Letter From Auschwitz

A construction crew working nearby the once notorious concentration camp Auschwitz discovered a letter written by seven people kept in the camp during 1944. The workers were renovating a cellar of a college building and found a bottle with a letter inside that was hidden in a wall. The letter was made of a scrap of a cement bag, said Monika Bartosz, college spokeswoman.

The letter contains the date, September 9, 1944, the names of the prisoners, their hometowns and camp numbers. Six people from Poland and one from France were between 18 and 20 years of age. Jaroslaw Mensfelt, Auschwitz museum spokesman said that two of them survived the horror but he had no more information.

“They were young people who were trying to leave some trace of their existence behind them”, he added.

The experts have taken a thorough look at the letter and verified its authenticity. In May it will be displayed at the Auschwitz Museum.

The camp was set up by Nazis in 1940. Mostly Jews were kept there but also Gypsies and non-Jewish Poles, as it was Hitler’s terrifying idea of creating a pure Aryan race and getting rid of the unwanted. More than a million people died there - in gas chambers, from starvation, forced labor. The camp was liberated on January 27, 1945 by Soviet army.