Description

Selected and edited by Franciszek Piper.
Janusz Pogonowski was born in Cracow in 1922 and arrested in 1940 during the so-called Operation AB (aimed at the Polish intelligentsia). At the age of 17, he was imprisoned in Montelupich prison in Cracow, and in the prison in Tarnów. He was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp on June 14, 1940, in the first transport, which came from Tarnów. In reprisal for the escape of three prisoners from the surveyors labor detail, he was hanged along with eleven fellow prisoners at a gallows on the roll-call square. He left behind the secret messages that he sent illegally from the camp. In them, he describes the hell of camp, his own dramatic experiences, and his youthful longing for freedom and those he held dear.