusz Szymański (born May 18, 1917 in Gostilla, Bosnia, † February 28, 2002 in Oświęcim ) was a Polish Holocaust survivor and an important employee of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum .
Life
On August 12, 1941, Tadeusz Szymański was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . Seriously ill and therefore already selected to be gassed , he was saved by the fact that one wanted to observe how the typhus experiment on the living "test object" ends.
At the beginning of 1945, in view of the advancing Soviet troops, he was to be transferred with a transport to Gross-Rosen and then to Buchenwald . When the train stopped in Czech territory, he managed to escape.
At the request of Tadeusz Wa̜sowicz, Szymański helped him build a memorial on the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The two wanted to protect the extermination camp from looting and demolition in order to create a place of remembrance.
In the 1950s, Tadeusz Szymański was primarily responsible for looking after visitors at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum , fighting for the establishment of an international meeting place for young people, and until his retirement in 1977 he was in charge of the camp museum's collections. He was also seen as a pioneer of Polish reconciliation with Germany.
Honors
In 1986 he was honored with the Theodor Heuss Medal .
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Irena Szymańska: Tadeusz Wąsowicz. The first director and co-founder of the Auschwitz Museum . In: Pro memoria. Information bulletin of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Foundation for the Commemoration of the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp , ISSN 1429-0448 , Vol. 7 (1997), pp. 51–57.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Szymański, Tadeusz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish survivor of the Holocaust |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 18, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gostilla |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 28, 2002 |
| Place of death | Oświęcim |