Adam Franciszek Jaźwiecki

Adam Franciszek Jaźwiecki was a Polish political prisoner and artist interned in Auschwitz, known as the Portraitist of Auschwitz for his portraits of other inmates.

Biography As an artist, in 1930s he was active in the Kraków Group.

On December 1, 1942, Jaźwiecki was deported from Kraków to Auschwitz.

Jaźwiecki worked in Auschwitz's carpentry workshop and paint workshop. However, they were eventually discovered by the SS, and SS-Scharführer Wilhelm Boger was assigned to investigate his case. “He sits down behind the table and browses through my drawings. ... Through hurting eyes I can see him looking at them with interest. ... Thus I feel I'm not going to be hanged, I also feel that he is going to punish me in his own way and not through the Politische Abteilung, because he wants to steal these drawings for himself. ... Otherwise, he would have to send them away with me, and he's putting them into the drawer.”

- Jaźwiecki on SS-Scharführer Wilhelm Boger His family donated 100 of his portraits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. Agnieszka Sieradzka, an art historian at the museum, suggests that Jaźwiecki intended the portraits to be a part of historical record, as he included the prisoner numbers in most of his portraits, allowing the subjects' names to be revealed through cross-reference with the extensive camp records.