A Successful Search via TV

For more than thirty years, Malgorzata Przybyla has been working for the Arolsen Archives – known as International Tracing Service before 2019 – and shedding light on not yet clarified fates from the Nazi era. She has been co-working on the #StolenMemory campaign   right from its start in 2016. Since then, more than 300 Polish families have received back personal objects, which the Nazis had confiscated from their loved ones when they imprisoned them in concentration camps. In 2024 alone, about 80 families have been found in Poland. An extraordinary success.

Nevertheless, Malgorzata Przybyla is frequently faced with searches, which are particularly challenging for her:

Appeals for information via Polish TV

Magdalena Gwóźdź-Pallokat, a Polish correspondent of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and Malgorzata come up with an idea: Why not call for information via TV? Such calls for information have a long tradition at the International Tracing Service. As early as 1946, employees initiated a so-called Mass Tracing when the fates of missing persons could not be clarified. That is to say that they wrote lists with the names of missing persons for publication in newspapers or radio broadcasts.    

The Polish public service broadcaster TVP was convinced by the idea.  Since early September 2024, a call for information by the Arolsen Archives has been broadcast in the news program Teleexpress once a week – during primetime on Saturday afternoons at 5.00 p.m. The short film clips introduce to the fates of Nazi persecutees and show personal objects still kept by the Arolsen Archives: Jewelry, identity papers, letter, photos, or watches. The broadcast has an audience of up to four million viewers.

Overwhelming feedback from the audience

Malgorzata Przybyla is overwhelmed by the feedback received in response to the search: “Already in the first weeks, several people have contacted and told us that they think they are related with the concentration camp prisoners portrayed. Meanwhile we have managed to give back personal objects to two families. And I am confident that two further personal effects will be dispatched soon.”

88-year-old receives back his uncle’s wristwatch

88-year-old Jan Szabrański from Rydzyń Podlaski situated north of Lublin is one of the lucky recipients. He got back from the Arolsen Archives the wristwatch of his uncle Sylwin Szabrański.

Sylwin Szabrański, 27 years of age and a locksmith by trade, was committed to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1940 and sent on to the Neuengamme concentration camp two years later.   Shortly before the end of the war, the Nazis drove him and thousands of other prisoners onto ships at Lübeck Bay. He lost his life there on May 3, 1945, when British bombers sank the ships by mistake assuming German troops to be aboard.

Broadcast till the end of this year

The calls for information will be broadcast on Polish TV at least until the end of this year. Malgorzata Przybyla believes strongly that more relatives will get in touch. “We have a strong presence on the internet with our #StolenMemory campaign. But we can reach a different audience via TV. That is why I am most grateful to the two broadcasters TVP and Deutsche Welle for their support.”

The greater range has another effect still: Television viewers who have not yet been aware of the work done and the collection preserved by the Arolsen Archives, learn from the calls for information that they may obtain data on Nazi persecutees here. Still today, many people in Poland are searching for traces to gain certainty about the fate suffered by their relatives.