Memoria [EN] No. 36 (09/2020) | Page 29

Zdjęcia w artykule dzięki uprzejmości Muzeum Reina Sofia

go crazy looking at these pale corpses and faces paralysed by fear. Is it not horrible? They bring a tiny, innocent, unaware child with black eyes and curly hair and in a few hours; they throw a cold, corpse out through the window. What did it do to suffer such a dreadful punishment?

Jadwiga worked there until her release from the camp, i.e. 17 May 1943. The teenager, along with others who regained their freedom that day, received money for a ticket and provisions for the road at the headquarters of the Polish Red Cross in Lublin at Niecała Street. She returned home to Warsaw on the morning train. However, the Majdanek experience has etched into her memory forever - ... and looking at these dozens of barracks, at the thousands of people hanging around them, who are not humans, but numbered striped uniforms, I have the feeling that I am not entirely liberated, after all, part of my heart is down there, at Majdanek.

On her return to the capital city, Jadwiga worked as a waitress. Jadwiga and her father, who was in hiding, began underground activity in the Grey Ranks as a liaison officer.

Regrettably, on 30 January 1944, she was shot dead in unknown circumstances by the Germans in one of Warsaw’s streets. She was just over 17 years old. She was buried on 31 January 1944 at the Bródno Cemetery.

We know what Jadwiga was like thanks to her uncle’s sister Teresa Tobera, née Ankiewicz. The family collection enriched the latest publication with valuable and previously unpublished iconographic material.

The excerpt from the diary is read by Joanna Kozieł, a student of Hetman Jan Zamoyski Secondary School in Lublin:

Her uncle's sister Teresa Tobera tells about Jadwiga Ankiewicz: