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Letters to Sala Draws on Materials from the Archives of The New York Public Library
The power of the written word to sustain life is a central theme of Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps, a compelling collection of rare Holocaust-era letters and photographs that are part of the collections of The New York Public Library's Dorot Jewish Division. The items -- from handwritten postcards to photographs to official documents -- were saved at great personal risk by Sala Garncarz from the time she entered a Nazi labor camp in 1940 until her liberation in 1945. The collection provides a remarkable first-hand view of the human drama that unfolded among Jewish victims forced to work as slave laborers. Curated by Jill Vexler, a striking exhibition reproducing the letters, postcards, photographs, and documents will be on view at the University of Michigan's Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library North (first floor off of the North Lobby) in Ann Arbor from February 2nd through March 27th, Monday through Thursday 10:00am to 9:00pm, Friday through Saturday 10:00am to 5:00pm, Sunday 1:00pm to 9:00pm. The exhibit will be open on Saturday, February 23rd from 1:00pm to 4:00pm only and will be closed on Sunday, February 24th. It will re-open on Monday, February 25th through Thursday, March 27th.
A special program titled, Whose Story Is It: How an Archive Was Transformed into an Exhibition, a Book, a Play, and a Documentary Film, featuring curator, Jill Vexler, and Ann Kirschner (Sala's daughter and author of "Sala's Gift"), was held on Wednesday, February 13th at 7:00pm in the Gallery of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, Room 100 North (off of the North Lobby).
"How do I say goodbye?" Sala wrote in her diary the day she was sent to the labor camp. "I tried to keep a smile on my face . . . though my eyes were filled with tears. One must go on bravely, courageously, even if the heart is breaking." In addition to diary excerpts such as this one, the exhibition presents approximately 100 postcards, letters, photographs, documents, and other artifacts drawn primarily from the Sala Garncarz Collection of The New York Public Library's Dorot Jewish Division. The total archive, which encompasses more than 350 items that Sala Garncarz collected, was donated to the Library in 2005 by Sala Garncarz Kirschner and her family.
"As primary documents of the Nazi labor camps, these letters are an invaluable resource for those who study the Holocaust and are among the most fascinating to have been given to the Library in many years," said Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. "At the same time, as a collection of intensely personal letters, they bring the terrible human consequences of Nazi forced labor to vivid life, and show the effect of this experience on both the interned Jews and their torn families."
"The letters that comprise this exhibition are the true embodiment of how the written word can give life," said curator Jill Vexler. "What emerges from the exhibition is an inspiring portrait of human resilience in the face of unthinkable atrocity."
"My family and I are delighted that, through Letters to Sala, the public will have the opportunity to learn my mother's incredible story of survival and courage," said Ann Kirschner. "When the world seemed entirely hostile, a young girl found refuge and hope in these remarkable letters written by her family and friends. Their words will now be preserved and made accessible to the historians and artists whose insights will help future generations to understand the lessons of the past."
The University of Michigan Library is proud to host Letters to Sala, which chronicles the courage of a young woman and her correspondents under the extreme, dehumanizing conditions of Nazi oppression in forced labor camps from 1940 to 1945," said Paul N. Courant, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics and of Information at The University of Michigan. "The exhibition complements the strengths of the Library, including its extensive Holocaust collections and the University's expertise in Judaic studies and the Holocaust. In addition, the University Library was the first public institution to have access to the Shoah Visual History Foundation archives with more than 52,000 interviews with survivors, witnesses, rescuers, and liberators. We expect wide interest in this exhibition from our campuses and the broader public."
ABOUT THE LETTERS
The Letters as Sala's Lifeline
Sala Garncarz was 16 years old when, in 1940, she was sent from home to Geppersdorf, a German forced labor camp where Jewish men were building the autobahn (highway) and women worked in the laundry and kitchen. During her 5 years' internment, which brought her to seven different camps in Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, Garncarz received more than 300 letters that were mailed or smuggled to her by friends and family on the outside or in camps themselves. Remarkably, she preserved these letters during her internment and continued to hide them for nearly five decades following her liberation and subsequent marriage to an American G.I., Sidney Kirschner.
The letters on display impart details about Jewish life in occupied Poland, Nazi labor camps, and the human ability to reconstruct life. For Garncarz, the letters provided evidence that her world still existed outside the camps and that her existence within it still mattered. Some carefully handwritten in elegant prose, others hastily jotted down, highlighting the urgent circumstances of their composition, the letters were her lifeline to the friends and family waiting for her return. Saving the letters became inextricably linked with preserving her own life.
The letters portray a young woman through the eyes of those who loved her: her sister, Raizel Garncarz, who wrote on behalf of herself and the immediate family; a suitor, Harry Haubenstock, whom she met in a camp; and Ala Gertner, a campmate who looked after her and stayed in touch with her by mail after they were separated. The sixteen year old's own perspective is painfully laid bare in fragments of a diary written as she departed for the labor camp: "Still, I could not stop looking at you, mother, because I felt something inside of me tearing, hurting. One more kiss, one more hug. My mother does not want to let go of me. Let it end already, it is torture. I say goodbye to my sisters."
Garncarz Volunteers for Labor Camp
Sala Garncarz and her family were living in Sosnowiec, an industrial city near Krakow, when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. The youngest of 11 children born to an impoverished Hebrew teacher and his wife, Sala was one of three unmarried daughters who lived at home.
In 1940, her older sister Raizel was ordered to report to the Geppersdorf labor camp for what was said to be a six-week period. The camp was part of a growing network that relied on Jews as slave laborers in construction, textile manufacturing, and munitions factories, and was administered by Albrecht Schmelt, a high-level Nazi bureaucrat appointed by Heinrich Himmler. An estimated 50,000 Jews from the Upper Silesia region of Poland were eventually interned in these labor camps.
Sala volunteered to take Raizel's place at the camp, believing that her timid, intellectual sister would find it harder to adapt. Six weeks stretched to five years of slavery for Sala, and while conditions within the camps were deplorable, written exchanges such as Sala's were permitted because the camp's administrators believed it boosted productivity and relieved the anxiety of those left at home. By the end of 1940, all correspondence had to be written in German and letters had to pass through Nazi censors - many of the papers bear Hitler's image and the "Z" stamp indicating that they had been cleared. The Nazis prohibited mail, however, for those interned in concentration camps.
A Massive Deportation
On August 12, 1942, approximately 50,000 Jews, including Sala's entire family, were rounded up in Sosnowiec and neighboring cities. Over the course of four days, they were held captive in an outdoor stadium while Nazis completed a selection process that separated out the elderly, children, the disabled, and pregnant women. She subsequently received three letters from eyewitnesses. "I'm sure you're wondering about this new return address," Raizel wrote, now in a labor camp herself. "But that's what happened." About 10,000 Jews, including Sala's parents and other family members, were sent to Auschwitz a few days later, where they were most likely gassed on arrival.
Embracing a Friendship with Ala Gertner
Saying goodbye to her family at the train station in Sosnowiec, renamed Sosnowitz by the Germans, Sala unexpectedly began the most important friendship of her life, with Ala Gertner. Ala, an elegant, well-spoken woman in her thirties, assured Sala's mother that she would look after her daughter and a life-saving alliance was born. Gertner helped Sala survive inside the labor camp, physically protecting her from the camp's worst dangers while sharing confidences, frustrations, and dreams for the future. After leaving their camp, Ala beseeched her young friend to maintain hope: "Don't be afraid, I always think of your release, just be patient," and later, wrote with advice for a lovelorn young woman, "What's doing with Harry? Where is he? Why is he silent? Don't worry, girl, it'll be fine. Be brave, stay well. Kisses." Gertner was tragically punished for her bravery. She was one of four women hanged for their participation in an uprising at Auschwitz, four weeks before the camp's liberation in 1945.
Saving the Letters
Garncarz recognized that her letters were sustaining her; she risked her life to preserve them, hiding them in her clothing during line-ups, handing them off to friends, throwing them under a building, even burying them. She took them with her from camp to camp. "I have the pictures of our dear father and dear mother, together with all the mail I received from home, starting from the first minute that I left for camp. All along, I watched it and guarded it like the eyes in my head, since it was my greatest treasure," she wrote her sister after the war.
Once her Nazi captors prohibited new mail from reaching the internees in August 1943, Garncarz found comfort in the birthday greetings sent to her by other women in the same camp. Renewing each other's spirit, they kept one another's dreams alive. To Sala on her birthday, they wrote: "Oh, what a great holiday this would be if we celebrated your birthday in freedom, together with your loved ones ... Let good luck shine on you just like the bright sunshine that steals secretly through our camp windows."
Liberation
Upon liberation in 1945, Sala located two of her sisters, the only surviving members of her family. Resuming the life-affirming correspondence, her sister Raizel wrote, "I did not doubt that you were alive, but I could not figure out how you - the one of us who knew best how to survive - remained silent ... Once more, we live for your letters." Her love of years earlier, Harry Haubenstock, had married another, and less than a year after her camp was liberated, Garncarz married Sidney Kirschner, an American soldier, and moved to the United States. The letters were hidden away for decades following the war, until Garncarz revealed their existence to her daughter, Ann Kirschner, before undergoing cardiac surgery in 1992. Sala Kirschner currently lives in Monsey, New York and Pembroke Pines, Florida.
Unless otherwise indicated, the letters, photographs, and documents in the exhibition are drawn from the Sala Garncarz Kirschner Collection, donated by the Kirschner family in April 2005, to the Dorot Jewish Division of The New York Public Library.
