back...A shocking testimony of a former prisoner of the concentration camps in Przemysłowa Street and KL Ravensbrück

The Ravensbrück concentration camp was one of the most horrifying institutions of the Nazi extermination system. More than 130,000 women and children passed through it. Tens of thousands of them lost their lives.

Taking this into consideration, the account of Maria Wiśniewska-Jaworska, one of the former prisoners of both the Nazi German Concentration Camp for Polish Children in Przemysłowa Street in Łódź and KL Ravensbrück, is exceptionally moving.

Maria Wiśniewska was born on February 17, 1928 in Poznań. She was the daughter of Aleksander and Gertruda, née Kaczmarek. Her father, a professor at a boys’ gymnasium, was arrested by the Germans on charges of participating in Dr. Franciszek Witaszek’s group and murdered at Fort VII in Poznań. Other members of the family were also subjected to repression – Maria’s mother was imprisoned first in the Żabikowo camp and then in the KL Ravensbrück; her older brother, Ludomir, was sent to KL Gross-Rosen concentration camp and then to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. In December 1943, Maria and her younger brother Tadeusz became inmates of the camp in Przemysłowa Street, where they remained until she reached the age of 16 (her camp numbers were 219 and 501). In the second half of 1944, she was sent to KL Ravensbrück, where she reunited with her mother. Both were then transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they lived to see liberation by the Allies on April 15, 1945. At Maria’s request, one of the women prisoners looked after Tadeusz until the escape of the camp crew in Przemysłowa Street.

After the war, Maria graduated from law school. In the 1970s, she was one of the witnesses testifying in the notorious trial of camp officer Eugenia Pol.

Maria Wiśniewska-Jaworska lived to be 93 years old. She died in 2020.