Thread by @marinamaral2

1) In 2016, I colorized Czesława's photo and posted it on social media for the first time.

She was just 14 when she was murdered behind the walls of Auschwitz concentration camp on 12 March, 1943. Her photo is haunting.

2) Staring straight into the camera, her eyes tell a story of fear and horrors that few of us, in modern times, can understand.

The expression on her face has never left me since the first time I saw this photograph.

3) However, as we know, Czesława was not the only one to be murdered in Auschwitz. 1.3 million others were brutalized, starved and killed within the camp’s walls.

4) Monsterous hatred was leveled against them for nothing more than their being who they were: Jews, Poles, Sini & Roma, Soviet POWs, Christians, Protestants, Orthodox or Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled people, homosexuals.

5) The Nazis took from them the right to be only human beings, plain and simple, without labels that eventually defined who was going to live and who was going to die.

'@FacesAuschwitz aims to recover these stories and present them through a modern perspective, so that current and future generations will be able to look back at those we lost, understand the roots of hate and ensure that the atrocities of the past will never happen again.

@FacesAuschwitz This is JÓZEF PATER, born on 31 July, 1897 in Żyrardów, Błoński powiat (at the time a part of the Russian Empire), the son of Marcin and Paulina (nee Dreksler) Pater.

@FacesAuschwitz Here you can see MARIA SCHENKER, born in Krakow, on March 20, 1913. Very little is known about her life before she was forced into captivity. It is known that she was Jewish, made her living as an office clerk and, according to some records, was a pianist.

@FacesAuschwitz This is AUGUST KOWALCZYK, a Polish theater, film and television actor born in 1921. He was also one of the few prisoners who escaped from Auschwitz, and died in 2012.

@FacesAuschwitz WALTER DEGEN was born on 4 January 1909 in Mörchingen. He was a locksmith.

@FacesAuschwitz SEWERYNA SZMAGLEWSKA was born on 11 February 1916 in Przygłów. She studied psychology and literature in Piotrków and Łódź to become a teacher.

@FacesAuschwitz IWAN REBAŁKA was born on February 6, 1925, to Nastasja and Maksym Rybałka.

His death certificate attributes the cause of death to a perinephric abscess, however, Iwan was actually murdered with a phenol injection into his heart on 1 March 1943.

@FacesAuschwitz GERSZ ZYSKING was born in Poland. His time in Auschwitz was brief: according to the official records, he died on August 4, 1942—a little over a month from the time that he was incarcerated and a few months short of his 29th birthday.

@FacesAuschwitz RUDOLF GŁUSZECKI was a university student born in Tarnopol. He died in the camp on 24 June 1942.

@FacesAuschwitz This is his brother, SEWERYN GŁUSZECKI, a student born on 19 June 1925. He died in the camp on 20 June 1942.

@FacesAuschwitz Their father, NORBERT “ISRAEL” GŁUSZECKI was born on November 27th, 1886 in Podwołoczyska, to Ludwig and Sabina Głuszecki.

@FacesAuschwitz KATARZYNA KWOKA, born on 1 April 1896, was Czeslawa's mom. She died on 18 February 1943.

@FacesAuschwitz WITOLD PILECKI was a reserve officer in the Polish Army born 13 May 1901 in Russia. He volunteered for an operation that saw him intentionally imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to gather intelligence on the site’s operations.

@FacesAuschwitz In this instance, we have photographs, but we know nothing about the girl in the picture. We don't know her name. We only know her number: 2731.

@FacesAuschwitz VINZENT (Vinzenz) DANIEL was born in the village of Smrčná in Czechoslovakia. On May 27, 1942, around noon, he escaped. According to witnesses, he ran across a field, then through the bottom of a drained pond and headed towards the nearby forest.

His fate remains unknown.

@FacesAuschwitz JÓZEFA GŁAZOWSKA was born on March 19th, 1930, in the village of Sitaniec. She was deported with her mother Marianna, who was murdered in a gas chamber, while her father was also deported to Auschwitz in a different transport, ultimately leading to his death.

@FacesAuschwitz DELIANA RADEMAKERS, born in 1923, was a Jehovah’s Witness, arrested while performing house-to-house ministry.

In a final letter to her family, she wrote: “go bravely onwards without fear, Jehovah is with us, what can (mere) people do to us?”

@FacesAuschwitz SALOMON HONIG was born on 15 May 1889 to Ryfka Honig in the village of Kołaczyce near Jasło.

@FacesAuschwitz JANINA NOWAK was born on August 19, 1917, in Będów near Łódź. She was the first female prisoner who escaped from Auschwitz.

@FacesAuschwitz 38,916 photos of registered prisoners (31,969 photos of men & 6,947 photos of women) remain. The photographs were taken in the first quarter of 1941 until spring 1943.

This means that the photos that exist today show less than 10% of all registered prisoners of Auschwitz.

@FacesAuschwitz By bringing color to the original black and white photos and telling prisoners’ stories, Faces of Auschwitz commemorates the memory of those who were murdered in the name of bigotry and hate.

It acts as both a memorial to their passing and a warning to the world at a time when the memory of the Holocaust becomes increasingly abstract and remote.