Haunting colourised picture of terrified young girl facing torture at Auschwitz offers chilling insight on horrors of the Holocaust
THESE harrowing pictures of a teenage girl awaiting her torture and death at the hands of Nazi torture specialists lay bare the tragic human toll of the Holocaust.
The gaunt face of 14-year-old prisoner Czesława Kwoka stares back through time in a haunting Auschwitz mugshot restored this year by a Brazilian artist.
Taken just minutes after she was beaten to within an inch of her life, the images give a human face to one of the concentration camp's 1.1million victims.
The painstakingly recoloured snaps show the teenager trying to hold back tears after being repeatedly struck by a guard's club.
Czesława was dragged away from her home in South Eastern Poland to create living space for ethnic Germans at the height of Nazi domination.
She had the number 26947 tattooed on her arm on arrival, before being savagely beaten by guards as she was dragged off to have her photo taken.
She died 67 days later after Auschwitz scientists injected deadly phenol directly into her heart without using anaesthetic.
Artist and photographer Marina Amaral, who restored the pictures, said: "When we see the photos in black and white, we get the feeling that those events happened only in the history books.
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"By restoring the colours on her face, I was able to show the colours of the blood and the bruises, which made everything even more real.
"These people were human beings who had dreams, ambitions, fears, friends, family, and had all this taken from them.
"Unfortunately, Czeslawa was just one among millions of others, but the expression on her face – so much fear, and at the same time so much courage, will stay with me for ever."
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