A fragment of a secret message from Tadeusz Pietrzykowski to his mother. APMA-B.
[Lagermuseum], where they made utility items and artistic works: paintings, sculptures, and bas-reliefs. The exhibition will present selected artistic works from the PMA-B Collections, as well as camp letters, decorated by prisoners with motifs referring to sports and highlander themes.
The exhibition also includes mental activities, such as chess or bridge, which were treated by prisoners more as a springboard from the brutal reality of the camp and an opportunity to spend their free time in an attractive way other than sports rivalry. Since it was a formally forbidden activity, it was played in hardly visible places, such as overhead bunks or cellars. The items necessary for the games were most often illegally manufactured by prisoners themselves. Undoubtedly some of the accessories for games - not only mental disciplines, but others, too - were illegally brought to the camp from the luggage stolen from Jewish victims.
New acquisitions of the Museum
A special place at the exhibition was devoted to two boxers: Antoni “Kajtek” Czortek and Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski. Thanks to the generosity of the families of both athletes, the Museum Archives acquired original secret messages and camp letters of former prisoners, which will be presented to a wide audience for the first time at the exhibition.
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, a pre-war Warsaw boxer, was the first political prisoner to cross gloves with a German prisoner functionary. This fight initiated a whole series of boxing duels both in Auschwitz I and in many sub-camps. For almost three years in the camp, he fought over 40 duels and was second to none among other prisoners. He became the informal champion of all weights in KL Auschwitz. He informed his mother about this in a secret message sent from the camp in 1942.
The exhibition presents his boxing glove, donated to the Museum Collections by his daughter, Eleonora Szafran. He got it just before his transfer from Auschwitz to Neuengamme and he fought wearing it both in Neuengamme and after liberation, as a soldier of the Division of General Maczek.
Antoni Czortek’s camp letters to his wife are unique memorabilia which will be presented at the exhibition for the first time – they are not only camp memorabilia, but also family memorabilia. They have been donated by Antoni Czortek’s son, Bogdan. As he emphasizes, these are the only memorabilia from the camp times in the family collection and unique documents. His father, forced into boxing fights in Birkenau, also with his pre-war friend and colleague from the rings, Zbigniew Małecki, reluctantly recalled the time of the camp ordeal, and his boxing career, both pre-war and post-war, is still awaiting a historical study.
Sport in the shadow of extermination
Everything that happened in Auschwitz happened in the shadow of extermination and always in connection with it. Also sport. It is best illustrated in a fragment of a short story by a Polish political prisoner Tadeusz Borowski, included in his post-war memoirs. The story “Ludzie, którzy szli” (The People Who Walked On) describes one of the football games in Auschwitz II-Birkenau in which he participated as a goalkeeper. The location of the football field in Birkenau was bizarre: it was built right next to the ramp, to which transports of people were brought, and near crematorium number III.
Tadeusz Borowski, Ludzie, którzy szli (The People Who Walked On), [in:] Opowiadania wybrane (Selected Stories), Warsaw 1971.
Summary
The exhibition “Sport and athletes in KL Auschwitz” has been prepared mainly on the basis of the archive materials and collections of Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. It can be viewed in block 21 at the former Auschwitz camp until March 31, 2022.