FREEDOM BREAD. The first comic book about Majdanek
Dorota Niedziałkowska, the State Museum at Majdanek
On 11 May 2019, the State Museum at Majdanek organised the premiere of the Freedom Bread, a comic book based on the accounts of former prisoners of the
KL Lublin concentration camp. The author of the concept and drawings is Paweł Piechnik, an artist from Poznań, who has been working on the project with the State Museum at Majdanek for several years. The edition marks the 75th anniversary of the creation of the Museum.
Paweł Piechnik illustrated 13 camp stories by 11 survivors of the German camp at Majdanek. The survivors include Franz Armbruster, Bluma Szadur-Babic, Zdzisław Badio, Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk, Józef Jeleń, Edward Karabanik, Andrzej Stanisławski, Estera Kerzner, Henryk Nieścior, Miriam Prajs-Fajgenbaum and Jolanta Nowakowska. The memories are derived from the books: Majdanek. The concentration camp on the accounts of prisoners and witnesses (edited by M. Grudzińska); Heaven without Birds Brzosko-Mędryk and Fields of Death by Stanisławski. The artist met Jolanta Nowakowska-Korzeniewska, now a resident of Poznań, in person and learnt that as a girl she was a prisoner of KL Lublin.
What formula did the illustrator adopt? The fourth page of the cover reads: “The term «bread of liberty» was used by prisoners of German concentration camps during the Second World War and meant bread baked in freedom”. Bread, literally and figuratively, is the central theme of the album. The graphic stories are divided into parts: About Hunger, Death and Freedom that precedes and concludes - the wordless, several-page prologue and epilogue.
The origin of the project dates back to 2012 when Paweł Piechnik visited KL Lublin for the first time. He spoke about it to a journalist from a Lublin newspaper as follows:
At the beginning of 2013, I came to Lublin to enquire if the museum would be interested at all in such a publication. They loved the idea. The head of the education department at the time recommended Ms Danuta's book to me. After reading it, I started looking for information about the author on the Internet. I found a radio interview with her. I then asked the editor of the Polish Radio to forward the letter to me. A few days later, I got a phone call. Ms Danuta said she would like to meet me and that she liked the idea of a comic book*.
The illustrator also learned about the possibility of meeting with Mr Zdzisław Badio, who was imprisoned in the camp at the age of 17. The artist points out that personal contact with those who survived helped him to see the subject matter. He dedicated the comic book to “Ms Danuta (1921-2015) ... and all persons of similar fate”.
During the premiere in Lublin, the audience asked the publisher questions about the appropriateness of the chosen medium. Art Spiegelman already transcended this convention in his award-winning Pulitzer Mausie (1992), and comic books are no longer associated exclusively with commercial and light content. The deputy director Wiesław Wysok referred to this during the promotional meeting, emphasising the outstanding artistic values of the drawings
All images in the article: The State Museum at Majdanek