Auschwitz Prisoner No. 31 Dies at 88
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Stanislaw Ryniak, the first Polish political prisoner to be locked up at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, died last Wednesday at the age of 88, almost 60 years after emerging alive from the notorious camp, where he was registered as prisoner number 31.
Ryniak was a student at a technical college in the town of Sanok when he was arrested along with the rest of his class by Gestapo officers in early 1940. Convicted (accurately) of being a member of the Polish resistance, he was then part of the first Polish contingent of 728 prisoners to be taken to Auschwitz ? in Polish called Oswiecim ? a year after the initial German invasion. He was shipped out of the camp on work duty in October 1944 and was released on May 8 the next year.
"I saw many things in my years in the camp ? things which still remain in me now, 60 years later," Ryniak said on one of his many appearances at the Auschwitz museum. "The selections for the gas chambers, uncounted executions. When I left I weighed 40 kilograms."
He was also a firm supporter of maintaining the permanent memorial museum at Auschwitz. "When we are gone the stones will speak for us," he said.
WARREN FOO