Wiesław Kielar was one of the first men to be imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1940. He remained there until 1944 and was then sent to the Barkhausen subcamp via Sachsenhausen. His book Anus Mundi is still considered one of the most important eyewitness accounts of the German concentration camps.
"Tears were streaming down my sunken and burning cheeks. You couldn't believe it. Just like that, without any notice, suddenly. The Americans were barely 50 kilometres away from our camp. Surely that was impossible? read more [...] At five in the morning we were led out onto the empty and deserted road. There was nobody there but us. Only before the bridge did we see any military personnel. On both sides of the bridge, where the pedestrian crossings were, there were a few boxes every few metres, connected to each other with wire. Dynamite! So the Americans had to be very close, very close. There was a long goods train at the station and we were loaded onto it. We pricked up our ears to see if we could hear the noise of the blown-up bridge behind us, but apart from the rattling of the train's wheels, nothing could be heard." read more
Wiesław Kielar, Anus Mundi - Fünf Jahre in Auschwitz, Frankfurt a. M. 1979. Quote translated from German.
Biography
Wiesław Kielar was born on 12 August 1919 in Przeworsk, Poland. His birthplace is in the eastern part of the country, roughly halfway between the cities of Kraków and Lviv. He spent most of his youth in nearby Jaroslaw. After the German occupation of Poland, Kielar planned to escape to Hungary with an armed resistance group. However, this failed and the Gestapo arrested him.
read morePrisoner number 290
After a stay in Tarnow prison, he was taken to Oświęcim in June 1940 to the newly opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Kielar was part of the first transport to the camp. The first 30 German prisoners had been taken there from Sachsenhausen concentration camp shortly before. Together with Kielar, 727 other Polish political prisoners arrived at the camp; Kielar was given prisoner number 290, which he kept for the next four years. In addition to the main camp, Kielar was also imprisoned in Monowitz and the Birkenau extermination camp. He was deployed everywhere in various labour detachments, had to work as a nurse and corpse bearer and was given the position of Blockältester at the end of his time in Auschwitz."Electrician"
In 1944, Kielar was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. When the camp administration, together with industrial representatives, looked for prisoners with previous knowledge of specialised work in the arriving transports, Kielar initially registered as a "well driller" and shortly afterwards as an "electrician". Based on this report, he was transferred to the "Hammer Works" men's detachment at Neuengamme concentration camp at the end of November 1944 and transported to the subcamp in Barkhausen.Prisoner in the "Hammer Works" commando
The purpose of this commando was to prepare, transport and install the machines for the relocation of Philips and Valvo tube production to the upper tunnels of the Jakobsberg. Although the "Hammer Works" commando was still run as a separate satellite commando of Neuengamme concentration camp in March 1945, Kielar and his comrades were imprisoned together with the other prisoners of the Porta satellite camp in the hall of the Kaiserhof Hotel.
Kielar left Porta Westfalica on 1 April 1945 with the evacuation transport of the three satellite camps. He arrived in Wöbbelin via the Schandelah satellite camp and a day-long odyssey on the train, where he was liberated by American troops on 2 May 1945. When he was liberated, Kielar still weighed 39 kilograms. He was only able to return to Poland after a year of medical treatment.Work as a cameraman and author of "Anus Mundi"
After his return in 1946, he graduated from the National Film School and subsequently worked as a cameraman, mainly for Polish television. From the mid-1960s, he worked on a manuscript about his time in Auschwitz. the report was published in 1972 under the title "Anus Mundi" by Wydawnictwo Literacki. In the years that followed, he received several awards for his book, which was published in German for the first time in March 1979. to this day, "Anus Mundi" is considered one of the most impressive descriptions of the reality of Auschwitz and is still available in bookshops. Kielar later supplemented his work with the books Nasze młode lata (Our Young Years) and Życie toczy się dalej (Life Goes On) on the pre- and post-war period, although these were never published in German.Wiesław Kielar lived with his wife in Wrocław after the war, where he died on 1 June 1990 at the age of 70. He was buried in the Rakowicki cemetery in Krakow.
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"We were unloaded at the goods station of a small town with the strange name "Porta Westfalica". Our astonishment grew even greater when we saw this quiet little town read more, which stretched along both banks of the river on mountain slopes with typical holiday homes without any trace of industrial buildings. Where were the Philips factories where we were supposed to work? After passing a beautiful suspension bridge that connected both parts of the town, which was divided by the wide and busy Weser river, we climbed up a street planted with old trees, turned into a narrow lane and then stood in front of a large wooden building that looked like an old synagogue, except that it was fenced in with barbed wire and had watchtowers at the corners. Was this supposed to be our concentration camp?" read less
Wiesław Kielar, Anus Mundi - Fünf Jahre in Auschwitz, Frankfurt a. M. 1979. Quote translated from German.
Wiesław Kielar at an event at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial.
Source: Archive of the Miejsce Pamieci i Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau
"The room wasn't heated, it was as cold inside as it was outside. We were put up against the north wall, just where it was coldest. Before that, however, our heads were shorn in a strange way, read more that is, a clipper was run through the centre of the head to the nape of the neck, creating a path that someone humorously called Lice Street; as we soon discovered afterwards, it was quite justified, as there was no shortage of insects such as lice, fleas and bugs." read less
Wiesław Kielar, Anus Mundi - Fünf Jahre in Auschwitz, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, quote translated from German. Quote translated from German.
