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Adam Frosh Author

Science fiction, fantasy, historical and dark fiction author

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Prisoner 7675

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It’s not an easy task to spend time studying the newly colourised photographs on the Faces of Auschwitz website, let alone read the stories from the Holocaust. Maybe it’s easier for me than many. Being a descendant of Polish Jews, when I read the string of tragic stories, I can identify with the suffering through a form of ancestral relationship to it. That doesn’t mean I can experience it more than anyone else, but it does give me a sense of connection to it.

I think many of us, from all walks of life, can relate to stories of suffering either because we have personally experienced it in some form or other – or perhaps because we haven’t. Our comparatively easy lives and relative privilege undoubtedly instils some of us with a deep sense of guilt. Maybe sometimes we feel this guilt because we simply cannot bear to hear the stories of the victims of the Holocaust, and therefore choose not to read about them.
Prisoner 7675 - Faces of Auschwitz

Prisoner 7675

The Faces of Auschwitz post about Prisoner 7675 haunted me in a special way. We know what she looked like, we know she was Jewish and we know she was murdered in Auschwitz on June 19th, 1942. There are many posts that provide considerable detail into the names and lives of Auschwitz’s victims. It’s fairly natural that the more we know about an individual, the more we can relate to them. Prisoner 7675 falls within a separate category, where the observer is left to use their imagination to fill in the unanswered questions. What was her name? Where did she come from? Did she, and does she have any family?

“Is there something that reminds me of my Nana?

Is there something about my mother in her?”

I look at this colourised photo, and in a strange way feel I know this lady – or at least think I know her. Is it her warm expression? Is there something that reminds me of my Nana? Is there something about my mother (alav ha-sholem) in her? Is it wrong to imagine that she looked after a lot of people with traditional ‘haimisher’ hospitality, where a stock pot would constantly suffuse the household with Jewish cooking aromas – the same ones I miss so much from my own youth? I can imagine her sense of humour too. Her slightly quizzical expression tells me of her wry humour. I can almost hear her telling funny stories about members of the family and people from her community. How I would love to listen to them! How was she as a child? That I can’t tell.

In 2008, we took our children to visit the Thiepval memorial in Picardy. It’s a war memorial to all the missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme of the First World War, from 1915 and 1918. It is remarkable in that each of these 72,337 servicemen named have no known grave. There was something about the fact that the bodies of these men and boys were never recovered that gave this memorial a special poignancy.
We all have heard about the Tombs of the Unknown Soldier in countries around the world, each containing the body of one unidentified soldier but honouring all of those unnamed recruits who eventually paid the ultimate sacrifice. Many of us have taken time to visit at least one of them. These monuments give us a palpable sense of the loss that war brings to humanity. The anonymity of the grave sparks a desire to learn more about the soldier. We exist as a societal group of beings that hold our stories dear to us. What could be more compelling than a hidden story of a life lived but ultimately destroyed by one of the worst periods of humanity’s history. Maybe that’s what drives us to write about them and embellish their stories with the trappings and accoutrements of our imagination.
As I write, I imagine Prisoner 7675 is chuckling to herself at my sentimentality. I dearly hope she is.