Czesława Kwoka was 14-years-old when she was sent to Auschwitz—the infamous Nazi death camp.
Digital Colorist Marina Amaral decided to bring this heartbreaking moment back to life in color.
Marina has been colorizing historic photos for three years.
The original photos were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, better known as the “famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp.”
“It was very hard to stare at her face for so many minutes knowing what happened to her,” Marina shared. “I wanted to give Czeslawa the opportunity to tell her story, which is [also] the story of so many other victims.”
Czesława was sat in front of the camera just minutes after she was beaten by a female prison guard.
“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.”
Czesława 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.
On March 12 1943, Czesława died at the age of 14. The circumstances of her death were not recorded.
With fresh blood still on her face, the last images ever taken of Czesława Kwoka are a stark reminder of the atrocities that happened in Auschwitz.
