Jan Liwacz

Who was Jan Liwacz?

Jan Liwacz – a master blacksmith, prisoner of Auschwitz concentration camp, known for the infamous "Arbeit macht frei" slogan over the camp's main entrance gate that he made.

He was detained and arrested on 16 October 1939 in Bukowsko, kept in prisons of Sanok, Krosno, Kraków and Nowy Wiśnicz; he arrived at Auschwitz in its beginnings, on 20 June 1940, receiving early camp number of 1010. As a metal worker he was assigned to a kommando manufacturing camp's infrastructure elements. During his stay he was twice condemned to solitary confinement of the penal 11th Block in June 1942 and March 1943, spending there five weeks altogether. On 6 December 1944 he was transferred to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, where he was kept at.

After the liberation of the Ebensee camp on he trekked for Poland with Alfons Wrona, his cell-mate from Auschwitz and settled in Bystrzyca Kłodzka of western Recovered Territories. Once there, he started working at local forge owned by Paul Wolf. When the Wolf family was expelled in 1946, he stayed there as an artist blacksmith.