As a number I survived

Those selected for work in Nazi concentration camps underwent the humiliating process of having their heads and bodies shaved. After a quick cold shower, they were issued ill-fitting uniforms, registered and sent to the barracks.

This jacket was issued to George Grojnowski on his arrival in Buchenwald. George was born in Radziejow, Poland, in 1927. From 1940, at the age of 13, he was interned in various ghettos and labour camps, under armed guards. In January 1945, aged 18, he was transported by cattle truck from Czestochowa ghetto to Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany. At the liquidation of Buchenwald, George was forced on the death march to Theresienstadt, and was liberated there by the Soviet Army on 9 May 1945. He replaced the yellow triangle on this jacket with a red one in gratitude to his Soviet liberators. His camp identification number 116530 sits next to it.

“We were requested to get rid of our jackets because it was all with lice…it was something that I can’t explain, I just felt I had to save something to show where I was. I just knew I had to do it to be able to – even for myself – to remind myself what I went through in the five years I was interned by the Nazis. I was interned when I was thirteen. I had the foresight to sort of bring something to prove how we were treated and what it means to me to have my uniform, that I was only a number, but as a number I still survived.”