Włodzimierz Borkowski, Auschwitz Stained Glass [Dedication].

Włodzimierz Count Dunin-Borkowski was born on July 29, 1920 in Ostrowsk, Podhale. In 1939 he graduated from a high school in Cracow and passed to study medicine, which he did not manage to start due to the outbreak of war. For his activities in the underground Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ), he was arrested on May 6, 1940 in Cracow and placed in Montelupich Prison, and then on June 14, 1940 was taken to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, where he was one of the first prisoners of the camp to be assigned the number 360. - Initially assigned to heavy and debilitating construction work, he later began working in the camp's carpentry shop, where, among other things, he drew various ornaments that were later carved on wooden products, says Dr. Adam Cyra, a historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. He also secretly made, he adds, designs for, among other things, stained glass windows intended for a memorial shrine to the victims of Auschwitz, which he hoped would be built after the war. - The designs for these stained-glass windows, as well as many other drawings by him, were saved thanks to the camp and camp Resistance Movement, Cyra adds. In November 1944. Włodzimierz Borkowski was transferred to Breslau-Lissa, and from there, in early January 1945, he was sent to the main camp - Gross-Rosen concentration camp. - Before Easter of that year, he was evacuated to Buchenwald concentration camp. After a devastating evacuation march and a short stay in the Flossenbürg camp, he regained his freedom on April 23, 1945. - says the historian. He returned to Poland on July 26, 1945 and resumed his medical studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, receiving his medical diploma in 1950. The deceased was a doctor of industrial medicine, surgeon, roentgenologist, mine rescuer, painter, poet, scoutmaster and Honorary Citizen of the City of Krakow. After the war, he was honored with the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the Silver Cross of Merit, the Oświęcim Cross and many other decorations. In addition to his professional work, he was active as an artist, writing poems and painting pictures. He also made replicas of designs for Oswiecim stained glass windows, which today are kept in the collections of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.

Source: https://gazetakrakowska.pl/zmarl-dlugoletni-wiezien-pierwszego-transportu-do-kl-auschwitz-zyje-ich-juz-tylko-kilku/ar/6239720