Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) – On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops entered the city of Auschwitz, coming upon the concentration camp; they knocked down the walls and freed the survivors that were left, nearly 7,000. That day would come to be celebrated as the “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust,” in memory of the end of the Shoah – the extermination of the Jewish people, in which nearly six million died, in addition to those who were tortured and persecuted – and thus, the end of the racial laws.
On this day, among the many initiatives that went on throughout the world, Rome hosted the presentation of the book entitled: “And I am afraid of my dreams” (published by Hippocrene Books). The book's author is Dr. Wanda Poltawska, a Polish medical doctor and member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical Council for the Family, who for health reasons had to send her daughter Ania to present the book in her place. Dr. Poltawska was takedn to a concentration camp in Ravensbruck when she was 20 years old, as a result of her activity in the Polish resistance effort. Her story is that of a young woman: Wanda, in fact, began writing down her memories as soon as she left the concentration camp, where she stayed for nearly 4 years. She felt the need to write, as the memories of the camp did not leave her in peace day or night. She finally managed to sleep without nightmares, after finishing her “diary.”
In those four years Wanda, like the other women who were in the camp with her, was subject to psuedo-medical experiments and treatments, designed to mutilate the people. They were referred to as “rabbits” (in fact, a rabbit appears on the book's cover). “In the end, death awaited us all,” Poltawska writes, recalling the beauty of the landscape – the sky that they could see during the day - and the solidarity that existed among the deportees, were the only motivations that helped them to survive the horrors, and come to describe the camp as a school of life. It was in these inhumane conditions, she says, that she understood who she wanted to be and what path she wanted to take.
“As we were sure of never coming back, we did something surprising: we wrote a will.” In the will, we called for the foundation of a center – which sure enough stands today in Ravensbruck, where the youth could visit and not forget. As her daughter, Ania, tells Fides, after reading several passages of the book selected by her mother, “until she wrote the book, my mother did not make many references to her experience in the camp. In reading the book, I have been able to enter into this experience and many of the details.” She added: “Now my mother speaks with serenity, although some things still bother her, like Christmas carols, that bring back memories of those moments that were not at all happy ones.”
Her proximity to death and pain made Wanda Poltawska a champion for life, as is evident in her constant commitment to fighting abortion, and a woman of great faith and love for the Church, as is shown in her deep friendship with John Paul II. The awareness of those atrocities cannot be lost, and in order for the horrors not to be forgotten or scandalously denied, this memory should be passed on to the youngest generations. This is the message that we can discover in this book, which has now been translated into English and German. (PC) (Agenzia Fides 28/1/2009)
