News

Precious artefacts related to two soldiers – Heinz (father) and Henry (son) Lindemann have been received by our Museum thanks to Wojciech Niedźwiedziński from Gniezno. The donor - son of Jan who was a stepbrother of Henry - has been popularing local history for many years, including co-creating the Sound Archive of Kcynia.

The wartime history of the family, shared with the Museum by Wojciech Niedźwiedziński, is pretty complicated and very interesting. The main reason why the donator decided to step into the CMJW’s doorsteps was the POW status of Ensign Henry Lindemann – in September 1939 who was taken prisoner by the Germans, initially was held in Oflag VII B Eichstätt, and then in Stalag VI C Oberlangen, from where he was released in early 1943, to be soon taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After his liberation, in April 1945, he died there in unexplained circumstances while being evacuated in an International Red Cross column. The key context of Henryk's biography is that he was born in Wiesbaden, and his mother was Anna Niedźwiedzińska, née Mieczkowska - a Pole from Grodzisk Wielkopolski, while his father was Heinz Lindemann, a conductor at the Albert-Schumann-Theater in Frankfurt am Main. That meant that Henryk, having been taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht, was given the chance to be released from it, provided he sided with the Captor. Considering himself to be Polish, however, he did not take advantage of this opportunity.

On the other hand, what we know about his father Heinz is that he died on the front in World War I on 9 November 1915. The widow was given, in addition to the meticulously prepared documents informing her about her husband’s death, the Iron Cross awarded to Heinz in 1914, and a casket with the shrapnel that had fatally wounded him. It was these artefacts that Mr. Wojciech Niedźwiedziński donated to our Museum, as well as a card with a dried leaf from the place where Lindemann senior fell, photographs and a postcard from 1912, and a collection of memorabilia related to Henryk Lindemann, including: photographs, documents and newspapers from 1930-1938, correspondence sheets with his mother from the period of his captivity and his time in the concentration camp, a Red Cross form sheet with the information about his release from captivity, and a letter dated June 1947 from Kazimierz Gaca, accounting of the circumstances of the evacuation of the Sachsenhausen camp and the disappearance of Henryk Lindemann.

We would like to give a huge thank you to Mr. Wojciech Niedźwiedziński for the valuable gift.