AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM
ACQUIRES THE ORIGINAL OF ILLUSTRATED DIARY
MADE BY SURVIVOR
ALFRED KANTOR
Auschwitz Memorial
The acquisition was made possible by the decision of the artist’s children, Jerry Kantor and Monica Kantor-Churchill, who reside in the United States. These unique works will now receive professional conservation care and will be integrated into the Museum’s collection of artworks created by prisoners and survivors, forming an invaluable visual record of the crimes committed in the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
“This extraordinary visual testimony could only be acquired thanks to the family, the children of the Survivor Alfred Kantor. I am grateful for their trust and for their deep conviction that these artworks should come to the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum. They are, after all, part of this very history,” emphasized the Museum’s Director, Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński.
Members of Alfred Kantor’s family stressed the special significance of the place to which they entrusted the works: “This is simply where this collection belongs. I cannot imagine it being anywhere else. The Museum staff and their expertise in preserving such materials are unmatched. This is exactly where such an important historical document should be,” said Jerry Kantor.
“Auschwitz is associated with immense suffering, and so many people should understand that. When I think about what this collection represents—something created by a person who went through Auschwitz—I cannot imagine a better place for these works. This material should be where it can be properly cared for, studied, and truly understood. It feels right that it is now at the Auschwitz Museum,” he added.
The original manuscript of "The Diary of Alfred Kantor", featuring drawings from the Theresienstadt ghetto and the Auschwitz and Schwarzheide camps, covers the period from December 1941 to May 1945. This album contains 127 pages of original watercolour drawings, together with additional pasted-in authentic documents, such as a deportation order, a yellow star and a camp number, as well as 12 drawings and watercolours, 30–35 letters, notes, photographs and travel documents from the years 1941–49.
In the postwar album, in the section dedicated to Auschwitz, the depictions include the interior of a freight car transporting Jews to the camp, the arrival at the ramp, the unloading process, the selections, the luggage abandoned on the ramp, and the transport of people by trucks to the gas chambers.
“The album also feature scenes from sector BIIb in Auschwitz II-Birkenau: the tattooing of numbers, the appearance of the camp, roll
The Memorial has expanded its Collections with an exceptional document by Auschwitz survivor Alfred Kantor, who was deported to the camp from the Theresienstadt ghetto in late 1943. "The diary of Alfred Kantor" includes his drawings and notes, made both during his imprisonment and in the postwar period, constitute a remarkable visual testimony of the Holocaust and the experience of prisoners.
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