Let us not forget 9 year old Henio
Zytomirski, every year on March 25 and November 9. He was murdered at the age
of 9 in a gas chamber at Majdanek concentration camp, during the German Nazi
occupation of Poland. We made him one of The 82 murdered children of Unit 1012 and Janusz Korczak’s 190+ children where we will not
forget him.
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Henio Zytomirski
(25 March 1933 to 9 November 1942)
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INTERNET
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henio_Zytomirski
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Henio
Zytomirski
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Born
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25
March 1933
Lublin, Poland |
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Died
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9
November 1942 (aged 9)
Majdanek concentration camp |
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Cause of death
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Murdered
in gas chamber
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Known for
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The
addressee of the "Letters to Henio" project. One of the heroes of
"The Primer" exhibition at the Majdanek Museum.
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Henio Zytomirski (Polish: Henio Żytomirski, Hebrew: הניו ז'יטומירסקי; 25 March 1933 – 9 November 1942) was a Polish Jew born in Lublin,
Poland who was murdered at the age of 9 in a gas chamber at Majdanek
concentration camp, during the German Nazi
occupation of Poland. Henio became an icon of the Holocaust, not
only in Lublin but all over Poland. His life story became a part of the
curriculum which is learnt in the general education system in Poland. The
"Letters to Henio" project is held in Lublin since 2005. Henio
Zytomirski is one of the heroes of "The Primer" permanent exhibition
at barrack 53 of the Majdanek Museum,
an exhibition which is dedicated to children who were in the camp.
Biography
Henio Zytomirski was born in the city
of Lublin in
Poland, the firstborn son of Sara (née Oksman) and Shmuel Zytomirski. Henio and
his parents lived at 3rd Szewska Street in Lublin. His grandparents, Chaya (née
Melamed) and Ephraim Zytomirski, lived at 22nd Lubartowska Street. On 1
September 1937 Henio began attending "Trachter" kindergarten in
Lublin. On 5 July 1939 he was photographed for the last time at the entrance to
PKO Bank, located at 64 Krakowska Avenue (Polish: Krakowskie
Przedmieście)
in Lublin. On 1 September 1939 Henio was supposed to start first grade, but
that day, Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
With the establishment of the German Nazi
reign in Poland, a Judenrat of 24 members was set up in Lublin. Shmuel, Henio's
father, a teacher by profession and Chairman of the Poale Zion
movement in Lublin, was appointed by the Judenrat to be the manager of the post
office at 2nd Kowalska Street. This role allowed him, apparently, to make
contact with the Polish underground (which delivered him
forbidden information and news); to correspond with his young brother, Yehuda
(Leon) Zytomirski, who had already immigrated to Palestine in 1937; to be in contact with Yitzhak
Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin from the Jewish resistance in Warsaw
Ghetto and with Hashomer Hatzair people in Vilnius; and to
correspond with Nathan Schwalb, Director of the Jewish
Agency offices and Hehalutz movement in Geneva, who aided
hundreds of youth movement activists in the Nazi occupation territories.
By order from the Nazi German governor
of Distrikt Lublin,
all 34,149 Jews who then lived in the city were forced to move to the ghetto that was
established in Lublin on 24 March 1941. In March 1941, the Zytomirski family
moved to 11th Kowalska Street in the Lublin
Ghetto. Henio's grandfather, Ephraim Zytomirski, died of typhus on 10
November 1941. Before his death he asked to be buried near the cemetery gate in
order to be the first to witness the liberation of Lublin. The tombstone on his
grave was smashed and destroyed in 1943 when the Nazis liquidated the new
Jewish cemetery in Lublin.
On 16 March 1942, the transports
in freight trains from Lublin District to extermination camps began as part of "Operation Reinhard". Every day about 1,400 people were sent to camps. The German
police and SS people supervised the transports. Selection of
Jews took place in the square near the municipal slaughterhouse. The deportees
were led on foot from the Great Synagogue (named after the Maharshal),
which served as a gathering place for the deportees. Aged and sick people were
shot on the spot. The rest were sent to the extermination camps, mainly to Belzec. Hundreds of Jews were shot dead
in the woods on the outskirts of Lublin. A total of about 29,000 Lublin Jews
were exterminated during March and April 1942. Among them were Henio's mother
and grandmother, as well as two of his aunts – Esther and Rachel – who were
murdered in Belzec's gas chambers shortly after arrival.
On 14 April 1942 the transports
ended. Henio and his father survived the selections
of spring 1942, apparently thanks to a work permit (J-Auswiess) that his father
had. Along with rest of the Jews who stayed alive in Lublin, they were
transferred to another smaller ghetto that was built in Majdan Tatarski (a suburb
of Lublin). Between 7,000 and 8,000 people entered this ghetto, although many
of them did not have work permits. On 22 April the SS held another selection:
about 2,500 to 3,000 people without work permits were taken first to Majdanek and
from there to Krepiec
forest which is about 15 km from Lublin. There they were shot to death.
On 9 November 1942, the final
liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto in Majdan Tatarski occurred. About 3,000
people were sent to the extermination camp Majdanek,
including Henio and his father Shmuel. Old people and children were sent
immediately to the gas chamber. Nine-year-old Henio was also in this
group.
Henio's father, Shmuel Zytomirski, was
transferred to a forced labor camp outside Majdanek, where the
prisoners built a sports stadium for the SS. From the camp he managed to send a few
last letters to his brother Yehuda in Palestine and to the Zionist delegation in İstanbul.
On 3 November 1943 the massive extermination of all remaining Jewish prisoners
in Majdanek and the other camps in Lublin District took place. This liquidation
is known as "Aktion Erntefest", which in German means
"Harvest Festival". On that day 18,400 Jews were murdered in
Majdanek. At the end of this killing operation, Lublin District was declared Judenrein,
i.e., "clean of Jews". Surprisingly, Shmuel Zytomirski survived also
this mass extermination. This is known because he sent a letter from Lublin by
courier to the Jewish delegation in İstanbul
on 6 January 1944. It is not clear where this letter was sent from. The city of
Lublin was captured by the Soviet Red Army on 22 July 1944. It is known for certain that
Shmuel Zytomirski did not survive the Holocaust,
but his cause, date, and place of death are unknown.
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Henio Zytomirski's Facebook profile
picture Photo: AP
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Letters
to Henio
The "Letters to Henio"
project began in the city of Lublin in 2005 as part of an activity to preserve
and reconstruct the city's Jewish heritage. A local cultural center,
Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre, organizes this
educational activity. According to center's director, Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, the
main idea of the project is as follows: "It is unacceptable to remember
the faces and names of 40,000 people. Remember one. A shy smile, white shirt
with a collar, colored shorts, side haircut, striped socks… Henio."
Every year on 19 April, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day in Poland, pupils and citizens of Lublin are asked to
send letters addressed to Henio Zytomirski at 11th
Kowalska Street, the last known address of Henio in Lublin. Thousands of
letters were sent to Henio, including paintings,
personal letters and exciting stories of 12- to 13-year-old
children. At the entrance to the PKO Bank, the place where Henio's last picture
was taken, a special mailbox is placed every year for sending the letters to
Henio. Lublin postal
Authorities have to deal with full sacks of letters which are sent back to
senders with the post seal: "Unknown Addressee". Later in the day,
participants follow a walking tour by foot and visit the addresses where Henio
had lived at: 3 Szewska Street, 11 Kowalska Street (in the Ghetto).
The walk ends with a silent prayer at the foot of a street lamp, which is the last remnant
of the pre-war Jewish town of Lublin serving as a memorial
candle. In 2007 the passengers by the bank were asked to write letters to
Henio on the spot. The response was extraordinary. The national Polish press
dedicates a lot of reportages to this project. Since 2005 Henio Zytomirski has
become an icon of the Holocaust,
not only in Lublin but all over Poland. Today his life story is a part of the curriculum
which is learnt in the general education system in Poland. School newspapers
tell about him and try to understand the meaning of the Holocaust through his
short life story.
The Primer
"The
Primer" (in Polish: Elementarz)
permanent exhibition in Majdanek is exhibited
in barrack 53, and it is dedicated to the children who were in the camp. This exhibition was created by Tomasz
Pietrasiewicz, the director of The Grodzka Gate – Theater NN Center. The
purpose of this educational project is to demonstrate the fate of the children
who were imprisoned in Death camp. The
idea of the project was born when one of the survivors noticed that Majdanek Museum does not inform the
visitors and does not show them the lives of the children in the camp. It was
hard for pupils who visited Majdanek museum to identify themselves emotionally
with the things which happened in Majdanek. By this exhibition the Majdanek
museum enables pupils to turn the knowledge which is learnt in school
into real education that concerns what had happened in "The Camp
World".
The
exhibition shows the fate of four children, ex-prisoners in Majdanek Camp: Two Jewish
children, Halina Birenbaum and Henio Zytomirski; a Belarusian
child, Piotr Kiryszczenko; and a Polish girl, Janina Buczek. One of them was
killed in the camp – Henio Zytomirski. The exhibition presents in a symbolic way also
a fifth fate which was likely the fate of Jewish girls in the camp. We learn
this only from what was written on a slip of paper which was found in Majdanek,
hidden in a girl's shoe:
"There was once Elżunia,who was dying all alone,In Majdanek was her father,And in Auschwitz was her mum".
The girl,
Elżunia, who wrote the note was nine years old, and she was singing the song to
herself to a melody of a famous Polish nursery
rhyme (in Polish: "Z popielnika na Wojtusia
iskiereczka mruga"). In the exhibition the visitors can hear both versions
of the song.
The
exhibition is divided into two parts: "The Primer World" and
"The Camp World".
It is
"The Primer" that teaches children how to
organize and describe the world. It contains the simplest social categories
that form the basis for relations between a human being and the world that
surrounds him. A unique characteristic of "The Primer" lies in presenting a world without cruelty and evil. The children
were "dragged out" from this simple and naive world of "The
Primer" and forcibly thrown into the "Camp World". This world
requires a completely different "Primer" – the Death camp
Primer.
The
"Camp World" that children were brought into was completely different
from the world pictured in "The Primer". Camp life brought entirely
new experience, created new concepts for children such as: hunger, selection, gas
chamber – as well as daily contact with evil and death. Living
in the camp caused distortion, deformed and destroyed the
children's psyche. Along the walls of "The Primer World" there are
pre-war primers in Polish, Belarusian and Hebrew.
Four children's names are written in white chalk on the school board, those
whose fates are presented in the exhibition. A hum of a school corridor is
sounded in the room, and one can hear screams and pushing shouts of children
during a school break.
In
"The Camp World" there is a symbolic “Camp Primer”.
The following words are described in it: appeal, barrack, gas
chamber, crematorium, camp, selection, transport.
Each word is expressed by the memories of survivors. To emphasize the
importance of the strength of these terms, the terms were written and burned
out on clay boards.
The boards are put on concrete plates. All texts (written and spoken) presented
in this part of the exhibition are memories of the
prisoners. There are no comments, historic studies, etc. There are only testimonies
of the witnesses.
Four
concrete water
wells erected in the barrack symbolize the fate of each of the four
children. The wells go through the floor down to earth under the barrack. When
one leans into the well, one can hear from the depths of the earth a story
narrated by an adult about their stay in camp when they were a child. The well
commemorating Henio Zytomirski is silent– he did not survive the camp.
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