Yanina cywinska biography definition

When she was 10 years old, Yanina Cywinska was a slave at the Nazis’ infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. Her job was to drag dead bodies out of a gas chamber. Her horror was compounded the day she realized the corpse she was pulling out by the legs was that of her mother.

“Please mom, wake up, I know you can do it!” she pleaded. “Wake up and let’s go home!”

A fellow prisoner, Greta, admonished her to keep working lest she meet her mother’s fate.

“You’re whining—there’s nothing she can do!” Greta yelled, which prompted the child to continue her grim duties.

This was but one of the atrocities recounted Thursday, Nov. 15, by Cywinska (pronounced Yuh-ZIN-skuh) during “Avoiding Future Holocausts: A Night to Remember” at the Chico Unified School District’s Center for the Arts on the Pleasant Valley High School campus.

Several hundred attendees watched this powerful and inspiring event featuring Cywinska and dozens of PV students who acted, recited, danced and