Konrad Rózewicz 1900 - 1941 Edit

Konrad Rózewicz was born on 24 November 1900 in Sępólno (then Zempelburg in the so-called Polish Corridor) and died on 16 August 1941 in Gusen.

According to the arrivals list of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, found during research in Moscow in 2012 in the holdings of the ‘Special Archive’ of the Military History Archive (RGVA), Konrad Rózewicz was deported from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp direct to Gusen between 27 and 30 May 1940. Gusen was officially established in May 1940 with transports such as these direct transfers from Dachau and Sachsenhausen.

His prisoner number in Sachsenhausen concentration camp was 21789.

Almost all the camp administration files for Sachsenhausen concentration camp, including the prisoner index cards and nearly all files on prisoners, were destroyed by the SS in early 1945 before the liberation of the concentration camp. The Archive of the Sachsenhausen Memorial holds only the list containing the prisoner numbers but unfortunately no further information nor images.

Konrad Rózewicz grew up in what was then Zempelburg on the ‘Lehmberg’ and his father Andreas Rózewicz was a stove fitter. He was an uncle to Maria Mischlinski, née Spohn, and therefore the great-uncle of my wife, Anette Mischlinski.

Konrad had four siblings. A sister died early on, his sister Martha (* 24 January 1889, Sępólno – † 22 February 1959, Stuttgart) married Max Spohn, a cooper in Sępólno. The other siblings were his brothers Lucian (who had four children: Irene, Steffi, Bruno and Heinrich) and Roman. A Spohn family saying has it that Konrad was more ‘insolent’ than Communist. He was also a ‘political’. The family, who lived in the Polish-German border region, had German nationalist leanings but were fierce opponents of the National Socialist regime. The Mischlinksis fled Sępólno in the confusion of the last days of the war and ended up in Stuttgart, where their parents Martha (née Rózewicz) and Max Spohn were later allowed to join them under family reunification measures. The emigration means there are no photos or documents about Konrad Rózewicz in the Spohn family, and anyone who could have given any information has already died. Konrad Rózewicz’s relatives remained in Poland and contact was lost through flight, expropriation and expulsion.

Anette Mischlinski / Dieter Scholz

Translation into English: Joanna White