Prayer book made from cardboard and company forms

Prayer book made from cardboard and company forms

This small, 10.6 x 7.6 cm booklet is a handmade prayer book. Zofia Sukow, married Czaplicka, made it during her imprisonment in the satellite camp of Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH, a subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH in Kleinmachnow. The company manufactured accessories for aeroplane engines. 

In August 1944, Zofia Sukow, born 1924, was one of around 60,000 Poles who were arbitrarily arrested after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupiers, deported to concentration camps and forced to perform forced labour. After a short stay in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, she was sent to the subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Kleinmachnow on 12 September 1944.

The 765 women prisoners had to work 12-hour laundry shifts. They were housed in windowless, damp and unheated rooms in an air-raid shelter below their workshop.

Sukow used 18 DIN A5-sized company forms for the production of the prayer book, which she joined together with white thread.The front is decorated with cross stitches, a cross and bears the title "Badz Wola - Twoja" [Thy will be done], a line from the Lord's Prayer. She has handwritten 44 Catholic prayers and litanies on 24 pages.

Practising her Catholic faith played a major role for Zofia Sukow, as it did within the Polish prisoner group as a whole. Although not strictly forbidden, this had to take place in secret. A fellow prisoner recalled that a prayer was said in her parlour every evening.

Production in the factory was stopped in mid-April 1945. The approximately 400 women prisoners were taken to Oranienburg via Berlin-Wannsee on a special train. From here, they had to take part in the so-called death march northwards a few days later.

An entry in the prayer book marks this section. On page 27, Zofia Sukow notes the beginning of the evacuation. A dried and pressed bellflower, which she picked during the first break on the death march, is still in the booklet today.

Zofia Sukow survived the death march and returned to Warsaw.

A facsimile of this exhibit is on display in the permanent exhibition "The Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936-1945. Events and developments" in the former prisoners' kitchen.