Publications
Publications on the German concentration camp for Polish children in Łódź
The first article on the fate of underage inmates on Przemysłowa Street was published in 1946 in the magazine “Służba Społeczna” ["Social Service"] by Maria Niemyska-Hessenowa. In the article “Dzieci z lagru” ["Children of the Gulag"], she described the mental and physical condition of 233 prisoners who ended up in the City Care Center in Łódź after their stay in the camp. Numerous publications about the origin and functioning of the children's camp on Przemysłowa Street were published in the 1960s. This was related to the fact that the District Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes collected evidence on the camp
in Łódź. Also, an article by Łódź-based journalist Wiesław Jażdżyński,“Reportaż z pustego pola”["A Reportfrom an Empty Field"], was published in the magazine “Odgłosy” [“Sounds”] in 1965.
In 1971, Tadeusz Raźniewski's memoirs entitled “Chcę żyć” [“I Want to Live”] were published by Wydawnictwo Łódzkie [“Łódź Publishing House”]. This was another publication about the camp on Przemysłowa Street written by a former prisoner. Tadeusz Raźniewski's story was an inspiration for the screenplay of the feature film „Twarz Anioła” [“Face of the Angel”] which premiered in January 1971. The film was directed by Zbigniew Chmielewski.
Beginning in 1968, “Przegląd Lekarski” [“Medical Review”], published by the Cracow branch of the Polish Medical Association, started featuring articles on the camp written by its former prisoner, Józef Witkowski. In 1975, he published through the Ossolineum publishing house the first monograph of the camp, entitled “Hitlerowski obóz koncentracyjny dla małoletnich w Łodzi” ["Hitler's Concentration Camp for Minors in Łódź”]. When writing the book, the author contacted former camp inmates, and the materials used in it were unique – photographs taken during assemblies, work in workshops, personal photographs of children, as well as letters written by young camp inmates to their families.
Numerous articles commemorating the camp were published in the 1970s. They concerned the unveiling of the Monument to the Martyrdom of Children, referring to the history of the camp, on May 9, 1971, in Promienisty Park in Łódź (now “Park im. Szarych Szeregów” [“Gray Ranks Park”]). The trials of former camp supervisor Eugenia Pol vel Genowefa Pohl, held in Łódź in 1972-1975, were also widely reported.
It is also worth mentioning the book published in 2019 by Urszula Sochacka entitled “Eee... tam, takiego obozu nie było.Wspomnienia Genowefy Kowalczuk, byłej więźniarki obozu przy ulicy Przemysłowej w Łodzi” ["There Was No Such Camp.Memories of Genowefa Kowalczuk, Former Prisoner of the Camp on Przemysłowa Street in Łódź"],based on the author's interviews with the former inmate conducted in 2009-2011.
In 2020, a book was published about the camp on Przemysłowa Street by Jolanta Sowińska-Gogacz and Błażej Torański entitled “Mały Oświęcim. Dziecięcy obóz w Łodzi” ["Little Auschwitz. The Children's Camp in Łódź"] (Prószyński i S-ka publishing house). It describes the history of the camp, the living conditions of the prisoners, and also includes accounts of the supervisors. An important element of this book are conversations with former prisoners, conducted by Jolanta Sowińska-Gogacz in 2015-2019.
In December 2021, the Museum of Polish Children: Victims of Totalitarianism published a book entitled “Nauczono nas płakać bez łez...” [“We were taught to cry without tears...”]. The book presents the history of the German concentration camp for Polish children on Przemysłowa Street, based on selected biographies of prisoners. Memories and letters written by the children to their families illustrate the horrific reality of the camp, the struggle to survive, and the immense suffering experienced by the young prisoners. The book also describes the post-war fate of the survivors of the children's camp on Przemysłowa Street.
“Niezwykła polska rodzina. Losy Gertrudy Nowak – dziecka z obozu na Przemysłowej” ["An extraodrinary Polish family.The fate of Gertruda Nowak – a child from the camp on Przemysłowa Street"]is the latest publication (September 2022) by historians of the Museum of Polish Children: Victims of Totalitarianism. It is based on the only surviving camp personal files of Gertruda Nowak, a former inmate of the German concentration camp for Polish children on Przemysłowa Street in Łódź. "The book presents the dramatic story of the entire family – Gertruda Nowak's parents and siblings, whose peaceful, happy life was destroyed by the ruthless extermination machine of the Third Reich," – reads the introduction.
In 2023, the Palgrave Macmillan Cham Publishing House will publish an English-language monograph on the camp on Przemysłowa Street, titled Przemysłowa Concentration Camp:The Camp, the Children, the Trials by Dr Katarzyna Person (Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute) and Prof Johannes-Dieter Steinert (University of Wolverhampton). It provides a problematic account of the history of the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager Litzmannstadt, touching on various aspects of its operation - the circumstances of its founding, the staff, the prisoners, the architecture, the forced labour system, punishments and abuses, sanitary conditions, the post-war settlements of the torturers, etc. The authors based their work on wartime documents, the records of later trials and the post-war accounts of prisoners and crew members, highlighting the difficulties of interpretation regarding sources of the latter kind. The historiographical context in which the monograph is set has several layers and concerns both the general German policy in the occupied territories, broadly conceived research on the history of childhood and research on forced child labour (this topic was already addressed in another book by Johannes-Dieter Steinert, translated into Polish, entitled Deportacja i praca przymusowa.Dzieci z Polski i ZSRS w nazistowskich Niemczech i okupowanej Europie Wschodniej w latach 1939–1945 (Deportation and Forced Labour.Children from Poland and the USSR in Nazi Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe 1939-1945).