|
"Chleb wolnosciowy", or "The bread of Freedom",
combines the accounts of 11 prisoners at the Majdanek camp in
eastern Poland, where 80,000 people, mainly Jews, are estimated
to have died. In all, more than 3 million Polish Jews perished
in the Holocaust.
"I wanted it to tell real stories, just like ...how today we
also often don't want to see things that concern us. Similarly
in those days, the world didn't want to see what was happening
in the camps," the book's creator Pawel Piechnik told Reuters.
The phrase "Chleb wolnosciowy" was used by camp prisoners to
refer to bread baked outside, evoking their yearning for home.
"(The book) shows the bestial conditions in which the captives
were held, but it also shows that even in the face of hunger,
they were able to demonstrate empathy, cooperation (and)
compassion," said Agnieszka Kowalczyk-Nowak, press officer of
the State Museum at Majdanek.
The museum was founded in November 1944, just months after the
Nazis liquidated the camp, on the outskirts of Lublin, as Soviet
forces neared.
Fifteen placards with pages from the book have been erected in
Lublin's city center, and the graphic novel format caught the
eye of young passers-by.
"People need to be reached by means of images... Text might not
be interesting to (the younger generation)," said 18-year-old
high school graduate Paulina Szyszko.
"...Maybe it has the potential to stay in their memory and reach
them deeper in its own way."
(Reporting by Robert Furmanczuk; writing by Alan Charlish;
editing by John Stonestreet)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
