History of Sorts

Henio Zytomirski was a 9-year-old boy who was gassed at Majdanek Concentration Camp in Poland on November 9, 1942.

In 2005, a project called “Letters to Henio” was started in Lubin, Poland. Each year on April 19, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Poland, pupils and citizens of Lublin are asked to send letters addressed to Henio Zytomirski at 11th Kowalska Street, the last known address of Henio in Lublin.

Although it is not the 19th of April today, I will send him a letter via this blog. It is a letter to Henio and an indictment of those who want to silence people like me. People desperately want to keep the memory of Henio and all the other victims alive. Still, often, they are met by threats from those who take pleasure in the Holocaust and/or deny it, or are threatened by history revisionists who lack the bravery and dignity to admit their nation made many mistakes; they’d rather sweep it under the carpet. More disturbingly, they are being ridiculed by so-called Holocaust scholars, not because they are telling untruths, but because they choose a different word than these so-called scholars would, and they start a war of semantics, not realizing how much damage that does because it distracts from the message. The message is to keep the memories alive, like those of Henio.

My Letter to Henio

Dear Hennio,

I should not have to send you a letter. In fact, I should not even know your name. You really should have lived a mundane or even boring life—or perhaps a very exciting life—but you didn’t.

You never got the chance to grow up. You were born on March 25, 1933, and murdered in a most brutal way on November 9, 1942. You were just nine years old when you were killed.

Your life was taken from you, but your memory isn’t.

Nowadays, you would probably have been called an ‘influencer’ because you have several social media accounts with a large number of followers. But if I look at some of the pages dedicated to you, I get sad because they are using you to get some political message across.

You were not a politician. How could you have been? You were only 9. All I want to do is show your picture and a few details of your life so that people remember your name. Maybe they will even try to find out more about you, and that is good because that means a piece of you is still alive.

Some want to stop me from telling your story and that of other children, but I won’t let them because these people have nothing to contribute to society.

If my day comes—and I hope that won’t be any day soon—and I pass through the pearly gates, if I am allowed, I will look you up, and we will talk then.

For now, my young friend, rest in peace in the knowledge that you are not forgotten.

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