Kaitlynn: Krakenbou

"Ecce Homo," Jan Komski

There is an art exhibit here at the center, “People in the camp hospital at Auschwitz.”  In Auschwitz the hospital block was Block 28, called the Krakenbou.  The exhibit outlines the lives of the patients, and both the prisoner and Nazi hospital staff.  This was a hospital in a death camp which raises the question of if this was a place of healing or life-saving at all.  In many cases it was another place to die.  Selections were made; this way to the gas chambers, this way for meager medical supplies and a chance to come back tomorrow.    Selections were made often from the inpatients as well.  The patients would be loaded onto trucks and taken to the gas chambers.  On some days there would be too many patients; once the space was filled there would still be others who had dropped to the mud outside, where they lay unconscious. 

                Inside the hospital there is the stench of the prisoners who had frostbite and whose fingers were rotting away, or the cries of the prisoners hallucinating from typhus.  One member of the hospital staff recalled that sometimes all he could do was hold the hand of a patient dying from Typhus, who could not be saved. 

                But, could anyone be saved in this place?  This hospital where there is no consideration of medical ethics and where bandages are like toilet paper, and where worms would spawn in wounds when the bandages could not be changed often enough. 

There were staff prisoners who gave their lives to help or did what they could.  One man would sneak a few of those condemned to die back into the hospital.  Another would take useless x-rays, for example of the lungs, in order for the patient to stay.  Wlodek was spoken of as genuinely trying to give life back to the prisoners.  He gave them more than bandages; he tried to re-instill their will to survive.  It is possible that these men saved some lives by giving the patients a chance to live to see liberation, or that for some only served to prolong their suffering.  However, in this place where, “one came here to receive bandages and medicine… and to die…”(Tadeusez Paczula), people did work to save lives even if they had to do so in ways aside from medicine. 

I was only able to view half of the exhibition fully.  There were photographs of each member of the staff who’s story was presented and of the hospital.  Some members of the staff looked young, some looked middle-age, but they all stared back in their striped pajamas.  Strength could be seen in the faces of some, even what seemed to be pride.  There were photographs of documentation for medical records, some false to hide executions, some for records of procedures and number of deaths that day.  The exhibit brought the dead back to a thin life.  While reading the captions of each picture, the story of prisoner staff, the selection process, and that of the Nazis, a general feel for interactions in Block 28 can be had.  The personality of the photographs as well as their content leaves an impression, just as the art does. 

Pictured above is “Ecce Homo,” a piece rich with symbolism (Jan Komski).  Instead of a crown of thorns the prisoner wears his cap, and instead of a purple robe he wears his ragged pajamas draped over his shoulders.  He stands in this painting for us to behold and to reflect.