Objects

Entlausung – odwszenie (Entlausung – delousing) (Gypsys body)

Siemaszko, Olga (1911-2000)

Contour drawing of the heads of two dead female prisoners, one of whom is Romani. This is one of the closing illustrations to the story "Entlausung – odwszenie" (Entlausung – Delousing) by Maria Zarębińska-Broniewska in the edition in the book "Ręka umarłej" (Hand of a Deceased). At the time the object was donated to the collection, it was on a backing and in a passe-partout, on which, in pencil in the lower left-hand corner, the illustrator had written the number of the page on which the drawing was to be printed – 'Page 49'. It actually ended up on this page.

The story shows, as the title suggests, the delousing of prisoners in the Auschwitz camp, after which the women became very ill. However, three of them, despite high fever (40 degrees Celsius), were forced to work. The illustration directly refers to the last sentences of the piece:

“One of them was a dancing Gypsy woman.

A few days later, my friends who carried corpses showed us her naked, thin, brown body".


Przemysław Kaniecki

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Information about the object
Author / creator
Siemaszko, Olga (1911-2000)
Object type
drawing
Time of creation / dating
20th century
Place of creation
Warszawa (mazovian province)
Technique
drawn
Material
paper
ink
Keywords
Copyright status
contact the Museum
Owner
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Identification number
MPOLIN-M1615
Localization
The object is not currently on display
The purchase of work for the POLIN Museum's collection was subsidized by funds from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Fund for Promotion of Culture - a state purpose fund, program: National Collection of Contemporary Art.