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In an emotional ceremony held in Warsaw, jewelry belonging to Stanislawa Wasilewska, a woman captured by Nazi German troops in 1944, was returned to her family. Wasilewska, who was 42 at the time of her capture during the Warsaw Uprising, was initially sent to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück and later transferred to the Neuengamme forced labor camp, where she was assigned prisoner number 7257 and stripped of her valuables.
Eighty years later, the Arolsen Archives in Germany, which maintains records on Nazi persecution, returned her confiscated jewelry, including two amber crucifixes, a piece of a golden bracelet, and a gold wristwatch inscribed with the initials KW and the date 7-3-1938, believed to mark her marriage to Konstanty Wasilewski. This return was part of a ceremony in which families of 12 Polish inmates from Nazi concentration camps were also reunited with their relatives’ belongings.
Many relatives were moved to tears upon receiving these heirlooms, with more such ceremonies planned for the future. Among those attending, Malgorzata Koryś, Wasilewska’s great-granddaughter, expressed the significance of the event, stating it shed light on a largely unknown family history.
Wasilewska was eventually liberated by the Red Cross and taken to Sweden after Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945. She later returned to Poland and is buried near Warsaw.
In another instance, Adam Wierzbicki, 29, received items that belonged to his great-grandfather’s sisters, Zofia Strusińska and Józefa Skórka. Captured together and sent to the same camps as Wasilewska, their jewelry, including two rings, a gold chain, and a gold tooth filling, was returned.
The Arolsen Archives, which holds information on approximately 17.5 million people persecuted by the Nazis, initiated a project titled “Warsaw Uprising: 100 Untold Stories,” aiming to return the last possessions of camp inmates to their families. Archive director Floriane Azoulay stressed the personal value of these items, emphasizing that they were among the last personal belongings inmates had before being imprisoned and reduced to mere numbers.
Volunteer Manuela Golc has played a pivotal role in locating more than 100 Polish families, often providing previously unknown information about their relatives. Golc’s on-the-ground efforts include leaving waterproof notes on graves to reach out to potential family members.
The Warsaw Uprising, a significant resistance effort by the Home Army to liberate the Polish capital from Nazi control ahead of the advancing Soviet troops, lasted 63 days and resulted in the deaths of around 200,000 people, with the surviving residents expelled and the city largely destroyed.
During the German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945, the country lost approximately 6 million residents, including half of its Jewish population, and suffered extensive material damage.