World War II – October 2019

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Pilecki instructs released prisoners and escapees alike to share this

intelligence with resistance command in Warsaw. Through them he

sends letters, maps, and diagrams to largely indifferent world leaders,

begging Allied forces to bomb the camp. All the while, Pilecki must

protect his underground—a job entailing everything from comforting

friends and lieutenants to murdering kapos and potential leakers—

while ensuring his own survival. Ulimately, Pilecki does survive—

sucessfully escaping from Auschwitz in 1943, only to be executed by

OCTOBER 2019 71

GONE, NOT

FORGOTTEN

REVIEWS EXHIBITS

AUSCHWITZ PRISONER Ruth Grunberger dreamed she’d

someday have a full head of hair again. So the Jewish teenager

made a talisman: a metal comb crafted from stolen scrap metal

and wire. Grunberger survived the camp, regrew her wavy

locks, and emigrated to America in 1946, comb in tow. Today,

the tiny symbol of survival is one of 700 objects included in

“Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.,” a traveling exhibition at

New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage through January 3, 2020.

Artifacts range from Auschwitz’s concrete fence posts to

prisoners’ clothing, underscoring the genocide’s vast scope

while also honoring its victims’ humanity.

Soviets as an anticommunist traitor in 1948.

Fairweather’s prose, occasionally workman-

like, still paints vivid scenes bet ween charac-

ters and their grim circumstances. Pilecki

tried to reveal Auschwitz’s true nature to the

world; now, decades later, The Volunteer does

the job for him. —Esther Bergdahl is an editor

and writer in Brooklyn, New York.

While an inmate at Auschwitz, Ruth Grunberger (middle) fashioned a

comb ( bottom)—one of a new exhibit’s smaller artifacts; among the

largest (top), a German railway car that carried Jews to Auschwitz.