Czesława Kwoka

Auschwitz fell to the Soviets 75 years ago today, almost two years too late for Czeskawa Kwoka.  I posted this about her in 2013:

Let not anyone pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

John Stuart Mill, 1867

Hattip to HappyAcres.  The story of the murder of Czeslawa Kwoka has been making the rounds of the internet.  Just one of the tens of millions of  victims of the attempt by Adolph Hitler seventy years ago to bring to reality his nightmarish vision of the future of humanity.

Czesława Kwoka, a 14-year-old Polish Catholic girl (prisoner number 26947) from the small village of Wólka Złojecka is photographed upon her arrival at Auschwitz concentration camp in December 1942. Wilhelm Brasse, an inmate who served as the camp identification photographer, recalled photographing Kwoka:

“She was so young and so terrified. The girl didn’t understand why she was there and she couldn’t understand what was being said to her.

So this woman Kapo took a stick and beat her about the face. This German woman was just taking out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful young girl, so innocent. She cried but she could do nothing.

Before the photograph was taken, the girl dried her tears and the blood from the cut on her lip. To tell you the truth, I felt as if I was being hit myself but I couldn’t interfere. It would have been fatal for me. You could never say anything.”

Kwoka died in the camp in March of 1943.

Let Czeslawa’s memory remind us that evil is ever plentiful in this Vale of Tears and that it is the duty of all decent people to combat it.  When good people turn away and forsake this duty, the consequences to the innocent are often horrific.