In spring 1945, around seven thousand women, survivors of the Nazi concentration camp in Ravensbrück, came to Sweden as part of a Swedish-Danish rescue operation. Among them was Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz, a Polish-Jewish artist, lithographer and illustrator.
She brought with her a sketchbook of drawings produced during her imprisonment in the camp as well as a number of completed works, made on bits of newspapers, the reverse of camp administration’s printed materials and wrapping paper. These had been saved by her and her fellow prisoners. It will now be possible to view selected parts of these artworks in the book, Pictures from Hell: Visual testimonies of women's concentration camp experience.
“The book contains around 70 reproductions, drawings and watercolours produced in Ravensbrück. These works are of great historical significance and depict the reality of the concentration camp. The book also includes an extensive introduction as well as a research-based discussion about works of art as witness statements about crimes against human rights,” says Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, professor of East and Central European Studies and deputy dean at the Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, who co-authored the book with Barbara Czarnecka from the University of Białystok in Poland.
Captured in the Nazi’s grip
Barbara Törnquist-Plewa’s interest in Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz’ fate was awakened thanks to Dr Barbara Czarnecka when she came to Lund to research the Ravensbrück Archive in the University Library.
The archive contains witness statements of prisoners from the Ravensbrück camp, including Simon-Pietkiewicz. In a conversation about Simon-Pietkiewicz, the idea of depicting her in words and pictures arose.
Simon-Pietkiewicz was born in Warsaw in 1906 to an assimilated Jewish family. In the mid-1930s, she and other members of her family converted to Catholicism. This saved her when the Nazis occupied Poland, although she did not avoid arrest. In 1941, after some underground resistance materials were found in her apartment, she was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Ravensbrück camp, where she remained from September 1941 to April 1945.
When Simon-Pietkiewicz ended up in Ravensbrück, she was already a well-renowned artist, having trained at The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw with successful exhibitions around Europe behind her (Warsaw, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris).
“She carried on drawing in the camp, despite this being forbidden by the Germans and despite being harshly punished. She was made to sit in isolation in a dark bunker, for example,” says Barbara Törnquist-Plewa.
Artworks as witness statements
Simon-Pietkiewicz arrived in Lund in 1945, and within weeks an exhibition of her work was staged here, with most pieces being sold immediately.
“So far, more than three hundred of her original works from Ravensbrück have been identified. Almost all of them have been dated by the artist, and she also provided descriptions, who is depicted and under what circumstances, even what happened to the person in the camp,” says Barbara Törnquist-Plewa.
The works are characterised by a high degree of precision when it comes to the depiction of real historical details such as the nature of forced labour, the prisoners’ own activities and their appearance. The images are very evocative when it comes to the psycho-emotional characteristics of the people and situations depicted.
However, in reflections about the history of the Holocaust and art-history analyses, Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz’ camp art is almost completely absent.
How is it possible that works of such high artistic and documentary value have not been recognised in a monograph of their own? That was something that both myself and Barbara Czarnecka wanted to redress with this book, and I hope it can be used not only by Holocaust researchers, but also by school teachers in their teaching about the horrors of the Second World War,” Barbara Törnquist-Plewa concludes.
This book was made possible by generous donations from the Salén Foundation and the Thora Ohlsson Foundation. The book is due to be published in 2024.