Holocaust Museum in Houston
presented last year the world premiere of
Auschwitz Eyewitness: The Artwork of Jan Komski

More than 50 pen and ink drawings and 18 paintings for the first time, comprise only a porition of Komski's oeuvre. Imprisoned in Auschwitz as a political prisoner, this Polish Catholic artist miraculously escaped only to be imprisoned then a second time. If the inhumane conditions in Auschwitz were not enough to bear, the skilled artist was then forced to paint portraits of the SS and their families.

"My art helped me to survive," says Komski, who at 82 years of age still paints every day. In 1987, he began painting and drawing subjects based on his memories of Auschwitz - a death camp, whose horror inspiring now is a symbol of man's inhumanity to man.

Filmmaker/artist Bert van Bork is producing a film based on the art created at Auschwitz-Bitkenau in which Komski is featured.

Born February 3, 1915 in the small Polish town of Bircha, Poland, near the Carpathian Mountains, Jan Mieczyslaw Komski had an interest in art at an early age. After he graduated from Gymnasium, Komski pursued his artistic passion at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, where he studied painting, anatomy and art history.

After being arrested for attempting to flee Poland to join the Polish army in France, Komski entered Auschwitz in June 1940 under the pseudonym of Jan Baras. Conditions began to worsen rapidly as prisoners tripled in number over the next two years. Komski recalls "By the time I escaped in 1942, thousands of prisoners were already dead. Throughout the war, three million Polish gentiles died along with others."

After a daring escape in 1942 with fellow prisoners and part of the Arbeitseinsatz (labor operations) files concealed aboard a hore-drawn cart, Komski was again incarcerated in a Cracow round-up on his way to Warsaw. He was taken back to Auschwitz-Birkenau under another assumed name only to spend two years moving from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen and Dachau. He wasultimately liberated from Dachau in 1945 by U.S. troops lead by General George Patton.

It is easy to speak about Poland Harder to work for her Harder still to die for her But hardest of all to suffer for her. Words of an unknown prisoner from the wall of a cell in the torture cellars of the Gestapo headquarters on Szucha Avenue in Warsaw

Thanks to Dr. Tad Rozycki for the materials to this page, and to the Holocaust Museum Houston for allowing us to use their exhibit invitation.