Henryk Mandelbaum-Inmate of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando 1944/1945

In Cooperation with the Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz e.V., the International Youth Meeting Center Auschwitz, Poland and the association Gegen VergessenFür Demokratie e.V., Regional Group North Hesse-South Lower Saxony

The central theme of the exhibition is Henryk Mandelbaum. He was a prisoner in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz and one of hundreds of Jewish slave laborers in the death zone. From April 1944 to January 1945, he had to participate in the cremation of corpses in the death zone of Auschwitz-Birkenau. He stems from a poor Jewish family from western Poland. His father, mother, brother, and one sister were murdered in Auschwitz.

By many coincidences and an enormous will to survive, Henryk Mandelbaum survived the inferno.

The exhibition introduces the person Henryk Mandelbaum and visualizes the effect that history and politics have on a person. The way he lived with his family before the war. The Mandelbaum family's short, terrible path from a normal life to contempt, persecution and annihilation. And finally, the way the young Mandelbaum entered his own life. The things the Nazis did to him. The way the horror working in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz shaped his life. The way Henryk Mandelbaum has lived and still does. The way he finds his way out of loneliness and the way to survive all the deaths and dead.

Freelance photographer Andreas Dahlmeier and Karin Graf, both from Kassel, and Tina Henkel, historian and political scientist from Hamburg, visited Henryk Mandelbaum and documented his life in photographs and text.

The exhibition is the result of German-Polish cooperation. In addition to that, the Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz e.V., the International Youth Meeting Center Oswiecim and the association Gegen VergessenFür Demokratie e.V., Regional Group North Hesse-South Lower Saxony are involved. It was opened on 6 May 2005 in the International Youth Meeting Centre Oswiecim/Poland. After several exhibition venues in Poland (e.g. Oswiecim, Cracow, Lublin), it will be shown in several German cities with an opening event in the Museum for Sepulchral Culture.