“Frames of memory. Labyrinths” – exhibition of works by Marian Kołodziej, prisoner no. 432
Marian Kołodziej was a prisoner in Auschwitz whose camp number was 432. He was incarcerated in the camp from the first day of its existence. From September 1944 he was also held in the camps of Gross Rosen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen-Ebensee.
After the war Marian Kołodziej became an artist well known in Poland as a theatre and film set designer. For nearly fifty years he remained silent on the subject of his camp past, and made no reference to it in his artistic work. At the beginning of the 1990s, however, following a serious illness, and inspired by the words of the poet Zbigniew Herbert “You survived not to live. You have little time, you must bear witness”, he made a series of works entitled “Frames of memory. Labyrinths.”In these emotional, moving works, Kołodziej leads us through the labyrinths of his camp memory, attempting to give expression to the terror, pain, longing, nostalgia, isolation, alienation and degradation of a human being reduced to the number tattooed onto their forearm. “Frames of memory. Labyrinths” is one of the few successful attempts to recreate the reality of the camps through art.
With prior notification the exhibition may be viewed at the St Maximilian Kolbe Centre alongside the Franciscan monastery in Harmęże, a village situated directly adjacent to the site of Auschwitz II – Birkenau.