Digital artist Marina Amaral has been colorizing historic photos for three years and recently updated the last images of a 14-year-old Polish prisoner in Auschwitz. Breathing life into the black-and-white pictures, Amaral managed to visually emphasize the tragic past of Czeslawa Kwoka.
"It was very hard to stare at her face for so many minutes knowing what happened to her," Amaral told Bored Panda. "I wanted to give Czeslawa the opportunity to tell her story, which is [also] the story of so many other victims."
"It is much easier to relate to these people once we see them in color. We understand what she and millions of others went through better once we see her bruises, the cut on her lip and the red blood on her face. The Holocaust did not begin with the mass killings. It began with the rhetoric of hate."
Originally, the images were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, better known as the “famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp” who was also the prisoner there during World War II.
“I distinctly remember [the] picture of this particular girl inmate,” he said in an interview. “It’s because she looked so young, so disarmingly girlish.” When she arrived at the camp, she couldn’t understand what was being said to her. “So this woman Kapo (a prisoner overseer) took a stick and beat her about the face. This German woman was just taking out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful young girl, so innocent. She cried but she could do nothing. Before the photograph was taken, the girl dried her tears and the blood from the cut on her lip. To tell you the truth, I felt as if I was being hit myself but I couldn’t interfere. It would have been fatal for me.”
Czeslawa was one of the “approximately 230,000 children and young people aged less than eighteen” among the 1,300,000 people who were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1940 to 1945. She was transported from Zamosc, Poland, to Auschwitz, on 13 December 1942. On 12 March 1943, Czeslawa Kwoka died at the age of 14; the circumstances of her death were not recorded.
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Czesława Kwoka was 14 when she was sent to Auschwitz - the infamous Nazi death camp
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Digital Colorist Marina Amaral decided to bring this heartbreaking moment back to life in color
Image credits: Marina Amaral
The original photos were taken by another inmate in the camp as part of the project to 'document' those taken to the death camp
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Czesława was sat in front of the camera mere minutes after she was beaten by a female prison guard
Image credits: Marina Amaral
"She cried but she could do nothing. Before the photograph was taken, the girl dried her tears and the blood from the cut on her lip"
Image credits: Marina Amaral
With fresh blood still on her face, the last images ever taken of Czesława Kwoka are a stark reminder of the attrocities that happened there
Image credits: Marina Amaral
There are plenty more historic photos colorized by Marina Amaral, like the Burning Monk
Image credits: Marina Amaral
A Victim Of American Bombing
Image credits: Marina Amaral
English Orphan In London, 1945
Image credits: Marina Amaral
A French Boy Introduces Himself To Indian Soldiers
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Abraham Lincoln
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Airmail Pilot
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Broad Street, New York
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Elvis Presley, Priscilla Presley And Lisa Marie
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Three French Boys Looking At A Knocked-out German Panther Tank
Image credits: Marina Amaral
John And Jacqueline Kennedy
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Inmates At Wobbelin Concentration Camp
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Migrant Mother
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Medics From The Us 5th And 6th Engineer Special Brigade
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Grigori Rasputin
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Polish Refugees
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Drink Dr. Pepper
Image credits: Marina Amaral
Winston Churchill
Image credits: Marina Amaral