Czesława Kwoka

Who was Czesława Kwoka?

Czesława Kwoka was a Polish Catholic child who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp at the age of 14. She was one of the thousands of child victims of German World War II crimes against Poles. She died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland, and is among those memorialized in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum indoor exhibit called Block no. 6: Exhibition: The Life of the Prisoners.

Photographs of Kwoka and others taken by the "famous photographer of Auschwitz", Wilhelm Brasse, from 1940 to 1945, displayed in that Museum photographic memorial, several of which Brasse holds up and discusses in The Portraitist, a 2005 television documentary film about Brasse, became a focus of interviews with Brasse cited in various articles and books.

Brasse's three photographs of Kwoka in particular inspired the creation of Painting Czesława Kwoka, a literary award-winning collaborative work of art and verse which attempts to transport her "image and voice into our lives."