Wołyń. She attended the famous Krzemieniec Secondary School, and in the 1930s, after moving to Warsaw with her parents; she continued her education at the Queen Jadwiga Middle School. During the occupation, she became involved in the resistance movement.
In 1943 she was arrested and deported to KL Auschwitz on 22 June 1943. She remained in the camp until the end of August 1944, when she was transferred to KL Ravensbrück. At the end of April 1945, following the action of the Swedish Red Cross, she found herself among the group of female prisoners who were released and taken to Sweden. In 1948 she married Jerzy Januariusz Zdunek, a Warsaw insurgent and former prisoner of the Stutthof camp.
The director of the Polish Institute in Stockholm, Paweł Ruszkiewicz, recalled the moment he first saw the notebook of Bożena Janina Zdunek: 'I was invited to Mr Zdunek's house. It is a moment I will remember for the rest of my life when the documents were pulled out of the closet and among them, the notebook. We immediately agreed that it should be presented to the world on a broader scale because we owe this above all to Mr Zdunek's mother, the female prisoners, Mr Zdunek and his children.'
In cooperation with the Swedish Red Cross, the Institute created an exhibition that tells the story of the camp notebook.
'Bearing in mind the condition of the notebook, we knew from the very beginning that it required conservation. The transfer of the notebook to the Museum, which has supported with content and media from the very beginning of the project, is indeed a culmination of the entire undertaking and an impulse for further activities. We intend to publish a reprint of the notebook with a translation into Swedish,' added Paweł Ruszkiewicz.
'For us, every document and personal memento is essential, because they allow us not only to learn about the history of Auschwitz as a camp institution but also to move to a personal level and show the individual fates of people. My sincere thanks to the professor for his trust and for donating this unique notebook. It is indeed an extraordinary volume of poetry, which is a testimony to the fact that for those imprisoned in Auschwitz, poems were a way to combat humiliation and dehumanization,' said Auschwitz Museum Director Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński.
'At the same time, I continue to appeal for the donation of all documents and memorabilia connected with the history and victims of Auschwitz. Here, at the Memorial, they will be protected, preserved, studied and exhibited. It is also worth mentioning that documents from family collections are not available for researchers and are therefore not used in creating canons of historical narration,' Cywiński added.
Bożena Janina Zdunek was a member of the Association of Polish Veterans in Sweden and financially supported several Polish and Catholic institutions in Sweden and other countries. She was also very active in the sphere of education. She regularly met with Swedish youth to talk about concentration camps and the tragedy of World War II. She died on 2 June 2015 in Karlskrona.