SALOMON HONIG, a Polish Jew, was born on 15 May 1889 to Ryfka Honig in the village of Kołaczyce near Jasło. At the time, Jasło was considered to be a part of Poland, under the Austro-Hungarian Partition. At the time of his arrest, Salomon Honig was living at Folwarcznastrasse 11 in Tarnów, Poland. He worked as a merchant. There are no known records that detail the circumstances of his arrest.
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The metal device visible in the left picture was part of a spinning chair. It held the head in the correct position during the photographing.
Salomon was deported to the German Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp on 5 March 1942. He was part of a group of 27 inmates sent from the prison in Tarnów to Auschwitz by the order of the Sicherheitsdienst. During his registration at the camp, Solomon was issued prisoner number 26389.
Honig was deported to Auschwitz before the beginning of mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers as part of the “Final Solution to the Jewish question” – the extermination of European Jews planned by Nazi Germany. Between June 1940 and March 1942, around 2,000–2,100 Jews were taken to the camp, of which number nearly 90% were killed. The Auschwitz Memorial Archives preserves 38,916 photos of registered prisoners (31,969 photos of men & 6,947 photos of women). The photographs were taken in the first quarter of 1941 until spring 1943. This means that the photographs that exist today show less than 10 percent of all registered prisoners of Auschwitz (approximately 400 thousand people).
In this project, we will show both some of the prisoners whose stories are well known and documented but also people about whom we know very little or nothing.
• Learn more about the story of Jewish prisoners of the camp in this online lesson provided by the Auschwitz Memorial.
Author: Séamus Bellamy.
Editor: Marina Amaral
Sponsored by: Michael Frank Family Charitable Fund.