Mury
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the Second World War Polish scouting organisation. For article about the song, see Mury (song).
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
“Mury” – “The Walls”, the clandestine Girl Scouts group organized by young Polish women; political prisoners in the concentration camp in Ravensbrück. The group, led by Józefa Kantor – the Scouts’ Group Leader, was established on 30 November 1941.
At first, “Mury” consisted of small number of patriotic girl scouts. Then, later on, it grew up to 5 units with about one hundred young women. Their main activities included: organizing food and medical supplies for the sick fellow prisoners, moral, psychological and religious support for the group members and other women in the concentration camp.
The members of the group held meetings in various blocks in the concentration camp regularly where they were receiving not only new tasks and daily instructions from the group leaders, but also acquiring a scouting knowledge and high school education from fellow prisoners who had been experienced academic teachers incarcerated in the concentration camp as political prisoners.
Based on the Nazis incomplete transport list "Zugangsliste" consisting 25,028 names of women sent by Nazis to the camp, it is estimated that inmates of Ravensbrück ethnic structure was the following: Poles 24.9%, Germans 19.9%, Jews 15.1%, Russians 15.0%, French 7.3%, Gypsies 5.4%, other 12.4%. Gestapo categorized the inmates as follows: political 83,54%, anti-social 12,35%, criminal 2,02%, Jehovah Witnesses 1.11%, racial defilement 0.78%, other 0.20%. The list is one of the most important documents, preserved in the last moments of the camp operation by courageous members of the Polish underground girl guides unit "Mury" (The Walls). The rest of the camp documents were burned by escaping SS overseers in pits or in the crematorium.
It is unprecedented case of such activities in such circumstances conducted by Girl Scouts during the Second World War. Regrettably, it is mostly forgotten chapter from the history of the Girl Scouts movement.
