Jewellery seized by Nazis from Polish concentration camp prisoners returned to families
Warsaw (Poland), Sep 11: Stanislawa Wasilewska was 42 when she was captured by Nazi German troops on Aug. 31, 1944 in Warsaw and sent to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück. From there, she was sent to the Neuengamme forced labour camp, where she was given prisoner number 7257 and had her valuables seized.
Eighty years later, Germany’s Arolsen Archives returned Wasilewska’s jewellry to her grandson and great-granddaughter at an emotional ceremony in Warsaw during which families of 12 Polish inmates of Nazi concentration camps were given back their confiscated belongings.
Some relatives had tears in their eyes as they received the mementoes of their long-gone, often unknown family members. More such ceremonies are planned.
Wasilewska’s family were given back her two amber crucifixes, part of a golden bracelet and a gold wristwatch engraved with the initials KW and the date 7-3-1938, probably marking her wedding to Konstanty Wasilewski.
“This is an important moment in our lives, because this is a story that we did not fully know about and it came to light,” Wasilewska’s great-granddaughter, Malgorzata Korys, 35, told The Associated Press.
When Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, Wasilewska was taken by the Red Cross from Neuengamme to Sweden, but later returned to Poland. She is buried in her native Grodzisk Mazowiecki, near Warsaw.
From another family, Adam Wierzbicki, 29, was given two rings which belonged to Zofia Strusinska and a golden chain and tooth filling of Józefa Skórka, two married sisters of his great-grandfather Stanislaw Wierzbicki. Captured together on Aug. 4, like Wasilewska, the sisters also went through Ravensbrück and Neuengamme before the Red Cross took them to Sweden.
A family story has it that a Swedish man fell in love with one of the sisters and wanted them both to stay, promising to take care of them, but they decided to go back to Poland, Wierzbicki said.
The return of their jewellery is “important for sentimental reasons but also for historical reasons,” Wierzbicki told the AP.
The items were returned by the Arolsen Archives, the international centre on Nazi persecution, which holds information on about 17.5 million people. It stores some 2,000 items which were seized by the Nazis from concentration camp inmates from more than 30 countries, and are intended to be returned to their relatives.
When the prisoners were sent to concentration camps, their valuables – wedding rings, watches, gold chains, earrings and other items – were confiscated and put in envelopes marked with their owners’ names. That allowed for the items’ return to the families, 80 years later. (AP)