This year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, located near the Polish city of Auschwitz. Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was a system of camps, combined all possible Nazi practices of humiliation of human dignity and the introduction of a misanthropic philosophy towards the population of the occupied territories - not only Poland, but also all countries under the rule of Hitler's Germany. Created as a concentration camp, Auschwitz served as a forced labor camp, a prisoner of war camp, and was also the largest of the six death camps, the main victims of which were Jews and Roma. The total martyrology of this man-made hell is more than 1 million people. For many generations, including us, contemporaries, Auschwitz has become a visual symbol of the evil and boundless cruelty that gripped humanity during World War II.

Almost immediately after the liberation and the public disclosure of the scale of Nazi crimes, the camp was associated with the city on the outskirts of which it was located. From the first journalistic essays, in the references in the investigative documentation prepared for the International Tribunal for Nazi criminals, the name “Auschwitz Camp” or simply “Auschwitz” came into circulation. Moreover, over time, Auschwitz-camp displaced from the general understanding its original meaning – the name of an ancient Polish city, the first mentions of which date back to the beginning of the 12th century.

That is why I would like to mention one of the residents of Auschwitz, who with his life personified the fate of thousands of Jews in the city - a city whose Jewish history we remember mainly in the context of the five years of operation of the Nazi “death factory”.

It is difficult to specify the exact year when the first Jews arrived in this town in Lesser Poland. In any case, it happened no later than the 16th century. It was around this time that the first wooden synagogue was built. Sources from the 17th century repeatedly mention the existence of a Jewish cemetery. As in many cities and towns in the region, the Jews of Auschwitz specialized in crafts, trade, and created establishments providing various services. A kind of calling card of the Jewish economy of Auschwitz in the 19th century was the production of alcoholic beverages using water from local springs.

On the eve of World War II, Jews not only lived in the city, but constituted most of its inhabitants, as the share of Jewish presence reached almost half of the total number.

Auschwitz was occupied by German troops on September 4, 1939. In October of the same year, the city was incorporated into the Third Reich. In April 1940, the construction of a concentration camp began, the core of which was the former Polish military barracks on the outskirts of the city. The first forced laborers who equipped the Auschwitz concentration camp (later Auschwitz I) were Jews: during May-June 1940, from 200 to 300 people were involved in the work every day.

In general, from October 1939 to August 1940, Auschwitz became a city to which the Nazis forcibly relocated Jews from nearby smaller towns and villages. In March of the following year, most of them, as well as some of the Polish townspeople, were evicted, and their homes were occupied by Germans – employees of the IG Farben chemical enterprise. Incidentally, one of the branches of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the so-called Auschwitz III camp, was located near the newly established enterprise, whose prisoners served as free and unenforced labor for the occupiers. Most of the Jews evicted from Auschwitz ended up in the two largest ghettos in Eastern Upper Silesia - in the cities of Sosnowiec and Będzin. Among them was Szymon Kluger - the second child in the family of the Auschwitz melamed Simcha Kluger. In addition to Shimon, there were eight other brothers and sisters in the family.

At the beginning of the German occupation, the 14-year-old boy had just finished the first grade of secondary school. Together with part of his family, he ended up in the Bedzin ghetto, where he remained until 1943. After the liquidation of the ghetto, a new, no less terrifying camp period began in the young man's life.

Blechhammer, Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, and in between the inhuman trials of staging, grueling labo r, and the constant threat of death. However, prisoner number 179539 was lucky, if that is what one can call the situation of surviving while simultaneously losing most of his family.

Through the mediation of the International Red Cross in 1945, S. Kluger emigrated to Sweden, where he settled in the village of Saleboda and worked as a mechanic in a local laundry.

In 1962, he decided to take a paradoxical step, given the circumstances at the time, to return to his hometown. Most of the Jews of Auschwitz who had survived the Holocaust initially returned home. However, the oppressive atmosphere of post-war anti-Semitism, combined with the feeling of lack of freedom brought about by the political regime of “people's” Poland, forced most of them to leave the city of their childhood and youth. As of 1961, there were no Jews left in Auschwitz.

However, this did not discourage Szymon. Despite the protests of his family, he literally returned to his parents' house and settled in its basement, which was more like a cellar. S. Kluger got a job at a local chemical plant and led the life of an ordinary Polish citizen. With one “But”. Apparently, he never forgot about his Jewish origin. Moreover, he tried to do everything to maintain a kind of continuity between the generations of Jews who lived in Auschwitz for many centuries. Or perhaps he cherished the hope of returning to the feelings of his childhood: traditional holidays, the bustling atmosphere of Jewish streets... Next to Kluger's house was the only synagogue that had survived the occupation. Shimon took care of its condition and lit Shabbat candles near its wall every Friday. The desire to preserve the memory of the Jewish Auschwitz did not leave the man even when he could not work, and his living space was limited to his own home. The Polish People's Republic had passed into history, but the fate of the building intended for communication with the Almighty continued to worry Shimon.

In 1995, the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation was founded in New York with the aim of establishing a Jewish cultural and educational center in Auschwitz. In 1998, the synagogue building, which at that time housed a warehouse, was transferred to the Jewish community in Bielsko-Biały, one of the few Jewish communities that existed in the region at that time. Its activists, with the support of benefactors, initiated the restoration of the shrine. Unfortunately, Shimon Kluger, who died on May 26, 2000, was never able to enter the synagogue, which opened its doors three months after his death.

The house of S. Kluger was donated by his siblings to the Jewish Center in Auschwitz. Through joint efforts, the building was renovated, and since 2014 it has housed a café – a venue for various exhibitions, educational and outreach events. The house also houses the shop of the Jewish Museum of Auschwitz, whose permanent exhibition is in the building of the restored synagogue.

Now, with the distance of time, we can see how the dream of the last Jew of Auschwitz has become a reality, albeit partially. The voices of the city's Jewish past, its traditions and culture are gradually returning to the space of a city with over five hundred years of history.

Yehor Vradii