Concentration camp uniform is handed to new Holocaust centre
HE WAS one of the lucky ones. Mieczyslaw Kowalski, a prisoner of the Nazis at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, survived to tell his story.
Kowalski was just 16 when he was put to work as a slave labourer, a few months before American forces liberated the camp.
He was repatriated to Poland but his uniform, along with the eating and drinking bowls with which he was issued, survived as evidence of what had gone on.
In September, they will go on display at Yorkshire’s new Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre, and yesterday they were handed to curators at Huddersfield University, where the unit will be based, by a woman whose father may have known their former owner.
Lilian Black, chairman of the Leeds-based Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association, negotiated the loan of objects illustrating the daily life of Holocaust victims, during a visit to the memorial sites of two former concentration camps.
Her late father, Eugene, who survived the Holocaust to build a post-war life in England, was at Mittelbau-Dora at the same time as Kowalski.
The Germans used their forced labourers there to help build the V2 rocket, the first long-range guided missile.
Ms Black said: “It is critical that we preserve our legacy and make it accessible for future generations to know how thin the layers of civilisation are.”
Emma King, director of the Huddersfield centre, which has been supported with £600,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, said: “It is amazing to have such precious and original artefacts from the original camp settings, to be able to actually see the reality of daily life in the camps.
“It was a deeply moving and emotional experience to see and touch these items which belonged to a human being who survived and donated them. They add and enrich the documentary evidence we already have, of testimonies, photographs and recorded minutes of meetings planning the Final Solution.”