OBITUARY
Zofia Posmysz-Piasecka Author.
Born Cracow, Poland, August 23, 1923; died Oswiecim, Poland, August 8, aged 98.
Numbers were always a part of Zofia Posmysz’s life. To the Nazis she amounted to zero, although at Auschwitz inmate No.7566 would be tattooed on her arm; she used 7566 instead of a byline when she came to write of those experiences, and a book expanding on her memories was called The Passenger in Cabin 45. The most reassuring number was 98 – the age at which she died, having defied extraordinary odds for so long.
Her concentration camp years were behind her when that history popped up unexpectedly as she walked through Paris’s Place de la Concorde in 1959. (Concorde had seen much history; Nazi troops and tanks had controlled it just 15 years earlier, and Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Maximilien Robespierre had been executed there during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.)
Convinced she was overhearing the voice of her Auschwitz jailer, Anneliese Franz, Posmysz’s blood ran cold. She wondered if she should report the woman to police – former members of the sadistic SS paramilitaries were wanted criminals – or perhaps approach the woman to ask: “Wie geht’s, Frau Aufseher” – in English “How goes it, Frau Overseer?” But it was not Franz; just a German tourist. (Franz is reported to have died aged 43 two years earlier.)
Read the article by Alan Howe in The Australian.