Myth and Reality Concerning the Death of Czeslawa Kwoka

You’ve almost certainly seen this photograph from 1942 of a young female Polish inmate of Auschwitz named Czeslawa Kwoka:

This is in fact a recoloured and touched up version of the original black and white photograph, which is:

Now as you can already see some of the touching up is a little bit on the creative side with the artist having emphasized the alleged swelling and bruising on Kwoka’s face which is entirely based on dubious post-war testimony from a Polish political prisoner of German ancestry named Wilhelm Brasse – he like Saint Maximilian Kolbe had publicly refused Germanization and thus declared themselves politically opposed to the Third Reich - who as one of the Auschwitz photographers claimed that he ‘remembered her in particular’.

To quote Beata Kozaczynska’s conventional account of what occurred:

‘According to Brasse's account, Czeslawa Kwoka was beaten with a whip by one of the female guards - to enforce obedience - before being photographed for the camp's records.

Years later, Brasse recalled: 'I remember this photo of this prisoner in particular because the girl simply looked so young, yes, true, actually disarming... as a girl and as a prisoner, dressed in this headscarf that still looked good, not shabby... Sometimes individual numbers were called out, but in German, and this girl simply did not know what was going on, it was then that the SS woman - I saw this in a few cases - simply whipped her or hit her in the face with a whip (...)'.’ (1)

The problem is that it is extremely unlikely that Brasse would remember Kwoka in particularly precisely because such alleged brutality by the SS was allegedly routine at Auschwitz and other concentration camps, (2) he was taking dozens if not hundreds of inmate admission photographs every day and that such recollections are post-war in an environment of vengeful recrimination and desperate self-exoneration, which provides a motive to find any kind of exculpatory information or testimony in order to escape imprisonment and/or physical harm.

But what do we actually know about Kwoka and how she died in 1943?

‘Deutsche Welle’ offers the following rather breezy conventional narrative:

‘The Auschwitz museum said German authorities had deported Kwoka and her mother, who were not Jewish, from the Zamosc region in southeastern Poland to Auschwitz to create "living space" for Germans in eastern Europe.

A guard had beaten Kwoka shortly before her registration photo was taken, according to Brasse's testimony. Her cut lip can be seen in the photo.

Her mother died three months after they arrived at the camp. Kwoka was murdered with a phenol injection to the heart a few weeks later.’ (3)

While Maria Zalewska offers a more detailed history of Kwoka’s life, brief stay in Auschwitz and her death in March 1943:

‘In January 2017, Amaral chose an original photograph of a 14-year old Polish girl named Czesława Kwoka (camp no. 26947) to be the first instalment of her colorized Auschwitz Birkenau registration photos series. She carefully colorized the black-and-white triptych of Czesława’s Auschwitz registration portraits and shared it via Twitter to an overwhelmingly positive reception. However, it was not until March 2018, when the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum shared Marina’s work on its Twitter and Facebook accounts, that the colorized image of Czesława became viral on social media and the project 'Faces of Auschwitz' was officially born. Emphasizing its educational and didactic mission, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum accompanied Amaral’s colorized image with a brief description of Czesława Kwoka’s life and information on the young girl’s haunting registration images. The Museum’s Twitter and Facebook followers learned that Czesława was one of the 230,000 children and youth deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz-Birkenau; that she arrived in Auschwitz on December 13, 1942 in a transport of 318 women; and that three months later, she was murdered with a phenol injection to the heart.

What is left of Czesława’s short and tragic life are snippets of information that allow us to establish traces of individualized memory. We know that Czesława was born on August 15, 1928 in Wólka Złojecka, a small village in the Polish Zamość region that fell victim to Hitler’s Lebensraum (living space) – the ideological policy of territorial expansion into Eastern Europe. We also know that she was arrested alongside her mother, Katarzyna, who received number 26949 and perished in the camp on February 18, 1943. The three images that Marina Amaral colorized in her studio in Brazil are the last indexical evidence of Czesława’s life, arrest, and brutal death.’ (4)

Zalewska also adds the following addendum regarding the re-colourised inmate admission photographs of Kwoka:

‘Learning that 14-year old Czesława was brutally beat with a leather whip moments before the camp photographer released the camera shutter individualized her story. Color allows the audiences to notice stains of barely coagulated blood on Czesława’s swollen bruised lips and empathize more with a young girl who posed for three distinct shots standard in prison photography: a profile shot, an en face shot, and a headcovering shot with a headscarf.’ (5)

This sounds pretty authentic, doesn’t it?

Kwoka is deported from the Zamosc region of Poland to Auschwitz because she was Polish and is then killed there by the evil Germans using a phenol injection to the heart.

The problems with this narrative are not hard to find and occur as soon as anyone with a reasonable familiarity with the ‘Holocaust’ narrative looks at the re-colourised photograph of Kwoka.

The issue is that red triangle you see.

Red triangles in the German concentration camp system you see referenced ‘political prisoners’ not random Polish deportees so if Kwoka was indeed given a red triangle it was because she was judged to have been a member – or have assisted – the Polish resistance (child members – and even partisans of that age – were not uncommon). (6)

It would also explain nicely why Kwoka and her mother after being interned in the resettlement camp at Zamosc were determined to be ‘KL’ (i.e., concentration camp) category prisoners (the most severe category with others being ‘WE’ (for Germanization), ‘AA’ (transport to the Reich [for war labour]), ‘RD’ (to be assigned to farm labour in Zamosc) and ‘KI’ (Kindertransport [i.e., sent to special facilities for children]). (7)

We can thus immediately see that Kwoka, and her mother must have been judged as some kind of security threat to the Third Reich because of how severe the categorization they were placed in was. This is especially true as they were sent to Auschwitz which was still primarily at this point – although this was fast changing – a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners. (8)

This makes a certain amount of sense when we note that relatively little has been revealed or found about Kwoka’s father suggesting that he may have in fact been part of the Polish resistance or possibly the reason why Kwoka and her mother were treated harshly by the German authorities and moved to a maximum-security concentration camp like Auschwitz.

Now it is also quite possible - and far more likely in my opinion - that Kwoka and her mother were in fact not ‘red triangles’ (i.e., political prisoners) at all but rather ‘blue triangles’ (i.e., emigrants) and were moved to Auschwitz not because they were threat to the security of the Third Reich (or active opponents of it as the ‘red triangle’ status necessarily implies) but rather because it was a convenient and large holding camp with substantial women’s camp facilities and Kwoka and her mother were simply unfit for forced labour – suggested by Kwoka’s slight frame as well as her (and her mother’s) quick death(s) in the harsh mid-war winter of 1942/1943 – and so the Germans chose to send Kwoka and her mother to Auschwitz not to ‘murder them’, but rather as the best way of keeping them safe and healthy given Auschwitz’s extensive medical facilities and the presence of a number of highly competent medical doctors (who had – like Josef Mengele himself – often been declared medically unfit for front-line military service after being injured in combat). (9)

This then immediately changes the entire narrative: doesn’t it?

No longer are the Germans satanic monsters but are rather either sending Kwoka and her mother to Auschwitz in late 1942 because Kwoka and her mother were members of (or associated with) the Polish resistance or because it was the safest and best place for them to live (and get medical treatment), while the German authorities engaged in the Germanization of Zamosc as a future home for the re-located German communities from the Soviet Union and decided where Kwoka and her mother were to be sent to in future (probably a Polish national homeland of a sort).

But what of Kwoka’s famous death by ‘phenol injection’ in March1943?

Well, the problem is you see we actually have Kwoka’s death certificate, which is below:

Now let me draw your attention to three points on this document.

A) It lists the causes of death as ‘cachexia from intestinal catarrh’ (cachexia from gastroenteritis in today’s medical terminology).

B) It lists the date of Kwoka’s death as 12^th March 1943 and states that it occurred at 8:20 A.M.

C) It lists that her death was certified by Dr. Kitt (i.e., Dr. Bruno Kitt) on that date.

There is no indication whatsoever on this rather ordinary death certificate that Kwoka died from a ‘phenol injection’ administered by Bruno Kitt or anyone else. This is simply a post-war supposition based on claims that the Germans were mass murdering Poles with ‘phenol injections’ at Auschwitz and other camps during the Second World War which are themselves unsourced and unsupported accusations from so-called ‘eyewitnesses’.

It is useful here to quote Carlo Mattogno’s lengthy examination of these claims in his 2016 ‘Heathcare in Auschwitz’ and why they are utterly nonsensical.

He writes that:

‘In order to make the story of the “selections” appear more believable, the author of the Chronicle writes of May 5, 1942 (ibidem, p. 206):

“An SS camp doctor orders 3 kilograms of phenol in the camp pharmacy, which is used in the Prisoners’ Infirmary for killing prisoners by injection into the heart.”

Of course, the accusation of these injections is based exclusively on testimonies, but there is yet another, utterly grotesque “proof.” We have seen in Chapter 2 that thousands of surgical procedures were performed in Auschwitz. Phenol is best known as a very effective disinfectant: 211

“This use of phenol goes back to 1867, when Lister introduced its use in Glasgow for surgical procedures.”

There is therefore nothing unusual about the fact that the Prisoners’ Infirmary in Auschwitz have ordered and been supplied with this chemical.

The Auschwitz Museum has a photo of an order for 5 kg of phenol, placed by corpsman SS Unterscharfuhrer Josef Klehr with the camp pharmacy. A syringe was laid across this order, and the combination then photographed. The caption explains that this was all that was necessary “to kill prisoners with phenol” (Dhigoborski/Piper 1999, Vol. II, p. 396).

This document (of course without the syringe) was sent from the Auschwitz Museum to the Frankfurt Court, which accepted it as Evidence Item No. 127. 212

Jerzy Frackiewicz published a letter from the Prisoners’ Infirmary Golleschau “to the pharmacy of CC Auschwitz, Upper Silesia” of February 26, 1943 in which among drugs and packing materials “5 liters of phenol” were ordered (Frackiewicz 1966, p. 72). As already mentioned above, the ordering of phenol for the requirements of the operating rooms of this camp was more than justified.

Regardless, the Auschwitz Museum has perverted the life-saving disinfectant phenol into a “proof’ of killings!

Danuta Czech appeared during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial on its 138th main session day (February 19, 1965) as witness for the plaintiff During this trial, the defendant Klehr was accused of being either the perpetrator of or an accomplice to the murder of prisoners by means of injection with phenol. Klehr’s lawyer Gerhard Gollner asked the prosecutors for the source of these alleged murders. The author of the Chronicle —at the time the accuracy of the first German-language edition was contested— answered in Polish:

“So, until December [ 1942] in a registry, in the so-called Death Book, in the registry [of the morgue] appeared the notation ‘Szpila’ next to selections.”

“Szpilka” (there’s no such thing as ‘szpila’) translates to Polish as “awl” or “pin.” This term was interpreted by Czech as the needle of a syringe, and so presented as evidence for lethal injections, even though the Polish term for needle in general is “igla” and for that of a syringe is “igla [do zastrzykow].”

Actually, the term “szpilka” appears nowhere in the registry in question, the Morgue Registry (and not Death Book). The term appears only in a secret “duplicate” of this document produced by members of the resistance, which Czech published in facsimile with the following caption (1960, p. 119):

“Material of the resistance movement. List of ID numbers of deceased prisoners compiled by members of the resistance based on the Morgue Registry. The entry ‘szpil[k]a’ = needle next to some numbers indicates that these prisoners were killed by injection of phenol directly into the heart as a result of a selection conducted in the Prisoners ' Infirmary on Aug. 13, 1942.”

Immediately after her perjurious testimony in Frankfurt, Czech said: 214 “After December 15, after December 12, there are no further entries of this kind.”

Nonetheless the Chronicle avers further selections for alleged phenol injections. The first is entered for December 16, 1942 (1989, p. 361). What is the source for this “selection”? It is a simple methodical trick. Czech proceeds from the unsupported assertion that the murders of prisoners by phenol injections into the heart were initiated in Block 28. From this, Czech implies that whenever corpses came from Block 28 after December 15, 1942, they had been killed by this means, despite the fact that most of the previously mentioned “Szpilka” annotations do not pertain to arrivals from

Block 28. Of the 60 “Szpilka” entries in the above-mentioned facsimile 58 pertain to prisoner corpses from other blocks (13, 20, 21, 25, 42 and from the outpatient clinic) and only 2 (two!) from Block 28.

For such “selections,” which are supposed to have happened between the 5th and the 14th of January 1943, the Morgue Registry is Czech’s only “source” (ibidem, p. 377-383). For example, Czech writes for January 11, 1943 (ibidem, p. 381):

“The SS camp doctor conducts a selection in Block 28 of the Prisoners’ Infirmary in which he picks out 55 prisoners who have no prospects of early recovery. These prisoners are killed on the same day with phenol injections.”

In the same spirit, Irena Strzelecka writes with reference to one of her own articles (1999b, p. 397):

“Up to April 1943, between a few or several dozens of prisoners were killed with phenol almost every day in the Main Camp of Auschwitz. Just in August, in September, in November and in December 1943, 2467 prisoners were killed with phenol injections. ”

Meanwhile she insisted that “physically exhausted prisoners” also were taken into Block 28 (which previously carried the number 20) allegedly in order to kill them with phenol injections (ibidem, p. 395). This alleged practice of killing terminally ill patients, who would die within a few days in any case, could be seen as a valid form of euthanasia, in order to spare the terminally ill unnecessary suffering. It is possible that some such cases in fact occurred. The most plausible hypothesis is, rather, that Block 28 re¬ ally was the “anteroom of death” in the sense that the incurably ill, who had but days to live, were transferred there. This would also explain the relatively high rate of deaths for prisoners in this block.

One last major problem remains, which orthodox Holocaust historiography has failed to address: Were the alleged prisoner murders by means of lethal injection part of the overall “special treatment”? If so, why were these prisoners not killed in the supposed gas chambers? Alternatively, if these killings were part of the specific “Special Treatment 14 f 13,” then the question arises, why is no trace to be found of any such treatment in the abundant documentation of deaths in Auschwitz? Under what category were such killings reported to Berlin? Moreover, by what means and ac¬ cording to what order were the “Special Treatment 14 f 13” converted into a general “special treatment,” that is, to those “selections” as they were supposed to have been institutionalized in the framework of the purported extermination of the Jews? In addition, how would such an order be recon¬ ciled with the guidelines of the WVHA of June 24, 1942 as well as with the comprehensive practice of registration and medical treatment of inmates incapable of working? All these questions remain so far unanswered.

In summarizing, it is to be stated that the orthodox Holocaust theory of the origins of the “selections” of registered prisoners in Auschwitz is but a patchwork quilt of guesswork that lacks any historical-documentary foundation. These guesses are mutually contradictory—such as the supposed “selection” of July 28, 1941—or provably false, such as that of May 4, 1942. Because these inconsistent and/or false guesses are the two most important elements of the “mechanism of extermination” sworn to by Piper, the purported connection between the “selections” of registered prisoners for the supposed gas chambers and the initial “Special Treatment 14 f 13” collapses.’ (10)

In summary of Mattogno’s point here: phenol was actually a commonly used painkiller (and still is in some places) and is especially effective in the treatment of chronic pain where the spasticity of muscles is a consideration. (11) There is no evidence other than unsupported post-war ‘survivor testimony’ that the Germans were killing inmates with phenol injections let alone on a large scale; after all, wouldn’t that have been far better and more efficiently achieved using the so-called ‘gas chambers of Auschwitz’ rather than using scarce medical resources and a potent painkiller in the middle of a war (and just after Goebbels’ ‘Declaration of Total War’ of 18th February 1943) to kill ‘selected inmates’ instead?

It makes little sense: doesn’t it?

But also ask yourself what was Kwoka’s condition listed as by Kitt?

Cachexia.

What is cachexia?

Irreversible muscle loss (i.e., you waste away) caused by another condition such as an infection like intestinal catarrh (Gastroenteritis) such as Kitt lists, but he might have actually been mistaken and Kwoka was suffering from gastrointestinal cancer. (12)

So Kitt injected Kwoka with a phenol – which in addition to being a potent painkiller is also an anti-inflammatory which is part of most treatments of cachexia – (13) which was not to ‘murder her’ but in fact was being used by Kitt to relieve the pain that she was in and try to treat the cachexia that was killing her.

Indeed, the fact that Kwoka almost certainly had cachexia before she turned up at Auschwitz is indicated by how thin and lacking in muscle tone, she is in her famous inmate admission photos – this usually manifests itself in trite moralistic comments about how ‘young she looks’ (which is common in such cases of children/teenagers afflicted with wasting diseases such as cachexia) – which now we can see show a deeply unwell young Polish woman; who was likely sent to Auschwitz not because the Germans wanted to murder her but because she was deeply unwell and – as with Maximillian Kolbe two years before – Auschwitz had excellent doctors attached to it – if in doubt look up the impressive list of qualifications and backgrounds of the Auschwitz medical staff in general - with modern medicines and medical equipment so they were best placed to help Kwoka (and presumably her mother who died in February 1943 under similar circumstances) but were unable to save her life and she died at 8:20 A.M. on 12^th March 1943 at Auschwitz despite the efforts of SS doctor Bruno Kitt to save her.

That is the real truth about death of Czeslawa Kwoka.

References

(1) https://kuryerpolski.us/en/Page/View/szpilowanie-dzieci-z-zamojszczyzny

(2) For example, see: https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-camps/case-study-auschwitz-birkenau/conditions-inside-auschwitz-birkenau-from-1942/

(3) https://www.dw.com/en/colorized-photo-of-girl-at-auschwitz-strikes-chord-on-social-media/a-43033478

(4) Maria Zalewska, 2018, ‘‘Faces of Auschwitz’: Learning History in Color’, Memoria, Vol. 10, pp. 28-29

(5) Ibid., p. 19

(6) For example, see: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/women-and-children-1944-warsaw-uprising and https://www.britishpoles.uk/the-untold-story-of-scouts-in-the-polish-resistance-during-wwii/

(7) http://dompomnik.pl/podmenu,5,3,historia_dzieci_zamojszczyzny.html

(8) For example, see: https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/categories-of-prisoners/poles-in-auschwitz/

(9) On this see Carlo Mattogno, 2016, ‘Healthcare in Auschwitz: Medical Care and Special Treatment of Registered Inmates’, 1^st Edition, Castle Hill: Uckfield, pp. 42-59

(10) Ibid., pp. 99-102

(11) For example, see: https://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/health-information/phenol-injections-treat-pain; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK525978/; https://mstrust.org.uk/a-z/phenol

(12) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14571093/

(13) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9657920/; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043661823001688; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311932.2015.1131412